An Autumn Playlist (Jillian)

In tempus autumnum venimus. Translation: we have come into the time of autumn.

With every season comes a sound. I cannot explain it, but there are certain songs and voices that I associate with the seasons - for no particular reason other than an ineffable resonance between my creative self and the world outside.

A few examples: I associate Strict Joy (of the Swell Season) with early December, as it was a comfort to me after a grueling season of preparing for the GRE exam; then there is Imogen Heap's Speak for Yourself, which I listened to frequently (and while on the internet) in the Winter of 2007-2008; there is also Capercaillie's Beautiful Wasteland, currently in residence in the CD player in my car, which is glorious Autumn to me; Spring knows no particular artist but a playlist Michelle made for me this last year entitled "A Year in Song" which brought me out of a winter state. Most recently, the Beatles has defined my summer, as well as Sia's We Are Born.

Autumn is gathering a longer playlist for me, as well, this year - oddly enough a melange of sounds from many seasons of listening:

* M'ionam - Capercaillie, Beautiful Wasteland
* The Blue Rampart - Capercaillie, Beautiful Wasteland
* Beautiful Wasteland - you get the idea
* Evangeline - Karen Matheson, The Dreaming Sea
* Dear Prudence - The Beatles, the White Album
* Across the Universe - The Beatles, Let it Be
* The Moon - The Swell Season
* Upward Over the Mountain - Iron & Wine
* Live and Let Die - Wings
* Life on Mars - David Bowie
* Levater - Yael Naim
* Go to the River - Yael Naim, She Was a Boy
* I Try Hard - Yael Naim, She Was a Boy
* A Case of You - Joni Mitchell
* The Scarlet Tide - Alison Krauss

The music helps - whether it be circulating images in my over-active imagination or getting through the day. Do you have a seasonal playlist? If not, I'd recommend it. It's probably already chosen itself for you.

Evangeline, Evangeline... angel of the morning is here...
and though the summer is over
and we're all a little colder
we'll get by...

"Does it need saying?" (Jillian)

First, a few lyrics from Karen Matheson - Album: Time to Fall, Song: "All the Flowers of the Bough" (She's Scottish, and she's awesome!)

Hearts are meant to be broken -

Made that way.

Love must have its trial.

Beauty, hope and wonder

Could not be

Without doubt and pain and self-denial.

All the flowers of the bough

They will fall and they will fade

But they resound

In the distance of the days.

Is life just a dance

Of happenstance?

I don't believe that.

Something that has been on my mind lately is love stories. I am writing a novel that is very much a love story. It was not something I'd planned. In fact, when the idea sparked into my imagination two years ago (in a story of its own), I began with the express purpose of avoiding a love story all together. My thought was, "I am too obsessed with all of these romance ideas! I shouldn't be aiming for a corny, sappy, sugar fest! What will people think?" But years later, the love story fought back… and has become one of the strongest threads in the tapestry of this novel. But why the lingering shame? Not to mention, the reluctance to mention to people who innocent ask what this complicated project is about, "Oh, yeah, there are these two characters who eventually… well… you know… fall in love…" and changing the subject as fast as possible.

I think our society has, in general, become cynical about love and what love actually means… overindulgent in things that seem to be love but are not. Evidence seems to be everywhere in film (loathed unintelligent "chick flicks" which border on soft pornography much of the time), on television, and in books - sex is more prevalent, less meaningful. Stories are full of disappointed hopes and disillusionment… as if it is foolish to expect much else. I cannot express how many times I have enjoyed a book until the characters cross that once-sacred threshold. Not even Elizabeth I in Alison Weir's otherwise wonderful The Lady Elizabeth is allowed to escape dangerous romances at a young age. Most stories are love stories, but only a small portion of them do more than cater to marketed "needs"… like The Notebook and its companions… where "love" is little more than a theme badly constricted in a formula, to the point where it grates on the value of characters and drags the story away from creativity… from a writer's unique drive to write outside the lines.

So in the broader context of sitcoms and ridiculous dramas, love is a blanket term for giggles, scandal and situations that end badly. Like smoking cigarettes - this kind of cynicism is a gradual road to an early loveless demise.

It is utter sadness! Because as human beings we were meant to love, and we reduce it to foolishness and hormones. Does this mean that the characters in my novel exist only to live out ideals that I could never have? No! It is our God-given gift, to love. Love is a deep, difficult enigma, maintained through sacrifice, self-denial, grace! Grace is such a big part of it. Forgiveness and acceptance without having to earn it. Loved because you're lovable, looking beyond facades and surface impressions, and touches the real person. It isn't just an emotion. It's something deeper, a journey that is as different as the characters who fall unexpectedly into its arms. This is why Doctor Who - yes, you knew it would pop up somewhere in this post - is so powerful, especially when it comes to the Doctor's relationship with Rose… a love doomed many times over, but strong enough to push Rose across parallel worlds to return to him. And the Doctor, in the tragedy of his immortality, literally leaves her with his double - a human version of himself - the only way the Doctor could fully give himself to her… with the greatest love comes the greatest pain… and vice versa. He has to walk away, while Rose begins her life with a man who is himself, but separate from his experience.

That is why I refuse to become a literary lemming and jump off the everybody-expects-this cliff. If love is truly boundless - than it shouldn't always mimicRomeo and Juliet (note that Shakespeare called it a tragedy not a romance!)… or Pretty Woman… or The Little Mermaid. (Feel free to insert here the first obnoxious romance that pops into your mind !) Love is a chameleon "very often mistaken for loathing" as Yvaine expresses in Stardust, and is full of surprises. And the surprises, the questions, the possibilities, the GREAT UNKNOWN is what I want to write about… not what every poor soul is trained to reach for!

I leave you with a picture. In the last episode of Series Four of Doctor Who ("Journey's End"), Rose says to the Doctor, "The last time I stood on this beach on the worst day of my life, what did you say to me?"

The Doctor's face is stern, and sad, as he prepares to leave Rose and the other Doctor behind. "I said 'Rose Tyler'."

"Yeah, and how was that sentence going to end?"

He hesitates. "Does it need saying?"

Rose turns to the Doctor's human double (wearing a blue suit). "And you Doctor? How would you finish that sentence?"

His answer: leaning over and whispering the magic words in her ear. We can all guess what they were:

And was it worth it? Yes! No shame in powerful, bittersweet beginnings. If a picture - a journey - like this is not a part of my writing… I can't imagine that I would want to write at all!

Happy writing, dreaming and loving!