天国のお嬢様

Music is an important part of my life, possibly one of the most important aspects of my life. It has been there since I was a child, the familiar crackle and hiss of the family record player and the skip of the occasional line or beat in worn LPs. I wrote my first book almost entirely with headphones on and, ever since then have found music to be as significant part of my writing rituals as it is any of my other daily routines.

As I have grown older, many elements of the regime by which I write have been stripped away, I’d be tempted to say ‘refined‘ if I believed that, but in truth I don’t. Nonetheless, I still find it important to listen to music whilst writing, not all the time and not every time but I often find that the right song can set a scene or inspire an emotion with much better results than diving into something cold.

This type of writing is the second form that I find the creative act dresses in. It’s a little less inspired, a little less eager to confess its words onto paper than the spontaneous grab for pen and paper or the quickfire feed of paper in the typewriter or click on the mouse but it’s no less important.

As the weekend just gone was bank holiday, I took time to begin the first part of heronaut, a project I’ve promised to Adrian Watts for PSP’s Astonishing Adventures. The soundtrack for most of this has been a combination of My Chemical Romance’s The Black Parade album and After the Goldrush by Neil Young – a fact that is evidenced in the prologue’s faux!Young lyrics.

The Love Amongst Strangers (Again) project has so far consisted of a variety of Paramore songs from their two studio albums, the Veronicas and a very specific song by American Goth revival band, ThouShaltNot whereas the playlist for the pretentiously titled lecteur de tarot side-story, 『天国のお嬢様』 has acquired two very specific Aly & AJ songs from their Insomniatic album and even a track from the original High School Musical.

These are still early days and, as I’m first admitting my obsessions with music here, I hope to go into detail later about the ’soundtrack’ of heronaut as it evolves, along with a possible breakdown of the library of tokusatsu songs that were used in my stint on Millennium Man.

By way of comparison, lecteur de tarot’s playlist is over 4GB of mostly orchestral music.