So, the song is from the perspective of the First Lady, Amy Winchell, but also the perspective of a wife who feels isolated and bitter about a crumbling marriage. Since we came to L.A., we were pretty isolated, not making a lot of new friends, not a lot to do – “She likes the night but there’s no weather.” Mirrors the Winchells moving to a compound in the middle of nowhere as the world falls apart.

I look at rain and see if I can find
Enough to praise of people, work, and life
He looks at rain as a new way to die

She likes to drive but there’s no weather
She likes to fly but there’s no weather
She likes the sky but there’s no weather
She likes the night but there’s no weather
at home

Since we arrived the only place to go
is stay inside where strangers aren’t home
Since we arrived, there’s nowhere I can go

Full lyrics here.

No Weather by theamericanbookofthedead

mp3 link: No Weather

Strangely enough, found out yesterday that my divorce was finalized.  I am divorced.  If you listen to my Alterati interview, I reveal that I was once a heroin addict.  So happens it was with my then girlfriend, now ex-wife.  Not the greatest foundation for a relationship. So this song is in part a companion to the song Shallow Lips. Lyrics to that song go:

I went on holiday to a place not far away from home
Here we go on and on
And then on Saturday, same place I went away, alone…

There might not come a day when I meet the God who made my soul
So I’ll buy it for a song
And like the human race I don’t want to be a waste of love
So I’ll breathe it all day long

Lyrics to this one:

I went on holiday
Where I slept in half the day
And dreamt I was awake
In a world uncracked and safe at home

We wait at home through hot wars and cold
To say that isn’t so is a lie of degrees

And when we’re satisfied we write, “The End.”
When we’re unsatisfied we write, “The End.”
But there’s no end. Yeah, there’s no end.

I wrote about the day
I ran in the human race
And beat out show and place
To be awarded our unwasted love

A Lie of Degrees by theamericanbookofthedead

mp3 link: A Lie of Degrees

Thought about adding keyboards and synths, but deleted them to make it a guitar song.

Tonight by theamericanbookofthedead

mp3 link: Tonight

Aftermath by theamericanbookofthedead

mp3 link: Aftermath

So I now have to think about my daughter one day reading this story about her father fearing her doing porn.  There’s no doubt this could creep her out, and perhaps I was being careless not foreseeing that scenario where she’d be old enough to read what I’d written.

But the point of the chapter is to illustrate how the lead character’s world is disintegrating in a way that mirrors the world at large.  Sort of like the rats at the beginning of Ralph Ellison’s Native Son – the novel opens up with rats crawling around a slum apartment and kids screaming.  I read an interview somewhere that he wrote the chapter last and he wanted a kind of archetypal situation to set up the rest of the story.  So that’s where I was going with “Gentleman Reptile” – something to typify the lead character’s worst fears.

This chapter was actually released as a self-contained story a couple of years ago by Cloverfield Press:

The woman who accepted the story is a mom and knows my daughter, so that’s some armor.  Too much explanation?  Just getting down some of the guilt I’ve felt about the opening.  I know that as a writer self-censorship isn’t a good idea, and the opening serves a very direct purpose.  Not only about the writer’s revulsion about the world, but the fact that he’s working on a story that – within the confines of the novel – turns out to be true in real life. That sets up the other prophetic writing he does later in the novel.

It’s that sense of prophecy that adds another layer of guilt to the whole thing.  Am I literally predicting this will come true?  No.  But one of the ideas in the novel is that “ideas are real” – consciousness can create reality and the dream world is as tactile as the waking world (something I believe is possible).  The evolution of the mind is when these different worlds come together and we can travel freely between them.  If so, though, what’s it mean for this story?  It’s true for the novel daughter, but not true for the real daughter.  They’re not the same person.

Long intro to the song I’ve written for the chapter, which was hard to write, considering.  The chapter begins with the writer talking to a fellow professor about being attracted to his female students.  “I’m adulterous just by looking at them.”  So,

I don’t know wrong from right
I cannot let go of a vice

When I sit down to write
I’m unfaithful to my wife

The basic message of the song is that it’s supposed to be sung both from the lead character’s point of view, but also the porn king who takes advantage of the writer’s daughter – as if to say, there’s also a violation in the writing itself, which is something I’ve considered and explained above. The main theme of the song is this one:

I am a lie
Do you need a ride?

All in all, touchy subjects. But I’m happy with how the song turned out. And, for that matter, the chapter.

I Am a Lie by theamericanbookofthedead

mp3 link: I Am a Lie

We shopped down at the market
for all our needs
going out of our minds
We bought only the knowledge
that we were thieves
going out of our minds

We saw the grass is greener
for those we grieve
going out of our minds…

This song is actually two songs and the second half gets more into where I was personally while I was writing the book. Soon, I’ll start working on TABOTD Volume II here. I’ve got to get my head together to do it, when the time’s right. It’ll be about my life in real time (fictionalized). And this song is more a reflection of that – A Year in a Day. While I was finishing up the book, I was out on my own after the dissolution of my marriage, raising my daughter as a single father, while taking lonely trips to the doctor where she informed me of the progress of my chronic illness. A rough year, every day felt like a year. In the book, the chapter is about the characters taking a day to look at the year-long destruction of the city. There are parallels with my own life falling apart and the end of the world in the novel.

I don’t know how I made it
But I’m here now for the ride
And I’ll start over with the weight of the world
Like a widower of my life

So I went to the doctor
And she told me that I might die
She told me my weakness is in my soul
But my body will survive
I said back, Yeah that’s all well and good
But my body doesn’t lie
She replied, It only tells you the truth
If you want it to be right

That wasn’t the only thing going on
with me that year
There were women
And a girl who told me
I was far more than my fears
I was father to a world I could build
As my world burned away
If I started to believe in my dreams
And stopped believing in my fate.

Full lyrics here.

Where the Green Grows/A Year in a Day by theamericanbookofthedead

mp3 link: Where the Green Grows/A Year in a Day

He wonders if this new world might be the beginning of something better – as was the point of the war: to jolt people into evolving, or bring about the Second Coming – as outlined by the fundamentalist President Winchell, or his father, Benjamin Winchell (Dick Cheney), who’s a lunatic of a different stripe. Eugene Myers himself wonders if this might be the makings of something better, as he’s seen evidence of a new type of consciousness, with elements of dreams becoming a reality. So:

In the beginning…
of our childhood
Is it the end of adult vice?

In the beginning…
of our rise
Is it the end of our decline?

The New City by theamericanbookofthedead

Another layering of guitars song, which becomes a kind of wall of sound, but this song represents the finale of the war. Full lyrics here.

mp3 link: The New City

Come on, peace
You arrive today (on the way)
What a relief
We will pass away

Sunny! But it’s the end of the world. A major theme in the book is life after death – if we literally knew that our soul traveled on after we die, it would change the fabric of everything. Death would no longer be seen as a punishment, so war would lose its utility, and there would be a different reaction to many different types of suffering, such as sickness. Can’t be certain of this, however, so the song ends,

What’s beneath the silver lining?
Is it peace or is it dying?

Please take a listen to this one. It’s in three parts and pretty much covers the ground musically of where I’m going with the book’s soundtrack.

Full lyrics here.

Dear World/Come on, Peace/Silver Lining by theamericanbookofthedead

mp3 link: Dear World/Come on, Peace/Silver Lining

A New York apartment. I know it’s New York without being told. I can feel it because I’ve lived in a place like this before. Grates on the kitchen windows that look out on the dirtied brick walls between apartment buildings. I had an ex-girlfriend who lived in a place like this. Almost exactly the same….

I understand what is happening in this room. I’ve been around junkies enough in my life. Done it myself. The pride in their wide eyes, as if they’re accomplishing something. Which they are, partly, but what you learn from dope you learn quickly and the rest is redundant. I don’t know where they are in the process, probably somewhere near the beginning. They’re still healthy-looking, not pallid, still excited as they snort, don’t shoot, another line….

She’s a junkie model named Dominique…who actually turns out to exist. So he goes to meet her in New York where she says to him,

“Part of the reason I trusted you is because I feel like I’ve seen you before. In a dream, maybe. I’m just crazy enough to not think that’s crazy. It’s a big universe out there and in here.” She touched her temple. “And there’s a lot more than we can see with our senses. It’s why I started doing dope, you know? To feel God. Because I can’t feel it otherwise. But I know it’s out there. I know it.”

So…the lyrics reflect this:

There might not come a day when I meet the God who made my soul
So I’ll buy it for a song
And like the human race I don’t want to be a waste of love
So I’ll breathe it all day long

Chorus: Models breathe through shallow lips
Making love into made-up faces
Horses breed through shallow hips
Giving birth to made-up embraces
Models breathe through shallow lips, whoa!
—
I think I’ve covered the range of heroin-related animals in this song. Except monkeys – but “Monkeys flinging their own shit” wasn’t quite poetic enough.

Full lyrics here. Song here:

Shallow Lips by theamericanbookofthedead

mp3 link: Shallow Lips

The scope of this song is I hope similar to the scope of the introduction. My editor said that in the intro I’m almost challenging people to read it – which was actually the point. Get people into a certain headspace, which is sort of like this song where it becomes a wall of sound and you have to dig for each individual part. That’s a basic theme in the book and the introduction -

The book was about a writer in his fifties working on a book. In the future the book has yet to be written, even if it was written in the past. Complicated, but it solved one issue: the older writer is not aware of the book that has already been published because in his world the book has not been written. But wait—I hear people say—you’ve been talking as if the war has already occurred and the novel has yet to be conceived. Here’s my answer: time doesn’t exist. All of these different stories are happening at once.

As are the different parts of this song…

Introduction by theamericanbookofthedead

mp3 link: Introduction