Riling up Emotions, Sustaining a Mood

I began writing Forever Urtth in earnest in December 2021, a few months after moving out west from my hometown of Baltimore. Over those proceeding 3+ years of writing (mostly during the early morning hours before starting my day job), I learned a lot about my creative peccadilloes: A) I needed to fall in love with my main character for the story to hold together, B) I needed to show (and have) compassion and love for all my characters, C) I had to embrace the meaningful emotions within and use their force as fuel for my story and D) to sustain a mood and tone over the duration of 100K words, I needed a song—or a small cadre of songs—to serve as reminders, guideposts … e.g., ‘how this song makes me feel is how I want to feel throughout the hacking and finding of the paths that takes me from start to finish with a blind optimism that those emotions would color/saturate the tone of the story.

One of the things I’ll always remember about this time in my life is waking up before dawn seven days a week, tired as shit, barely coherent, but excited—vitalized—wanting to do justice to Sloan and her dad and to the story. In those bleary hours, I’d meander down to the kitchen to make coffee and click play on one of, say, five(ish) songs that were on permanent rotation in my YouTube playlists. These were my mood setters, my reminders, my guides that riled up the right emotions and reinforced the direction I was going in.

One of those songs—perhaps my favorite of the bunch—was this particular version of Brian Jonestown Massacre’s ‘If Love is the Drug.’

The discordant tonality it starts with … eerie, flatline(ish) … but also as if you’re tuning in to something about the pick up … And it does: riotous, rebellious but also with grace … hopeful, despairing, a drunken past of fights and fire and screwups … but also filled with hope and longing, yearning, striving, wanting something (someone) more … I really couldn’t find a more perfect analogy for the ‘hero’ of my story. To me, that’s who Sloan Slagg is. She walks around with a ‘small cadre’ of songs in her head but I think this one plays more often than any other.

The cost of a song, the price of a rivian

We live by a main road that connects east and west Colorado Springs. I go for a lot of walks, so I’m always passing cars. And I’m often listening to music on my walks, so perhaps it was unavoidable that cars and songs would converge in my thoughts.

On my little sojourns, I pay attention to well-designed cars. The futuristic bubble look of a Tesla 3 (the reek of Elon’s affiliation be damned). The rugged adventurism of a Jeep Renegade. The Pixar-esque headlights of a Rivian. I like admiring the convergence of artistry and functionality in an automobile.

When you consider that the average price of a new car is $50K—a hefty commitment over 5+ years—it seems, if not exactly reasonable, at least digestible. We need transportation, yes. But even more than function, we’re paying for how our car makes us feel.

I like when dust kicks up and cakes the rear window when I’m driving a winding dirt road to go hiking. I like hitting 100 when I’m crossing New Mexico back to Colorado, Blanca Peak dominating the northern horizon. Some of my favorite moments have been in a car: evening giving way to twilight as we drove through the dust-ridden hopelessness that is Tuba City on to the rolling, rocky wilderness of the San Juans and into Durango.

The thing about driving is how often our travels are accompanied by music. I’ll always associate The Flaming Lips’ ‘The W.A.N.D.’ with Oklahoma City because I was stuck in traffic leaving Tennessee toward OKC when I first heard it. Or John Denver’s ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ as we were literally driving home country roads from the Shenandoah Valley. Or The Cult’s ‘Sanctuary’ as we rode the wild road along the Rio Grande toward Santa Fe at night, with no street light anywhere, and the possibility of wildlife or a rogue driver ever-present.

Music helps define the mileposts of our lives. Nirvana in my teens. Dandy Warhols in my 20s. The Brian Jonestown Massacre (BJM) since then. The song that started our wedding day (Cake’s ‘I Want to Love You Madly’) and the song that concluded the night (Blur’s ‘Tender’). I know that scent is the sense most connected with memory but I think that sound—music in particular—is right behind it.

My question(s) is this: what is your favorite song worth to you? And how much have you actually paid for it?

Forced to choose between my car or BJM’s ‘If Love is the Drug then I want to OD,’ I’d find a way to get by without my EV. But while I have another three years to go on paying off my car, I’ve paid next to nothing for a song that I can’t imagine living without.

Yes, a car costs a lot to make. And yes we need transportation. And music might seem like a luxury.

But Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s ‘Stop’ is worth more than any Audi, a Porsche, or a Rivian.