A Writer Afoot

New Years Eve

Waiting tonight for the ball to drop in Colorado, I'm availing myself of a pair of I-tunes gift cards that came my way on Christmas (have I mentioned that I am IN LOVE with my video Nano?).  Interesting to be choosing things from the past on the eve of the new year. 

Here are some of the things I've chosen: 

Beggar's Banquet, Rollling Stones.  Seriously--could you possibly call yourself a rocker without this CD in your collection?  Timeless, eternally perfect, especially (of course) Sympathy for the Devil.   This particular music has been on my mind because I've connected with an old friend and we loved Mick & the gang. We saw them in concert in Boulder....oh a long time ago. A massive highlight of my young life.

Downloading that led to (for no reason I can name)...

Lives in the Balance, Jackson Browne.  One of my favorite albums of all time.  I especially love the title song, partly for the words and the message, but also for the music and the Latin influence.  When I was a young mother, I'd play this song in my kitchen while I did the dishes and never could hear Lawless Avenue or Lives in the Balance without stopping to dance and sing.  I've heard this particular CD was his passion but it fared poorly in the market.   Speaking strictly for me, I'm very glad he made it anyway.  And now I've purchased it again.   

Thinking about dancing in my kitchen made me remember John Mellencamp's Pink Houses and another concert.  Uh-huh is a fantastic piece of work, and some of the videos were masterpieces.  Mellencamp gets the working class, and he is a master of telling detail. 

Now it's nearly midnight here and I'm going to watch the fireworks from the top of Pikes Peak, carried there by the AdAMan club, which I think I'd like to someday join on their trek.  Glad it isn't tonight, though.  It is very, very cold.   (And, considering it's probably 40 below up there, that's a silly comment.  But how cool would it be to be on top of Pikes Peak at midnight on New Year's Eve?  I wonder if they spend the night up there?)

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!  May 2008 be your best year thus far.

PS The fireworks are fantastic.  The snowy peak is illuminated against the darkness, making it seem like something stolen and magical.

Soundtrack for the new book

I have been fretting that my process is annoyingly different every time, and as this book is brewing, I've torn out pictures from magazines, but haven't felt even the slightest desire to brainstorm with a collage. (Yet.)

Then, yesterday in the mail, I had a package from my ex, who sent me his copy of Sonny & Brownie because I couldn't find this one, and remembered he had it, so I asked if he'd copy it for me.  He couldn't get copies made for some reason or another (well, I do know why--a little late to computers, this one, and the process flummoxes him).   

Oh, seeing that cover.....! I rushed upstairs and put it into the computer to copy and blasted "God and Man," which is one of the best songs EVER.   I played it five times in a row, swaying and singing along and letting those voices echo in my chest.  Once it was safely copied, I moved a copy into the soundtrack file for the new book, which so far looks like this:

Are You Alright? Lucinda Williams
Still I Long For your Kiss, Lucinda Williams
God and Man, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGee
The Wind, Cat Stevens
My Lover's Gone, Dido
Not Alone, Patty Griffin
What a Dream I Had, Simon and Garfunkel (which is not the name of the song, but I'm lazy and don't feel like looking it up)
Every Morning, Keb Mo
Let Him Fly, Patty Griffin
Moses, Patty Griffin
Home, Marc Broussard

Now, it might seem an odd list, but often it is as much about the tone of the music and the emotions it stirs up as it is about genre or artist or even tone.  This is a pretty bluesy list, but there are some other things, too, and it is not yet complete, and I'm listening to tons of music, listening and listening as I do other things.  Wash clothes, drive around town.  New things, old things, I don't care.  I know a song is right when one of the characters starts to move around. 

This is morning, it occurred to me that this is just a different way to collage.  I'm listening to this collage instead of looking at it.  That has often happened in the past, too.  Every book-child has its own requirements.

Looking at that list, is there something you think might add some nice flavor?  Do you do soundtracks or collages?  Just curious.

The leaded window opens.....

I walked home from the YMCA this morning, listening through my left ear to my Ipod Shuffle (which is one of the great inventions of all time).   The Jethro Tull CD Heavy Horses arrived in rotation, and I had not heard it for quite some time, so I switched from shuffle to playing in order so I could listen to it all.   

There are albums you love because they mark a period of time, pin down memories, capture some special something you treasure.  I can see myself lying in the middle of my living room floor in one of the first houses I lived in away from my parents, between two gigantic speakers, listening to Jimi Hendrix.  He was long dead by then, but lived in perfect, unmarked beauty in a poster on my bedroom wall (weirdly, my younger son resembles him quite a lot, or maybe I just think so because he's my child and beautiful and I did so love Jimi for a time).  In the right mood, I can still enjoy Are You Experienced, but it does have to be just the right mood.

There are others that just never wear out. Beggar's Banquet.  I'm pretty sure I can listen to Let It Be a few hundred thousand more times before I tire of it.  Simon and Garfunkel's For Emily, Wherever I May Find Her, the poetry set to a melody as delicate as cobwebs:

What a dream I had
Pressed in organdy
Clothed in crinoline
Of smoky burgundy...

Heavy Horses is one of my top ten CDs of all time.  If I tell you that my eldest son is named Ian because of Ian Anderson, you'll know I mean I love this band.  There are very, very few musicians who can create such a mood of joy, weaving that flute and elegant lyrics and guitar into something that feels celebratory and medieval and earthy, and it is never any better than it is in HH, an ode to the sweet beauties of pastoral life, the pleasures of the natural world and animals and simple living close to the earth. "Weathercock" is an ode to the simple beauties of pastoral life, the simplicity of faith in things beyond us, woven with the famous flute and medieval dance rhythms that can still--after 40 zillion listens--catch my throat:

Give us direction; the best of goodwill,
Put us in touch with fair winds.
Sing to us softly, hum evening's song.
Tell us what the blacksmith has done for you.

When my boys were small, we had music quizzes.  A song came on the radio and I would say, "Quick, who is this?"  (Often they would not know and answer, "The Beatles." )  But they both knew that "The Mouse Police Never Sleeps" was Jethro Tull, because it is a delicious song for small boys, full of slithers and s-s-s-s and twitching tails, in musical language as well as words:

Muscled, black with steel-green eye
swishing through the rye grass
with thoughts of mouse-and-apple pie.
Tail balancing at half-mast.
...And the mouse police never sleeps
lying in the cherry tree.
Savage bed foot-warmer of purest feline ancestry.
Look out, little furry folk!
He's the all-night working cat.
Eats but one in every ten
leaves the others on the mat.

Perhaps my favorite is the poignant Moths, which stands alone as poetry, but is a hymn when set to music:

The leaded window opened
to move the dancing candle flame
And the first Moths of summer
suicidal came, suicidal came.
And a new breeze chattered
in its May-bud tenderness....

And:

Chasing shadows slipping
  in a magic lantern slide ---
Creatures of the candle
  on a night-light-ride.
Dipping and weaving --- flutter
  through the golden needle's eye
  in our haystack madness.  Butterfly-stroking
  on a Spring-tide high.
Life's too long (as the Lemming said)
  as the candle burned and the Moths were wed.

And:

And the first moths of summer
  suicidal came
  to join in the worship
  of the light that never dies

I have not heard a band that sounds anything like Jethro Tull, blending that lyrical flute and elegant lyrics and stunning sense of play, but I'm willing to be educated. If you know a band I should check out, let me know. 

In the meantime, if you've not heard Heavy Horses, give it a try.