Girl Defective continues to haunt...

Girl Defective is the kind of novel that continues to beat in your soul long after you've finished it. I absolutely loved the characters, the story, the love, but I also adored all the music references and jotted down almost every song referenced.

I re-discovered some favorites and found some "new" to me. Tim Hardin's "It'll Never Happen Again," for instance, is one track I pulled up online right away to listen to, then bought off iTunes because it's so achingly beautiful. As Sky says, "the mournful piano was like a finger prodding me."

Some people cite High Fidelity as their favorite music-infused novel. I mean it with all sincerity when I write that Girl Defective pretty much topples that to the ground. It's more heartfelt, more earnest and, in a fiction world where record collectors and music lovers are almost always guys, it's nice to have a girl be the main character.




"Music was everything: the whole stinging, ringing pulse of being human was in here."
 

This drawing is from Dickens' Bleak House and done by Hablot Knight Browne (I love that name!) way back when the novel was originally published in serial form. I look at it and find odd comfort and can't get over how much the shading adds to the mood, makes the picture so powerful.

The way Caddy Jellby is leaning against the mantel is so modern, reminding me that body language is universal and timeless. I'm not a big Dickens fan, but I do so love Bleak House.

 

As I sometimes do when I can't sleep, I wander out into my living room and look at all the books on my shelves and know that even if I never slept another night in my life there still wouldn't be enough time to read novels new to me or revisit the careworn ones.

 

When you love books a lot, sometimes you just have to find comfort in their presence alone and not worry that you'll never get to them all...



Paloma Faith's "Can't Rely On You" is the perfect Saturday night song to get you out of a slump.

 

I first read about the album it's off of (A Perfect Contradiction) in the new October issue of Curve magazine. Music reviewer Kelly McCartney calls the cd "a thinking woman's dance music."

 

Channeling a bit of Donna Summer with some Amy Winehouse and vintage Motown, A Perfect Contradiction's only fault is that it doesn't drop until its American release on October 7th. I don't think I can wait that long to buy the rest of it. "Can't Rely On You" has been on repeat several times tonight.

 

Nylon magazine also sings its praises:

 

It might be criminally early on a Wednesday morning, but we have just the thing to drag you out of bed....and that's Paloma Faith's new album! Musically or otherwise, the English singer, songwriter, and actress stands out in everything she does. It doesn't matter if she's performing or sitting front row at Burberry (which she did a few weeks ago), this is a lady who's hard to miss.

Her statement retro style, her two-tone hair and defined brows might catch your attention at first, but it's her seriously powerful voice that will keep you captivated. These chops are especially evident on her third LP, A Perfect Contradiction, which is stocked with irresistible dance numbers that have major heart. Drawing influence from R&B, disco, and soul, the slick release is a unique mishmash of eras and inspirations. They might be hard to pinpoint (Amy Winehouse? Billie Holliday? James Brown? The list goes on....), but this genre-skipping sensibility keeps things interesting.

Clearly we're not the only ones obsessed, because Faith enlisted Pharrell to lend his golden touch to the lead single, "Can't Rely On You." The spunky track is the perfect intro to the LP, which Faith describes as, "'if it's all gone to s***, f*** it, let's have a dance' kind of record."

 

You can listen to her right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8M1KF9nCF5A



Insomnia can be wonderful (almost) until it becomes useless. You can't sleep, but you can't think, either. You have two books on your nightstand you're dying to read, three more on your Kindle and you still haven't caught up with the Sunday papers...that quiet, free time beckons, but it's pointless, because you haven't slept well for nights and it feels like you have bananas for brains.

Even so, I picked up Kate O'Brien's As Music And Splendour at 4 this morning and found myself enraptured with Anne Enright's lovely introduction. Normally, I read forewords after I finish a novel because often plot points are revealed or reflections that make more sense in the story's aftermath.

Mostly, though, Ms. Enright writes of two of the novel's most critical elements: love and music.

 -that all love is impossible, that it fades as you try to grasp it. 

-And still, the music yearns and insists that love is possible so long as we are true.

Now, that I am into the book (first published in 1958) my only frustration is in finding the time to read it all in one sitting. Maybe it won't be so bad if my insomnia strikes again tonight.



 

There is nothing quite like listening to David Bowie's dreamy and beautiful "Heroes" in German. I love the song so much, no matter whether he performs it in English, German or French. This is the story behind it...

 

 (from Songfacts) :

 

This song tells the story of a German couple who are so determined to be together that they meet every day under a gun turret on The Berlin Wall. Bowie, who was living in Berlin at the time, was inspired by an affair between his producer Tony Visconti and backup singer Antonia Maass, who would kiss "by the wall" in front of Bowie as he looked out of the Hansa Studio window. Bowie didn't mention Visconti's role in inspiring this song until 2003, when he told Performing Songwriter magazine: "I'm allowed to talk about it now. I wasn't at the time. I always said it was a couple of lovers by the Berlin Wall that prompted the idea. Actually, it was Tony Visconti and his girlfriend. Tony was married at the time. And I could never say who it was (laughs). But I can now say that the lovers were Tony and a German girl that he'd met whilst we were in Berlin. I did ask his permission if I could say that. I think possibly the marriage was in the last few months, and it was very touching because I could see that Tony was very much in love with this girl, and it was that relationship which sort of motivated the song." (thanks, Michael Lloyd - London, England)

 

Some people dispute the fact that Bowie would have had this view of the Berlin Wall, but Hansa Studio moved its location sometime after "Heroes" was recorded.

 

 

more on "Heroes" here:

 

http://www.songfacts.com/detail.php?id=1629

 

and here:

 

http://www.soundonsound.com/sos/Oct04/articles/classictracks.htm

 

 

from designlov.com

"Heroes"

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can beat them, just for one day
We can be Heroes, just for one day

And you, you can be mean
And I, I'll drink all the time
'Cause we're lovers, and that is a fact
Yes we're lovers, and that is that

Though nothing, will keep us together
We could steal time,
just for one day
We can be Heroes, for ever and ever
What d'you say?

I, I wish you could swim
Like the dolphins, like dolphins can swim
Though nothing,
nothing will keep us together
We can beat them, for ever and ever
Oh we can be Heroes,
just for one day

I, I will be king
And you, you will be queen
Though nothing will drive them away
We can be Heroes, just for one day
We can be us, just for one day

I, I can remember (I remember)
Standing, by the wall (by the wall)
And the guns shot above our heads
(over our heads)
And we kissed,
as though nothing could fall
(nothing could fall)
And the shame was on the other side
Oh we can beat them, for ever and ever
Then we could be Heroes,
just for one day

We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
We can be Heroes
Just for one day
We can be Heroes

We're nothing, and nothing will help us
Maybe we're lying,
then you better not stay
But we could be safer,
just for one day

Oh-oh-oh-ohh, oh-oh-oh-ohh,
just for one day