Yes, it’s been two weeks since Valentine’s Day. Yes, I understand the perspective that it’s a manufactured holiday meant to make people spend money on flowers and candy and jewelry and dining out and trips, etc. And it makes some people feel lonely and alone, or resentful for being expected to feel lonely and alone, when they are actually quite content with their lives. So here’s a message from the bottom of my heart–or the bottom of my Hershey’s Kisses.
Love is love. Celebrate it any day or every day with friends, family members, family pets, and romantic partners. Or just celebrate because Snoopy was created, and he’s amazing.
I have an important chapter to focus on today. On instinct, I plucked these three CDs out of the binder. Two were burned for me by Marika many years ago when she found out I loved “Twin Peaks,” both the TV series and its music. They are joined by my official “Twin Peaks” soundtrack, with music by the late Angelo Badalamenti and lyrics by the brilliant David Lynch. The soundtrack has only three pieces with vocals by the late Julee Cruise; Marika tracked down thirteen more for her custom CD (I’ll provide the track list below).
It’s the best music I can listen to while writing today for several reasons, but one in particular. My Director is working on a film post-production, and he’d asked The Musician to compose a haunting score. There’s probably no music more haunting than these two CDs of “Twin Peaks” music, making them surreal and ideal.
Sometime during the pandemic or post-pandemic, Marika pitched me the idea of “Ghost Girl” music, and we often sent each other song titles that on the surface were light or pop songs, but if you turned the singer or the subject into Ghost Girl, they took on an entirely new mood and meaning. Wherever she travels among the stars of the Universe, I’m betting Marika still likes hearing some good Ghost Girl songs.
Julee Cruise “Twin Peaks” Music
1. Falling
2. The Nightingale
3. Floating
4. I Remember
5. Rockin’ Back Inside My Heart
6. Mysteries of Love
7. Into The Night
8. I Float Alone
9. The Swan
10. The World Spins
11. This Is Our Night
12. The Space For Love
13. Movin’ In On You
14. Friends For Life
15. Up In Flames
16. Kool Kat Walk
I don’t have a track list for Marika’s mix CD titled Julee Cruise/Big Band, and I don’t currently have the time it would take to figure out her lyrics so I could research and identify all the songs on this CD. The mood of her work is equally haunting to the “Twin Peaks” music. The CD shifts gears on the seventh song, but it still works with the overall mood of this section of my novel.
1. Needs research
2. Julee Cruise, “She Would Die For Love”
3. Julee Cruise, needs research
4. Julee Cruise, “Questions In A World of Blue Lyrics”
5. Julee Cruise, “The Voice of Love”
6. Julee Cruise, “Bei Mir Bistu Shein”
7. Frank Sinatra, “Witchcraft”
8. Frank Sinatra, “In the Wee Small Hours of the Morning”
9. Needs research
10. Glen Miller, “String of Pearls”
11. Needs research
12. Needs research
13. Frank Sinatra, “Summer Wind”
14. Frank Sinatra and Nancy Sinatra, “Somethin’ Stupid”
15. Frank Sinatra, “It Happened In Monterey”
16. Alison Moyet (I think), “That Ole Devil Called Love”
17. Needs research
18. repeat of Frank Sinatra, “Summer Wind” (guess Marika really liked this one)
19. “Here’s To The Losers,” this version is more mellow than Frank Sinatra’s, could be James Darren playing “Vic Fontaine” on “Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Season 06, Episode 26, ‘Tears of the Prophets,'” which would be a clever move on Marika’s part
20. “Danke Schoen,” by a female vocalist; Brenda Lee did a version, but this doesn’t sound like her
21. “Fever,” most likely Peggy Lee’s version, doesn’t sound like Patti Page, and I can’t find Julie London’s rendition
ETA: It turned out to be a much longer writing day than I expected, partially because I updated my concordance with all the new names and places that are part of Book 7 in progress. Always good to hear music from Brahms, Beethoven, Schumann, Mozart, Rachmaninoff, Gershwin, Ravel, Tchaikovsky, Grieg and Chopin. These CDs probably should have been used for writing a different character, but it’s okay to mix things up a little.
Timothy was still living in NYC then, and he sent the CD in the spring/early summer of 2001, when he already had his Keith Haring Radiant Baby tattoo and before he moved to Houston in October. Below are the works he recorded, introducing me to songs he knew I’d love, or already loved, or just needed to know existed. =)
1. Wicked Little Town, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
2. Here With Me, Dido
3. I’m Not In Love, Olive
4. Take Me Down, Boss Drum
5. Lover, Lover, Lover, Ian McCulloch
6. Within Your Reach, The Replacements
7. Born To Make You Happy, Britney Spears
8. Lady Bunny Speaks Out, Lady Bunny
9. America, Simon & Garfunkel
10. Jeannie’s Diner, Marilyn E. Whitelaw
11. Move On, Boss Drum
12. Special, Garbage
13. Nightingale, Sandra Bernhard
14. Sorcerer, Buckingham Nicks (1974)
15. Nomad (demo), Buckingham Nicks
16. Gold Dust Woman, Hole
17. Thank You, Dido
18. Origin of Love, Hedwig and the Angry Inch
In the late 1990s, Jim sent me a CD of songs he chose for me. It was in a jewel box, and I later made a cover for it with stickers when I put it in my CD case. His playlist was aimed at the California dreamin’ sensibilities and memories of adolescent/hippie Becky.
1. Wishin’ and Hopin’, Dusty Springfield
2. Age of Aquarius, The Fifth Dimension
3. Better Shop Around, Captain and Tennille’s version
4. I Think I Love You, The Partridge Family
5. Sharing the Night Together, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show
6. Kodachrome, Paul Simon
7. California Girls, The Beach Boys
8. Your Mama Don’t Dance, Loggins and Messina
9. Little Willy, The Sweet
10. Mother and Child Reunion, Paul Simon
11. Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree, Tony Orlando and Dawn
12. Don’t Pull Your Love Out, Hamilton, Joe Frank & Reynolds
13. Temptation Eyes, The Grass Roots
14. Only 16, Dr. Hook & the Medicine Show
15. Cecilia, Simon & Garfunkel
16. Say A Little Prayer, Aretha Franklin
17. Midnight Confessions, The Grass Roots
18. I Am a Rock, Simon & Garfunkel
19. Wendy, The Beach Boys
20. California Dreaming, The Mamas & The Papas
I miss MIX TAPES! Now everybody just tells you to go look at their Spotify playlists. Not the same at all.
These CDs were part of my most recent writing playlist. No way am I choosing a song from one of their mixes, making it seem like I slighted the other. Instead, here’s a song from Wham! that gave Timothy, Jim, Timmy, and me the title of our third novel. I miss my writing partners!
Timmy, Timothy, me, and Jim back in the early part of the century?
When I recently listened to the double CD that includes Dennis Wilson’s solo album Pacific Ocean Blue and the tracks from the second planned solo album, the last couple of songs on both CDs had skips on them. Fortunately, I was able to find a used copy from an eBay seller for a good price. The cover of this second one is beat up–mine isn’t–but the CDs both sound fine. If you know me, you understand this is a crisis averted. This collection is a go-to for me when I need to find a certain kind of solace and peace. In the past, I have’t listened to it on my little CD player, so maybe a different player wouldn’t have had the same problems. I’ll check that out sometime later. For now, I’m good.
News came out this week that Dennis’s brother Brian, the oldest of the Wilson brothers, has some form of dementia. Since his wife, who recently died, managed his care, and the care of their children still living at home, a conservatorship has been approved by a court with the family’s input. Apparently, Brian’s still singing and playing at home, but he doesn’t always do well in unfamiliar situations or with unfamiliar people. I wish him the very best and hope there aren’t any issues within his family about his care or his money or property. Not everyone inside the Beach Boys organization as it now exists has been kind to him, just as they were often unkind to Dennis. There’ve been many books and articles written about them; no need for me to rehash it here. I simply think Brian’s life has been tumultuous, and his gifts so beautifully shared, that he deserves a gentle and loving twilight.
Now that I’ve been through my A to Z CD binders, I have plans for what music I’ll listen to going forward when I write. More to come.
A few photos of the Wilson brothers I’m mostly saving for my own future reference, though it’s interesting to see how they changed through the years before Dennis died in 1983 (drowning, age 39) and Carl died in 1998 (lung cancer, age 51).
Errands and other matters to tend to today, but when I strategized about writing or actually wrote, these were the playlist. Two of my favorite lyricists and artists, spanning decades of my life. I’ve also enjoyed several books about them.
Neil Young’s Harvest and After The Gold Rush, and Warren Zevon’s Warren Zevon, Excitable Boy, and The Wind.
ETA: The Z in Zevon makes it official; I’ve gone through the CD’s in my alphabetical binders and those with hardcovers that are kept in a separate box in the same cabinet. It was poignant for the last song to be from Zevon’s last record The Wind before his death, “Keep Me In Your Heart.”
Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams
Touch me as I fall into view
When the winter comes keep the fires lit
And I will be right next to you
Eighth row on the floor. Back in October of 2020, I was going through bins of stuff that I’ve collected since I was a teenager, and that’s when I found these tucked into some other stuff. A day can simultaneously seem like one of the best and worst of your life, but I was relieved to see I still had the tickets. Time has given me perspective, and you know what? The day still has that best/worst feeling. Fortunately for me, feelings can be processed through fiction and have a little less power.
Speaking of writing, the recent playlist.
Rufus Wainwright, Want One; The Wallflowers, Bringing Down The Horse and (Breach); Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot; Hank Williams, Icon; Brian Wilson, Brian Wilson Presents Smile, a 2004 collection of 17 works Brian created for the unreleased Smile LP in the 1960s and an accompanying booklet. Though many of the songs were later released on other Beach Boys albums, these versions are more like what Brian planned before his breakdown. The collection is a gift for fans and critics who always regretted that Smile wasn’t released.
These last two will start the Tuesday writing playlist.
Dennis Wilson, Pacific Ocean Blue, a 2-CD set that includes POB plus 4 bonus tracks, and a second disk, Bambu, the Caribou sessions, that includes 18 works Dennis intended to be on his second (unreleased) album, plus a bonus track of the late Taylor Hawkins (Foo Fighters) adding vocals to “Holy Man.” This was a beautiful composition Dennis wrote with Gregg Jakobson. Dennis and Gregg left it off POB because they never wrote lyrics, and Dennis died in 1983 without producing a second solo album. In 2008, when it was decided to put together a second album of Dennis’s music, Jakobson commissioned Taylor to write lyrics and add vocals to “Holy Man.” The first time I stumbled over the song, Taylor’s voice sounds so much like Dennis’s that I wondered how I never knew Dennis put vocals to it. A little research enlightened me that the vocalist and lyricist was Taylor. When Taylor died in March of 2022, it was a huge loss to music; to me, it felt like losing a part of Dennis again.
My second album of the day will be Paul McCartney and Wings, Band on the Run. Originally released in 1973, this one is the 25th Anniversary Edition, and includes a second disk with more than 50 minutes of voices of the band and some of the celebrities on the cover along with previously unreleased versions of some BOTR tracks. This year, the 50th Anniversary Edition has come out with more extras. (I don’t have it.)
Here’s the posthumous Dennis Wilson/Taylor Hawkins collaboration on “Holy Man.”
A few of my little stone and crystal friends because the Internet is full of hearts right now.
Labradorite and rose quartz
A couple of river rocks
Healerite and goldstone
Black moonstone and amethyst
Amazonite and white banded carnelian
They remind me there are so many variations on love in the Neverending Saga. Love can be…complicated.
The perfect music for writing on an overcast, drizzly day when my characters are grappling with love and all it demands and provides is music by the great Texas blues guitarists, the Vaughan brothers. I’ll always miss Stevie Ray and wonder what music he’d have created if he hadn’t died too soon. The biography Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan, by Alan Paul and Andy Aledort, is a good account of him if you like biographies. Many years ago, I wrote a musician who turned his life around from a very dark place, and Stevie Ray Vaughan later proved to me that not only could it be done, he dedicated so much time to helping others who grappled with addictions.
Jimmie Vaughan, Strange Pleasure; The Vaughan Brothers, Family Style; Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble, Greatest Hits,The Sky Is Crying, and The Real Deal: Greatest Hits 2; various artists including Jimmie Vaughan, A Tribute to Stevie Ray Vaughan.
ETA: Oops, missed one. Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble’s In Step.
In the live version (below) of “Look At Little Sister,” watch for the smoothest guitar switch ever after a string breaks (around 2:40). I freely confess to having a moment like this in the Saga as tribute to Stevie Ray and the guitar techs who make live music fun for us all. I’m so glad Tom and I (with Lynne) got to see Stevie Ray in person after we moved to Texas.
Another little journal I found last year sometime and plucked off the shelf today, having forgotten it. This one I’ll call “Hey Thanks” is a guided gratitude journal. There are some exercises provided to help the journal keeper record what s/he’s grateful for, and sometimes topics are given.
I flipped the book open at random and did this one. I mean, there are a ton of wonders in the world, and most of them I haven’t seen. So I tried to come up with a geologic feature that stirs me emotionally, and animals in general and one specific, and then something purely selfish that might not seem like a “wonder” to others, but would open new worlds to me and help me write.
Hope this is readable. Any wonders you’ve dreamed of experiencing?
Question 658: Rubik’s Cube or Magic 8-Ball? (and why…)
Goodness. I could never solve a Rubik’s Cube. I’m not sure if I’m spatially challenged or impatient, but my first efforts took too much effort and thought. (I do a word puzzle among several other online games every morning and compare the results with Timothy and Jim, who do the same games. One of those word puzzles requires more strategy than the others, and isn’t my strongest game.)
So of course, I’m choosing Magic 8-Ball. What exactly is it that I use my most creative time for? I choose words from millions of words and string them together into stories that bring people and events to life all by means of ideas in my head. Is it not in the very NAME of the object: MAGIC?
Let’s put that question to Magic 8-Ball.
The answer?
I rest my case.
ETA: Later edited to add this to my Numbers Photo Series as No. 11. Also it’s Pick One No. 11. See? Magic.
So of course, I’m choosing Magic 8-Ball. What exactly is it that I use my most creative time for? I choose words from millions of words and string them together into stories that bring people and events to life all by means of ideas in my head. Is it not in the very NAME of the object: MAGIC?
