Obeying The Muse: ACOTAR Music Under the Mountain
Why I make ginormous, obsessive playlists
Well, my friends and and flamers, I’ve done it again.
Twice, actually, since that obsessive weekend when I created the Dew In the Bracken monstrosity of a playlist. Yes, it’s true, all true! I have fallen in lurve with another book series, another author, and…well…then I got knocked onto my butt for the second time in three months by being around somebody who didn’t know they had Covid.
Gah. At least this time, instead of three weeks of utter Hell, followed by two months of clawing my way back, ye microscopic badass only took me down for three days.
You know…just when my body had reclaimed the ability to build muscle again. During the height of my altercation with Covid, even though I was eating like a warhorse, I dropped eight pounds in under a week — almost all muscle mass. Because of that, I rolled over under the sheets one night and — CKHHHH! — displaced my knee, like I used to do all the time when I first re-tore my meniscus the super-bad way.
I bleep you not.
The weight of a stupid sheet. That’s all it takes when my knee is unhappy.
It had already been micro-tearing during The Seizure Revival last fall. Hey, man, when we’re in the middle of a brain crisis, we do not concern ourselves with piddly limbs. Pffffft! Heck no! We have bigger fish to fry, so my almost-healed meniscus started being starved for the nutrients and healing attention it still needs.
Thus was the latest interruption to my huge Kingkiller/Name of the Wind dance project that I’ve been concocting since 2021.
It had already needed to be put on hold once when I had a small re-tear six months into the project. Ya see, what happened was…in the wake of Dain Bramage hits 2-4, my scrambled brains had not yet been capable of creating a full choreography again since acquiring this finicky, difficult-to-heal-at-the-age-of-50 knee injury. Especially because my spinal degeneration gobbles up most of the nutrients required to repair spongey, bone-cushy things like disks…menisci. Yeah.
That’s the way my sports-med doc explained it to me, when everybody shook their heads in bafflement over why I just cannot heal this confounded thing. I mean, I did almost give myself spontaneous meniscus surgery with one little skirt-flick, so there’s that.
But no shit, it was 2021 and there I was, in the middle of another neuroplasticity resurgence, gifted with the inexplicable ability out of nowhere to…drumroll…choreograph. Like…full dances! And kind of remember them once I looked at my notes. Shocker, I know. Because that had only happened one other time since 2012.1
Ummmm…note to self: when one has a torn meniscus, one is not allowed to continue doing fancy footwork on fatigued calves and thighs.
EVER.
But long-lost Choreographer Brain didn’t realize that because I first injured my meniscus in 2017 — still smack-dab in the choreographic wasteland.
Le-heave-of-siiiiiiiigh.
Customarily, when you get to creating the finale of a new dance and you’re on the point of exhaustion, but you’re just not quite done setting the initial choreographic draft, you start marking. (“To mark.” That’s dancer-speak for doing things small and half-assed — basically movement-shorthand to conserve space and/or energy.) There is no stopping at this point. You push through to the end because if you stop now?
Bwahahahahah! Good luck ever being visited by the Muse with all that same momentum you had going on.
So you do NOT quit 5/6 of the way through creating a choreography, especially when you’re crafting The Big Finale.
Ugh.
Except if your dance is footwork-heavy and you have a lower-limb injury like a torn meniscus. Doy.
New post-meniscus rules for workaholic Choreography Brain:
Sit your fatigued butt and legs down.
NOW, missy!
Tap feet on floor.
Mark arm-work to get the gist of what you want to do.
Beg Terpsichore’s forgiveness for interrupting Her.
Make devout sacrifice for three days straight in Her name if She will grant unto you the inspiration to truly finish the choreography once your legs have properly rested.
If She tells you to go suck rope, you’ll have to do it the hard way — cerebrally, instead of the glorious fire-hosing brain-dump of The Muse’s Flow that you can barely keep up with to capture it in notes so your battered brains can hope to remember what She gifted you.
Make additional sacrifice in the hopes that She will bless you again in the future.
Blahhhhhh.
Hey. It’s better than having delays for months of knee recovery.
Soooo…while I recovered from this steep learning curve, I did a bunch of sewing and costume trials, which I started photographing and eventually capturing on video snippets.2
The momentum was building back up. It was going astronomically well!
But check out the date: August 2023.
That was the month when I got hammered by three government agencies simultaneously amidst losing the assistance of my primary caregiver/paperwork wrangler (my beloved mother) because she’d had a second stroke. This sent me into the worst neuro-crash I’ve had since brain traumas 2-4 back in 2012-14, which cost me the ability to choreograph and memorize dances for the second time since the big car wreck in 2000.
So not only did I not have the time to do anything but battle G-men and sleep this fall, but my body started falling apart. I also lost the ability to read and remember what I’d read, much less make and remember choreographies. Again. If you’re subscribed to my other publication about all this stuff, then you know that this adventure culminated with an emergency CT scan, a rush-trip up to Missouri to see a neurologist, which gave me and my elderly parents Covid for our first times ever, and an entire winter of medical tests, more government hammering, and the unconscionable shenaniganry that is being a Medicaid patient. I’m still waiting to get my 5-day, in-hospital continuous EEG to hopefully rule out epilepsy.3
Amidst all that, I kept trying and trying and trying and TRYING to battle my way back to that dance project. Heck, to any dancing, period. It didn’t take long before I was relegated to floor-dancing and PT because my meniscus started micro-tearing just from standing on it, and my spine started degenerating again because my body was too busy trying to get my short-circuiting brains back under control while healing from Covid ravagement.
Yet night after night, my costumes would beckon.
I pass the Kingkiller Kostume Rack every single night on the way to bed, and every morning when I get up. The feather boa that lines the hem of that amazing dusty-pink-and-burgundy, sequin-and-crystal, snake-skin dress brushes my arm.
Okay, my arm brushes it, just to assure these glorious treasures that I haven’t forgotten about them. That I’m coming back, I swear!
Night after night, I make this promise.
Well, after what I just went through for half a year, and the battle that I’d waged just to get to the point of photographing costume trials? There was only one thing powerful enough to drag me out of the muck of stuck inertia and despondency.
The Muse.
Apparently, She knew that my old Kingkiller project had undergone enough tainting over the past year that the inspiration was sludgy. If you know about Patrick Rothfuss’ Kingkiller series, and you’ve been waiting for the end of this epic tale for over a decade with the rest of us, then you probably also know about the Purple Drakkus in the room—the Promised Chapter Debacle.
If you don’t…rest assured, it means that this project was already problematic because I’d been working my butt off to separate the art, story, and characters from all the issues surrounding their creator and his community.
“Problematic” is the last state you want to be in while clawing your way back from the Underworld. (Again. And again. And once more because apparently they didn’t hear you in the back.) What I needed was the pure, shining spear of inspiration, piercing through the gloom to point the way with unwavering, unhesitant Light. *cue angelic choirs and god-rays* I needed clean-burning rocket-fuel to obliterate the gravitational clutches of depression, exhaustion, and the frustration born of having to start over so dang many times.
So a tainted, problematic project? A hurting, troubled reader-heart?
NOPE.
Thus it was that one of my besties synchronistically recommended a new book series just in the nick of time as the Dance Bug bit.
I read Book One. I loved it. I knew a quarter of the way through that I would read Book 2. Amidst Book 2 I knew that I would read the entire series, and that I would absolutely check out this author’s other series.
Shortly after starting Book 2…drumroll…something else happened.
Playlist Hyperfixation Strikes Again!
Hoooooo boy.
Roll up the sleeves, tie the hair back, and line up the fuel tanks because we’re doin’ this thang.
Just like when the Kingkiller/Dew In the Bracken playlist was created, I was struck by another weekend of needing to shut out the ENTIRE FLIPPIN’ WORLD with its G-men, its health “care” hell, and its crappy treatment of the disabled. I needed to forget about Dain Bramage and MRIs and EEGs and Medicaid. I needed to go on hikes in the woods, devour comfort food, and fully submerge myself in new sounds, new rhythms, new imagery, new lyrics.
As I worked on tinkered with this new playlist, I realized several things. Really crucial things that helped me understand why I sometimes spend all these hours compiling playlists.
Yes, I’m a neurodivergent uber-nerd obsessed with music.
Yes, my lifelong career has been dance, therefore it is my job to immerse myself in new tunes regularly.
But I’m also a fiction author, and this is one of the ways I have always kept the story-gears oiled and primed when I’m not finger-banging my keyboard and puking out word count. Playing these playlists (formerly mixtapes or CD “soundtracks”) over and over everywhere, all the time, keeps the imagery of my story cycling in my mind so that when I sit down at the computer it comes rocketing out of me, sometimes faster than I can type.4
But this latest musical deep-dive made me understand something about why I do this for other people’s books as well. Why the need is so driving and important to me.
Yes, I needed a new inspiration that made my dancer-heart soar and got my pancaked butt off the freaking chair. It has given me the excuse to start thinking about all my cherished costumes in different ways.
(The Kingkiller Dances may cycle back around. Then again, they may not, and I knew that deep in my guts when I pounded out all those costume trial photo shoots in July and August. Right now, I need to not worry about it. I need to let that whole project hang out in the barrel behind the shed, fermenting. Every few weeks, I check back on it. Dink around with it. See if The Bug will strike. We’ll see if a fine wine emerges someday, or if the best we’ll have are the costume trial slideshows, pockmarked by a few video gems. Eh. It will be whatever it will be. The Muse demands a metamorphosis. NOW. Thus I hear and obey.)
But here’s the kicker — I also make these playlists as a way to help my bashed brains recall what the bleep I’ve already read so I can go on in a long book series with much more ease, neurological comfort, and enjoyment.
That was actually a forehead-smacking bomb-drop of a DUH the other day.
When I make these playlists, I have the book open, scanning the pages for the correct plot-order because do you think I can just drag-drop a bunch of mood music for easy listening? Ohhhhhh, no! I’m an anal-retentive, pattern-obsessed, meticulous fuck. It also makes Reader Brain happy to have it in order, and it helps solidify TBI Brain’s ability to remember sequences and details.
In order to remember why I chose a particular song for a character or plot point, I also make what used to be the CD jewel case “cover art” with all the alternate song title names. This helps me keep it all straight as I listen, because around here, the ability to remember and sequence requires major neurological engineering through a bunch of different input sources — sources that are less damaged than my frontal lobe and left brain. That means visual imagery. Emotion. Motion.
But really? Let’s get honest here.
I also make these alternate titles because I’m a punny smartass.
They’re a bunch of inside jokes for we who are obsessed with these stories. (Or who have at least read the books.) And yes, I do email said list to my friends who want it because they love my playlists and want to follow along with my musical hat-tips to specific characters and moments from the books.
Moments like:
“Splattered Against the Wall”
“Riffraff (are you running out of food here?)”
“Starfall”
And of course, the quintessential “Hello, Feyre darling.”
One that tickles me each time I see and/or hear it: “Dead Chickens, My Sagging Ass."
So does “Rhysand Is the Center of My World! (shove it up your ass)”
Apparently there’s a lot of ass around here. And sass. Of course there is. Have you READ these books? (Could I SOUND any more like Chandler at this moment?)
It’s double-punny around here, because snark does not merely abound in the plot-point alternate titles. Nay-nay, it’s right down to the titles of the chosen music itself:
Somewhat Civil — the snarky, fiddlin’ around song for “Hello, Feyre Darling” when a certain someone crashes certain festivities—yes, like an ass. An ass with such glorious sass.
Family Discourse — same musicians, same album, similar snark, this time for “We Don’t Bite (unless you ask us to).” Because in true soundtrack fashion, there are themes that must build, ebb, and flow. I swear, I should have been a musical score composer but alas, I lack the gift. Instead, my Muse paints stories in words and movement set to other people’s music. So we build these musical themes by selecting songs from the same musicians or from the same album.
She Cometh — why yes, yes SHE does, and this is a song as dark as HER.
Bruises & Bitemarks — for the educated reader, this should be self-explanatory.
The tah-dah of She’s A Superhero which is directly followed by the morose Behind A Smile.
Starcatcher & Skydance & The Mating Game.
Again, it’s all one big inside joke pockmarked by our reader-hearts racing as we’re dangled on the edge of our seats, or being ripped to shreds in the most glorious ways because these musicians are just as gifted as the books that inspired this project. And yes. When I play these playlists, some of those dang songs do, in fact, make me all blubbery just like I was while reading.
Why am I telling you these things? Because I have an urge to share these alternate title sheets with anyone who is of my hyperfixating, super-geek ilk. So now you’ll know why in THEE BLIVVIN’ BLEEP I’m posting ginormous song lists with additional snarky titles that only truly make sense to we super-fans5
Yes, indeedy, I have fallen into the Middengard and I can’t get up! Nor do I want to. Let the nerd-out begin!
Oh.
Right.
I should probably tell you which book series has become my new listen-day-n-night…dance-everywhere…costume-plotty…read-with-book-open-at-every-meal obsession. It’s by Sarah J. Maas.6
Here’s a taste - my playlist for the first half of Book 1. (Gotta go to Part 1.2—Under the Mountain to be dropped into the Middengard):
As I write this, I’m only halfway through just finished Book 3.5. These books are way too big and too imagery-rich for one playlist per book, even the novella. As such, each list, like the book arcs, wind up with their own particular flavor — perfect for choosing what I want to listen to according to my mood (whether for mood music or dance).
You can find them all as I build them on my Spotify.
MUAH! Enjoy.
Extra shoutout to my corruptor — I mean my bestie/uber-patron, Cowboy. This hat-tip’s for you!
The only other time since 2012 that I’ve been able to create full-length choreographies - my 2019 show in Memphis:
And truly taking off the belly dance constraints into full BellaDancer fusion: Universe: Wrapped In Skin
My oh-so-fun adventures with Traumatic Brain Injury, disability, and G-Men can be found OVER HERE on Bella & the Beast. Be warned. This other publication can get downright NSFW.
I will encourage you until the crows come home — if you find these nerd-fests annoying, please take advantage of the ability to shut up the squawking parrot of your email notifications for this Hyperfixator’s Haven Section. Go to the desktop version and opt out in your Sections. You can always find it again by visiting the Tinkerings homepage.
 | A guest post by
|
I found it interesting you mentioned that music — and making playlists — helps with your fiction writing. It’s so cool how different creative domains seems to influence each other.