Play It Like You Feel It
As much as I love writing, I have to confess an equal affection for playing music. The two are intimately related, I think: Words are like notes, each one selected to create a melody in the reader’s mind. A book’s characters are like individual instruments in an orchestra, and a book itself reminds me of a symphony, with slow and fast movements combining (one hopes) into a harmonious whole.
I’m a guitarist. Not a professional one, but about as passionate an amateur as you’ll find, and so I approach my writing with the same mindset I do my music. Work steadily; don’t get frustrated when my fingers won’t obey my brain; and keep at it, even when it feels like I’ve hit a brick wall. And eventually everything comes together, and all the work (and sometimes frustration) is forgotten in the joy of completion.
Late last year, the fabled C. F. Martin & Company of Nazareth, Pennsylvania, featured me in a very nice profile: ‘Robert Brighton: A Best-Selling Novelist Finds His Voice in Music.’ And very recently they re-released it in an all-access version. I share it here with you. Have a look!
As I am wont to do when giving a shout-out to a favorite product, I hasten to say that I am not compensated or endorsed by the esteemed Martin & Company. It’s only that I happen to like (love?) Martin guitars, whose pedigree and reputation have been earned, one instrument at a time, since the company’s founding in 1833. (The firm remains one of the oldest family-owned companies in America, now on its sixth generation of Martin descendants.)
I hope you’ll accept that all this is not about tooting my own horn, or at least not entirely. It’s that I tend to think that you and I share a relationship very much like the one I have with my guitars: at once individual and interdependent.
Picking up one of my Martins reminds me that it is the instrument’s thoughtful design and careful craftsmanship that allow me to develop my own unique style and sound. The instrument wasn’t designed or made specifically for me, but I still get to play it like feel it. I get to bring myself to the instrument in a way no one else does in quite the same way (for good or ill, ha ha).
In that spirit, my fondest hope is that each one of you will hear something of your own personal song in my words, and bring your own interpretation to my work. I find something mysterious and lovely about the notion of crafting instruments for you to play as you feel. I’m grateful to Martin & Company for doing that for me.
