Frozen Music

You know, the first time the book's hero Michael Moss gets going on one of his inner monolgues I'm thinkin' oh great, so it's gonna be one of books - but you know they all came back later in the story, like he was really just setting little land mines for the reader to step on later. Very stimulating stuff - the Lamarckian Theory of Evolution, the perpetual time-crush of the late 20th century, and later in the book a series of references to the geological evolution of the Northwest - that all ends up having a very personal meaning in the life of this guy who's just trying to get himself back in the flow of things. Very interesting stuff, and much more imaginative than a lot of the crap out there these days.

Frozen Music is really like three novels in one: Michael Moss's past screw-ups (with a manipulative, alcoholic older woman); his present challenges (fighting an attraction to his assistant choir director, Amy Fine), and my favorite part, the road trip through the Pacific Northwest, during which he keeps dreaming up strange new rituals through which he hopes to exorcise his demons and get on with his life. Some of these are downright comical - like throwing rocks to the bats in Yosemite Park, or nearly offing himself trying to salvage a cupful of water over the high falls of Multnomah on Oregon's Columbia River Gorge - but a lot of them sound like things I'd like to try myself, like playing a Celtic drum on a cliff overlooking the Oregon coast, tossing pebbles from a ferry off Washington's San Juan Islands, or throwing a softball (yeah, really, a softball) into the ocean north of Eureka. The idea of a personalized religion really appeals to the new age/pagan side of me (forgive the term "new age," by the way - it's unfortunately developed a lot of bad connotations) but even more appealing than that is the siren call of the asphalt, man - the uniquely American ability to throw your laundry in the back seat, put the key in the ignition and disappear, leaving bits of yourself all along the roadside and, as the author puts it, "never staying in one place too long, lest the pieces come back together and catch up with you." Hit the road, Jack, and read this book - it's a great trip!

Having sung in a few choirs myself, I was highly amused by Vaughn's fictitious Westfield Community College Choir, which contains just the same kind of extroverted eccentrics I've met during my own singing career. You can tell they're drawn from real life (and the author's bio seems to hint at this, too). It's fun, also, the way that Vaughn makes use of technical musical lingo, more as a playful verbal backdrop than for reasons of story (don't worry; you don't have to understand it to follow), and the way he employs his metaphorical brush to describe the many and sublime ways in which music bumps up against our souls. As for the main character, Michael Moss, I found his search for self a little pretentious at times, but then I guess that's his problem in the first place; he's wrapped himself so tightly against human contact that he needs the power of singing (and a little female attention) to draw him out. Lots of good sex (in a corn field? Ouch!) and, overall, lots of fun. Frozen Music is quite a strange pleasure.

I really related to the main character Michael. He's such a great lady-killer! What a stud, he's my hero. I too hope to get lucky like Mike some day!