Music as the Great Connector

[Jeff Gerke]

Let's say there are folks from the SF world who are trying to work things out with folks in the fantasy world. Take my "3 Acts with the New Religion Idea" thoughts, in which a small group from each faction is trying to unite.

So I can see this very tense banquet. Both sides are there, perhaps grudgingly, but tension is high. Small fights and quarrels are everywhere, or else stiff formality and cold relations.

Both sides do something special to honor the other side, kind of like at a state dinner between the U.S. and U.S.S.R. during the height of the Cold War.

Maybe the fantasy side brings in dancers and a storyteller, perhaps, and a wizard to put on a show of wonder, and some mounted warriors to display their prowess with lance and spear. The SF side brings in a holographer and an ether band and a chemist and a corps of marksmen.

These displays are supposedly to honor the other faction, but really they're to show the other side that they can whup 'em if it comes to that.

But at the tensest moment, when things are about to come to blows, one of the lead SF musicians (a major character, perhaps?) goes over to one of the talented fantasy musicians and asks him how to play his instrument. The sounds he makes are so awful as to be hilarious. It breaks the tension. Then both bands huddle together and begin learning from one another, quickly coming up with (to steal from Robots) a fusion of jazz and funk, called junk.

In the midst of the synergy surrounding the jam session, the leaders from the SF and fantasy worlds find each other and slowly begin to thaw their relations, even sharing some ale and maybe getting sloshed together.

Because of the bridge-building work of the musicians, what could've been a major debacle becomes the breakthrough both sides wanted but neither side knew how to create.

Maybe the SF musician who started it all could be suddenly elected as the ambassador/liason to the fantasy people. Maybe the fantasy musician could become his counterpart. Maybe these two could even become fast friends and the focus of some or much of the storytelling. (Maybe if things fall apart and their factions have split, these two could find each other and play one last duet.)

Anyway, grist for the mill.

Jeff

[dulci]

I love it. Of course, being a musician, I'm a stickler for musical anything. But no, really, this is awesome! I think it would be a great catalyst, maybe coming at the beginning of Act 2?

Maybe show one of these major characters before in the story strumming their whatever-macholit?

[Jeff Gerke]

Right. And the musicians would've had a chance to see each other perform in the "presentations" that have gone before: supporting the dancers (fantasy) or in the ether band (SF).

Jeff

[ellij]

If it involves music, count me in! I love the idea...it allows for so many sub-plots!...shutting up now ('cause I know I'll just keep gushing about music if I don't).

[terry]

It might be useful to review Kathy Tyres use of musicical terms, as plot movers, in her Firebird Books.

[ellij]

There is a specific song in every heart that only becomes active when the Truth is known. The dance will only come when the Messiah is revealed. In other words, the secular set of music exists, but this particular song is more beautiful than all of that stuff.

Just another thought.

[mongoose]

I know we'd be copying lawhead, but I loved the "Song of Albion" and how it was used in the book by that title to overcome the evil hoards attacking the last stronghold.

And that truth song is a fusion of the pieces of the truth song in the hearts of each individual. They only find their individual piece of the song when they find the Truth, or come to belief in the One God (whatever we'll call him.) But for the song to gain its full beauty and power, it requires each of the elect to play TOGETHER in harmony, their individual pieces of the Truth Song. When they do finally jam together, like that, the song overcomes all who hear it, and they break down weeping, dying, being broken, repenting, coming back to life, being healed, whatever it is the One God designs to do through the hearing of His music.

Wow. I want us to write that. I might have to use it myself if we don't use it as a group. It's just too cool.