a conspiracy of cartographers

Back in the Midwest! I feel very much like some awkward metaphor about a Rubik's cube or jigsaw puzzle or something else that can be rattled about and have a few bits missing; that said, though, there is something immeasurably relieving about falling back into routine. The grooves are reassuring, and I finally have the time to read manuscripts again. Having lunch with were_duck definitely helped too.

Other things that are helping: reading Pamela Dean's Tam Lin at a luxuriously leisurely pace. I cannot believe I never read it before. I cannot believe I didn't imprint on the damn book at thirteen. How have I conducted my life as I have without reading it? The advantage of reading it after college is that, with the exception of a few of the moderns, I get every single literary reference thanks to my silly degree. The disadvantage of reading it at all is that my writing starts to sound like Janet's internal monologue.

Incidentally, I thought I might try NaNo this year, not in a public posting sense but in a "get something original written!" sense. Then I looked at my WIP folder and laughed at myself. I suppose I could try to get at least 50,000 words of fic done this month! It's not as though I don't know I could.

Also: MUSIC.

i. First, getcher new Decemberists here! You have to join the mailing list, but if you join the mailing list you'll get gems in your inbox like the record will be called The King Is Dead and will be available on January 18th, 2011. That's 1/18/11. If you take away the slashes, that reads 11811. What does that mean? Must you ask? Clearly it is a snowman surrounded by a colonnade of waving banners. And once again I am soothed by the reassurance that the Decemberists are just as fucking absurd as I am. The song itself is called Down by the Water, twists at my heart in pretty much the same way all of their songs do the first time, and rhymes 'wrong' with 'anon' because lines like 'the summer swells anon' are always rife in Decemberists songs.

ii. Getcher new My Chemical Romance here! Or omg the Sing trailer here. I may be a bit in love with the Killjoys universe? We're approaching starry-eyed here.

iii. Amelia introduced me to The Clockwork Quartet; you can dl both their songs free, and then possibly for afters gnaw off your own hands with joy. Or at least you can if you are me. The Watchmaker's Apprentice gives me the same scary-grinning joy that The Mariner's Revenge Song does, only with fewer accordions and more tick-tocky noises. I am actually terrified of listening to The Doctor's Wife again, because I've already done the wide-eyed listening as I figure out the lyrics; I know if I hear it again, I will start sobbing. Basically it's like the Decemberists +100 STEAMPUNK. I didn't even know that was possible.

Oh dear. I have officially listened to Hazards of Love enough that I want to do fannish things with it. (My perennial problem with the Decemberists: I listen to their music enough and I end up doing things like writing story for myla goldberg, Miranda, and on one memorable occasion the outline for a novel developed over a month's worth of driving to school whilst listening to the same four albums on repeat. [Warning: all these links are to things from 2005/2006, which means I am mildly shamed of them now.]) This time, to my vague horror, the fannish thing I want to do is not to write anything but rather to draw an elaborate scene for each song. My artistic abilities have not become markedly better in the last ... six years, though, so I have no idea from whence the urge comes.

Note to self: prioritize the novel-length WIPs over the amateur illustrations. Oh, and prioritize looking at grad schools over the novel-length WIPs. Love, your underdeveloped sense of realistic responsibility.