Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
by Cindy Layton
The music of Neil Young can really drag a girl down. Hauled from the deep archives of rock and roll, songs like Old Man, or Down by the River, are downright morose and scary. Even his attempts at anything upbeat, say, Cinnamon Girl, can’t hide the whiny tone to his music. Imagine -instead of Keep on Rockin’ in the Free World, he sang Party in the USA. Can’t be done. Morose and whiny is his thing. He owns that. It’s part of his “charm.”
The time I paid to see Neil Young perform, the audience began clapping to the music. He abruptly stopped playing and scolded the crowd because, to him, any self-respecting concert goer, with a scrap of experience with his music would know, this was not a song that people should clap to. He continued to play, but scowled more fiercely for the duration.
Anyone can debate whether Young should have done that, but there he was, live on stage, baring his soul to his audience and, when they didn’t respond in a way he deemed appropriate he stopped what he was doing and corrected them.
Writers rarely have the opportunity to interact so directly and freely with their audience in that way. Besides, they’ve been raised on the workshop model, which requires writers to remain silent while the critique group strips them bare, administers any number of lashes, then gives them a few seconds to lick their wounds before a pile of marked up copies with lots of complaints gets dumped in their laps. Throughout the process, they’re trained not to respond. Accept the comments. Give thoughtful consideration to them. Don’t argue.
Years ago, I was in such a writing workshop braced for the critique I was about to receive. In my short story, a doctor advised a pregnant woman that she was experiencing a “spontaneous abortion” (the medical term for a miscarriage.) A member of the class latched on to this terminology and began a politically oriented critique of my “anti-choice” slant, dominating the discussion with accusations of the writing being an affront to the rights of women and, by the time she finished, class was over.
If only I could have stopped the music and told her that her clapping was not appropriate.
I think, for all of his temperament issues, Neil Young was frustrated in his attempt to be understood, which is the hurdle for most artists. If listeners couldn’t discern between a clappable and un-clappable song perhaps he wasn’t communicating effectively.
More likely, his frustration lay with what he considered listener error. That’s a lot like reader error, except, in his case, it was way more simple to correct.
Young, given the opportunity of that moment, made the choice to protect his art despite the risk of damage to his relationship with his audience. The writer’s opportunity to protect their art is within their critique group. With the right group the author stands a better chance at creating a work that will be both understood and accessible, having an audience who’ll clap when it’s upbeat and who’ll be mesmerized by the quiet, intimate passages.
Let me take this opportunity to say how grateful I am to the wonderful women of the writing group with whom I share this blog space. Dedicated, professional and hardworking, all, they’ve been a constant source of inspiration and support.
Here’s a few links with good advice on finding and working with a really great critique group.
Brooke McIntyre from Jane Freidman Blog -How to Find the Right Critique Group or Partner for You
Rudri Patel from The Review Review – The Power and Poverty in Critique Groups
