Create a playlist of five songs based on your reading of Zazen

Instructions for creating a playlist for Zazen novel

Create a playlist of five songs based on your reading of Zazen. Veselka. Vanessa. Zazen. Brooklyn, NY: Red Lemonade, 2011. [novel] At least one song should have lyrics and at least one song should be instrumental. It could be a playlist you would create for a character in the novel. It could be a playlist you imagine a character creating. It could be a playlist you create that is dedicated to or inspired by the novel in some way.

 

You might also think of it as a “soundtrack” to certain moments/scenes in the novel. Along with your completed playlist, you will write an accompanying essay explaining your choices, their relevance for (certain aspects of) the novel, and what constitutes, in your own words and in detail, the sonic fit between the music and the novel.

 

You must make an explicit connection between each musical choice and a specific aspect of the novel. How, if at all, did the exercise of “reading with or toward listening” affect your experience of the novel?

 

What did you learn or experience that you might not have if you had read the novel with more conventional academic expectations? And above all, how does your experience of reading (and “listening to”) Zazen connect to our readings on attention, consumerism and critical theory?

 

1) The narrator has a particular short-hand, making an association on one page and then referring back to it twenty or thirty pages down the road. Try to keep track of these associations (popsicle sticks snapping, jazz hands, blackberries, etc), and of the proliferation of proper names (Black Ocean, New Honduras, etc). If there is a bizarre image or name you can’t quite understand, chances are it is grounded in a phrase or moment that occurred earlier in the book. These associations and made-up names can very quickly float around in terms of their meaning, but if you keep track of them, they turn out to be webbed together.

2) The protagonist Della is out of rhythm: she perceives events too closely or too distantly, and the scales of her thoughts and experience are not aligned or in tune with others around her. In her immediate past before the events of the novel, Della completed a PhD in paleobiology and, along the way, had a kind of unspecified mental breakdown or crisis. Her out-of-rhythm perspective gives her particular insights into consumer culture and political/activist culture. Think about how she “senses” the world and feels out cultural and political problems in her daily experience. This is how Della’s experience connects directly to many of the concerns of our course, and to specific course readings.

3) If you don’t know what self-immolation is, you should look it up.

4) Write out notes actively, in a notebook, as you read. If you are reading a print book, underline and write comments in the margins, just to keep track of plot points, details, images, etc. Don’t use a highlighter, use a pencil. Write out questions for yourself of passages you don’t understand, keep a reservoir of ideas, impressions, theories about the book—in writing—as you read. 

5) Part of your final writing assignment on Zazen involves coming up with a short playlist of music/sounds that fit the book in some way. Think about thematic connections between the book and song lyrics you know; think about sounds and musical styles that fit the “vibe” or “tone” of the book. Think about pieces of music that are referenced specifically in the book, and about descriptions of sound and listening and what they do for the narrative. You should also be jotting down notes and ideas about sound/music as you read, and that way, you’ll have a head-start on the assignment. If the novel inspires you to listen to certain music in the background as you read, then make a note of what you listen to and when. (I do not recommend reading with music on, but that’s just me. . . )

6) Don’t wait too long to start reading the novel. This assignment can be rewarding and stimulating and a lot of fun, if you don’t have to rush through it. But nothing is fun in the last week of a semester. Nothing. So don’t leave it till then!