Jordan Morris's Blog
June 4, 2014
Round and Round: The Full Soundtrack.
(Photo credit: David Pye.)
Each of my stories has a soundtrack - songs I listen to while writing, or that somehow encapsulate aspects of the plot. (Annalise also drew inspiration from the songs for her artworks, not least of which for her triptych [as seen at our RAW exhibit] which literally and figuratively represents the lyrics for 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out'.) At the Round and Round book launch, the novel's soundtrack was playing in the background. Below, that soundtrack is broken up, chapter by chapter, over three CDs. You can listen to it as you read the book, or listen to it afterwards, or not listen to it at all.
CD1. Round and Round Chapters I-VI: The Soundtrack.
1. ‘Do You Want To Play?’ by Jewel.
2. ‘Fred Jones Part 2’ (live) by Ben Folds.
3. ‘Berlin Chair’ (acoustic) by Smudge.
4. ‘Somebody Told Me’ by The Killers.
5. ‘I’ll Try Anything Once’ (‘You Only Live Once’ demo) by The Strokes.
6. ‘A Design for Life’ (Stealth Sonic Orchestra Remix) by Manic Street Preachers.
7. ‘Everybody’s Changing’ by Keane.
8. ‘Prettiest Eyes’ by The Beautiful South.
9. ‘Cattle and Cane’ by The Go-Betweens.
10. ‘Purple Sneakers’ by You Am I.
11. ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ by Tori Amos.
12. ‘Dirty Dream Number Two’ by Belle & Sebastian.
13. ‘Cherish’ by Renato Russo.
14. ‘Rhythm And Blues Alibi’ (Pre-Mellotron Version) by Gomez.
15. ‘June Gloom’ by The Like.
CD1. Round and Round Chapters I-VI: The Soundtrack.
I: The Wheels on the Bus Go.
1. ‘Do You Want To Play?’ by Jewel.
“Are you only half-alive?”
2. ‘Fred Jones Part 2’ (live) by Ben Folds.
“The passengers change,
They don’t change anything:
You get off,
Someone else can get on.”
3. ‘Berlin Chair’ (acoustic) by Smudge.
“I’m the rerun that you’ll always force yourself to sit through.”
4. ‘Somebody Told Me’ by The Killers.
“Heaven ain’t close in a place like this.”
5. ‘I’ll Try Anything Once’ (‘You Only Live Once’ demo) by The Strokes.
“To go through school,
Either you’re noticed or left out.”
II: The Hand That Rocks the Cradle.
6. ‘A Design for Life’ (Stealth Sonic Orchestra Remix) by Manic Street Preachers.
“Libraries gave us power,
Then work came and made us free.”
III: Mortal Coil.
7. ‘Everybody’s Changing’ by Keane.
“Try to understand that I’m
Trying to make a move just to stay in the game,
Trying to stay awake and remember my name
Because everybody’s changing
And I don’t feel the same.”
8. ‘Prettiest Eyes’ by The Beautiful South.
“Well the bus shelter’s always okay
When you’re young.”
9. ‘Cattle and Cane’ by The Go-Betweens.
“A bigger, brighter world:
A world of books
And silent times in thought.”
IV: Environmental Reasoning.
10. ‘Purple Sneakers’ by You Am I.
“Do you need somebody
To feel somebody?”
V: Controlled Damage.
11. ‘I Don’t Like Mondays’ by Tori Amos.
“I want to shoot the whole day down.”
12. ‘Dirty Dream Number Two’ by Belle & Sebastian.
“In a town so small there’s no escaping you.”
VI: The Fall.
13. ‘Cherish’ by Renato Russo.
“Romeo and Juliet -
They never felt this way I bet.”
14. ‘Rhythm And Blues Alibi’ (Pre-Mellotron Version) by Gomez.
“Try anything twice.
Chasing after stories that have already been told.”
15. ‘June Gloom’ by The Like.
“Looks like the end of days
But it takes so much more
For anyone to say
We need another way.
But if we wanted one
We’d do it just the same.”
CD2. Round and Round Chapters VII-IX: The Soundtrack.
1. ‘In Your Car’ by Kenickie.
2. ‘Unsent Letter’ by MGF.
3. ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’ by Morrissey.
4. ‘Tranquillizer’ by Geneva.
5. ‘Bobby Fischer’ by Lazy Susan.
6. ‘A New England’ by Billy Bragg.
7. ‘Little by Little’ by Oasis.
8. ‘Incomplete Lullaby’ by Lisa Mitchell.
9. ‘Butterflies & Hurricanes’ by Muse.
10. ‘A Sorta Fairytale’ by Tori Amos.
11. ‘Release Me’ by The Like.
12. ‘Hey Jupiter’ (The Dakota Version) by Tori Amos.
13. ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ by Gotye.
14. ‘St. Swithin’s Day’ (live) by Dubstar.
15. ‘Perfect Day’ by Lou Reed.
CD2. Round and Round Chapters VII-IX: The Soundtrack.
VII: Objects in Mirror are Closer than they Appear.
1. ‘In Your Car’ by Kenickie.
“I get so tired of walking.
I’m in heaven:
I have been told.
I’m in heaven.
I’m too young to feel so old.”
2. ‘Unsent Letter’ by MGF.
“With a girl who seems all right
And another one who’s better.”
3. ‘Everyday Is Like Sunday’ by Morrissey.
“Come, Armageddon, come!”
VIII: Parental Guidance Recommended.
4. ‘Tranquillizer’ by Geneva.
“Until it all seemed pointless,
We lifted up the mattress
From underneath the window seat.
Is this what checkmate means?”
5. ‘Bobby Fischer’ by Lazy Susan.
“If I don’t concentrate
She’ll have me at checkmate.”
6. ‘A New England’ by Billy Bragg.
“I saw two shooting stars last night.
I wished on them, but they were only satellites.
Is it wrong to wish on space hardware?
I wish, I wish, I wish you’d care.”
7. ‘Little by Little’ by Oasis.
“My god woke up on the wrong side of his bed.”
8. ‘Incomplete Lullaby’ by Lisa Mitchell.
“A second look;
Like a burning leaf of an open book.”
IX: The Butterfly Effect.
9. ‘Butterflies & Hurricanes’ by Muse.
“Change everything you are
And everything you were.”
10. ‘A Sorta Fairytale’ by Tori Amos.
“Like a good book, I can’t put this day back.”
11. ‘Release Me’ by The Like.
“You’re a boy that I could love
And all I do is run
And still I keep you hoping someday soon our day will come.”
12. ‘Hey Jupiter’ (The Dakota Version) by Tori Amos.
“Sometimes I breathe you in
And I know you know.”
13. ‘Dig Your Own Hole’ by Gotye.
“In the end,
You just repeat yourself again.
When you don’t know who you are,
You dig yourself the hole you’re in.”
14. ‘St. Swithin’s Day’ (live) by Dubstar.
“I miss the thunder; I miss the rain,
And the fact that you don’t understand
Casts a shadow.”
15. ‘Perfect Day’ by Lou Reed.
“Such a perfect day,
You just keep me hanging on.
You just keep me hanging on.
You’re going to reap just what you sow.”
CD3. Round and Round Chapters X-XII (plus ‘1A’): The Soundtrack.
1. ‘The Saturday Boy’ by Billy Bragg.
2. ‘Juicebox’ by The Strokes.
3. ‘Something’s Got to Give’ by Kenickie.
4. ‘Regret’ by New Order.
5. ‘Gone’ by Ben Folds.
6. ‘Older Than You’ by Eskimo Joe.
7. ‘Live Forever’ (live) by Oasis.
8. ‘There Goes the Fear’ by Doves.
9. ‘History Never Repeats’ (live) by Crowded House.
10. ‘The Girl Who Wanted To Be God’ by Manic Street Preachers.
11. ‘Summertime’ by The Sundays.
12. ‘From a Balance Beam’ by Bright Eyes.
13. ‘Distant Sun’ (live) by Crowded House.
14. ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’ by The Smiths.
15. ‘Belinda’ by Ben Folds & Nick Hornby.
CD3. Round and Round Chapters X-XII (plus ‘1A’): The Soundtrack.
X: Clash of the Titans.
1. ‘The Saturday Boy’ by Billy Bragg.
“I never made the first team - I just made the first team laugh,
And she never came to the phone, she was always in the bath.
In the end it took me a dictionary
To find out the meaning of unrequited.”
2. ‘Juicebox’ by The Strokes.
“Old time grudges will die so slowly.
I know you miss the way I saw you.”
3. ‘Something’s Got to Give’ by Kenickie.
“This is no way to live.”
XI: Noah’s Ark.
4. ‘Regret’ by New Order.
“Save it for another day –
It’s the school exam
And the kids have run away.”
5. ‘Gone’ by Ben Folds.
“If you think that you feel nothing at all –
If you don’t
Then you don’t.”
6. ‘Older Than You’ by Eskimo Joe.
“I chose to take this moment
To tell you I’m leaving.”
XII: Full Circle.
7. ‘Live Forever’ (live) by Oasis.
“Maybe I just want to fly.
Want to live,
I don’t want to die.”
8. ‘There Goes the Fear’ by Doves.
“Don’t look back when you break all ties.
Think of me.”
9. ‘History Never Repeats’ (live) by Crowded House.
“I was so young, too blind to see,
But anyway, that’s history
And I say history never repeats.”
10. ‘The Girl Who Wanted To Be God’ by Manic Street Preachers.
“Black out the words, for the blind have eyes.”
11. ‘Summertime’ by The Sundays.
“Have I read too much fiction?”
12. ‘From a Balance Beam’ by Bright Eyes.
“You have waited for this day and finally
You are free.”
XIII: 1A.
13. ‘Distant Sun’ (live) by Crowded House.
“It’s easy to forget what you learned
Waiting for the thrill to return -
Feeling your desire burn
And you’re drawn to the flame”
14. ‘There is a Light That Never Goes Out’ by The Smiths.
“To die by your side,
Well the pleasure, the privilege is mine.
There is a light and it never goes out.”
15. ‘Belinda’ by Ben Folds & Nick Hornby.
“I met somebody younger on a plane.
She had big breasts;
A nice smile;
No kids either.
She gave me complimentary champagne.”
June 2, 2014
Up and Down. The Guide to Round and Round. Part 1.
From The Front Cover To Page 3.
There is a cliché about bookcovers.
Back in 1860 George Eliot published her semiautobiographical novel The Mill On The Floss. (Disclaimer: Anyone who has ever been in one of my classes knows that I tend to go off on tangents. In mathematics, a tangent is the point where a straight line touches a curve. I promise that even if it seems like I am heading off track onto that curve, I will return to that straight line. Eventually.) So, a biography is an account of someone else’s life. An autobiography is when a person writes about him or herself. Semiautobiography falls somewhere in the middle. All novels are fiction, but some are less fictional than others. (Round and Round is also semiautobiographical. But I will get to that later.) George Eliot was the pen name of Marian Evans Lewes, because she feared that as a woman her writing would not be taken seriously. Maggie Tulliver, the heroine in The Mill On The Floss, is Eliot’s self-insertion character, and is a clever, literate nine year-old. Maggie’s father buys her a pile of books that were “all bound alike, it’s a good binding, you see, and I thought they’d be all good books.” So Maggie starts telling her father and his friend about the book she is reading, in which women are drowned in order to tell if they are witches, while “the Devil takes the shape of wicked men, and walks about and sets people doing wicked things, and he’s oftener in the shape of a bad man than any other, because, you know, if people saw he was the Devil, and he roared at ’em, they’d run away, and he couldn’t make ’em do what he pleased.” Maggie’s father is embarrassed to discover that he has given his daughter The Political History of the Devil, because its cover looked “good”. “But it seems one mustn’t judge by th’ outside,” Mr Tulliver realises, indirectly coining a phrase in the process.
The front cover of Round and Round is a representation of events that occur in the first three pages of the novel. Evander is a Greek from Arcadia who has come to Italy and founded the city that will become Rome. It is the 13th Century BC, before the Trojan War and the twelve labours of Heracles. In Book VIII of Vergil’s Aeneid, an older Evander retells a story from his youth: “I/Cut down the front rank by Praeneste’s wall/And won, and burned the piled shields of the conquered./With this right hand I dispatched to Hell/King Erulus, to whom Feronia,/His mother, gave three lives at birth, and a/blood-chilling three sets of arms to fight,/So he had to be brought down three times./Nevertheless, this hand took all his lives that day,/And each time took his arms.” Round and Round begins at the moment the young Evander defeats Rulus for the third time. Annalise painted the scene:
I recoloured the image to look like a sixties paperback cover (and make it less obvious to the Mr Tullivers of this world that we had a severed head on the front of our young adult novel.) The title font is Garamond, like most of the interior of the book, the eponymous typeface that can be traced back to Claude Garamond in the 1500s. Garamond is one of the first fonts many of us read - it is the one used by Dr Seuss (also The Hunger Games trilogy and the US Harry Potter books.) The ‘O’s are snakes eating their own tails, the main recurring image from the text, and the huge red circle represents the spiral of Evander’s destiny, alluded to on page 3.
Evander has “vague memories of his dad – a traveller’s hat, a pair of sandals, a staff – all somehow blended in Evander’s head with impossible images of wings and serpents”, all attributes of the Greek god Hermes. Unlike his deadbeat father, “Evander’s mother refused to ever go away... Evander had done so much and yet his mother was never appreciative. When he taught his citizens the alphabet, his mother decided she could do better and changed fifteen of the letters to ones of her own invention. When he slew a panther, his mother told Evander he was not bringing dead animals into any house of hers and threw out his leather clothes and bearskin blanket.” According to Hyginus’s last fable from the turn of the first century, Nicostrate invented the Latin alphabet, and it was forbidden to wear leather or fur in her temple. Coincidentally, considering the setting, I began writing these three pages on my way to Rome, and polished them after my trip.
The initial that begins the chapter represents Evander’s view, “lying on the Palatine hill with his two best friends, finding patterns in the stars. Acoetes had pointed up towards the celestial dome, claiming he could see Mercury, but Carmenta contradicted this, saying that the god could not be seen in the sky. Evander focused on what she had to say. Evander focused upon Carmenta whenever she did anything – sometimes even when she did nothing. Carmenta said it was Mercury’s job to ferry people’s souls from the Earth to the underworld, and so we shouldn’t be looking above us for such a god, but beneath us and amongst us.” I believe this may be what we call foreshadowing. The part where “She and Acoetes then began to joke about death, and Evander felt as if he were being pummelled in the stomach” actually happened to me - I still remember the moment I found out for the first time that nobody I knew was immortal. See - semiautobiography - stick with me on the curves and we will always get back to the straight.
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Bonus art - the colour version of Annalise's image from page zero:
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Bonus art - the colour version of Annalise's image from page zero:
