Envision

I am envisioning this:

Intro and preface: 10,000 words

Chapter on Lorca's own musicality, etc...:  10,000

Chapter on classical music...  12,000

Chapter on vernacular idioms.... 12,000

conclusion:  5,000


So let's say 50,000 words.  Each chapter is fairly long but it has many subdivisions.  It will be seamless in its flow even with many "seams." It will be idea driven rather than mostly descriptive.  The main ideas so far are cultural hybridity and cultural hierarchies, between high, middle, and low. I'm especially interested in the under theorized middle brow.

It is good to envision things, imagine them as already existent.  Say there is a lot you will build the house on. The lot exists, but the house is only an idea, so far. We have the advantage over the architect in that we can already build the house simply by writing things down. I can close my eyes and see the book. Maybe the cover would look like this:

The Musical Afterlife of

Federico García Lorca

Jonathan Mayhew

I would open up the book and see the table of contents, with the page numbers there. I turn to the first page and start reading. If I imagine what words are there, then I can write them down and the book will become a reality for me. It is merely an idea, but all books have to start with being an idea in someone's head.