In what ways do the books you read figure into the music you write?
Songwriting is of course a very different art to that of the novelist — condensing sometimes large ideas into rhyming couplets seems to be the opposite process.
But it is interesting to me how often a novel will begin with a quote from a poem or a song, so the territories do overlap to some extent. My favorite songs are narrative songs, short stories that can be recounted in three minutes. My favorite novels are extended songs. What is “One Hundred Years of Solitude” if not an opera? And a grand one at that!
Indeed, an opera! Oh, Sting. What a marvelous man. He reminds me of a knife slice. Definite. Painful. Cold. Brilliant.
As I used to say (well, I still say it much to the chagrin of the younger ones) so cool! And I had to include this from the interview for emphasis of cool-os-ity:
What book has had the greatest impact on you?
Probably Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita,” a delicious and disruptive satire of Soviet Russia. I hear a dead man was put on trial in Moscow only this past summer; Woland would have loved it!
One of the most aptly named characters of all time – Sting.