Natural Connections

I took piano lessons for about a year in my twenties, and my teacher explained that there is a tradition amongst classical musicians, particularly pianists, to trace your instructional roots back as far as you could go. That is, Susan, my teacher, was giving me instruction based on what she had learned from her mentors, who in turn taught based on what they had learned from theirs, and so on, and so on. According to Susan, her musical roots went back to Beethoven, which technically meant mine did as well.

I was a huge Beethoven fan at that time, so this was nice in theory, though I couldn’t really feel any tangible connection to old Ludwig. Then again, when I see photos of my father’s grandparents, standing in front of their Kansas homesteads with expressions so grim a smile would have shriveled and died there, knowledge of our shared surname sparks no sense of connection either. True, I wouldn’t exist if not for them, but in reality, I could say this about every human that came before me.

As I write this, I’ll be interviewing the American novelist T. C. Boyle tomorrow, whose work Joe Milan Jr. credits with inspiring him to try his hand at this writing thing. Joe, by the way, was a student of Jaret Keene’s, whose stories are very different than Boyle’s but who no doubt had his own influence on Milan’s work. If you have ever published anything anywhere there is a good chance your work has influenced someone in some way. Maybe a lot of people, most of whom you will probably never meet or hear from.

This is why I like interviewing authors. When I meet someone for the first time, it’s not hard, particularly since they too they have sat in front of a blank page and asked themselves what story they would like to tell, to feel that natural, intimate human impulse that guides us all. It doesn’t matter how different our work is. It doesn’t matter if they are a debut novelist or have been publishing for thirty years, the connection is the same. It would be no different if I were having a conversation with Beethoven – or, I suppose, my great-grandfather. The old fellow may or may not have written or even been literate, but he was a person, and so he dreamed, and so he wondered and yearned, and so he and I were not that different.

Check out Fearless Writing with Bill Kenower on YouTube or your favorite podcast app.

Everyone Has What It Takes: A Writer’s Guide to the End of Self-Doubt
You can find William at: williamkenower.com