Music for Desks: "That Pleasant Buzz at the Periphery" by James Gyure
It’s the repetitive synthesized murmur, the drone rising and falling like a slow lunar heartbeat, a melody (if you can call it that) which loops back and forth over and over. It’s not that the compositions have entirely flat musical horizons, but that those horizons are stretched out, the undulations too subtle to deliver any sudden jolts. There is little or no discord here, and it is that seamlessness which I find reassuring.
Nowadays, I generally stand to write, at a large sturdy wooden desk I stained ebony. It doesn’t matter. Sitting or standing, the music I listen to while writing is typically ambient.
Saying “ambient” is like saying “rock” or “classical” or “world.” Can you narrow it down a little? There are particular artists and albums I listen to most often: Stars of the Lid (such as And Their Refinement of the Decline), and early Brian Eno (Apollo, Thursday Afternoon, the landmark Music for Airports).
Eno, who is credited with coining the term “ambient music,” suggested that it should, paradoxically, be inconspicuous and stimulating at the same time. His edict recalls the description composer Erik Satie gave to some of his own compositions sixty years earlier: “furniture music.” That is pretty much how it works for me, effectively clearing my mind so I can focus on what I’m writing while at the same time keeping a pleasant intellectual buzz going at the periphery.
Drone music is often characterized as being cold, detached, even boring, but the sounds – the synthesizers and electronic effects, manipulated strings and keyboards – are sensitive. They influence me emotionally. There are points in Stars of the Lid’s “Don’t Bother They’re Here,” or Eno’s “An Ending (Ascent)” from Apollo, which I find as soaringly emotive as a plaintive guitar solo by Mark Knopfler, or a heart-breaking passage from one of Vivaldi’s late violin concertos.
“Don’t Bother They’re Here,” from Stars of the Lid’s And Their Refinement of the Decline, unexpectedly takes the famous melody from Sondheim’s “Send in the Clowns” and re-envisions the ironic text and melancholy sentiment of the original as a futuristic lament of gentle droning bittersweetness, as the modified sound of classical instruments – horns especially – morph the well-known tune into an AI hymn. And yet there is no mocking undertone, no tongue-in-cheek dispassion. The track pays its respects to the original, but slowly ushers it into outer space, ever resonant even as it recedes.
Outer space is the setting for Eno’s “An Ending (Ascent),” which was included on the soundtrack for a documentary about the Apollo space flights, and has been used in several films. The track contains no irony at all, no counterpoint. Its heavily remixed and layered sound is effortless and buoyant. It takes its time, meandering gracefully through its repeated theme, which is characterized by the ebb and flow of high-pitched notes that echo like the electronically reworked voice of a pure soprano. There is acknowledgement here of the reality of longing and loss, but mostly the sense is one of peaceful awe.
The relationship between my writing process and ambient music can be intuitive – like pushing open a back-porch screen door the better to listen to heavy summer rain, and then looking for music which matches that effect – but more often the connection is deeply pragmatic. I began writing to ambient music years ago, when I happened to tune in to NPR’s ambient music radio show Hearts of Space. I was laboring over a poetry manuscript at the time, fretting about the way it was going. I had no preconceptions about the music or how it would affect my work, and I was surprised by how easily it toned down my anxiety without taking my mind off the poems.
I now listen to ambient mostly when I’m writing fiction. I find it a good match for the narrative flow. Its unhurried pace fits my pace as I work on constructing scenes, and its unobtrusive tone allows me to hear dialogue in my head. Sometimes I feel guilty talking about this genre of music, which I truly enjoy, as if it were merely a tool, as if I’m taking advantage of its unjealous willingness to stay in the background. But that’s the point.
I often write late at night, when the house and streets are quiet. This is certainly better than the grind of daytime noises, but every now and then I find the stillness a little eerie. Ambient music keeps me company at this hour. It is a supportive presence, better than unnoticed furniture in a corner of the room, more like a companion, sleeping beside me. Rhythmically breathing, in and out.
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James Gyure lives and writes in Pennsylvania, where, in a former life, he had a long career as a university administrator. He received an MFA from the University of Pittsburgh, and has work in jmww, Baltimore Review, Tahoma Literary Review, Jabberwock Review and elsewhere. His short story collection was short listed for the Steel Toe Books 2020 Prose Award, and his writing has been selected for two Pushcart nominations. He’s at work on a novel.
