Unveiling the Hidden Harmonies: How John Garrison’s Memoir Transforms Music into Life’s Untold Stories
Play music as you write. Because music can help us unpack our feelings about a particular memory, integrate it into your writing practice. Describe not just the memory it evokes, but also the feelings in your body as you listen to it now. You could even create a “mixtape” of songs from a particular period in your life and play it while you write in order to both evoke past feelings and keep the mood consistent across your writing.
Coda
I should add one final note about using music in your autobiographical writing (or in any writing). Make sure you’ve educated yourself about copyright issues. If the song is not in the public domain, consider alternatives to quoting lyrics to invoke a song in your readers’ minds. The examples linked above model innovative approaches. To start with, you might reflect on the title of a song, the album cover art or the video. Or, you might choose a song most of your readers will know, or paraphrase the lyrics of the song as Dr. Frank Anderson does at the start of each chapter in To Be Loved: A Story of Truth, Trauma and Transformation.
