Menewood playlist at Largehearted Boy
As part of Largehearted Boy‘s Book Notes series I have a longish piece about all the kinds of music I used to find my way into and through Menewood and Hild’s different moods: Wyrd Music. I’ve talked before about how I use music as an emotional signpost when finding my way into story but with a book like Menewood—huge in every way; dense, wild, and contradictory—music becomes not just useful but vital: a lifeline. I used two playlists, one that I called Wyrd Hild, and then a modified and extended version of my original MainHild playlist that I’ve talked about before. This combined list is as maximalist as the novel. The first part was largely whole albums and chunks of albums—interspersed with single, radically different tracks, as a kind of slashing shock—all chosen for a sense of lostness and search.
To whet your appetite, here are three track discussions:
Felt Mountain — Goldfrapp. “Lovely Head”
The first track begins with human vocals electronically manipulated to elongate sound—like whale song circling the global deep, with strange, slow stops that themselves echo; a vast, alien call to…whom? To do what? And this is where I was at the beginning of writing the book: I knew what had just happened at the end of the previous novel, Hild, and I knew some of the major turning points of Hild’s life ahead, but I couldn’t quite decide at what point to begin the next part of her story. I felt unmoored; I needed an anchor point. Paradoxically I knew I needed to wander to find it. Hearing that high, lonely whistle put me inside a woman on the high moor of Elmet, in the cold of Wolf-month, as wind hisses like grit through frozen bracken. And something is coming…
“Papa’s Got A Brand New Pigbag (12” version)”— Pigbag
Eventually, Hild finds herself literally between two opposing armies, in the middle of a battle that, rationally-speaking, is simply not survivable. This percussive piece, which hurtles along at an unsustainably high number of beats per minute—I’ve tried to count but always lose track—for over six minutes is similarly impossible to dance to, full tilt, beginning to end. But in my snorting amphetamine-and-dance-past-dawn days I would try anyway. For me it evokes the sheer insanity required of battle: knowing you can’t, knowing you must, setting your will to stun then just giving yourself to gore-glee and blood lust, the weight of muscle and bone; heart thumping and turning, turning, turning endless as a mill wheel as you plunge, lunge, jab stab thrust, on and on, step by step, cutting your way through the line, even as more enemies come, even as your limbs turn to lead and you can’t breathe and the light begins to gutter. On and on and on…
Meddle — Pink Floyd. “One of These Days” “Echoes”
The driving, doubled bass on the first track is all about purpose, but this time it’s towards life—Hild is rebuilding her hidden community, getting ready for the second phase of the war, feeling the world come alive all around her: crops growing, birds fledging, sun breaking out from behind the clouds. But the dialy rhythm is not her wyrd; her wyrd and gift is to understand what others can’t, to find the quiet place and listen. The last track begins with the ping of sonar and moves through the wuther of wind and cry of the great albatross as Hild casts her mind loose to soar, to skim over the daily crests and troughs and rise to the realisation of the startling strategy and unexpected alliances that will change the world. Here, too, is where the playlist changes.
I really enjoyed writng this one—it was lovely to revisit those emotions again, as though for the first time. If you’re inclined to go read it I’d love to hear your thoughts. Oh, and theres also a Spotify playlist to listen to as you read.
