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Printed from https://writing.com/main/books/action/view/entry_id/1083410
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Rated: 18+ · Book · Writing · #2041762
A math guy's random thoughts.
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#1083410 added February 6, 2025 at 6:59am
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Soundtrack, Feb 6, Come Sail Away
I've been working on a sequence of stories, "Lauderdale TalesOpen in new Window., about a dysfunctional group of travellers on a journey from Oklahoma to Fort Lauderdale for Spring Break. As they travel, they have adventures at various places along the way, and these are the "tales" I'm writing. If this setup sounds familiar, you're not wrong. The four tales I've got so far more or less follow the structure of the source material, although thematically the stories are quite different.

The adventure in the story I wrote yesterday, "Briney's TaleOpen in new Window., involved attending a ballet in Memphis. I wanted to find a song with a scifi element that the ballet might have used to for their performance. I settled on today's piece, a 1977 release by Styx:


Dennis DeYoung of Styx both wrote the song and was the lead vocalist. Lyrically, the song uses sailing as a metaphor for achieving one's dreams, a metaphor that happend to also dovetail with a theme of story.

In the song, a "gathering of angels" appears with an invitation to "come sail away with me." But, to vocalist's surprise, "we climbed aboard their starship and headed to the skies." That's the line that gives the song the desired SciFi flavor and foreshadowing that I wanted. I had one of the characters mention that specific line early in the story to establish the desired foreshadowing.

The song has been used in other places. It appears in The Virgin Suicides, for example. On television, it's been used in series as varied as South Park and ER.

It's a great song, but it's part of my soundtrack because of "Briney's TaleOpen in new Window..

If you want to read any of the "Lauderdale TalesOpen in new Window., drop me a note and I'll send you the passkey.

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