Songs and writing

I like to listen to music when I'm writing. It sets a mood, a tone, that infuses what I'm writing, and helps me get to that semi-trance state in which I write. Right now I'm listening to Jem's Falling for You and Depeche Mode's Home a lot. Often I'll listen something which has a connection to what I'm writing, lyrically or in mood. I used music for PHOTO a great deal. There were three tracks from Lucinda Williams that fit one of the characters perfectly. Hank, actually. It gave me a window into him that I don't think I otherwise would have gotten. Right now I'm revising SEA CHANGE and I haven't found that many songs that pertain so far, but I'll create a playlist.

I saw My Boy Jack on PBS last night. It was very moving. Daniel Radcliffe from Harry Potter played Jack. He did a marvelous job. The whole cast was excellent. It was about WWI and one family's experience of it. It was about Rudyard Kipling's family. Kipling wrote a poem about his son which is one of those poems that make you tingle all over from its brilliance and its emotional power. Here are the last two stanzas:

"Oh dear, what comfort can I find?"
None this tide,
Nor any tide,
Except he did not shame his kind--
Not even with that wind blowing, and that tide.

Then hold up your head all the more,
This tide,
And every tide,
Because he was the son you bore,
And gave to that wind blowing and that tide!