When I write, I kind of have to hypnotize myself. After all, being a novelist means getting paid to have imaginary friends, being attuned to a reality that doesn’t exist for anyone but you, day after day after day. To enter into that reality more easily, I make a playlist for each new project. Sometimes I’ll even listen to the same song for hours, until the moment I’m trying to write is grooved into my brain. The point isn’t capturing what the novel sounds like, per se, but immersing oneself into how it feels.
This practice proved essential during the lockdown. By February 2020, I’d been working on a ballet novel for a couple of years, but, being mid-MFA, I was also attempting several other projects. In February, my graduate advisor took me to task. “You need to set everything else aside,” he said, “and work on this book until it’s done.” I took his advice, and I’m so glad I did—because by the time the lockdown started a few weeks later, I was already deep into the book (and my daily practice). No matter what else was going on around me, I had another world to slip into. Every morning, I’d go for a run, ask my husband about the death tolls, and then go upstairs to my office to work. When I put on my headphones, I was immediately with Maya and Natasha.
This playlist made that possible.
“The Angel of Doubt,” by Punch Brothers
From the beginning, I knew this novel would be about the seductiveness of ambition (inspired, in part, by the alluring figure of Death in George Balanchine’s gorgeous, unsettling La Valse). This haunting Punch Brothers song is about a similar temptation. I first encountered it while watching the band perform at Tanglewood. (The elderly audience was utterly bewildered when Chris Thile started rapping.)
“Wedding Day at Troldhaugen,” by Edvard Grieg
You’ll be unsurprised to hear that my novel about ballet in Soviet Russia required listening to a lot of classical music. (What else would those girls have heard all those hours at the barre?) This song’s cheerfulness captures twin sisters Maya and Natasha’s mood when the story opens: they’re seniors in ballet school, and the whole world could be theirs. (This song is also the only one that’s ever captured the joyousness and tenderness of my marriage, but that’s a different essay…)
“Overture,” from the Ben Hur soundtrack (1959), by Miklós Rózsa
Maya & Natasha is—surprise!—about more than just ballet: it also explores the world of Soviet film, which was deeply influenced by (and often imitative of) Western cinema. The pomp and grandeur of this overture from Ben Hur helped me imagine what it might feel like to be on set at Mosfilm, Moscow’s enormous state-funded studio.
“Bolkonsky’s Hope Reborn,” from the War and Peace soundtrack (1966), by Vyacheslav Ovchinnikov
All right, since the cat’s out of the bag—among other things, my novel details the filming of Sergei Bondarchuk’s masterful adaptation of War and Peace. Seeing this seven-hour film in theaters in 2019 completely changed my concept of what art could—and should—be. In the pandemic’s worst days, I listened to the soundtrack on repeat. This song in particular was an anchor: every day, as I wrote, I listened to the last forty-five seconds of it over and over. It helped me remember that there had once been peace and wonder in the world—and someday, there would be again.
“While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” by The Beatles (Love version)
Any coming-of-age story deals with lost innocence. My characters face the difficult reality of being state-sponsored artists: what does it mean to be someone whose government funds (and therefore controls) your self-expression? At one point, one sister thinks she’s figured out how to have her cake and eat it too. In this song, George Harrison could be singing to her: “I don’t know how someone controlled you/They bought and sold you.” If you had to get bad news, wouldn’t George Harrison singing it to you make things a little bit better?
Coming-of-age stories also deal, of course, with sex. This song was immensely useful to me when a character found herself getting pulled deeper and deeper into an affair she knows will end in disaster. “No chance to break the spell of it all”—isn’t that what it feels like to fall, headfirst, into lust?
“Les 400 coups,” from The 400 Blows soundtrack (1959), by Jean Constantin
When I first took on this project, I had no idea where to begin my research. A wise mentor of mine, whose first novel was also historical, advised me to look at what was happening elsewhere in the world during my novel’s era. Watching French New Wave films like The 400 Blows got me started: sure, 1959 Paris was vastly different from 1959 Leningrad, but both worlds were, in their own ways, somehow romantic and austere at the same time.
“Another Hundred People,” Company Original Cast Album
Near the middle of the novel, one of my characters visits New York for the first time. This song expresses the thrill and sensory overload of that experience—people, people, everywhere. It’s a very good place to recognize your own insignificance.
“Vanderlyle Crybaby Geeks,” by The National
As I researched Soviet dancers who defected, I wondered what it’s like to leave everything you know (and everyone you love) behind. Can you ever feel at home again? Matt Berninger might as well have written this song about a defector: “Leave your home/Change your name/Live alone/Eat your cake.” Perhaps self-exile is the loneliest kind of all.
“Bluette,” by The Dave Brubeck Quartet
During the Cold War, both Russia and the United States sent their very best artists—like, say, the Kirov and New York City Ballet—on tour in each other’s territory as a way of proving their superiority. Dave Brubeck was sent abroad, too, and this track from his classic Time Further Out suggests the weariness Maya and Natasha feel as they live out their state-mandated roles.
“Another New World,” by Punch Brothers
This song is both thematically linked to my novel—it’s about someone who throws everything away for ambition—and deeply embedded into it. The first time I heard it, on a lawn in Indianapolis at my first post-Covid concert, I imagined the astonishing moment when, after much hard work, an artistic project takes on a life of its own. It came to be my personal soundtrack for the pivotal scene in Maya & Natasha when one sister realizes she’s not just a dancer, but a choreographer. As Chris Thile’s tremulous arpeggios pick up speed, her turns do, too, and I can see every movement she makes, every swoop of her feet as she dances into a new—and very unexpected—life.
Pezzo in Forma de Sonatina, from Serenade for Strings (1880), by Pytor Ilyich Tchaikovsky
The Serenade for Strings appears multiple times in this novel, but I can’t hear the triumphant opening chords of this movement without thinking of hearing them at Lincoln Center in 2021, at New York City Ballet’s first performance after the pandemic. I’ll never forget the wave of applause and cheers as the curtain rose on George Balanchine’s masterwork Serenade. It was a moment that stirred me so deeply that the ballet made it into the novel—how, exactly, I won’t spoil for you, but suffice it to say that this song encapsulates the entire spirit of my book: the resurrection of long-dead hope, a return to love after loneliness, and art’s transcendent ability to carry us through our days.