“When you get to interview two dozen incredible women filmmakers, you get to watch at least 5 times that many incredible movies that offer up music , scoring a few memorable moments.”
Tag: playlists
“As I compose this piece on a long train journey, it occurs to me that the rhythmic, occasionally juddering, song of the rail below me is in spirit a musical companion to my novel.”
“Teen Queen Training is a book steeped in the lessons I took from Seventeen magazine during the late ‘90s.”
“I had a song or a soundtrack in mind for each of the nine essays in the book.”
“In public and in private, whenever I was writing something for On Sundays, songs would come to me—bits of jazz, a hymn I grew up hearing in church, a blues song, something moody by Hozier or Nina Simone. Sometimes the songs snuck their way onto the page as with “Don’t Let Me Misunderstood” and “There’s a Leak in This Old Building”, but most stayed in my head, happy to be hummed while I wrote out some horrible, stomach-churning scene of horror.”
“Finding a song that aligns with the emotion or experience I’m trying to communicate helps me go deeper and stay in the moment.”
“Berceuse Parish is a community record: part myth, part elegy, part songbook, and ultimately a love letter to Louisiana. It’s a poetry book you can read as a novel, or maybe a broken novel you can read as a series of poems and other ephemera.”
“When I think about Red Girl Jumping – both the writing and living within — the music that comes to mind embodies states of confusion, longing for saviors and hope, and the da-da-dum heartbeat sounds that Red Girl hears in herself.”
“Music helps me imagine the world at the moment of the story.”
“I chose this song in an early story about the Arrington family because I see ‘Take the A Train’ as a representation of their old life in the Black Community.”