987 Words of Short Fiction: A Thing From the Past

In the background, maybe coming from a distant room, I could hear the sound of a barely audible piece of music, enough at first only to judge it was classical music and something familiar. Since I rarely found him alone in the house, especially at night, there was usually some kind of commotion going on. It might have been on TV or maybe one of Ben's grandchildren was listening to it on-line (part of an assignment?) though I didn't recall anyone in his family being interested in classical music.

As our conversation continued – I don't remember about what – I found myself paying less attention to what Ben was saying and more to trying to hear the music better so I could identify it. For some reason, the fact I found myself humming along with it but still couldn't think what it was, bothered me.

It was a "Tip-of-the-Tongue Moment" – when I stuck my tongue out, Ben would lean forward and say, "nope, can't see it" – a joke we'd often used when we were kids so many years ago. It was a way of breaking the awkwardness caused by some momentary forgetfulness, but our parents never found it very funny.

"Just wait," their looks would say, especially my curmudgeonly grandfather's, "till you're our age, then you'll understand." (And they were right.)

But Ben couldn't see it this time because we're on the phone.

"Salome!"

Ben stopped abruptly. "No... what? I was talking about the cheese at the market. I guess they might've had salami, but..."

"No, sorry," I stammered. "I meant the music – in the background? Strauss' Salome?"

"Oh, that." He paused. I could imagine him suddenly listening to it. It had been wallpaper for him up till then.

"I meant, it's the 'Dance of the Seven Veils,' right? I can barely hear it but I still couldn't place it."

"Yeah, I guess," then went right back to yesterday's trip to the supermarket.

Cheese and its availability at the local Shop Rite grocery store – remembering Stravinsky's great ballet, I'd always called it Le sacre du boutique – was not a topic that held any real interest for me. But I let him drone on because, whenever I talked about my love of music, he was bored but always polite.

Ben Hoyle's parents were what we'd call "Big Cheese Buffs," not that that was anything I or my family considered odd, and trying some new variety was always a major part of any dinner. Ben would rattle them off as enthusiastically as I would list any new composers I'd just heard for the first time. Over the years, I had been a guest at many a family dinner when Ben and I were neighbors growing up, less often after his parents moved to the suburbs and another school district.

Quite often, after school, I would join Ben and his older brother and sisters at the kitchen table for a snack, which was cheese and crackers rather than the more traditional milk and cookies. When we'd sit down to dinner, Ben's mom "presented" standard favorites of cheese rather than risk possible disappointment, spoiling the experience.

I didn't know his sisters, Emily and Ruth, very well, and his brother, Nick, older by about seven years, always treated Ben and me like we were too young for him to bother with. Even their dog, Ralph, some black-and-white random terrier, was a year older than Ben, the true baby of the Hoyle Family.

Ben's mom, Mrs. Hoyle, was a tall, quiet woman who grew up on a dairy farm, often talking about childhood memories. Ben's father was more distant from us kids, aloof and dignified, a teacher.

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What my family did consider odd about Ben's family was Mrs. Hoyle being a Baptist and Mr. Hoyle apparently a "non-believer." They assumed Baptists were country-folk, where, in the city, many Baptists were black. My parents, always finding some excuse not to go to church themselves, never thought "Cheeses" was an issue worth worrying about.

It wasn't so much either of the Hoyle's beliefs but that the combination didn't create more obvious friction than it did. The girls went to church with their mother, and the "men-folk" stayed home.

One afternoon, near the end of the school year, Emily brought home a friend – "boyfriend," Ruth chided her in that annoying voice little sisters always used when making fun of others. "His name's Ralph."

Mrs. Hoyle said she recognized him from church and you could see what was initially alarm quietly shifted closer to approval.

"Ralph?" Ben asked, looking at his sister, confused. "You mean like the dog?"

"How're we ever going to tell them apart," Mrs. Hoyle quipped. It was as if they boy wasn't even standing there.

"Well, I refuse to call Ralph the dog 'Ralph the Dog'," Ruth pouted. "He has seniority. He's even older than Ben!"

"I suppose we could call him 'Ralph the Human'," Ben suggested, Ralph blushing to the roots of his very blonde hair.

"Or instead," I offered, "maybe you can call Emily's friend 'Ralph the Baptist'?"

Everyone else seemed to think I'd made a joke, judging from the way they'd laughed. Even Mr. Hoyle cracked a smile. I hadn't meant to be rude and I suspect the others hadn't either. Ralph – not the dog – apparently'd had enough, running out of the kitchen, the back door slamming behind them after Emily followed.

I tried to recall if I ever saw him around after that, always thinking I'd ruined a good friendship for Emily. She soon stopped going to church, then, probably too embarrassed to face him.

Over the years, it never occurred to me to ask Ben "whatever happened to that guy – you remember, 'Ralph the Baptist'?" I'd completely forgotten Ralph till something reminded me of him and that afternoon.

"So," Ben was saying, "should I pick up some of that for you?"

"Cheese?" Salome's 'Dance' had stopped. "No, that's okay."


– Dick Strawser

987 Words About Resolutions that Have Nothing to Do with the New Year

Okay, I've made it to the second installment of 987 Words and I'm seriously wondering how this is going to work, not that '987 Words' trips off the tongue all that lightly, does it? The first post took almost a full week to write and I'm finding it's time consuming keeping to the Fibonacci Structure. Predictably, given the New Year – not to mention a whole new decade – thoughts might turn to Resolutions: a self-disciplinary writing exercise? But in this case, I'm thinking more of 'resolutions' in the musical sense.

In music we have lots of terms that are easily misunderstood: for instance, dissonance is usually taken to be 'ugly' and, if you want to enjoy yourself, best avoided. 'Art should be beautiful,' right? What it really means is 'something that creates anticipation,' building a sense of tension that will somehow need to be resolved.

So when you watch TV and see a character's eyebrow rise a bit, you probably think, 'Aha, she's discovered something: what?' And you'll have to wait till after the commercial break to find out. It's a way of creating anticipation requiring future resolution (otherwise, what's the point?), drawing you on so you don't tune away.

A musical dissonance might be the equivalent not only of that raised eyebrow, but of many other regularly accepted, stereotypical 'dissonances.' Imagine a horror show without a monster or a plot without a twist.

Another word we hear when talking about music is 'harmony,' which we usually think of as something 'harmonious' and therefore beautiful, though it originally meant 'living together in peace' or 'forming a pleasing whole.' But in music, it's the process by which an individual chord combines with other similar chords to create a 'pleasing whole.' Anyone who's ever taken music classes learns how these chords, building blocks of most Western music, classical and otherwise, work in certain standard ways despite tons of often confusing rules and even more exceptions.

Without getting into the particulars of how chords are built, let's just say a chord by itself is just a sound. Putting a bunch of chords together could create a string of pleasing sounds. Most of Western music is based on the idea chords together go somewhere, a journey with a beginning and a destination.

Not that I'm writing an entire Music 101 course in 987 words, but think of a piece of music as a story with a beginning and an end, and lots of stuff in between. You meet characters (themes, motives), situations evolve (the expansion of those themes, motives), things happen (contrasts), eyebrows get raised (unexpected modulation). Structurally, a longer composition, like a novel, could have several movements instead of chapters, each one subdivided into sections like scenes, and, on the micro-level, there are musical paragraphs with phrases instead of sentences.

To carry the analogy further, cadences act like punctuation – a full cadence for a period, a half cadence for a comma – shaping the music, giving it a chance to breathe both melodically and harmonically. A cadence is also a formula, a standard-operating-procedure or cliché, with specific chords which define what kind of cadence it is.

Analogies may not be the most accurate way to describe something, taken literally, but realizing there are certain generic parameters we can talk about in music might help explain the significance of each one. It's called SHMRG, an acronym standing for SONORITY, HARMONY, MELODY, RHYTHM, and GROWTH, allowing us to focus on smaller, specific details.

Basically, sonority refers to anything to do with the music's sound in general. Growth concerns structure on any level, like the overall form (like Sonata form) or the shape and expansion of a phrase.

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Now, if you take those categories and describe them not in terms of a story but, not taking it too literally, in terms of the human body, you could think of them this way:

SONORITY is like the person's appearance in general – say, the color of the hair or eyes, recognizing somebody by their voice;

MELODY is like the skin, a surface covering everything we can't see underneath;

GROWTH (or form) is like the skeleton, giving the body support and shape: without it, we certainly wouldn't look very human;

HARMONY is like the muscles which give the body not only a sense of definition but also the power to move;

RHYTHM is like the blood that brings energy to everything, giving it life.

So, let's think about cadences which we think of primarily as HARMONY, but which also fall under MELODY, GROWTH, and RHYTHM.

A cadence is a pattern of chords which, depending on how weak or strong it is, creates some level of finality, the chords building up to it generating a sense of direction and anticipation. Increasing the harmonic rhythm – the rate the chords change – also gives the chord progression more energy and defines the phrase's structure.

A melody, supported by its underlying chords – real or implied – is not just a memorable series of pleasing pitches randomly chosen. It follows the harmony's contours, and usually takes its breath at the cadence.

We all know how important breathing is and what happens if we don't: eventually, we'll keel over from lack of oxygen. Well, what happens to the music if the performer doesn't let it breathe? That whole breathing-in, the act of, like a singer, taking a breath, allows the phrase to play out in the breathing-out.

Pay attention to the hierarchy of these breathing cadences, the open-ended ones and those that sound more – and eventually, most – final. They create a sense of direction allowing this 'tension,' these uncertainties, to increase.

How does the composer heighten tension through the use of chords, the rhythms, the high-points of phrases, the approach to cadences? Discover how any digression away from the expected can increase the listener's anticipation.

How can you, the performer, bring these different discoveries out in your interpretation? It's always more satisfying when tension is released.

– Dick Strawser

987 Words Which Have Nothing to Do with New Year's Eve...

Like a sequel to the recently released film-version of Cats, something else no one is likely to be waiting for is my imminent return to even moderately regular blogging at Thoughts on a Train, since it's been over a full year since I've posted anything after my latest serial novel, another “classical music appreciation comedy/thriller.” The idea to resume writing – and more importantly to post the results – was a fairly spontaneous but not necessarily welcome idea. Long retired, why not sit around watching TV or staring disconsolately into space?

Perhaps practicing my so-called writing skills could help keep what's left of my mind sharp, or sharper than it seems to have become as the world sinks into an increasingly darker pit of despondency. New posts should come easily, railing at life's indignities assailing us from every angle, but that's why there's Facebook and Twitter.

Aside from wondering what I might want to write about, whether anybody wants to read it or not – considering I usually write rather long posts – I was wondering how I might keep them within certain, more manageable, potentially realistic bounds. I mean, many of them, even after editing, ended up around 4,000 to 5,000 words.

Inspiration came from watching an Australian TV drama called 800 Words where, the basic plot aside, the main character writes a column called “800 Words” which, not surprisingly, consists of exactly eight hundred words.

Doing a bit of on-line searching (is it still “googling” if Google is not your default search-engine?), I discovered several websites geared for writers who want to write in compact units of 800 words. That could be a free-range essay or short story (a very short story), or a way to work on one's self-discipline.

I'd participated in several “November-Is-National-Novel-Writing-Month” (NaNoWriMo) challenges where the goal was to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month. Not necessarily a 50,000-word novel, but at least 50,000 words toward the novel-length-of-your-choice.

Granted, it's a challenge for many people to find time in their days to write at all, but it's easier if you break it down to a goal of, say, 1,613 words a day. Some days I could barely manage 600 words, compared to those days I'd rattle off a few thousand for a blog-post.

Clearly, I have no problems blathering away on the keyboard just putting words on paper – or, rather, on my computer screen – so, for me, what's the point of trying to write only 800 words? Why try my hand at writing compact short stories when both of my last two novels were almost 200,000 words long? Yes, “learning” to write shorter works, especially in this day of short attention spans and non-taxing tweets, might be highly recommended. But it is also an age of binge-ing, a dichotomy I find intriguing.

It's not that “writing 800 words” wasn't a sufficient challenge, since many would consider writing even 100 words a daunting task. I just didn't feel drawn to writing that number of words, you know? It also didn't appeal to me because the “word goal” seemed so arbitrary, not being particularly interested in writing self-contained stories.

In addition to those essays by E.B. White about his living in Maine, I also found myself intrigued by the feuilleton, originally “a supplement to the political portion of French newspapers, containing non-political news and gossip, literature and art criticism, a chronicle of the latest fashions, that also contained epigrams, charades and other literary trifles.”

Now, that's something I'd find more interesting and certainly fits in with the original, free-range idea behind Thoughts on a Train. One week I could write about something musical; the next, maybe something “literary.”

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A few decades ago, I'd become fascinated by the Golden Section and how it relates to symmetry and proportion in art, plus the unique numerical series that reflects it: read more about it, here. (Seriously, you expect me to explain the Fibonacci Sequence and still keep this under 5,000 words? That's what Wikipedia is for!) So rather than write 800 words, I chose the oddly specific number 987, only because it's part of the Fibonacci Series. I'll explain later, but let it suffice that's only part of the reason.

It should be more than just an arbitrary choice of another number, something I'd chosen at random but still within reason, so I thought my feuilleton could reflect the proportions of the Fibonacci Sequence. Like a piece of music in, say, “sonata form,” everything could be structurally subdivided into a pattern reflecting the Golden Ratio.

Drawing a line and dividing it at the Golden Section – see illustration, left – results in two unequal parts, not exactly “halves,” and subdividing each segment further results in smaller segments but with similar proportions. If this line represents the time-span of a novel or piece of music, various subdivisions could help create chapters or phrases.

Rather than producing a sequence of equal, box-like units dividing everything in halves, it creates an asymmetrical sense of rhythmic flow. If handled properly, it can propel the reader or listener toward the conclusion.

This so-called “Golden Proportion” occurs frequently in nature – in nautilus shells and sunflowers – or in pleasant balances of art or architecture, where you can, with a practiced eye, at least see these proportional relationships. How do you do that in something unfolding in time, not just space, like listening to music or reading a book?

Like many things we look at, listen to – or read – and find satisfying, we cannot explain why we respond to it. But we do and do it without really understanding what initiates our response.

If you listen to a symphony by Beethoven or a song by Beyoncé, you can enjoy it without any musical training, so much technical stuff going by unnoticed even if you are musically trained.

So we'll see how long I can keep up a weekly 987-Word Challenge, though it's not really a New Year's Resolution...