August 28, 2008
-
On Style:
Associations
for the writer
known as UD"Have liberty not as
the air within a grave
Or down a well. Breathe freedom,
oh, my native,
In the space of horizons
that neither love nor hate."-- Wallace Stevens,
"Things of August"
A related visual
association of ideas --
("The association is the idea"
-- Ian Lee, The Third Word War)
by John Braheny
"Hook" is the term you'll hear most often in the business
and craft of commercial songwriting. (Well, maybe not as much
as "Sorry, we can't use your song," but it's possible that
the more you hear about hooks now, the less you'll hear "we
can't use it" later.)
The hook has been described as "the part(s) you remember
after the song is over," "the part that reaches out and grabs
you," "the part you can't stop singing (even when you hate
it)" and "the catchy repeated chorus...."See also UD's recent
A Must-Read and In My Day*
as well as the five
Log24 entries ending
Sept. 20, 2002.More seriously:The date of The New Yorker issue quoted above is also the anniversary of the birth of Wallace Stevens and the date of death of mathematician Paul R. Halmos.Stevens's "space of horizons" may, if one likes, be interpreted as a reference to projective geometry. Despite the bleak physicist's view of mathematics quoted above, this discipline is-- thanks to Blaise Pascal-- not totally lacking in literary and spiritual associations.* Hey Hey
