Story Companion: Epiphanies, Part 1

Anthony and Joel talk about the use of epiphanies in music and story.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:07

Hello and welcome back to Jones and Wolf, an audio fiction podcast featuring original music. Today, Joel and I are back with a new story companion episode to talk about our last few stories and specifically how they incorporate epiphanies, both narratively and musically. Before we dive in though, let's quickly establish what we mean when we're using this term. In story, an epiphany is typically a sudden moment of profound realization, self-discovery, or clarity. An epiphany can force a character to confront a flaw or a difficult truth, transforming their understanding and shaping their ultimate arc. It can also give a character an insight or the motivation they need to resolve a central conflict. So, just really quickly, some examples. Think of a small, weak, nondescript character discovering the immense power that comes from friendship and love. And then they're able to use that newly discovered strength to accomplish an incredible task in the face of great hardship. Now that would describe a lot of stories, but the one I had in mind there was Frodo in Lord of the Rings. Or, for example, a former high school teacher fallen on hard times, who turns to criminality to support his family. For years he claims that his motives are altruistic, that he just wants to protect his wife and son, but in the end finally admits that he behaved badly because he enjoyed it. That's Walter White in Breaking Bad. Now, why are these moments so important for stories? Well, if stories are instruments for transmitting information about how to navigate the world, as I believe they are, then these mind-altering aha moments signal to the audience: hey, pay attention. There's a critical lesson you need to learn to help you live a better life. Like, don't ever astr don't ever underestimate what you can accomplish when you're willing to sacrifice for those you love, or beware the voice inside your mind that tells you your bad behavior is justified, because that is the path of evil. At least that's how epiphanies typically function in stories, and that's what we can use as a backdrop for this conversation. But want to bring Joel in and hear about how epiphanies function in music.

SPEAKER_00 2:08

It's an interesting question, and it's one that I think highlights a difference between stories and music. As you've described, epiphanies obviously relate to the self. So for an epiphany to occur, there has to be, you know, a character with some kind of consciousness that is able to experience those moments of clarity, those those profound realizations. But I think music operates at a different level of abstraction to that. There aren't any characters, or there's no sort of consciousness embedded in the music. And we only have notes and texture and rhythm. And so I think while there might certainly be character themes in music, you know, for example, um Darth Vader's theme or Luke Skywalker's theme in Star Wars, but it's the the character that has the epiphany and the music kind of accompanies this. So the the music in a way reflects the epiphany that is happening within the self of the character. So I think that there are some things in music uh that can sort of reflect these epiphanies, but I think you know, these are things, sort of musical techniques, things like key changes, changes in texture, sudden shifts in tempo, uh, or maybe a combination of all of these things. And these are certainly some of the techniques that I've used to varying degrees in quite a lot of our episodes when I wanted to either sort of draw out or or not so much draw out the uh the epiphanies that the characters were experiencing.

SPEAKER_01 3:47

Yeah, can you say more about how you create that backdrop? Like how do you create musically an environment that you feel like accentuates a character epiphany or might help the listener experience a particular emotion where they might also share in that epiphany.

SPEAKER_00 4:07

I think that uh certain musical elements evoke certain feelings. So for example, if you hit a really long, sustained, deep bass note, it tends to sort of connote some kind of tension or impending impending doom or something like that. Or if you watch a bunch of action movies and you look at all the chase scenes, you'll notice that they're always quite rhythmic. You know, lots of drums, uh lots of shifts in rhythm, the tempo is quite elevated. And you know, the the list goes on if you want to show something romantic, maybe it's a nice slow melody. Like there's endless examples of these things. And so I think when it comes to accentuating the epiphany, it's just using the things that will communicate the sense that there has been perhaps a build-up to this. So it might be that this character has been experiencing things over a prolonged period of time, and then all of a sudden it clicks for them. And so that might be expressed by building the music up and then dropping in a sudden change at the moment where you want to express that the character has changed. And that change could be, uh, as I mentioned before, it could be that all of the instrumentation drops out and it goes from this really densely layered thing to one single uh instrument, or it could be the opposite of that. It could be all of a sudden everything comes in at that moment. It might be that it goes from really loud to really soft, or vice versa. I think it just depends really on what exactly it is that is being communicated and which sort of group of techniques I would use in that instance.

SPEAKER_01 5:54

Yeah, it's interesting. I as you were giving the the action movie example, I was wondering like, do musicians typically rely on those rhythmic elements like those drums because they mimic the heartbeat, and increasing that rhythm maybe increases the heartbeat of the listeners, which kind of elevates tension for them and you know elevates the the conflict that they're that they're viewing on screen or the story that they're listening to. And if so, where is the physiology of the epiphany for you? Is it like a neck up experience? Is it a heart experience? And are there particular musical elements that you're using in order to tap into the listener's physiology in a way?

SPEAKER_00 6:39

Yeah, that's interesting. And I think I think actually the answer is that I don't think about those things necessarily consciously prior to writing the piece of music. It's not so much that I think, okay, uh, I want to stimulate a sense of anxiety and tension here, so therefore I'm gonna use drums at 140 beats per minute and blah blah blah. It's more so an instinct, I think, born out of years of practice, years of exposure to our cultural backdrop of a hundred years of film and hundreds of years of music, and you hone that instinct over time, and so that it it's almost like it feels natural to sit down if I want to evoke a sense of tension, I instinctively know the kind of note combinations that are going to evoke that sense of tension, and I I instinctively know the the note combinations that are gonna evoke a sense of peace or comfort. I don't the I don't know the deeper answer to your question, which is I don't know why it is that low sounds make us feel anxious and soft melodies make us feel relaxed and fast rhythms make us feel on edge. And you know, I'm not quite sure what the physiological response system is and how that works. I'm sure there is some kind of science about that, but I just think from an intuitive level, those things tend to work, and so that's why lots of composers use them.

SPEAKER_01 8:11

Yeah, that makes sense, and I I'll I'll be really interested to hear your process for our latest story, Ollie Aberdeen Swanson's Epiphany, because it seemed like in that story you made some different choices than you typically make, although you can you know fully explain that in a in a second. We'll get there very soon. I just one more thing that I wanted to note about you know, moving back to the narrative side is that there can be positive or negative epiphanies, or sometimes people refer to these as true or false epiphanies. And the difference is a positive epiphany will show character evolution. Uh, a negative epiphany, on the other hand, is going to show a moment of flawed realization where the character has an aha moment, but the conclusion they arrive at is deeply flawed. And as a result, they remain trapped in denial or delusion. Now, typically, like if you're a writer or a storyteller, you might use a negative epiphany for dramatic irony. Um, this will frequently show up in satires also. It allows a reader to see the truth of a situation while the character remains trapped. We've obviously used, for the listeners out there who have who have heard many of our stories, we've used that technique several times. Um, My Endless Wedding comes to mind, Rise of the Nonsense Machines, America's Hidden Treasure. Those all feature negative epiphanies where the character realizes something that is really flawed, very delusional, maybe downright um insane. Um and we'll we'll we'll maybe explore like that technique and those stories in a future companion episode. But I think the stories we're going to talk about today employ more positive epiphanies. Although I did want to just make that distinction because I think so often now, if we even move a little bit beyond narrative to society or culture, we have a lot of people who scream on the internet about some, I would say, negative epiphany that they've reached, some conspiracy theory that they've bought in whole hog on. And I would, you know, I would call that a negative epiphany. So I just wanted to make that distinction because not every time, you know, someone has that aha moment, whether it's in a story or in real life, is it a good thing? Although the feeling itself or the individual probably feels almost exactly the same.

SPEAKER_00 10:33

I might jump in there if you don't mind. I just have a question for you related to epiphanies, then. What in your mind is the difference between an epiphany and a transformation? Is the transformation the product of an epiphany, or is it just that they happen over different time horizons?

SPEAKER_01 10:49

Yeah, I think that's a really that's a really good question. And it's highly subjective, obviously. Every storyteller is gonna have a different way that they employ these devices. But I think the way that I I think about this stuff typically is the epiphany is the internal transformation that'll then allows for an external manifestation of that transformation. So if we go back to the the Frodo example from Lord of the Rings, he is dealing obviously with an internal struggle throughout his journey to Mordor while he's carrying the ring. And ultimately, he has to reach a certain level of internal understanding about his heroic potential before he can manifest that heroic potential, before he can actually do heroic things in the world. He first has to change his perception about himself. And I think that's true, you know, for most characters, and I think that's true for most people. You know, they're not going to really change their behavior until they're ch until they change some internal narrative. And I I see that change of or that flip of the internal narrative as the epiphany.

SPEAKER_00 12:04

I guess maybe that makes me wonder what is the difference between a sort of a realization and an epiphany. If I think about my own life, I'm not so sure that I've had any earth-shattering, life-changing moments. I I've certainly had moments of clarity, moments of understanding, but they've been relatively subtle in the scheme of things, relatively small in scope. In terms of the sort of bigger changes, I think maybe they've all been products of these smaller understandings and you know, certainly experienced transformation. I'm no longer, thankfully, the idiot I was as an 18-year-old, but that's taken many decades to become a respectable member of society. So I guess my question here is how real do you think epiphanies are? Or are they sort of more of a a narrative device rather than something that actually happens in the real world?

SPEAKER_01 12:58

Yeah. Excellent question. Um I think with a with a device like an Epiphany, yes, they they certainly on average are far more common in story because story is this super concentrated aspect of real life that is designed to deliver an impactful message in a very short amount of time. And so, at least in the classical sense of storytelling, right? In the in the more postmodern sense of storytelling, like anything is a story, and so you get a lot of flat narratives, you get a lot of quote-unquote stories about characters who just stay the same or they don't do anything, or it's just kind of a slice of life. And you could probably tell from my tone of voice, like, you know, what I think of those types of stories, although, you know, there's always exceptions. But in in the more classical sense, we're we're capturing a very, very particular moment in a character's life in a really, really concentrated way to show something dramatic. And through that dramatic, you know, moment, hopefully there's a realization in the reader or the audience that teaches them something about how to live a better, more noble, more just life. That's the that's at least, again, the classical promise of art. And so if you as an individual aren't experiencing anything that's that concentrated or anything that that's intense, I would say that's, yeah, that's like perfectly normal. You're probably just a very sane person who's grounded. I mean, keep in mind, this the schizophrenic, for example, is experiencing epiphanies, maybe, you know, all the time when they're going through a manic episode. They're thinking that secrets of the universe are being revealed to them in a way that to everyone else just manifests as insanity. And so epiphanies can be dangerous in that sense too, because how can you really delineate between a psychotic break and an epiphany if you're the one experiencing that super intense emotion? So I I wouldn't, I wouldn't say, you know, people should be experiencing epiphanies or there's something wrong if they're not. I think what an epiphany looks like in a narrative is probably what you're describing as realization, but just in a far, far, far more potent form in order to amp up the drama and create the stakes that are necessary in order for like a story to be effectively communicated.

SPEAKER_00 15:24

Yeah, okay, that makes a lot of sense.

SPEAKER_01 15:26

Okay, great. Well, I think that that backdrop is perfect for diving into our latest story that we that we put out, I think it was a couple weeks ago, Ali Aberdeen Swanson's Epiphany. If you haven't listened to that story yet, I would recommend that everyone just take the time to listen to it. I think this conversation will make a lot more sense if you have it, you know, firmly in mind. But just to recap a little bit, it's a story about a legendary MMA coach reflecting on his experience coaching Heather Conway, who's widely considered the greatest fighter who has ever lived. And before we before we dive too much more into the plot and the narrative elements, I Joel, I wanted to ask you when you read this story, what was your sense of what Ollie's epiphany was, and then how did that influence some of your musical choices?

SPEAKER_00 16:19

Uh for me it was it was the moment he's sitting in the bar and he's contemplating or looking for an excuse to have a fight with one of the farmers, and the woman approaches him and starts talking to him. And I think that when you feel your life spiraling out of control, I think it's very easy to lose sight of anything but yourself and your own problems. And I think Ali at that moment is very much wallowing in that internal struggle. His horizon is very limited. But I think then as he listens to the woman in the bar, I think it's almost like a mirror. He sees himself reflected in her and he calls her story bullshit, and he says she has to stand up and fight for what she wants, and I felt like that that was as much directed at him as it is at her. And so then I think he then sees Heather the next day, and she's sort of like the the vehicle for him to live out that epiphany that he had, that he actually can't just keep getting drunk and trying to fight people. He has to actually start doing something and you know fighting that internal struggle for himself. I don't know if that's what you intended. I'd be interested to understand more about your intent there before I talk about the music.

SPEAKER_01 17:39

Really, what I'm what I'm trying to get at in the story, and there's a reason why we start the episode with a little you know retelling of the Phoenix myth, because this story is really designed to be in touch with that ancient archetype, this idea that you know things fall apart, things break down, but then there's there's this amazing possibility for renewal and rebirth. And so I think with Ali, yes, that moment in the bar, he is quite self-destructive, maybe even suicidal. But I wanted to get across that his urge for self-destruction is more metaphorical. So he's convinced he has this feeling of despair and despondency and wanting to harm himself and harm others, because that's there's something deep in his mind that is telling him that he needs to destroy an old part of his identity. So rather than actually destroying his body in any physical sense, he needs to destroy some bad ideas or some outdated, you know, self-images that he has that's holding him in this stasis. And so once he's able to have that moment where he sees himself and this woman at the bar and kind of break through to the other side, then he's able to kind of start to birth his new identity as Heather's coach, right? But the only reason why he can see this potential in Heather is because he can then see the potential in himself. And so he's tapped into this sense of renewal that's so important because, and I don't know if this is quite, this probably doesn't quite come through in the story, but the whole backdrop or the whole idea I had is that Heather Conway, who is this amazing young female fighter, has suddenly retired and left Ali in this state of like, oh, well, she saved my life, but now what am I gonna do next? And really because he's had this experience with Heather, he doesn't necessarily know what he's gonna do next, but he knows that he'll he will be able to reinvent himself because he's been able to tap into that emotion through his experience with Heather. And so that's really like the overall epiphany that I'm trying to get across, although maybe that's a little like too subtextual. I don't know. Did that did that part come through for you, Joel?

SPEAKER_00 19:51

Yeah, it did. Well, when I think about how I approach the music, perhaps it might answer that question in a sort of roundabout way, which is that for me the mood of the story and the overall feeling, it being sort of it was almost like it was in a post-Epiphany time. It wasn't just that he'd had the epiphany, he'd also had the coaching career with Heather, and then as you said, he's at the end of that wondering what to do next. And for me, that entire mood was actually the really sort of potent inspiration for the music. Maybe what you're saying it did come through, and again, maybe it did come through in a subtextual way, it influenced the music in this kind of subtextual way.

SPEAKER_01 20:38

Yeah, and tell me more. I I'm so curious about this music. I mean, I love the use of organs, and where my mind initially went is it it felt quite spiritual, I think, probably because I was raised going to churches where there was a lot of organ music, and so maybe every time I hear organs I'm back in the pew. But were you yeah, tell me just why why the organs and why did you make these some of those specific choices? I mean, I I really loved it. I thought it was so beautiful, but I don't know that you've used organs like that in a in a story in the past.

SPEAKER_00 21:12

Well, look, I I hate to uh I hate to pop the bubble here, but they're not organs. It's a synthesizer. I wanted it to sound like an organ, but not be an organ. I think the main thing here is that I'm writing it in kind of like an organ style, like with these really long held notes, these sort of, it's not quite counterpoint, but these counterpoint type melodies that that bounce off each other. And it was it was a deliberate choice to give it that kind of solemn, slightly spiritual air that organ music often has. That was kind of like the the concept.

SPEAKER_01 21:54

Yeah, and the long, slow notes that you mentioned. I think that's what really struck me. I was I was surprised at times how emotional I was getting while listening to the music. And I couldn't even really put my finger exactly on what emotion I was experiencing. I just felt a sud like a sudden and steady rise. Yeah, just something sort of welling up in me. And I wonder, was that intentional on your part? Like did you were you thinking that the slow and steady aspects of it would cause this emotionality in listeners? Or what what were you thinking would be happening to people as they listen to this piece?

SPEAKER_00 22:39

That's a really interesting question. And I think it echoes perhaps what you mentioned before about just trying things, experimenting, seeing what feels right, rather than consciously deciding all these things. So I'd like to sit here and say, yes, I absolutely deliberately intended all of that, and I'm really glad it worked out exactly as I planned. Uh, but that's not the case. I I certainly intended the concept, and then as a general rule, I really hope that any music I write stirs emotions for people, but I certainly wasn't thinking, okay, these slow, long notes are gonna make people feel really intense emotions at this point, and this is the point where I really want to eke out as much uh emotion from the music and from people as as I possibly can. That just sort of happened.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

Now you also mentioned earlier in the conversation, you know, when it can't when it comes to epiphonies, that typically you might think of of representing that musically by having, say, a lot of the instrumentation fall out all of a sudden, or some, you know, sudden rise. But basically what I took from that is, you know, at the moment of the character epiphany, you might do something musically that is notably different or more intense than what the listener has been experiencing up to that point. But in this, in this story, it's really is steady throughout. And so why the you know, why did you, I guess, go with the steady approach as opposed to the approach that you that you laid out at the beginning of the conversation?

SPEAKER_00 24:21

That's a really good question, and and I think it just goes back to that idea of trying to latch on to the mood of the story as one thing rather than go inside the temporal environment of the story. For me, it was really my it was very much situated in the present, and he's looking back on all of these events many years ago when he was going through this terrible time, many years ago when he first started coaching Heather, all throughout her crazy journey and her, you know, ever-increasing chaotic behaviour, and then he's at this point now in his life. And I think I was writing it from that point, and that point is relatively emotionally stable, and that was what I was really honing in on, rather than the ups and downs of the sort of backstory. And then I think the other thing to say is that there are some very subtle musical changes during the Epiphany, uh, like very subtle, but there are some slight harmonic variations and some some slight melodic variations that happen there. And I don't know if maybe they're just too subtle to have an effect, or if maybe they just have the intended effect, which is just sort of slightly, slightly raising the emotional stakes at that point.

SPEAKER_01 25:50

Yeah, I wonder if part of the effect too is you know, a piece like this for me really puts me in a more liminal state. And I think in liminal states, you know, all kinds of emotions, you know, you start to have access to all kinds of emotions that you're, you know, not typically feeling when you're, you know, just more in your conscious mind, day-to-day, get shit done, go from point A to point B. And I think that's obviously like the beauty of art, it's the beauty of music, it's the beauty of story, is that it puts people in liminal states. And as I'm writing, certainly I want to be in a liminal state. I want to feel like I'm almost in a half-dream where things are appearing to me as opposed to me making conscious choices, just because that's much more creatively fulfilling and it's just kind of a regenerative place to be. And I think in some sense, that's where I'll leave the character is too, because I think if you're really in that that neuroplasticity, that emotional, emotional vulnerability, that place that you need to be in in order to actually reinvent and reimagine yourself and feel like you are reborn, like it is inherently going to be a liminal space. And so I wonder if there's just if you're responding to that on some level with with the music that you're making, and then me as a listener hearing it played back to me like I'm put back in a liminal state. I don't know. There might does that resonate with you at all, Joel?

SPEAKER_00 27:24

Yeah, it does. I think I think maybe you've expressed what I was trying to say better than I did, really. I felt a sort of liminal space, or I felt a a strong emotion from the story, but it wasn't the sort of up and down of what was happening in the story itself. It was more the feeling that the story left me with. And in writing the music, I wanted to tap into that feeling. But actually that makes me want to ask you then when you're writing, is it that you sort of write a you write a draft or or several drafts, but then when you come back to edit it, you're not in that liminal space anymore, you're in a much more uh analytical frame of mind and then you're editing in that. And and do you sort of have to switch between those two frames or do or are you mostly in that that liminal space?

SPEAKER_01 28:20

No, I think I think it's the first that you laid out. Yeah, I think it's it is a constant kind of toggling back and forth between trying to get to this like semi-dream state to be generative that also goes hand in hand with limiting inhibitions and having uh as little judgment as possible and just allowing things to happen on the page. But I think with that also you get a lot of of content that is just crap. Because if you just well, you know, if you just if you just imagine all the junk that we have in our in our subconscious by the time that we get to be middle-aged, and then you just sort of open the doors, or you, you know, you you allow the membrane um to be a little bit more porous, there's just gonna be a lot of stuff, there's gonna be a lot of stuff that seeps out that's interesting, and there's gonna be a lot of stuff that seeps out that's just like nonsense, right? Like if you've ever listened to somebody explain or describe in painstaking detail a dream that they've had, chances are it's probably like really, really boring to listen to because like you're like, yeah, uh-huh. And then you walk through a door and it was the ocean, and then your mom was there, and then blah, you know, it's like, okay, I don't care. This doesn't mean anything to me. Versus if you're able to take raw content like that and then shape it with your taste. So if you've developed an aesthetic over time from consuming, you know, a lot of great art, great literature, great music, great film, and you have a rough instinct for how, you know, the beats in a story or the the journey that a character might take or the arcs, then yeah, with the more analytical side of yourself, you can start to hone that content and edit it. And I think really what it what it boils down to for me is it that analytical part tells me, you know, where I need to go back to a scene and maybe redream it. You know, try to get back to that liminal state and create a new interaction or, you know, a new metaphor or just new action. And then just through trial and error, just sort of see what's what what seems good and what seems bad. But like with a story like this, for example, I would say I wrote a lot of this content years ago and then came back to it more recently, and being able to come back to it with fresher eyes, I was able to just cut 30% of it and just get rid of it without feeling any emotional attachment or really worrying at all. And I think that ultimately makes the story much stronger, versus if even if I tried to edit this with my most analytical mind three years ago, there's just the attachment to particular scenes, to particular lines, and it it it's just too strong and it's and it's hard to overcome.

SPEAKER_00 31:23

Someone said to me once many years ago that the the best piece of artistic advice they had was kill your babies. I think that really helps. That idea that you shouldn't be afraid to throw away things that you like that aren't actually working. That that always sticks with me, that idea that you shouldn't be afraid to delete things.

SPEAKER_01 31:46

Yeah, I and there's a ruthlessness there, but I I do think it's it's necessary and but it's incredibly difficult because I think on some level too, if you're you know, your art is a manifestation of yourself, and so when you're seeing, you know, words on the page that are really representative of something about you, or notes in a song that really again are connected to some part of your identity that's just hard to let go. And maybe this, maybe we can land the plane on this by connecting it back to the this idea of rebirth of a character, of ultimately finally being able to let go of parts of himself or parts of herself that are decaying or dead or not serving them anymore. And it's necessary to allow that to burn off, like the Phoenix myth, in order to emerge brand new from those ashes. And so, on some level, it's just that regenerative process, I think, playing out through the act of making art, let's say.

SPEAKER_00 32:54

Yeah. I think that's a good summation.

SPEAKER_01 32:57

Really? And I swear to God, we I did that all without AI. This is not uh I didn't use uh Chat GPT to sum that up, I promise.

SPEAKER_00 33:05

You didn't type into ChatGPT how to end this conversation.

SPEAKER_01 33:08

I didn't. I just want to firmly establish Joel and I, we are not AI agents, we are in fact human beings. This is a good place to cap the conversation, Joel, because I really I really also want to talk about the story that we did before Ali Aberdeen Swanson's Epiphany. That one was called a Parisian Interlude, which also deals with an epiphany. So maybe we just come back and do a part two of this conversation and and dive into that story.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Yeah, I think so. That works.

SPEAKER_01 33:39

All right, everybody. That's it for now. Thanks again for listening to this story companion episode. Like I said earlier, Joel and I will come back with part two of this conversation soon. In the meantime, of course, if you want to get in touch with us, you can reach us at Jones and Wolf at gmail.com. That's J O N E S A N D W O O L F at Gmail dot com. All right, we'll talk to you again soon, dear friends. Until then, thanks for listening.