Apologies for not blogging for a while; but I’ve been away, in America, in fact! This was a road trip I took with my mate, Rob… We both play music and we’ve played together in various bands for the past twenty years; so this was a musical odyssey!
We flew to Chicago and proceeded south, mainly (but not exclusively) following the path of the Mississippi… I did the driving (to St Louis, Missouri, Nashville, Memphis, Natchez, Mississippi, ending up in New Orleans); the total distance is not far short of 1500 miles and I did that in nine days, driving on alternate days…
So what’s this got to do with SF and the Lights in the sky series, I hear you ask? Well, I’m getting to that!
The trip was a chance not only to visit and pay homage to old musical heroes and discover new ones (Rhiannon Giddens and Gary Clark jr. at the Chicago Blues Festival were particularly memorable!), but also a chance to get away from my life; away from the writing and away from my claustrophobic little island!
I completed part two of The Leftover Girl, just prior to leaving and I’m thus between two thirds and the three-quarters of the way through the book. The first two sections are called The Road, and …to Hell, and the final part will be called …paved with good intentions, so you probably get the drift…
Time away from a work-in-progress is important because it helps give you perspective, vital for a writer. I re-read the section I’d just completed on my return in preparation for starting on the final leg of the literary journey; and I realised something that, although obvious, just hadn’t occurred to me in the rush to complete part two of the book before my departure. The revelation is that the second character in my novel, Dr (later Professor) Helen Choi, ends her life in despair; concluding that she has been in error, pursuing false scientific goals and denying her essential nature. She has lived her life in maya, the world of illusion, effectively denying her own spirituality… She dies hoping that when she meets her husband (‘…in whichever version of the afterlife she is bound’), he will find it in his heart to forgive her…
The second conclusion I came to (the start of this came while watching the aforementioned artists in Millennium Park, Chicago), was that after three terrible years things are finally moving in our favour once more… Chicago Blues was important because I was disillusioned with music (which for a songwriter is my own version of despair!).
A bit of context is needed here! For those of you unfamiliar with the form, blues festivals in the UK consist of a few hundred (mostly) blokes my age or older, standing ‘round drinking real ale and watching acts even more ancient than they are!
Chicago was different; the first thing we saw (the Blues Village stage), was just like UK blues festivals, and we nearly left at this point! But I looked at the flyer and saw that Rhiannon Giddens (for Christ’s sake!), was performing on the main stage and she was just about to start! For those of you who don’t about her she’s immensely talented as a writer and performer, utterly beautiful, from North Carolina (my favourite out of the twenty seven states of the Union I have visited!), and the possessor of the best voice God ever gave a woman!
We moved to the fantastic open-air auditorium in Millennium Park (think Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao!), and were presented with at least twenty thousand people in the open air-bowl that forms the arena! And these people weren’t old gits like me and Rob, they were young people, of all races, who love music that most young people in my country wouldn’t be seen dead grooving to… The reaction to Rhiannon Giddens was ecstatic enough, but that was nothing compared to the welcome they gave to Gary Clark jr, the new Jimi Hendrix, and someone I hadn’t even heard of !
Not only did this restore my faith in music, but I realised that things in general are changing! It’s not just music; Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity with young people in the UK (as evidenced by his reception at Glastonbury!), the totally unexpected election result, the retreat of Fascistic populism everywhere etc etc
The wheel is indeed turning; favouring authenticity rather than artifice; art rather than commerce; individual expression rather than Simon Cowell-mentored posing; idealism rather than self-interest!
Finally, we seem to be throwing off the twin dead hands of Postmodernist ‘irony’ and neoclassical economics, and discarding the appalling cynicism they engendered…and it occurs to me that this can only be good for me personally, because the type of fiction I write may even come back into fashion…
I talked about the zeitgeist in a previous post; well, I think its just shifted…
C.E. Stevens June 2017
