music composition:Inspiration for writting,individual,environment

music composition:Inspiration for writting,individual,environment

Individuals Specific individuals in your society could ignite the creative impulse in you. Your story could revolve around this individual or he/she plays a significant role in the story or has a significant impact on the character of your protagonist. There is a saying that anyone who survives childhood has at least a story in him or her. The individual could therefore be you or any other person who has played a significant role in your life or the lives of others. (It could be how this individual you admire or hate behaves). It could be how this individual relates to the people around him or her that inspire you. In your writing, you present the society through such individuals. Their interpersonal relationships with others became sources of germinal ideas for you. In Festus Iyayi’s Violence for instance, the relationship between Obofun and his wife, Queen and others highlight the idea that excessive wealth generates excessive desire for material possession and sex. He associates opulence with moral laxity. Queen exhibits lack of sanctity for the marriage institution and sleeps with men to get contract awards or to gain one favour or the other. In Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, his admiration for Unoka is obvious. Unoka’s presented as lazy and cowardly but Achebe’s attitude to him is not that of condemnation. He wants us to appreciate his qualities which if Okonkwo had possessed, his life may not have ended in catastrophe. Read the following passage on Unoka carefully. 23 He was very good on his flute, and his happiest moments were the two or three moons after the harvest when the village musicians brought down their instruments, hung above the fireplace. Unoka would play with them, his face beaming with blessedness and peace. Sometimes another village would ask Unoka’s band and their dancing egwugwu to come and stay with them and teach them their tunes. They would go to such hosts for as long as three or four markets, making music and feasting. Unoka loved the good fare and the good fellowship, and he loved this season of the year, when the rains had stopped and the sun rose every morning with dazzling beauty…Unoka loved it all, and he loved the first kites that returned with the dry season, and the children who sang songs of welcome to them. He would remember his own childhood, how he had often wandered around looking for a kite sailing leisurely against the blue sky. (pp. 4-5) Unoka is an artist, an actor and a musician. He is good natured, generous and humorous. He enjoys good fellowship and lives in harmony with his kinsmen and the forces of nature. His son, Okonkwo, lacks his warmth and humanity. Although his society sees Unoka’s life as a disaster, he is useful to the society through his life. 3.5 Myth Writers, from the origin of literature, have taken their germinal ideas from myth. The myths are either central to the works or are reflected in the works. We have explained the meaning of myth and the fact that it provides materials for creative writing has been treated in the course material Eng 210 Creative Writing I. The myth of Moremi has been reflected in several literary works. As a writer, you will decide to reflect a particular myth the way it is or restructure it to suit your purpose. In the novel and the play, it is a bit difficult to base the entire work on a particular myth. Writers, often depict the myth as part of the story to help 24 illuminate certain character(s), ideas or incident(s). In Morountodun, Femi Osofisan restructures the Yoruba Moremi myth to show Titubi’s resolve to align with the oppressed class. In Things Fall Apart, Chinua Achebe presents the myth of Ogbanje as part of the belief system in Igboland. In both cases, the myths are presented as part of the stories. In poetry, the most concise genre of literature, a myth could be the germinal idea and an entire poem becomes an exploration of that myth. Ogbanje in Igbo is Abiku in Yoruba. Read Wole Soyinka’s Abiku to assess the explication of that belief system in Yorubaland.