Blood Musk

November 13, 2007 - 3:06

Lately, I've been trying to think melodically, but it doesn't come that easily to me- so this morning on my bicycle commute, I gave myself an exercise suggestion: to sing the shapes that I saw (happened to be mostly branch and tree debris), whatever that meant.
It was eerily surprising how naturally melody came to me this way.
I've been dwelling on it today, and I actually think I understand why it was so intuitive for me to happen upon melody while fixating on swooping and/or linear shapes.
When I was a girl at church, I was often bored and sought any available stimulus, and in the back of the hymnal were diagrams of the choral conducters hand motions for each tempo the hymn might call for. Like so, more or less:

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I spent a bit of time practicing those hand motions, flipping through the pages of the hymnal and humming the songs under my breath.

Trained brain.