{"id":2698,"date":"2021-05-26T13:32:07","date_gmt":"2021-05-26T17:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/?p=2698"},"modified":"2021-05-25T14:33:36","modified_gmt":"2021-05-25T18:33:36","slug":"working-music-fire-in-the-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.davideriknelson.com\/sbsb\/index.php\/2021\/05\/working-music-fire-in-the-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Working Music: \u201cFire in the Hole\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"There-Was-No-Sound-of-Thunder-cover\"<\/a>
There Was No Sound of Thunder<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

I listen to music basically whenever I write, often as a simple practical matter (I have a wife, a barky-bary-bark, two school-age kids at home, and a house that backs up to an apartment parking lot).\u00a0 What I\u2019m listening to during a given period often seeps into what I\u2019m writing.\u00a0 I listened to Steely Dan\u2019s \u201cFire in the Hole<\/strong>\u201d every morning while working on the middle section of this novel<\/a>\u2014both the longest and darkest (\u201cWhere There is Nothing, There is God\u201d\u2014itself a title stolen from William Butler Yeats<\/a>.) At some point, I\u2019d gotten the notion in my head that the narrator of the song was a waiter\/actor, which is why the protagonist is a waiter\/actor. Looking at the lyrics<\/a> now, I have no idea where I got that impression. (I\u2019m told Fagen\u2014who co-wrote the song\u2014said in an interview that it was about dodging the draft during the Vietnam War, which makes a lot more sense than my interpretation of the song.)\u00a0 Doesn\u2019t really matter; it was always the piano that caught my mind. It\u2019s the piano, more than the words, that seeped into that story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n