In addition to the playlists that I have for this story set up, there are some specific albums and artists that will take me right into thinking about this book again and again. Some of these are obvious, but this is a somewhat indulgent post where I get to talk about bands I like.

Deriving Vivian from Florence probably came from my obsessive listening of this album. I didn’t actually get into it until 2011 while I was on a break from school, but it felt like something surreal. It ended up influencing me a lot when I attempted the story for the second time, using magic realist style, because the album is so evocative and full of rich symbols and images. “Drumming Song” is one that I always imaged for the characters who were dancing around one another: Jasmine, Thomas, and Bernard. The first two songs also remind me of the writing process and that sudden waking up from a dulled state to something wonderful. As much as I love this album, Ceremonials probably had a much larger impact on the current work since I listened to it pretty much non-stop while writing and during the fall before I began.

“Spectrum” is just such a perfect song to me, especially for the beginning of the story. “No Light, No Light” is the other side of that euphoric uplift, something that has been revealed in this section particularly. Her work is full of such strong emotions and I wanted to capture that with this book. Just.. everything about Florence is so perfect.

No songs from Circa Survive’s Blue Sky Noise ever made it into the soundtrack, but it’s another one of those highly evocative and narrative based albums that touches on certain themes that immediately send me back to this story. Lines of “how it all works with so many partners” and then “how many artists” in the next stanza, in addition to the song “I Felt Free” sends me right back to these characters. The album also encapsulates depression quite well (“Glass Arrows”) and was something I would listen to when I felt bad about not writing. The chorus in particular, the chants of “I don’t want excuses / I don’t want apologies,” is actually too strong to me sometimes and I can’t listen to it. “Fever Dreams” with the line of “All my life passing before my eyes all the time” also really gets me. The entire album is ricocheting between these quagmires of guilt, shame, and despair and then to utter beauty. “The Spirit of the Stairwell”, “Fever Dreams”, and “Dyed in The Wool” sound wonderful and Anthony Green’s voice is one of my favourites in music. I love most of their other work, but this album is easily my favourite.

I will probably forever associate Placebo and their music with writing this series. I first really got into them when I started writing the first book and saw them perform near the end of my first year (I also met two of my really good friends, Danielle and Brook, at that concert and through writing and the MCR fandom). The song “Protege Moi” sums up Thomas and Bernard’s relationship in the first one perfectly and still gives me chills. For obvious reasons, I prefer the French version of the song, but the original album version is good too. They had just come out with Meds at the time of writing and its influence can be seen on the book’s playlist (“Pierrot The Clown”, “Follow The Cops Back Home”, and “Infrared” are all present). Their album Sleeping With Ghosts I usually associate with writing GRASP, and now, for this new book, their album Battle For The Sun was particularly influential.

Battle For The Sun stuck with me for a lot of different reasons. I only first heard it in its entirety after I had finished writing and was in the process of editing. “Speak In Tongues” ended up representing the Babel sequence in April, but the entire album makes me think of this time period. It was winter when I finished it, and soon after, I started to hang out more with Travis, just as friends at the time. I have very distinct memories of talking to him for most of the night, sometimes abstractly about writing or concepts to do with this story, then waiting for the bus in the freezing cold while listening to songs from this album. When I noticed that Travis and I began to parrot conversations that I had already written, this album was always on in the background. Not only do Placebo as a band just make me think of writing (probably because of their sexually and romantically charged lyrics, along with stage antics), but they represent to me two very distinct and personal times in my life that had to do with these stories. Their music more than any other tends to take me back, as if it is a trigger, a memory of where I first heard the song and how I ended up experiencing it with others or in writing.  Twenty Years, one of their b-sides, is one of my favourite songs and when coupled with what just happened in this story, still deeply resonates. I actually can’t listen or talk about Placebo for that long without getting very nostalgic, so I shall move on now. :)

A few songs from Thursday’s album No Devolution made it onto the soundtrack (“Gun in the First Act”, “Turnpike Divides”, and “No Answers”), but I want to stress how much I love this entire album. The song above is called “Magnets in a Metal Heart” and I was going t use it for December to describe Thomas and Jasmine together, but I went with “Skinny Love” by Bon Iver instead for variety. In this album, not only are they faithful to their New Jersey roots (and conjure up, for me at least, the imaginary where I tend to place stories), but they stress this faithful need in all other areas. I have a quotation from Geoff Rickly shortly after the album came out where he talks about the idea of devotion. This strongly influenced how I would later write Bernard:

People don’t write about devotion. They write about first love, about obsession, heartbreak, jealousy, whatever. They don’t write about something that’s so fundamental. It’s about devoting yourself to another person, a lifelong goal, or a set of beliefs. It’s something beautiful that doesn’t get explored. The record is like a prism. You shine a theme into the prism and you get so many different versions of the same theme. All of the songs are a different twist on that idea of devotion.

At the time, this story had been something that I had been completely (and horribly?) devoted to for such a long time that it had to take precedent  I really admire the fact that they were able to produce this album about devotion and staying true to yourself, and then respectfully break up afterwards. They encapsulated a great career and then went on to do other things. As much as this story has been wonderful and so much fun, I recognize that it has a time period and will be over one day. I’m relieved and sad by this fact – and this album tempers these sometimes conflicting moments very well.

I found this song “Karl Marx in The Bath” by Tom Rosenthal while I was in the process of editing and fell in love with it. It reminds me a lot of Bernard and what he may have done when he was in Paris – sitting alone and reading books that made him feel better. He talks about Marx and about capitalism in relation to making art, and I think the subdued nature of this song reflects that wonderfully.

And of course, this list would not be complete without MCR on it. The Danger Days album in particular is one where I see a lot of the same sentiments echoed (art is the weapon, the future is bullet proof) and the desert landscape they evoked with a lot of their videos reminded me of O’Keeffe. Not to mention the focus on colour and not darkness for once! While I wrote, this was my background wallpaper:

As a whole, I utterly love this album because of the way it insists upon a future that must be lived and ways of dealing with the world. It’s an album that’s always felt like it was about identity politics and legacy, which are things that I think most people struggle with and what I focused a lot of the book on. When certain elements of society change, as in a dystopian world, how do you define yourself? And more importantly, when you die, how does someone remember you? In the case of the story, if you begin to forget who you are, how will other people help you remember?

Though this song was written for Bandit, I see so many potentials for it now with Bernard and Thomas:

That’s it for now! Thank you for reading my slightly self-indulgent post. :)