music and lyrics

I've found a good deal of enjoyment in going through my music library and making mixes and playlists of songs that could be about my characters, or that illustrate their situations and/or points of view. It's amazing how just listening to the right congretation of songs can inspire me to keep writing on a discouraging day, and how the rhythm spurs my typing onward. I should be nervous, I suppose, that lyrical turns of phrase might work their way into what I'm writing, but it's never been the case. I take such inspiration from music, and I always have.

It seems that all art forms dovetail into one long stream, draining into an ocean of human expression. Visual arts, theatre, cinema, poetry, prose, music...they all swirl together like the colors in the petroleum film on rain puddles in parking lots. They don't make the water muddy, though, their individual colors staying discrete and true while making all of the colors around them more beautiful. It's all part of the same artistic, creative impulse that first drove Cro Magnon to decorate the caves in Lascaux.

I wonder when and why we started thinking it was such a good idea to put things into pigeon holes. Life is never so neatly categorized; why should we expect that the expression of life should be any different?