Lux Aeterna

overcast, cool, temps minus 4

Feels a little colder to me, but it is still WAY milder than normal.

Am having great fun engaging now with the next book. Just letting my thoughts run free. But I also realize how important music is to my creative process. Each book has had both poems, and pieces of music that have inspired it. Sometimes with lyrics, like the searing Leo Ferre piece called 'Avec le temps' that inspired the next book - Bury Your Dead - and the instrumental 'Colm Quigley' that inspired The Brutal Telling.

I was watching the pairs short programme at the Olympics the other day and as always was amazed. I just love all of them! And get so caught up in their stories...borders and frontiers disappear and it seems to become about the people - the human stories. But - what struck me like lightning - it really feels like a jolt - was the music used (co-incidentally) by one of the Canadian pairs. They didn't do so well in the standings, but their music stunned me. I loved it.

Yesterday I decided to try to find out what it was. I love research - part of what I adored about journalism...following leads and trails - and the amazing satisfaction when you find what you're looking for. So I googled and searched, refined my search, tried different things...and finally found a reference to it. The piece was Lux Aeterna by Clint Mansell, from his larger work Requiem for a Dream. Though, I actually think it was a slightly different version called Requiem for a Tower. But I downloaded both.

As soon as I heard it I knew it was the 'track' to book 7, which is tentatively called A WORLD OF SIGHS - from an Othello quote.

My books, I've long realized, are individually like pieces of music, and often collectively like a symphony...in that over the arc of several books and story lines, there are different movements.

After BURY YOUR DEAD - which as you'll see is like a final movement - rich, full, dramatic - the next book needs to start the cycle again. Ridiculous to keep building dramatically...then the series would turn into a melodramatic shriek.

No, there are natural ebbs and flows, and book 7 is really the beginning of another 'symphony'. Indeed, the thrilling part in finding that piece of music is it tracks what I hope A WORLD OF SIGHS will feel like - but it is also what the next arc of a few books will feel like, over the course of Lux Aeterna.

Not sure if this is making any sense, but it is thrilling for me...indeed pivotal. A turning point in approaching a book. so many unseen elements need to fall into place for it to feel real to me, and be propelled along. Having music in my head as I'm writing (granted and thankfully not all the time) - is a huge inspiration.

The trick, though, is not to over-listen to it, and have the 'magic' and power wear off. Now I'm afraid to listen to it at all until I start to write on March 1st. We'll see if I can or if I give in to temptation. As Oscar Wilde said, 'I can resist anything except temptation.'

Having fun watching the Olympics. I just adore the skating - hockey I'm afraid doesn't do much for me - but I do love curling. Such a game of nerves and strategy. Of finess. What an interesting - and probably psychotic - country Canada is - to embrace and love both hockey and curling. Like our seasons, we are drawn to extremes. Well masked behind a courteous exterior.

Thanks for letting me prattle on about music. It feels quite divine when something hits like that. Very exciting.