I always write to music. It seems to inhibit my reservations and lets the words flow. Each good song carries a particular feel to it and I like to borrow that when I write. A lot of emotion is required to achieve that moving quality in writing and for me, music triggers those emotions like nothing else. Perhaps this is because good music reflects back your own emotions through a prism of someone else's experiences, thus making them more distant and consequently less scary to face. The story and the music that I wrote it to thus become interlinked, until every time I hear a particular song I remember the feel and voice of the story I wrote listening to it. A helpful trick when I have let a story sit too long.

Mattafix's ‘Signs of a Struggle’ is one of those albums I wrote a lot to (‘Big City Life’ is still the #1 Most Played song in my iTunes). Each song on the album has a massage, but somehow the music, the singing, and the lyrics just blend together in perfect harmony where nothing sticks out, resulting in a seamless blend of music, voice and lyrics. Mattafix's lead singer's voice carries a sadness that stays short of pathetic, and the more empowered songs do not carry with it the violent resistance that so many such songs tend to. It just is—things are resolved, the songs are just telling the facts, and there is no pent up anger at the injustices, or profuse crying over suffering. I like this sentiment, this kind of quiet resistance that comes across in Mattafix's music, because it signifies acceptance, the first step to resolution, and healing, and hope.

Not all music is good for writing to; sometimes either the lyrics or the music is too invasive, unwillingly pulling you out of the dream state where the stories come from. The harmony of all the musical elements is, thus, crucial for an album to be good 'background noise' to writing. And somehow, by some trick of blending the elements just so, Mattafix's Signs of a Struggle manages to achieve this. For me at least.

Vanja is still a new writer, though some of her stories can now be read online or are forthcoming at A Long Story Short, Thieves Jargon, and Heavy Glow. She is currently in the process of attaining a Master's Degree in Human Rights and Democratization in Venice. Hopefully, this will enrich rather than inhibit her writing endeavors. She is 27 years old and is seriously considering writing her first novel. Though maybe she is not ready yet. To read her story, ‘Rotten Like the Gutter’ on the showcase section of this site, click here.

© 2007 Laura Hird All rights reserved.