Soren makes much of the fact that when I started to write Gestalt they were supposed to be rudimentary, cardboard characters, invented so that I could try writing about a band. I tend to feel that most characters start out that way, and whether they develop or not depends on how much of the writer's personality they contain. These six promptly locked on to my feelings and beliefs about music and love, and if they became more than stick-figures, it's because those feelings and beliefs are quite strong motivating forces in my life.
The members of Gestalt encompass widely different approaches to life, but music and love hold them together in a true six-way partnership of which sex is only one form of expression. Tollain lives through his music, Suncat makes music from her life. Korynn and Kaichang make musical alchemy from their totally opposed points of view. Orville regards himself as the anchor that stops the whole thing floating apart, and he may be right. Verneen sits in a corner and makes the quiet suggestion that resolves the insoluble problem. All of them write songs, separately and together in any combination, and a Gestalt gig is more than likely to involve several songs performed by one, two or three of the band while the others sit out. In their universe they are successful, famous and so rich (largely thanks to the acumen of the rogue Nyrond Gomer) that they don't even have to think about money.
Gestalt aren't real. Probably they aren't even possible. But there have been moments in my life, sometimes making music, sometimes just being, when I've felt them round me in the forms of my friends. And those are the moments I live for.
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