The song is over but the story lingers forever

Having a little fun today. I’m writing about songs that inspire me. Leave a comment telling me what songs you think inspire love stories. Someone will win the ebook of Hard Lovin’ and someone else will win the ebook of Jungle Inferno.

A lot of people say music is their muse. I never thought so until I sat down to write this blog, but I guess it really has inspired a lot of the stories I’ve written. For example, when I was asked to write an erotic romance with a psychic element in it, the first thing I thought of was telepathy. Why? Because one of my favorite songs, one I have on my iPod Favorites list, is If I Needed You by the late great Townes Van Zandt.

“If I needed you would you come to me

Would you come to me for to ease my pain?”

That became the basis for Jungle Inferno, The Phoenix Agency Book #1.  

For Faith and Mark, the telepathic connection they’d shared for years was nothing compared to the scorching physical connection they realized as adults. From the first moment they came together, erotic was too pale a word to describe their relationship. Together they explored each other’s deepest, darkest desires. But now Mark, survivor of an ambush to his Delta Force team, is a prisoner of a terrorist group in the Peruvian jungle, and his telepathic communication with Faith is his only contact with the world. While she searches for help to save him, they survive on dreams that took them beyond all sexual boundaries. Can she persuade the men of Phoenix to undertake a treacherous rescue and bring Mark back to her arms?

“I need you.

The familiar voice blasted through her mind.

Mark! Oh God, Mark.

Stunned, she tried to focus her thoughts but a white-hot pain pierced her body, stealing her breath. She clenched her fists against it and as it faded an image of Mark’s face, bruised and lined with pain, flashed briefly and was gone.

Faith leaned back in her chair, using the skills she’d been taught to control her breathing and slow her racing pulse. Running her hands up and down her arms she discovered a fine sheen of perspiration on her skin.

Mark!

She tried to recapture pull the image back but it was gone.

Need you…captured…

Captured! Dear God. He’d reached out to her from wherever he was. But how could she find him? He could be anywhere. She felt as if a part of her body had been severed. Closing her eyes and pushing everything else from her brain, she concentrated on sending a reply.

I heard you. Where are you?

She sat perfectly still, eyes still tightly shut, blocking out everything else, focusing as she’d been taught, to strengthen her message.

Mark?

She waited but the only thing that answered her was the heavy silence. Either his strength had given out or something—or someone—had blocked him.”

Then there was my novella, Hard Lovin’, that I had such fun writing. That one was inspired by a sixteenth century air called The Gypsy Rover, recorded by The Highwaymen and The Clancy Brothers.

“The gypsy rover came over the hill
Down through the valley so shady,
He whistled and he sang 'til the greenwoods rang,
And he won the heart of a lady.”

I brought the story forward to the present and made the gypsy a traveling guitar player.

Erin Braddock, daughter of wealthy and powerful rancher Rance Braddock, has been to hell and back. So has wandering cowboy minstrel Grady Sinclair. But the moment they meet chemistry ignites between them, erasing everything else. The sex is scorching, explosive, addictive. They can’t get enough each other. The same talented fingers that coax seductive music from his guitar coax powerful orgasms from her body. Seduced by his music as well as the sinfully sexy man himself, Erin runs away with him. Nights she sits in the bar listening to his come-to-me voice promising her the erotic delights he delivers on when they’re back in their room. But will the past follow them or can they build a future together, in and out of bed?

“Erin Braddock slipped into the dark bar through the back door, squinty against the darkness and found her way to a tiny booth in the corner. The area was so small a second person would be hard pressed to find room in the space but that suited her just fine. She hadn’t come here looking for company. Unless it was the cowboy up on the postage stamp sized stage, alone in the spotlight with his guitar and his smoky voice. Ebony black hair curled down to the nape of his neck and a work shirt and worn jeans clung to his lean body like a second skin. The muscles in his arm flexed as he picked at the strings of the guitar, coaxing a tune from it.

The lights were dim in the smoky club, a sea of black with only himself in the searing white glow of the spotlight. The air was heavy with expectation as he strummed the melody of a love song that whipped its sound over the crowd only to slow like the stroke of a lover’s caress.

You are so out of your mind for doing this.

So what else was new?

She’d just had to get out of the house. Away from the ranch. Away from …everyone. Her father, Rance, who was suffocating her with his protective kindness. T.J. Elliott, the fiancé she couldn’t seem to break away from. The houseful of people all gathered to celebrate a wedding tomorrow.

Hers.

A wedding she didn’t want.

The memories of the nightmare with Cal hadn’t yet faded and her father was suffocating her with his protective kindness. The far too wealthy Rance Braddock was, if nothing else, like a tidal wave that swallowed people up. And then there was T.J. Elliott, her father’s choice for a ‘safe’ and well-connected husband. A way to guarantee her future. No danger there.

Not like Cal, the worst mistake she’d ever made. And she’d wanted safe. Needed it. Her father and T.J. treated her like some child too fragile to be let out on her own.  Well, maybe she was. Look what she’d gotten herself into. And didn’t want to get out of, until she’d had no other choice. Now, at thirty, she suddenly didn’t seem to be able to put one foot in front of the other any more.

Until now.

The bad part about being rescued from a situation like the one she’d been in was people were afraid to take their eyes off of you. She didn’t even seem to have the strength to tell them they could look away. She went along to get among, letting herself be swept up in a courtship she didn’t want and a wedding suddenly bearing down on her like a tornado.

She’d come to the bar a few nights ago with her girl friends who had practically dragged her out of the house.

“Have fun,” her father said.

“You’ll be fine with the girls,” T.J. told her. He’d kissed her on the cheek and teased, “Last night out before becoming Mrs. Elliott.”

She was safe with her friends. Girl’s night out was okay. Both her father and T.J. had relaxed.

But her friend Lili had whispered in her ear, ”Wait until you see Grady Sinclair. He’s hot, hot, hot. And his music!” Lili rolled her eyes. “Just listening to him makes your pussy get wet and your nipples poke like diamonds.”

Erin had shivered, skeptical but hopeful. She didn’t think she’d ever have that reaction again. Or want it. The best thing about T.J. was he was nonthreatening. She could always fake orgasms. She’d become a very good actress living with Cal.

So she’d let them coax her out and come to Smoky’s with them and damn but Lili was right. Wrapped in the almost mystical cloak of the music that drifted to her from the stage she’d felt stirrings that she thought long dead. Responses she didn’t think she was capable of anymore. And then she’d come back with them. Again and again, to hear the troubadour with eyes as black as his hair and a rugged face, drawn by the clear, mesmerizing notes of his songs and the sadness in his voice.”

And finally, a taste from an upcoming release, Aftershock, the sequel to the Holt Medallion winner, Joy Ride. This one was so inspired by lyrics from Amazed, by Lonestar.

“The smell of your skin

The taste of your kiss

The way you whisper in the dark

Your hair all around me

Baby your surround me

You touch every place in my heart”

Handling P.R. for Lightnin’, the newest light on the rock scene, was Sydney Alexander’s opportunity at last to prove herself and shake off her past. It was all business until she met Rick Trajean, Lightnin’s leader, and the sparks flew between them like, well, lightning. Even as the band exploded on the scene and the crowds and publicity took all her skills to manage, she and rick managed stolen moments where the scorched the sheets as hotly as the band scorched the music scene. But not everyone was happy and the backstabbing and vindictiveness so common n the business could easily destroy the band, the tour and the love they’d found in each other. Could they handle it? What would they do if and when it came crashing down on them?”

As I sat at my computer I could so totally visualize the scene between Rick and Sydney.

“Are you okay?” he asked. What would he do if she said no?

“Yes,” she whispered. “More than okay.”

She leaned forward and the silk of her hair fell around them like a dark curtain. She pressed her lips to his, rocking her hips gently.

“You feel so damn good,” he told her, amazed that he could say anything at all.

“So do you.” Her words were still no louder than a whisper, cloaked by her hair all around them.

Rick was torn. He could stay like this forever but the need to come inside her body was like a wild animal he needed to feed.

“Move with me,” he urged.

Releasing one hand he slipped it between them to find the hot button of her clit. Very slowly he rocked up to her until she caught the rhythm. His fingers stroked her as her body moved on him, so slowly that the restraint was excruciating. At that same time he didn’t want this to be over. Wanted it go on and on.

But the grasp of her cunt around his shaft was his undoing.

“Ride me, Sydney. Ride me hard.”

She took him at his word. Bracing her hands on his chest she rocked herself back and forth, increasing her pace as he moved with her. Captured in the exquisite shroud of her hair, her soft voice whispering things to him he wasn’t even sure she knew she was saying, he rubbed her clit harder. Faster, in cadence with the rhythm of their bodies.

“God, you feel so good. So tight. So hot. I could stay like this forever and never get tired of it.”

He thought she whispered Me, too, but he wasn’t sure.

He lifted his eyes to her face again, he saw only how lost she was in the rhythm of this erotic dance they were doing. Saw her breasts move with the action of her body. In that one moment the feeling he’d had from the beginning, that they were connected by something deeper and more intense than just body to body engulfed him. This was more than just the best sex he’d ever had in his life. This was a forever kind of feeling. It both excited him and scared him.

“Talk to me, Sydney. Tell me how you feel.”

“I feel—beyond anything I’ve ever felt before.” She whispered the words in the dark, her hair like a curtain surrounding them as she bent so her face was closer to his. “I feel special. Cherished.” She ran a small hand over the taut planes of his stomach down to where they were joined. “I love the texture of your body, your scent, the taste of your kiss.”

“Don’t ever stop feeling that way.” It was hard making his brain work when his body was screaming for release but he knew she needed the words as much as the physical contact. “You are so very special. I want this forever, Syd.” 

In the moonlit darkness the emotion between them was stark and real.”

So when you read my books (and I certainly hope you will!*grin*), play a little game with yourself and try to guess that song inspired the story. And donlt forget to leave your comment.

But the Melody Lingers On...

Sacchi Green

I don’t play music as a background while I’m writing. Once in a while, though, in certain stories, music takes over and plays inside my head. There are times when the music my characters hear is essential to their story, but if the reader isn’t familiar with the tunes, there’s no way to make them feel the emotional impact I wish I could get across. I can’t use lyrics, either, unless the music is so old that it’s no longer under copyright. “Fair use” of copyrighted material is a very shady area, and in the case of song lyrics and poetry in general even one line can constitute too high a percentage of a work to be permissible. The only safe practice would be to find out who owns the rights and get permission, which in the closely guarded music industry would cost more than a short story writer could possibly afford. Titles, however, can’t be copyrighted, so I do what I can with those, and hope that someone, somewhere, will know the songs I mean, and hear the music in their heads with all the lyrics I can’t include. I’m not objecting to poets and songwriters copyrighting their work; using their words in my own writing would indeed be plagiarism, even with attribution. But it’s still so frustrating!

The first time I realized how frustrating it could be was when I was writing a story set in London during WWII. My characters were an American WAC nurse and an American woman pilot ferrying warplanes for the RAF, both staying at a Red Cross club set up for servicewomen. The deeply emotional songs of that period were as intense a part of that setting as the pervasive aura of wartime. “What’ll I Do, When You, Are Far Away” (I’m stretching a point with titles here in the context of the blog, but I kept them short in the story;) “Please Give Me Something to Remember You By”; “I’ll Be Seeing You, In All the Old Familiar Places”; well, I don’t know how many people still remember these, but they evoke that time as nothing else could. Here’s an excerpt from that story, titled “To Remember You By.”

Dinner was being served at the Red Cross club, probably the best meal for the price in England. Cleo muttered that she wasn't hungry, not for dinner, anyway, but I had my own motive for insisting. The band would be setting up in half an hour or so, and with the window open you could hear the music from my room. Well enough for dancing.
     So we ate, although I couldn't say what, and Cleo teased me by running her tongue sensuously around the lip of a coke bottle and into its narrow throat. Her mercurial shifts from intensity to playfulness fascinated me, but the time came when intensity was all I craved.
     "I don't suppose you'd like to dance, would you?" I repeated last night's invitation with a barely steady voice. "If I tried my best to do it right?" I stood abruptly and started for the stairs. Behind me Cleo's chair fell over with a clatter as she jumped up to follow me.
     I reached my tiny room ahead of her--nursing builds strong legs. I crossed to the window to heave it open, and then the door slammed shut and she was behind me, pressing her crotch against my ass, wrapping her arms around me to undo my buttons and cradle my breasts through my sensible cotton slip. I longed to be wearing sheer silk for her.
     When she slid her hands under the fabric and over my skin, though, I found I didn't want to be wearing anything at all. "So soft," she whispered, "so tender..." and then, as my nipples jerked taut under her strokes, "and getting so hard...."
     A melody drifted from below; "Something To Remember You By." I turned in her arms. "Teach me to dance," I whispered. 
     We swayed gently together, feet scarcely moving in the cramped space, thighs pressing into each other's heat. Cleo kneaded my ass, while I held her so tightly against my breast that her silver wings dented my flesh.
     "Please," I murmured against her cheek, "closer...." I fumbled at the buttons of her tunic. When she tensed, I drew back. "I'm sorry...I don't know the rules...."
     "The only rule," Cleo said, after a long pause, "is that you get what you need." 
     "I need to feel you," I said.
     She drew her hands over my hips and up my sides until she held my breasts again; then she stepped back and began to shed her clothes. Mine, with a head start, came off even faster.
      The heady musk of arousal rose around us. A clarinet crooned, "I'll Be Seeing You." I cupped my full breasts and raised them so that my nipples could flick against Cleo's high, tightening peaks, over and over. The sensation was exquisite, tantalizing--I gave a little whimper, needing more, and she bent to take me into her mouth.


In  “The Outside Edge,” a more contemporary story about a figure skater coming out as a butch lesbian on the Olympic ice on world-wide TV (hmm, I think I’ve used excerpts from this one here before,) I had a better chance of readers knowing the songs I mentioned, but I still wish I could have provided a real “sound track.” Here’s a bit from that one, near the end, when Jude, who won the bronze medal, goes all out in the exhibition skate afterward with newly cropped hair, a bound chest, blue jeans and a white T-shirt.

Six bars of introduction, a sequence of strides and glides--and then I was Elvis, lookin' for "Trouble", leaping high in a spread eagle, landing, then twisting into a triple-flip, double-toe-loop. My body felt strong. And free. And true. 
Then I was "All Shook Up", laying a trail of intricate footwork the whole length of the rink, tossing in enough bodywork to raise an uproar. Elvis Stoijko or Philippe Candeloro couldn't have projected more studly appeal. When my hips swiveled--with no trace of a feminine sway!--my fans went wild.
They quieted as the  music slowed to a different beat, slower, menacing. "Mack the Knife" was back in town. Challenge, swagger, jumps that ate up altitude, skate blades slicing the ice in sure, rock-steady landings. Then came a final change of mood, to the aching, soaring passion of "Unchained Melody". I let heartbreak show through, loneliness, sorrow, desperate longing.
 In my mind a slender, long-haired figure skated in the shadows just beyond my vision, mirroring my moves with equal passion and unsurpassable grace. Through the haunting strains of music I heard the indrawn breaths of a thousand spectators, and then a vast communal sigh; I was drawing them into my world, making them see what I imagined... I jumped, pushing off with all my new strength, spun a triple out into an almost effortless quad, landed--and saw what they had really seen. 
Suli glided toward me, arms outstretched, eyes wide and bright and filled with challenge. I came to a stop so sudden I might have fallen if my hands hadn't reached reflexively to grasp hers. She moved backward, pulling me toward her, and then we were skating together as we had so often before in our private pre-dawn practice sessions. The music caught us up, melded us into a pair. Suli moved away, rotated into an exquisite layback spin, slowed, stretched out her hand, and my hand was there to grasp hers and pull her into a close embrace. Her raised knee pressed up between my legs with a force she would never have exerted on Tim. I wasn't packing, but my clit seemed to lurch with such intensity that it should have burst through my jeans.    
Then apart again, aching for the warmth of her body...circling, now closer, now farther...the music would end so soon... Suddenly Suli flashed a look of warning, mouthed silently, "Get ready!", and launched herself toward me. 
Hands on my shoulders, she leapt upward, hung there for a moment while my fingers gripped her hips and my mouth pressed into her belly, then wrapped her legs around my waist and leaned back. We spun slowly, yearningly...no bed, this time, to take the weight of our hunger...and then, as the last few bars of music swelled around us, Suli slid sensuously down my body until she knelt in a pool of scarlet silk at my feet. She looked up into my eyes, and then, gracefully and deliberately, bowed her head and rested it firmly against my crotch as the last notes faded away.


This has been altogether too long, and I apologize for any repetition from previous blogs. I won’t go on to the story of a honeymoon in Paris (complete with gargoyles) where “Singing in the Rain” plays a small part, or…well, nevermind. I think I’ll go reread the two stories I excerpted here. If anybody needs me, I’ll be in my bunk. Humming a song or two.

Music to my Ears

Post by Lily Harlem

Some authors can listen to music while they're writing, they enjoy it, it helps their muse and their flow. But not me, I need silence. I thrive on peace and quiet and the knowledge that I won't be disturbed for a reasonable length of time - enough time to immerse myself in my thoughts and see and hear the story in my head that's coming out onto the page.

That's not to say that music doesn't inspire me though. I'm often driving along or cooking (the two things I always do with music in the background) and the lyrics will give rise to an emotion that spins into a story, or at least a scene within a story. Lyrics can be so wonderfully precise, capture a whole scenario or a particular angst that I can't help but wonder about the history behind the words, and that of the singer/songwriter.

I do enjoy songs with a story behind them, this is one of my favourites. It's Beth Rowley sing an old Etta James song, Almost Persuaded.

I love the line 'a smile any girl would understand', it works in way that is personal to the listener. It has a nice sentiment too. Yes, I know, I'm a softie :-)

When creating characters I nearly always have in my mind what kind of music they like, it's part of their makeup the same way it is part of mine. In fact the first short story I had contracted at Ellora's Cave was called Mattress Music - here's a snippet - it's a dose of naughty fun...

Elton was killing me. I needed to do something—fast. I glanced at my iPod in the far corner of the room. The small blue circle stared at me uncaring, as if it knew I’d lost the remote in the move and could do nothing, in my current compromised position, to shuffle the droning song.

And boy, did I need to fast-forward Candle in the Wind. It had conjured a head full of images of Marilyn and Diana, big hair, sweet smiles, churches, orphans—

And it seems to me you lived your life—

I pulled in a deep breath and focused my attentions. What did it matter what song played? Its purpose was to mask noise as I concentrated on Ian, the hot guy I’d picked up at the Solo Bar. He was where my thoughts should be trained, not icons and princesses and worrying about my new flatmates hearing our sex noises.

Because bless him, Ian was doing his best down there, licking and sucking, swirling and fondling. Hell, he even had two fingers searching out my G-spot. But what could I do? My head wasn’t in it—

Your candle burned out long before—

Neither was my body...

“What’s up?” Ian asked, throwing off the duvet as he came up for air.

“Nothing, I’m fine.” I curled my hands over his wide shoulders and pulled him down for a kiss. He tasted of me, hot and spicy, slippery-tongued. He settled his sheathed erection between my legs and prodded my entrance. All I could think of was Marilyn being found in the nude, Diana forever in England’s greenest hills.

“God, you feel good,” he said in a tight voice. “So damn good, I won’t last long.” He had a rugged, should’ve-shaved look and now, hovering over me with his face flushed, pupils wide and a sheen of sweat on his brow, he really was drop-dead gorgeous.

I wrapped my legs around his hard thighs and encouraged him in. Despite his appeal, it was just as well he wouldn’t last long. Because there was no way I was going to climax, not with Elton warbling on miserably about dead people. Might as well get it over with, then I could turn off the abysmal mattress music and get some sleep.

* * * * *

Mattress Music initially, as you can tell, is about how the wrong music can really ruin the mood in the bedroom for lovers and send your mind in all kind of directions it shouldn't be going in. In this sense, writing is like sex for me, if I had the wrong music playing in my little pink office when I was writing, it could spoil the mood for both me and my characters! That's why when it comes to music it stays in the car and the kitchen for me.

Thanks for reading

Lily x

PS - My favourite Christmas song - Wham's Last Christmas!

Give Me the Music

by Giselle Renarde

Have you noticed how pervasive "rockstar romance" erotic novels have become lately?  I'll admit, my finger's not exactly on the pulse of modern romance trends (much as it ought to be, since I operate at least somewhat in that genre), so if I've noticed it, it must be a thing.  Books, stories, 30-novel box sets, all about girls and guys lusting after rockstars.

And this is probably a brilliant trend to hop onboard--because if there's one kind of hero that never gets old, it's a rockstar hero.

I'm going to get way too personal here, because I know how much you love it when I tell you all my sexrets. <=That was supposed to be "secrets" but I can't bring myself to erase a Freudian typo.

Right.  So, you've probably heard me mention that, at this stage of my life, my primary attraction is to women.  If you want to know something quirky and odd about me, here's a random fact: the only guys I've found myself attracted to in the past few years (aside from Professor Snape, but he's fictional anyway) are musicians.

Super-SUPER-gay musicians.

Rufus Wainwright.  OMG.  My heart is beating faster just looking at that name.

This is nothing new, come to think of it.  When I was a preteen, I recorded my father's Elton John's Greatest Hits record onto a cassette tape and played it every night as I fell asleep, fantasizing about dancing endless tangos with him.  Someone was wearing a flashy red gown, and I don't think it was me.

Earlier this year (or maybe it was last year), Ryan Field posted a call for submissions.  He was putting together an anthology called The Women Who Love to Love Gay Romance.  It happens that I don't read gay romance (or any romance, for that matter), but his concept of having female authors insert themselves into gay sex scenes hooked me, totally.  I had to write something for him.  And I did.

And it was about a gay musician. Obviously.

My story featured a fictionalized version of a Canadian indie artist called Owen Pallett. You may remember him from when he performed as Final Fantasy. Or maybe you don't know him at all.  Here he is:



I wrote a story called "Baby Got Bach" for Ryan Field's anthology--a what-if scenario based on... oh boy, this is embarrassing... 

See, last year Owen Pallett's first violin concerto was premiered with the Toronto Symphony Orchestra.  He didn't perform the piece himself, but he was there.  He hosted the afterparty.  Which meant that, after the show, I found myself in the same room as him.  He was standing right there.  Right-the-fuck there. And do you think I could work up the courage to say, "Hey, I love your music."

Nope.

I stood in the corner and stared at him like a huge creepy perv.  And then I left.

When I got writing "Baby Got Bach" I kind of hit a writer's block wall when it came to actually envisioning myself engaging in any kind of sexual activity with this guy.  If I got my hands on one of the gay musicians I'm constantly perving over, what would I even do with him?

Do I want Rufus Wainwright's penis in my vagina?

Umm... actually, no.  I don't want that at all.  And yes, I realize there are many other ways to have sex, but when it comes right down to it, I don't want to do any of those things with these people.  I could perv over Rufus Wainwright concert clips on YouTube ALL. NIGHT. LONG. but I don't want to fuck him.  I'm almost disappointed in myself, admitting that, but I just can't picture it.

Maybe it's not the musicians.  Maybe I want to fuck the music.

The music gives me this giddy, blissful feeling that's... well, a lot like love.  Like a frenzy of misdirected lust and joy and cosmic orgasm.  It's hard to explain, because it feels like infatuation.  There's a longing and a pull, a desire, and it's strong.  It's damn strong.  I'm not even sure what you'd call it.

But I guess romance readers can keep their rockstars after all, as long as they give me the music.

Kisses the Color of Thunder: A Story About Music

The blue hour of the afternoon walking from the rehearsal at Symphony Hall to the subway station on the corner of 6th ave and 42nd feels smooth, round and soft, peaked stiffly in the center as I would imagine a woman’s breast would feel if I ever dared to touch one.  I have not.  I can’t even look at them in pictures.

The jackhammer rapping of the workman floats by as a trail of perfectly round gray airbursts like floating manhole covers with glowing silver rims.  They rise into the city sky to the skyscrapers like a flock of lost geese.  When the noise makes me anxious the number 9 stands next to me, putting her loving arms around me and holding me close and warm.  She calms me.  Numbers are my friends.

I have an obsessive need for order and routine.  In the morning, each morning except for Saturday which is a red day, I have exactly one cup of well steamed oat groats, with 22 raisins cooled by exactly one third of a cup of boiled custard cream.  I must leave the house for the bus at exactly 7:15, not earlier, not later.  On the bus I must not, cannot, sit next to a girl or a woman of any age or body shape.  I couldn’t stand it; I’d become sick.  I would suffocate from an absolute fear as the walls of the bus squeezed in and crushed me.  If I can’t sit alone or with a male I stand near the front holding the pole where I can keep my eyes looking out the driver’s window and count prime numbers in sequence.

The exhaust of taxi cabs sounds like the tears of angels.  The blare of their horns is a clear forest green that tastes of mown grass.  The Key of G is also forest green, but tastes like a good Brooklyn egg cream.

The taste of D Major is sweet sour like the taste of Bavarian sauerkraut.  The taste of B Sharp is clear and shiny like ice caressing your cheek in the summer.  The tolling of church bells spins silvery gyres like dust devils.  When I feel nervous in the very last moment before the conductor lifts his baton, the number 9 – noble and very British – stands next to me and bids me stand true.

Music was my first language, my mother humming to me in the crib is my earliest memory.   I recall humming back although I think that can’t be true.  I’m a passionate man. But disorderly, unbounded passion terrifies me.  Women evoke passion, I adore them, I love the company of women and yet I can’t bear to touch them or even be near them.  Their breath steams the air like icicles.  Speaking to them above a murmur is impossible.  They have always terrified me to the bowels and filled me with longing.  Their ugly emotional scenes and outbursts in public; their reaching hands, their screeching laughter, so often aimed at me.  Music is how I experience my passion boxed in and tamed with mathematical orderliness.  You will say – oh, he must love Bach.  No.  Beethoven.  Deaf, gloomy Beethoven is the soul of repressed passion.

I have a neural condition which is so natural to me I didn’t know it existed until I was in 2nd grade. My teacher asked me a simple math question and I went on staring into space.  “Well,” she demanded, “What is it?”  I told her I was counting the colored squares to the number 4 times 12 and the kids laughed and threw paper at me.  Then I knew I was different and kept these things to myself.  There is an area in the limbic system of the brain that receives all the data flow from our sense organs and interprets and distributes it to hand craft each instant of what we experience as the world around us.  The senses are kept in their separate spaces.  When these spaces bleed into each other and are experienced as a single river, sound has shape, taste has color and numbers cuddle. 

When I pass people in the street and hear their voices, I see swimming spider silk lines of color connecting their ears together, person to person in a kind of intimacy only I can see, or another one like me.  I have synesthesia.  About one in two thousand persons is a closet synesthete.  Don’t feel sorry for us; don’t think we have a brain disorder just because we’re not ordinary.  We’re the ones who feel sorry for you.  From where we stand, you’re the unfortunate ones.   There is a web of interconnected sensual beauty you know nothing of.  There is also a girl.

For all I know she may only live inside my violin.  Holding tight to the violin case snugged under my left arm, I search each woman’s face as I scuttle along.

Near the entrance to little Bryant Park behind the big Public Library is the stairs to the number 7 train.  This is where I said I would meet her.

We discovered each other during a rehearsal last month.  Always in the same way.   I played, from sheet music, the concerto for violin in D Major, opus 61 by Beethoven.  This is one of the great romantic pieces of music, a requiem for lovers.  As the notes braced my tongue, making me squint against the sweet intensity the notes invoked, I sensed her sitting at the edge of my vision.  A waif, small and thin, dressed in yellow with a square, tight skinned jaw, strong skeptical eyes and surprised looking eyebrows.  She wasn’t looking at any of the other players.  She smoothed her hands over a cello and the shapes rose from her and I leaned into the shapes, adjusted my pacing and drawing to them ignoring the conductor and following her.  I sensed people’s eyes on me, sitting straightly in a whirlwind of bright geometry, trusting her.  When the last note had sounded, there was such a singe of heat and pain that I had to sigh out loud and then I heard applause.  The conductor in his saggy sweater and disheveled beard was regarding me with bemused surprise.  But that was not it, no.  I barely saw or heard them as her face traveled the abyss to mine, a flowery perfume, like an old lady’s perfume and then her lips touched mine and pressed. 

There was the deep rolling peal of great Donner’s storm hammer, like a Wagnerian chorus of kettle drums and then the golden blare of thunder in my eyes, an overwhelming and lemony gold, a yellow reserved for Chinese emperors - and she was gone.  I didn’t see her leave.  There was only the empty chair and the abandoned cello leaning on it. 

When we rehearsed the concerto it happened again, again she appeared out of no where, kissed me and the blare of thunder like someone shining a golden light in my eyes as she vanished like a bubble.

I yelled “Bryant Park!  Subway! Four thirty!”  I don’t even know if she heard me.  No one seemed to notice if she had ever been there.  I was terrified to ask.
 
I unpack the case on the sidewalk by the iron fenced entrance to the park and lift out the violin.  A last despairing look at the women and girls streaming past me from the depths of the subway entrance and I know already, she isn’t there.  She isn’t coming.

I fold a white handkerchief and rest it on the base of the old violin and tuck it under my chin.  A finger pluck arpeggio to check the tune of the strings and then a touch of the bow.

As the concerto begins to bloom, as the spidery and nostalgic colors begin to gather to me I am surrounded, not only by people but the presence of a curvaceous harem of number 3’s.  They reassure me.  Dollar bills begin to appear in the case, but I don't give a shit for them.  Where is my thunder girl? 

The notes dance like stray fireflies, and then a cascading waterfall of colors.  I am not thinking notes.  I am thinking colors and shapes as though the drawing of the bow across the string were moving pieces of a mosaic together.  Cascading tastes, now sweet, now sour, now lemon, now vanilla.  These are my guides.  She has taught me to trust my senses. 

The people stand awhile and listen.  I’m looking at their faces, searching.  On the outside I’m a busking musician, on the inside I am a necromancer raising a ghost.  The bow is my wand.  The shapes my fire.  The swelling smoke of the notes my incense.

The sound of a cello.  There.

Ghostly at first, rising, and now the familiar shapes her fingers make.  I spin like a fiddler looking to see where she has set up beside me, but there’s no one, only the cello sound, demanding and sweet.

A flash of skin.  A nose.  Darting lips pressing hard my mouth without missing a note.  The glare of golden light staggers me backwards and the rolling peal drowns the world behind my wounded eyes.

I have to bend over sharply, stopping the music, lifting the bow.  Panting, looking up.  People applaud, laughing at my reddened face; they don't know its because I'm holding my breath against my urge to scream.

There - she runs!  Like Ahab, I know its her as her heels vanish behind the iron gate into the park.  I don’t care about the violin case full of money – I can’t lose this moment. 

This park in the warm summer evening is filled with people.  It’s especially filled with women.

Someone impatiently pushes past me and jostles me and my chest is hurting.  All the women in the world are here.  I just can’t.  I can’t go in there.  I don’t even know which one is really her.

But – there is a way.

The hot tingle of her glass slipper hangs on my lips.

It’s mate is in there where my Cinderella ran.  She may as well have dashed into a pool of sharks.

I draw the bow to summon her.  Struggling to play the concerto but I can’t think for fear, the humiliation, my fingers are shaking and fumbling on the strings.  There are so many women - why are there so many women?  Don't they have anywhere else to go?  Useless me.   Impotent.

I try counting prime numbers but I can’t think for the squeezing of my breath.  Women and girls are looking at me in my distress.  I scratch out a little tune to console myself, hide myself in colors, a simple blue Applachian ditty.  One old woman lifts her long skirt and does a little shottish.  Girls hop and dance.  If I don’t look at them I can walk towards the dancing women, if I keep my eyes on the ground.  Close.  Fiddling,  a playful little shuffle with my feet to keep them off guard.  The old soft shoe.

I dart in close and kiss the old woman on the mouth and cringe waiting for her to punch me.

There is no thunder.  But she doesn’t hit me.  She laughs.  The girl next to her shrieks with giggles and watches me expectantly.  I close my eyes – tight- tight – and punch her lips awkwardly with mine.

There is no thunder.  But she hugs me.

More fiddling, I feel things relaxing.  Women are standing up and coming closer.  So many women.  Which one is her?

Bare breasted women who have been lounging in the grass reading books and sipping from plastic cups while the men folk sneak stares at their nipples, these half naked beauties come over to me and begin dancing in a circle, breasts swaying like pagan goddesses.  Men lift their phones and snap pictures of them.  I fiddle my way over and their breasts and nipples don’t frighten me.  They look like a circle of number 9’s dancing a little jig like some old Max Fleischer cartoon.  I kiss them one by one.  One girl with bright blue wings tattooed across her breasts leans across my moving bow and kisses me kindly on the lips.

Thunder.  Bright thunder as blue as her tattoo.

But blue is not right, it should be yellow.

Another bare breasted girl kisses me delicately on the cheek – bright pealing silver thunder.

The women.  The thunder.  It’s all the wrong thunder.  But the women are kissing me and the women are kind.  I love women. I have always loved women.  The company of women.  These women have penetrated my terror and welcomed me into them.  A great sweeping peace washes over me such I never imagined possible.

My eyes are closed in happiness when they come to my skin, the magic lips that bring the loudest crash, and there behind dazzled eyes closed by bliss and not fear -  the golden light of thunder.




The topless girls in the park are "The Outdoor Co-Ed Topless Pulp Fiction Appreciation Society".  If you'd like to appreciate them the URL of their web page is:

http://coedtoplesspulpfiction.wordpress.com/

C. Sanchez-Garcia

Memories are made of this - J.P. Bowie

Music and songs have always been a huge part of my life - I was a performer years ago in the UK, touring with many a musical production - some good some better forgotten. But if anything evokes memories of my past life it has to be music. Even before my trips across the boards my sister and I would shirk our Sunday morning duties of dusting and polishing the furniture and sit at the top of the stairs to listen to our favourite songs on the radio.
I could tell you (if you were at all interested) exactly where I was and who I was with when a particular song is played on the radio today. And in my stories, song titles pop up in random places...Cole Porter's In the Still of the Night, Jerome Kerns' Long Ago and Far Away, Gershwin's The Man I Love, have all found their way into my narrative or dialogue - all duly given their credit of course. No plagiarism here!
Now, you would think that listening to music while I write would be the ticket to great inspiration. Unfortunately it has the opposite effect. Why? Because I listen to the music, get caught up in the lyrics, especially if it's Ella Fitzgerald singing them, and I get nothing done 'til the song is ended (but the melody lingers on).
In Britain there was a famous radio show Desert Island Discs that invited celebrities to choose music they would want with them if stranded on a desert island. Some of the choices were interesting - an insight into the person's character perhaps.
Here's my list:

1. Easy to Love, Cole Porter
2. What Kind of Fool Am I? Leslie Bricusse
3. What's it all About, Alfie? Burt Bacharach
4. Someone to Watch Over Me, Gershwin
5. Being Alive, Stephen Sondheim
6. All in Love is Fair, Stevie Wonder
7. Cherish, Kirkman
8. Every Time We Say Goodbye, Cole Porter

I don't really know what that list says about me, maybe that I don't listen to the pop music of today but I don't think I'd be able to tell you where  I was when I first heard Justin Bieber's Baby, Baby. Probably wishing I was anywhere but there at that moment!

Songs and Stories

By Lisabet Sarai

The screen door slams
Mary' dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch
As the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again

Bruce Springsteen – "Thunder Road"

It's one of those summer nights when I just can't sit still. The air's soft as a whisper. The smell of Ma's roses filters in to the kitchen where I'm washing up. Cars rush by out on Highway 9, rumbling like a faraway storm. There's an ache in my chest, a sweet pain that swells whenever the DJ puts on a slow song.

Pa's in the den, snoring already in front of his game. In the front room, I pick up my book, put it down, pick it up again. I can't concentrate. I turn up the volume. The music burrows into me and takes me over. I twirl on the worn old carpet, until I'm gasping and dizzy, but I can't dance away this restlessness.

A breeze wafts in the front door, ripe and full of secrets. I don't believe in magic but I feel it anyway. I remember Ma's warnings, months before the cancer took her. Keep yourself to yourself, gal. Don't you go falling for some fast-talking kid who fancies he's a poet.

The porch light's dead again. The night calls me. Still swaying, I answer. I step outside, close my eyes, take in a lungful of summer perfume.

I see him then, huddled under the street lamp. Spindly, all angles - not grown into his height yet – and full of rebellion. Fists shoved in the pockets of the jeans that hug his narrow hips. Too-long hair, the color of sand, falling into his eyes. Scuffed work boots and a tee shirt that's none too clean. A book tucked under his arm. Shoulders hunched up and lips pressed into a thin line. Staring at me like a man who hasn't eaten in a week.

He doesn't say a word. He doesn't have to. I know who he is – I've seen him at the car wash where he works, and in the diner, blindly shoveling bacon and eggs into his mouth, lost in the pages of some novel. I know what he wants.

The breeze stirs my hair. A shiver runs through me, as if the night weren't warm as bathwater. It turns to a tingling, a vibration, a hum, like the engine of the world turning inside me. Keep yourself to yourself, gal, my mind says. Go back inside. You can write in your diary later.

My body says something else, and for once, I'm tempted to listen.

For him? After all the nice boys I've refused? Skinny, without a dime to his name, nothing but that souped-up Chevy he spends all his free time polishing? Those hungry eyes, though, drill into me and rip all my reasons to shreds.

Why not say yes? I can almost hear him, that gravelly, power-filled, self-confident voice of his, so at odds with his half-baked appearance. He has a band, I've heard. I can imagine him making music.

Say yes, his eyes plead. Haven't you waited long enough?

My cheeks burn. Sweat stains the armpits of my blouse. Blood pulses in my secret places, hot as July, overwhelming the chill of fear.

He pulls a hand from a pocket and dangles a set of keys. They glint in the street light. He grins, half mocking, half embarrassed, and jerks his thumb toward the alley running behind the house.

The liquid night tugs at me. The wind sighs. The song ends. He holds out his hand.

Say yes.