村上春樹談爵士樂以及他的小說創作

在網路上偶然看到許多人引用村上春樹在紐約時報書評版寫爵士樂對他的影響，我覺得很不賴，有段話寫的實為直入心坎裡面。如果你平時會花點時間寫上一兩篇文章、偶爾聽聽非主流音樂的人，那以下這段話你一定要看過一遍：

Whether in music or in fiction, the most basic thing is rhythm. Your style needs to have good, natural, steady rhythm, or people won’t keep reading your work. I learned the importance of rhythm from music — and mainly from jazz. Next comes melody — which, in literature, means the appropriate arrangement of the words to match the rhythm. If the way the words fit the rhythm is smooth and beautiful, you can’t ask for anything more.

Next is harmony — the internal mental sounds that support the words. Then comes the part I like best: free improvisation. Through some special channel, the story comes welling out freely from inside. All I have to do is get into the flow. Finally comes what may be the most important thing: that high you experience upon completing a work — upon ending your “performance” and feeling you have succeeded in reaching a place that is new and meaningful.

And if all goes well, you get to share that sense of elevation with your readers (your audience). That is a marvelous culmination that can be achieved in no other way.

原文連結 (via nytimes.com)

另外他還提到他最愛的爵士鋼琴手 Thelonious Monk 所說的一段話：" It can’t be any new note. When you look at the keyboard, all the notes are there already. But if you mean a note enough, it will sound different. You got to pick the notes you really mean! " 村上春樹在寫文章時常想起這段話，並且他跟自己說：“It’s true. There aren’t any new words. Our job is to give new meanings and special overtones to absolutely ordinary words.” 我深表認同。