Song for a Tucson summer
“Gonna be another long, hot night …”
Tag: music
“Wanna make you believe / that the height of this tightrope / is just second nature to me”
Not been online much. Busy with life stuff, book stuff, other stuff, so …
… here. Have some music. 🙂
(This one is on the raven book’s playlist. While Duvekot’s “Phoenix” belongs on a Bones of Faerie playlist.)
“We built our base camp on avalanche terrain / looking back I think the wreckage was built into the frame”
A good equinox to you all. It’s feeling like an equinox-y sort of season around here, with poppies and penstemon blooming, with the feeling that everything’s all balanced and poised for change, the citrus blossom-scented air filled with opportunities and challenges.
Or maybe that second is always true, and season change encourages us to step back and take notice.
I was asked about the source of the lyrics for this post (and to source my lyrics in general–I’ll try!) It’s from another Antje Duvekot song, Juliet.
I just might be obsessing over her music a little right now, having only recently discovered it. It’s music that takes to obsessing over well.
“Though I had no armor / you just let me go / into the night to battle with your ghosts”
Thanks to Matociquala, I’ve been obsessively listening to Antje Duvekot’s music this week.
This one in particular feels like a Bones of Faerie sort of song–I can listen to it and focus on Liza, or listen to it and focus on all the parent/daughter relationships that echo through the trilogy.
Plus, it’s just a gorgeous and haunting song.
Shine on, shine on, just shine on
Not a new song, but new to me. Anna Nalick’s “Shine” got my attention when it came up on Pandora with:
“And the past, it knocks on your door
And throws stones at your window at 4 in the morning …”
Meanwhile, here’s Vienna Teng’s take on shining on: same title, same underlying meaning, but slanted through different metaphors and with a different tone:
“In this desert land, I know some rain must fall
See where we began, we’ve come to far …”
It isn’t a problem, when two artists decide to tell the same story, because by the time they’re through following the story through the filters of their own voices and obsessions, they couldn’t really tell the same story even if they wanted to.
(The Teng recording, being live and fan done, is a little rough–I used it because she gives permission for such recordings to be online, but the album version is worth looking up, too, because the better sound quality actually lets a deeper sort comfort through. And the Nalick has an alternate acoustic version, which I’m kind of partial towards but which also wasn’t officially online.)
From the current book’s current playlist
Mid-afternoon music break
Spoken and sung by anyone else, this would probably be a little irritating. Spoken and sung by Ethel Merman, it’s rather nice. And makes me smile.
(Via lnhammer.)
“Oh, raven, what you done /I long to see you but you’re gone /the wind has wrapped you in its wings”
And at 76,000 words I’m declaring it a second draft, and returning a full half-day early from my Internet vacation. (Hi!)
It’s a muddle, but perhaps less than a muddle than usual for one of my second drafts. Not only the right story, but quite possibly the right first 2/3 of the structure, for all that there are underpinnings and arcings and characters to think about. And I kept my last line between first and second draft, which doesn’t normally happen, either.
Now to step back for a few days, look at the big picture, and get a handle on all the things I still need to research.
(Writing happened during my Internet vacation, but I do still owe stories and readings and emails to some of you. Still working on it!)
I have some thoughts on things learned by stepping back from social media, and a bunch of character letters, and some other odds and ends I’ll start posting over the next few days.
In the meantime, here’s “Raven,” by Jen Hajj, a Tucson Folk Festival discovery whose music has been getting much play on the current book’s playlist.
How have you all been?
“You can be there by 4:30 / ’cause I’ve made your reservation / don’t be slow”
Or, three things make a post:
Now, you can have your dystopic novel and learn SAT words at the same time! Somewhere, there’s a dystopia in which teens are forced to study for their SATs by reading dystopic novels, while the government tries to suppress the recursion that threatens them all.
Book research numbers of the day: Manhattan = 23 square miles. All of New York City = 305 square miles. New Mexico’s Gila Wilderness = 872 square miles. Knowledge I’ll be incorporating into my overall sense of the scale of things.
RIP, Davy Jones:
“You say it’s a tragic ending / I say it’s a new beginning / All that’s wrong is really all right”
So a few days ago, when I posted my Faerie 3 playlist, I commented that the one song I couldn’t find was Madelyn Iris’ New Day.
Today, I found a comment from the artists (whose group name I’d been spelling wrong) with a link to the song. Thanks, both of you!
So, here! MadelynIris’ New Day. Go forth. Download. It really is quite lovely.
Sometimes, I love the Internet. 🙂