Unlocking the Secret Symphony: How Rhythmic Writing Transforms Language into Music
I attempted to communicate that principle through the words of a character in my own novel, Splintered River. In one scene, Vice President Reginald Taylor attempts to tutor police officer Mike Hargreaves in the fine art of riling up a crowd through his speeches. He hands Hargreaves a recording of a blues song and a speech by the Reverend Digston Barnes, a prominent civil rights leader, as examples to follow:
“ … You hear the notes, but do you hear the pauses … it’s not filling every audible space with sound … It lets you experience the feeling by letting your mind fill in the spaces between the notes … You become part of the song … That’s why it’s so seductive. If you pay attention to what you don’t hear, there’s music every second but half of it is created by you … Listen to the cadence, listen to the volume, listen to the pauses … That’s why he’s a ‘reverend;’ not because of what he says but because of how he says it … It’s how he works the cadence so the heart, the soul, the mind of the listener enters the rhythm. That’s hypnotic. It’s not just the message, Mike, it’s the medium … ”
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