Backyard Soul-O

What I find most interesting and challenging about these book passages is not knowing the context of the passage in relation to the larger scope of the book. So when I would read and re-read the passage from Dreams of Leaving by author Rupert Thomson I was challenged by the details of the passage. Unlike other passages that I have worked on, this passage seemed much more literal with characters and place, making my own personal interpretation a bigger challenge. My solution to a passage that has many descriptive details about a very specific act, the saxophone solo, led me to pick out some key words that I was drawn to. The title, Dreams of Leaving, the words "abandoned mansion, saxophone and solo" around the larger significance of music is what I used to build my visual interpretation.

I grounded the visual interpretation's sense of place with the abandoned mansion. It dominates this passage so much that not including it, I felt, would leave the viewer too disconnected from the passage. The rest of the interpretation deals with the physical and emotional sensitivity that can be experienced through the power of music.

Here is the book passage that inspired my visual interpretation Backyard Soul-O.
"Gloria was introducing the band. If he didn't listen to the saxophone this time, she'd murder him. He only had to wait until halfway through the next song, then Malone unleashed a sixty-second solo, and played with such raw soaring power, assembled such an intricate structure of notes, that listening to him was like being led through some extraordinary abandoned mansion. It was as if Malone somehow knew of Moses's anxiety and was building a house specially for him, a different kind of house, a house where policemen would never appear at the door. The saxophone scaled the facade, dropped into an upstairs room, tiptoed across the landing, opened a door with rusty hinges, tripped, stumbled to the edge of a parapet, peered over, stepped sharply back, ran down flight after flight of stairs, through ballrooms peopled by the ghosts of dancers, through echoing cloisters and claustrophobic passageways, past windows with vistas and hushed rooms no longer used, tore through curtained doorways and out, finally, into the open air, paused to breathe the air, ran on through gardens with peacocks and fountains, along spacious landscaped avenues, past sudden explosions of plants from South America, and back down a sweeping gravel drive to the road where Gloria was waiting with the rest of the song."