With less than a week remaining before their final deadline for submitting a revised financial restructuring plan that will satisfy the Char-Meck Arts & Science Council, executive director Jonathan Martin and former guv James G. Martin are taking it to the streets today with a 12 p.m. rally for the embattled Charlotte Symphony Orchestra. The “Stand Up for Your Symphony” Rally on The Square will feature a speech from the former governor, newly elected to the chairmanship of CSO’s board, and performances by Symphony musicians.

A rally, in the old-fashioned baseball sense of the word, may be exactly what is needed to save Symphony from strangulation by the ASC and its practitioners of cultural cluelessness. By punishing Symphony with censure this past spring and threatening to cut off funding, the ASC expected Charlotte’s largest contingent of performing artists to increase their attractiveness to prospective donors and subscribers?

Of course, a rally in the deathbed sense of the word will be necessary if the ASC persists in its practice of euthanizing local arts groups. The beancounters who have sat in judgment in the lordly Carillon Building, decreeing how proceeds of the Queen City’s annual fund drive should be misdirected, have allowed a string of local companies to perish over the past 16 years. Unless there is a sudden transfusion of funding, the ailing Charlotte Symphony will join a deathly parade that includes Charlotte Shakespeare Company, Charlotte Repertory Theatre, and Charlotte Philharmonic Orchestra – all killed in part by the ASC’s malign neglect.

Maybe the Martins need to announce a name change for the Charlotte Symphony. “Pittsburgh” might offer better prospects. “Bank of America Orchestra” has a nice coppery ring.

Executive director Jonathan Martin is promising “exciting news of our progress so far” at the rally. So please be present at Trade and Tryon for your lunch hour, enjoy the music, act appropriately excited by the speeches and announcements, and if CSO staffers or musicians pass the hat, kindly drop in some negotiable currency.

You can be sure that cash will be spent on sustaining the Charlotte Symphony. Unfortunately, no such assurances have come from the idiots at the ASC.

In this final piece of a four-part series titled iTunes and the Pen, authors Kevin Canty, Monica Drake, and Paul Eckert explain how they feel about listening to music while writing.

For other authors takes on the topic, check out the following:  For Part 1 of iTunes and the Pen, click here. For Part 2, click here. And for Part 3, click here.

Kevin Canty, whose most recent release is the collection Where the Money Went, describes himself as “a cork-lined-cell type writer.”  Canty says, “I love silence and solitude and the random play of my own thoughts.”  Because of his background as a guitarist, he can’t be in the same room with music without actually listening to it.  Still, he finds music helpful for getting his way into a story, often finding what he’s looking for in a pop, blues or jazz songs. Canty is the first to admit that most of his story titles come from songs.  “Nothing mysterious about this,” he says.  “I just stink at coming up with titles and somebody's already done the work for you when they write the song. Why work when you can steal?”

When Monica Drake, whose debut Clown Girl was released on Hawthorne Books, first started writing she found inspiration in different musicians, from Tom Waits to Lou Reed, but certain artists with “associative leaps in lyrics, the rough, rugged riffs, the driving emotion,” as she says, would make her want write short stories. These artists include Liz Phair, Tom Verlaine and Television.  These days, however, Drake spends less time listening to music while writing. She says, “A lot of my time is surrounded by people talking, so when I manage to find writing time I like to sink into my own thoughts and have no music on at all. I'm writing in more compressed time periods, an hour here or there, and I like to focus."

Paul Eckert, author of Ghostwriter Circus, was once working on a short story with the music of Godspeed You Black Emperor! playing along.  “I found my groove, and I was just writing away. And when the music started to build tension, the writing started to build tension. I didn't realize what was happening until the climax when the song was loud and crazy and the tension I'd been building in the chapter started to explode all over the place. Now that I think about it, maybe that experience scared me away from writing to music,” Eckert says.  Since then, Eckert admits he rarely listens to music while he works.  “If I take three minutes to write two sentences, and I realize a three minute song just finished, it makes me aware of time," he says. "Then a song may come on that I don't like, so I have to spend time skipping to the song I want. Instrumental music is more open to interpretation, hence it can fit any mood and help me find my groove.”