<a class="proll" href="https://www.Writing.Com/main/books/item_id/2313403-Music-Notes">Music Notes

Jun 28, 2025 at 4:20pm
In response to "The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 10"

Wow! Look at all the work you've done this month! Congratulations on all your writing projects throughout June. Especially joining in on the "The Bard's Hall Contest"

Blogging month!

Good job!

Jeff

Jun 28, 2025 at 11:02am
In response to "The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 10"

Congrats on finishing "Musicology Anthology"

(and so many other writing projects)!

AmyJo-Mother Nature needs MEDS

Jun 28, 2025 at 7:50am
In response to "The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 10"

Wow!!!

What a busy bee you are! I am exhausted just reading your achievements. Good for you! You are an inspiration~ Whereas I've to deal with the perspiration of checking stuff out. Keep up the good work, and enjoy a few days off before the next adventure begins...

Jun 26, 2025 at 2:31pm
In response to "The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 8"

It's too bad your boss at the Christian charity workshop, turned so nasty when you were able to return after a month out due to the Covid rules. I guess it made him so angry that it happened, he took it out on the employees.

It's always a good idea to keep up with cursive writing. These days the youth don't even bother anymore. I like the fact that they probably need translations for handwritten notes!

I'm guilty of not hand writing much. But, years of overworked fingers and hands led to arthritis in those joints which makes it difficult.

Great music themes to get your creativity up.

Thanks for sharing!

Jun 25, 2025 at 1:20pm
In response to "The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 7"

How cool having a Raggedy Ann and And MB commissioned. I can't wait to see it.

Also, wonderful that you placed in the Shadows & Light contest.

I don't know how you keep up with all these writing activities and contests.

Fantastic!

Jun 25, 2025 at 1:11pm
In response to "The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 6"

Radioactive was played on a loop in stores like Walmart, grocery stores, even Staples! It still pops in my head like a brain worm I can't shake.

However, I have a couple daughters living in CA who would always go to ID's concerts whenever they were in the area.

But yeah, music does attach to us in a way that's undeniable. I love background music when I'm doing stuff. It seems to make chores less "chorey."

. Writing with music playing, I believe, heightens the creative output.

Jun 25, 2025 at 11:05am
In response to "Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 5"

Very cool and creative! I love the transparent handwriting layered over the selfie. Words, music and art are woven within your life--I see that clearly here.

Jun 24, 2025 at 8:54pm
In response to "The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 4"

It was delightful learning how you were so focused on cover design, characters, even the dog! You are quite the planner. Yet you found a different path rather than continuing a novel. I think short stories can be fascinating. I call them lunch-break reads. They aren't too cumbersome to read in a short time. And, they don't pull you into wanting to read more than lunchtime allows.

One could lose their job if that happened. I know, I kid a bit. Books are great before bedtime. That's when I do my novel reading.

You do so many short stories here. I can see your passion for writing them.

Thank you for sharing that book, to cover, to short stories, experience. Music is a fantastic backdrop to writing. I do enjoy music.

Kåre เลียม Enga

Jun 23, 2025 at 8:21pm
In response to "The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 6"

My upbringing was impoverished in different ways. One thing we may have in common is that I was not allowed to swear. Not a bad thing... but when I learned how to swear it was like a damn broke (yes, damn not dam). These days, I don't swear much but when I let go...

Music does speak to me. Which may be why I prefer silence.

A song from my childhood... Handel's Largo from Xerxes:

Kåre เลียม Enga

Jun 23, 2025 at 8:05pm
In response to "Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 5"

Never remove... let it sink into the sands (or mud or snirt).

Goes for writings as well as photos. You can thank me 50 years from now with laughter.

Yes, I understand Eeyore.

The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 10

June 28, 2025 at 7:29am

#1092397

The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 9

This blog post will be pretty much my last WdC project this month. I like to push myself to get everything done ASAP so that I have a couple days left at the end to sit back, relax and feel some satisfaction in what I've accomplished. I've developed a habitual sense of urgency so that, where someone else would say “aw, it's only the sixteenth, I've got plenty of time,” I say “ack! It's the sixteenth already—I'm almost out of time!” It gets stuff done.

So, a look back at the writing projects I've completed in June:

Five "Reflections"

stories for "Musicology Anthology"

(One of which was submitted to Max's Tales Shown Not Told, one submitted to Kit's Share Your Faith, one to both Grill a Christian and Quotation Inspiration.)

Twenty-eight drabbles for Rachel's Beatles Challenge

Four Promptly Poetry entries

Ten Bard's Hall blog posts

A blog post for the 48 Hour Media Prompt Challenge

A story for "Merit Badge Magic"

A story for the Veterans Challenge

A poem for Cubby's Writing 4 Kids

An opening paragraph for Hook of the Book, and

A qualifying post for Jody's Contest Challenge.

A couple of projects I've mostly decided to skip for now, are Quihadi's spiritual poem and the SciFi story contest. I'm hesitant to write about the Holy Spirit, because I don't really believe in the Trinity, and I'm not sure if different viewpoints are welcome at his contest. And I don't really feel like writing a SciFi about war drones. While working on Reflections, I briefly imagined I could combine the SciFi prompt with "A-OK"

and write something socially relevant, because of the US strike in Iran which was dominating the news at the time…

That turned out to be totally beyond me.

Speaking of Reflections, I need to add a quick synopsis of what exactly the 14-story overarching narrative is about, and maybe a list of the stories in order of timeline, to add to the folder intro. I didn't attempt to do that at the beginning, because quite honestly I had no idea where the arc would end up or if I would be able to write fourteen connected yet standalone stories about the same set of characters.

You should see the Google Doc I've been using for the past three months

I believe in efficiency, plus everything is stored offline on my phone, so I literally wrote every single story into one document, with all manner of (sometimes exasperated) scribblings stuffed in between. I built the settings, timeline, and major life points as I went along. Every story was basically written just once, from start to finish, not including “false starts” where I tested different premises and dropped them. The only one I had to pull out to rework in a separate document was the first one, "Mayday"

.

The entire process of writing, worldbuilding and note-keeping totaled out at about 45,000 words. Each story is between 1500 and 2500 words, mostly averaging just under 2k. I put in so much effort, it was hard to push each one out of my head after it was done in order to move on to the next one.

I must say, this was a fascinating, rewarding and enjoyable project. I've never before attempted to reuse characters or follow them through their lives in a series of stories. I'd been toying with the idea of writing detective stories for a few months, and when the Detective genre was chosen for the April Journey Through Genres, I took it as a sign for setting the theme of the entire collection.

Over the course of three months, I've guided my main characters through heartbreak, trauma, a haunted car, nervous breakdowns, false alarms, and life in general. Hopefully they've grown and developed chronologically. It's hard for me to step back and consider it objectively. Right now I'm just giddy that I made it through "Musicology Anthology"

in time and was able to combine stories/songs with so many different prompts around WdC.

I'm also quite happy with how Annette has set up I Write this year. It's given me the opportunity to have a friendly and helpful review on almost every track on the album, and so much more of my writing besides.

I need to thank Webbie and Stephanie for giving us the opportunity to blog without prompts. It's allowed me to share myself with the community in a deeper way, and also given me a chance to set my writing goals in public for an extra boost of focus and encouragement. Listing the goals here also reminded me to check in at the Weekly Goals forum, which turned out to be beneficial as well.

Now that I have some spare time, I think I'll go ahead and look into that new OneRepublic collaboration, Starlight. If I like it, which I probably will once I make the leap and actually listen to it, it'll most likely end up as an entry in next year's "The Soundtrack of Your Life"

blog. Stay tuned

Words: 830.

Comment • View 3 comments

June 25, 2025 at 6:39am

#1092199

The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 8

Judging by how frequently I write about music and how deeply it influences me, one might assume I listen to it nearly constantly. On the contrary, I spend most of my time at home in silence, working on projects. I don't believe in background music, preferring to sit down at appointed times to give a song (or two, or several) my undivided attention for a while.

As far as Asperger's type obsessions go, I seem to have room in my head for only one all-consuming hobby at a time. Over the years I've gone through different, overlapping “cycles of obsession,” pouring myself into each with as much gusto as possible until I wore myself out and moved on to something else. Since for me, music is an umbrella hobby encompassing reading, writing, art, and both production and consumption of various media types, it lasted longer and kept a stronger hold on me than the other hobbies, which usually revolved around it in some way.

There was a time, mostly before I joined WdC, when almost every spare thought was about music. I would memorize lyrics, write them down by hand, and basically stuff my head with them so I would have the songs without having to play them all the time. I would see connections between favorite lyrics and random images, moments or conversations, or even movies I found appealing (Frozen/Imagine Dragons art mashup, anyone?) Everything in my life seemed to be filtered through the lens of music, building a unique, intricate web of personal culture and identity.

I can't do music without considering the people in it that I like. I was swept up in their lives, following them on IG, feeling concerns about them and overall being rather parasocial. When Dan Reynolds and Aja Volkman initiated their divorce in 2022, I think I was more upset than either of them. This shock set off my gradual shift away from building my culture entirely on music.

2023 was a year split precisely in half, for me. The first half, I spent beefing up my offline playlist, stashed on a defunct phone. I had finally mastered the technique, spending hours rediscovering all the songs I hadn't heard in years because I didn't have a platform other than YouTube, nor a dedicated device to use.

This was the climax of my hobby, and the closest I got to doing background music. My first pair of truly wireless earbuds deteriorated to only one earbud, and I made the best of it by using that one to catch up on all my favorites while doing mundane things. Indeed, there were times when I would have fallen asleep inappropriately if I hadn't had my offline music streaming in one ear, keeping different parts of my brain activated.

The shift started when I discovered WdC in the middle of July. As more and more of my spare time got caught up in creative writing projects, I simply had less time to spend “vegetating,” or sitting around giving up my thought processes for someone else's art. I spent more time creating my own universes of words, rather than stepping into and living off of the word worlds of others.

Contributing to this, I also bought a new pair of truly wireless earbuds last summer. They work so well, I don't ever want to use only one earbud again, because I'll be missing out on the full depth and dimension of the music. And situations where I can afford to use both earbuds and totally lose myself in bidirectional sound… well, that's mostly in the hours shortly before bedtime. But that's the time reserved for writing!

It's not only that I don't have time for listening to music anymore. I hardly even miss it. It's all still pretty firmly planted in my head and heart, ready to inspire my worldbuilding when I need it. If I need a particular song to write a story to, as with "Reflections"

, I'll give it some time. If I decide I need music to activate a different side of my brain for a change, I'll put the writing aside.

I've even learned to ignore or filter, for the most part, what surrounds me in public. I've developed an ear keen enough to identify a song style and voice I would be interested in learning more about, and everything else mostly goes in one ear and out the other. It used to be I would Shazam everything indiscriminately. These days I hardly pick it up unless I really want to know. Half the time I just want to see if I've correctly guessed at someone's voice.

A couple examples to show I'm not so obsessed with music as I used to be, and I'm fine with it.

The other day, I heard the tail end of a song at Walmart and sensed it was something interesting. Shazam told me it was The Hype, from Twenty Øne Piløts and their Trench album. “Normally,” I would have been excited and gone to research it, download it, listen to it and write about it at some point. As it was, I took a screenshot of the stats and hurried to do my fiscal-year's-end market research, which is why I was inside Walmart in the first place.

It took a couple days before I even remembered to look at the lyrics to The Hype. When I did, I was bored and decided not to bother listening to it. It didn't seem nearly as intellectually compelling as the handful of other Tøp songs I'm familiar with. I noted it in my journal and moved on.

Then yesterday, I was at the library, juggling tasks and trying not to stare blankly at my iPad while helping Mom with her college studies. I noticed OneRepublic apparently dropped a new song, a collaboration with some obscure band with a weird name. I tried looking into it and found almost no information. I glanced at the lyrics, grew bored by them, and decided I had better things to do than get all excited about a collaboration. I don't even know if Ryan Tedder sings exclusively on it or if he shares it with someone else.

Another thing, which dominated 1R headlines for some reason, is the career compilation album they've announced. Like, duh, it's old music gathered onto a CD. What's so exciting? I looked at the tracklist and felt like I could have picked a bone with half of the choices on it, but it wasn't worth the energy.

I have more interesting, more productive things to do these days than cling to the world of music. And that's a good thing. Hopefully it's a sign of intellectual maturity.

Words: 1,100.

Comment

June 24, 2025 at 2:31pm

#1092154

The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 7

When I posted "Note: Maybe I'll tell the story behind this *^*Th..." I hinted someday I would share the story behind my mysterious handwritten quote. I suppose now is as good a time as any.

It starts in 2019, when I started working at a quasi-Christian charity workshop sort of place. At first it seemed like a dream job for me: walk in, sit down, do my work and leave with money earned. Human interaction was minimal. The boss played Christian music. I was happy.

Then came the pandemic. Everything changed for the worse that year. The place shut down for a month, leaving me without an income. When it reopened, it was a different atmosphere: the boss grew toxic, manipulative, untrustworthy. He blasted creepy secular music. I worked longer hours for lower pay.

My brain gradually started to melt under the pressure. I got so caught up in working, it left no room for anything else. I'd be so exhausted by the time I got off work, I'd black out in bed for a couple hours. My creative side shriveled up. I stopped listening to my own music, instead obsessing over trying to get the boss to play what I wanted to hear at work, without telling him how stressful the whole situation was or what I really needed out of the job.

I stopped journaling. My Google Photos account was filled with dreary work charts and weird screenshots of the obscure Twitter-verse I spent most of my spare time hanging out in. It got to the point where I couldn't cobble together two coherent sentences in a letter to a pen pal.

Finally, in March 2021, I quit. I spent the next eighteen months or so rediscovering myself alongside OneRepublic and Imagine Dragons, who both awakened from their pandemic slumber to release new music in the springtime and ultimately new albums by summer's end.

Cutthroat was the B-side of ID’s double single they dropped that March, Follow You being the A-side. Two more vividly contrasted songs would be hard to find. At the time, ID employed a metaphor which I've used often since then in my journal, as a music analysis tool. One eye open, one eye closed. Inward facing, outward facing. A cute song about love and loyalty to another, and an edgy song about conquering your own flaws.

Having been separated from my music and journaling for so long, I was deeply fascinated by Cutthroat and its harsh, startling message. Yes, that's where I got my subtitle for "White Iris"

and "Virus"

from: “only one of us will make it out alive, and it's not you.” My friend Jack accused me of getting the catchphrase from Fallout 4, one of his favorite video games. I'm not a gamer, however.

At first glance, and indeed to most people, the theme of Cutthroat seems to be about getting ahead at the expense of everyone else. It sounds like the narrator is fighting with the world. Lead singer and songwriter Dan Reynolds has explained that he's actually fighting with himself, a concept I can relate to and root for. While analyzing it in my journal, I noted gloomily that if I killed off all the parts of myself I didn't like, I wasn't sure there would be anything left of me.

Yet, the language he uses triggers my oversensitive, overactive imagination in other, darker ways, to the point where I couldn't bear to hear him shout “get on the knee!” at the bridge of the studio version. Cutthroat is a noisy, ugly, unnerving song, one that can only be appreciated if one knows exactly who made it, why and how. I've never quoted or spoken of it on WdC, and in fact have not listened to it in years. Admittedly, though, it is perhaps the one song that sent my brain down the worldbuilding path that ultimately led me here.

During the summer of 2021, I turned it over and around in my head, trying to break it down musically into its different elements. It was my first taste of the Dragons working with famous producer Rick Rubin on their upcoming Mercury double album, and the production style was nothing like what they usually did. I puzzled over the instrumental, even looking for karaoke versions or string covers to listen to without the words. Something about the music didn't make sense, somehow. It reminded me a little bit of Queen's Another One Bites the Dust.

It gave me something to write about, anyway, and write I did. Slowly that year I gathered the scattered bits of my brain back together, utilizing the new music coming from my favorite artists to relax, relate, create artwork, write, analyze, and mark time, rebuilding my personal culture which had shriveled up with the stress of my old work environment.

One verse in particular haunted me as I struggled to put the previous year of my life in perspective and move on…

This ominous, yet hopeful thought seemed especially applicable to the time I ultimately wasted at that dead-end, downspiraling job. During a month of total lockdown in April 2020, I re-learned cursive handwriting and did myself a lasting service. It was an excellent way to handle being abruptly disconnected from society and watching the world crumble from afar.

After I scribbled out this thought a year later on paper, I used the picture as my Twitter profile banner. It stayed there for several years, a unique declaration of… something. Not sure what

Cutthroat, Follow You and OneRepublic's Run all came out at the exact moment I needed them. In fact, if I'm not mistaken, the double single from ID dropped the same day I quit my job. This motley trio became the theme music of my life for a few months, gradually moving aside to make room for the albums they led into, which released a week apart in August and September of 2021.

The music video for studio Cutthroat shows the story of a woman attempting to get her driver's license—a comic relief from and exploration of the song's weirdness.

I was quite pleased when ID released what I call a “rebuilt” version of the song, using real, visible instruments, including a kazoo. They chose to drop the phrase “get on the knee” at the bridge, so this is the version I have downloaded on my old phone I use as an iPod. A bit easier to listen to.

I'll include Follow You and Run down here, as well as the lyrics to Cutthroat so you know what you're getting into if you care to listen.

This is a story I've wanted to share for a while. Glad to have the opportunity to do so now

Words: 1,130.

lyrics to Cutthroat ▼

Cutthroat music video ▼

Cutthroat rebuilt version ▼

Follow You official lyrics video ▼

Run, by OneRepublic ▼

Join "WDC Dragon Vale "

Comment • View 1 comment

June 20, 2025 at 8:05am

#1091863

The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 6

Sometimes all I think about is you
Late nights in the middle of June
Heat wave’s been faking me out
Can't make you happier now…
"Heat Waves," by Glass Animals.
video ▼

Ever since this song came out, I felt it perfectly captures the mood that comes around every June. Stifling air, short nights and long days mess with my head, and I feel as though I spend most of the fleeting darker hours lying awake, wondering what's become of my life. Things get done, somehow.

My writing goals are rolling along pretty well this month. I've cleared the third week of Rachel's Beatles Challenge, with twenty drabbles located at "Pocket Size Stories"

. I'm all caught up on "Promptly Poetry Challenge (2024-2025)"

, and a few weeks ago I passed the threshold to receive the PPC award on my "Promptly Poetry"

book. I've written three "Reflections"

stories: twelve down, two to go.

One of the stories is higher stakes, because it'll be my submission to the Quotation Inspiration, but I'm intending to write a relaxing “cozy story” and basically just chill, wrapping up my Reflections universe and bidding farewell to the characters I've spent three solid months developing. Whether it places or not is inconsequential. I intend to also submit it to Light in Mind and his Grill a Christian, to answer the question of “how do we find peace?” It may or may not be what he's looking for, but I don't think I'll have the energy for a personal philosophical monologue at the last minute, so a story will have to do.

Something I wasn't expecting to do this month is commission an exclusive Merit Badge

Thanks to the generosity of my friend Sung'manitu

who sponsored it and advised me on its usage, I now own a group and am waiting on a Raggedy Ann and Andy badge. See the group here "Love is Best When Shared"

. I'm a little nervous about how and when to hand it out… At first I thought I would have an “at-cost” giveaway party, and then I realized I can offer it to 🐕GeminiGem🎁

as one of the monthly special writing rewards at "Merit Badge Magic"

. I hope I haven't set up any false expectations as to who will receive it and who will be able to send it

Anyway, that was a learning experience, for sure. I'll be happy to own something so deeply personal and at the same time universally loveable. I also am aware of the limitations of my ownership; if there ever comes a time when I decide to close my account, I promise I will make arrangements to transfer the group to Schnujo's Doing Homework

to maintain the existence of the MB. Perhaps I should prepare a WdC will…

Now for a moment of

my "Tuscan Afternoon"

placed second at "Shadows and Light Poetry Contest"

. It's the first time I've placed higher than Honorable Mention in the year or so I've remembered to enter. A humble thank-you to Rachel and Dave for running such a high-quality contest. My PPC5 book has four ribbons on it so far.

In other news, Dan Reynolds and his brother Mac have finally announced the upcoming release of a video game they've been designing and teasing us about for years. Mac Reynolds is the band manager for Imagine Dragons, and of course Dan is lead singer and songwriter. I don't do video games, but I think if I ever did, this one they're making would be a suitable entrance to that universe. I've read the reviews from game critics who were invited to preliminary testing, and they all enjoyed it, even if they didn't think they would. (A “family friendly shooter?” That's so totally Dan Reynolds

)

While I was wrestling with stories number eleven and twelve of Reflections, I missed the kerfuffle Ryan Tedder of OneRepublic stirred up over June 14th. He expressed dismay about how the No Kings protests overshadowed the Army birthday celebration, and was promptly accused of being a Trump supporter. I don't know or particularly care what Ryan's political affiliations are, but I'm rather annoyed with him for sticking his neck out. I've already seen music critics poo-pooing 1R for being goody-two-shoes “church music.” The last thing I want to see is people claiming they're no longer 1R fans because of something he said being too “right-wing” for them. Ah well, it's just one of those social media dust-ups that'll be forgotten in a day or two. Much ado about nothing.

In the meantime, I shall write. I always do.

Words: 720 (excluding the quote in italics.)

Join "WDC Dragon Vale "

Comment • View 5 comments

June 16, 2025 at 8:39am

#1091600

Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 5

Wanna know how I became an Imagine Dragons fan? No? Well, I'll tell you anyway

I've already mentioned how I was unfamiliar with everything but the sounds of music, growing up. My musical coming of age started in 2015 (the year ID released sophomore album Smoke + Mirrors) and exploded in 2017. (The year they released their third album, Evolve.) Songs I'd been aware of for years finally took on a name and a face, so to speak.

The first song I was ever aware of from Imagine Dragons was Demons, released 2012. I knew the sound of it because we used to shop frequently at a store called Burke's Outlet, where they subscribed to SiriusXM satellite radio. Every store in the chain, in those days, had their radio set to SiriusXM The Blend, featuring a rolling playlist of perhaps fifty to a hundred current pop songs which got annoying really fast. Between 2012 and 2017, every time we walked into a Burke's Outlet, I'd be likely to hear Demons.

I never understood the lyrics, except for the words “this is my kingdom come.” That phrase alone was enough to cause suspicion, from a Christian point of view, and the song's vibe generally unnerved me, because I knew it wasn't your typical love song but I didn't know why.

At some point I googled “this is my kingdom come lyrics,” saw the names “Imagine Dragons” and “Demons” for the first time ever, and immediately assumed they were Gothic… code word in my naive mind for satanic. It's difficult and somewhat embarrassing to explain how culturally sheltered and deeply religious my upbringing was, to lead me to that conclusion. I didn't know people refer to their mental issues as demons. I thought it was a man admitting he's possessed. Combine that with the old urban legends of rock stars selling their souls to the devil for fame and fortune, and… yeah. Not good

After that, every time I heard Demons, I'd get a surprisingly strong physiological reaction of unease and dismay. This early promotional image from the Dragons, which was on their Wikipedia page for years, didn't help:

“Sulky” was the word that came to mind to describe Dan, second from right. I did not hold a high opinion of four pallid, sour-faced guys in black jackets leaning against a brick wall

The change in my perspective came with Believer, which took over the airwaves in 2017, mostly unnoticed by me at first. It wasn't until one day in August, in the mountains of Weaverville, North Carolina, I happened to have Believer blasted into my head at Walmart and picked it up on Google Sound Search.

Being always curious, I went over the lyrics, and the first thing that popped out at me was the lines “I'm the one at the sail, I'm the master of my sea.” This is a dead ringer for the lines in William Earnest Henley's poem Invictus: “I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” Which is ironic, because I've always found Invictus to be disturbing. People assume it's a rah-rah declaration of strength in pain; I saw through it as a declaration of unbridled spiritual rebellion in the face of hellfire.

In my quest to find out more about the song, the group, and why the singer tapped into Invictus, I gradually started to appreciate Imagine Dragons for what they are: decent, catchy and thought-provoking. I learned about lead singer Dan Reynolds and the autoimmune diseases he struggles with, and began to understand his mindset. In my journal, I wrote that Believer “grabbed me by the throat and wouldn't let go” until I decided to enjoy it and find my meaning in it.

After a few weeks, I was gobbling up whatever Imagine Dragons music I could find, same as OneRepublic. Possibly my most precious moment was watching the Dragons performing Thunder acoustic at the 2017 Tyler Robinson Foundation annual Gala. It was the first time I'd laid eyes on Dan Reynolds speaking and singing, and it was an enormous relief to see how normal, sweet and funny a human being he actually was. Not sulky, not possessed. Just… loveable, in a goofy, boyish way.

From then on, I had nothing to worry about and a lot to learn

Circling back to Demons, it was still a while before I could bring myself to listen to that song, unless it was live at the yearly TRF Gala, which I always made a point of watching. Oddly enough, precisely at the time when Believer was blowing up the charts, SiriusXM The Blend cut Demons out of their playlist. One of the last times they played it, I was struck by the fact that the very next song after it was Broken Road, by Rascal Flatts. Together, they told a deeper story, one I could understand. Eventually, I related Demons to the story of Beauty and the Beast, creating several art pieces combining the two.

Believe it or not, I never heard Radioactive when it exploded and made ID famous in 2012. I was familiar with Demons, vaguely familiar with It's Time—I thought it sounded rather like Bon Jovi—and conflated I Bet My Life with the Mumford and Sons song I Will Wait, but Radioactive… crickets.

It's the kind of song that if I had heard it, I would never have forgotten it. Like, “OMG, he's talking about the apocalypse! Is this the Illuminati warning us the end is near?” Seriously, my mom liked watching conspiracy theory documentaries back then, as well as channels where people would read occult messages into TV commercials and other cultural stuff. Radioactive was exactly the sort of thing I would have been deeply alarmed by, in my limited understanding of pop culture. I guess I never heard it because it was considered rock rather than pop, therefore didn't appear on the “eighties, nineties and today” stations I was usually exposed to.

So… yeah. I became an Imagine Dragons “believer” ultimately because I happened to be in the right place at the right time. Trust me, this is the abbreviated story

My journals from those days fill hundreds of virtual pages, all about music, the people who made it, the stories behind it, and what it taught me and inspired in me.

Here's the 2017 TRF Gala performance; Thunder begins at approximately 33 minutes in. I love the “secret message” that comes clear at the end: “never give up on your dreams!”

Words: 1,100.

Comment • View 3 comments

June 14, 2025 at 7:55am

#1091460

The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 4

I grew up with Winnie the Pooh, so of course I always liked Eeyore. As a kid, I didn't understand why he was always so sad, though when I read the original stories by A. A. Milne, I became more aware of the British sense of humor involved.

Did it ever occur to you that Eeyore's name is onomatopoeic? In our rural Tennessee county, the school board office was next door to a field. In that field stood a donkey. The donkey literally brayed “Eeyore” to anyone who would listen

What a delightful learning experience!

As an adult, I appreciate Eeyore's depressive and occasionally cynical nature. I like how Pooh Bear and his friends love the little purple donkey with the loose tail, and the way everyone wishes him well but doesn't try too hard to change him… although there was the Little Golden Book, Eeyore, Be Happy! which could be summed up in the Grumpy Cat catchphrase: “I had fun once. It was awful”

A few years ago, while getting over my creative collapse from the Covid lockdown, I developed the habit of taking selfies with Squishmallows in the store. This was partly because I couldn't afford to buy any of them and wanted something to remember them by. I've never been a selfie sharer, preferring to make eclectic art pieces using my unsmiling face as a surrealist element, rather than taking straightforward photos for social media purposes.

When I saw the Eeyore Squishmallow at Walgreens, of course I took a selfie with it. This was in 2021, during Imagine Dragons Mercury Act 1 era. One of the tracks from Act 1 taught me the pop psychology catchphrase “it's ok to be not ok.” I was impressed with the concept at the time, assuming it to be unique.

For me, it wasn't a big leap at all to draw an artistic connection between my Eeyore selfie and the mental health/self esteem message of the song. I'd been creating art combining song lyrics with innovative images for years. I worked with the image in my favorite Android photo editor, Photo Studio, and created this:

Later, in 2022, Imagine Dragons was celebrating the tenth anniversary of their debut album Night Visions. They released several previously unheard-of tracks from their vault, and I found one of those to be especially soothing: Easy.

I remembered my Eeyore selfie and came up with a fresh idea. I wrote out the lyrics to Easy in my best “pandemic cursive,” snapped a picture of it, and layered the transparent sheet of words over my image, resulting in:

Not sure how to do that again… I haven't used those photo editing techniques in years. I impress myself sometimes, looking back at the intricate digital art pieces I made on my phones in those days.

I've only ever shared these two pictures with one person, a close pen pal. I treasure these, because they entwine so much of what I love: music, art, handwriting, autumn, worldview, stuffed animals, Eeyore. I was still wearing my mask because of Covid; you can see it under my chin. I wasn't smiling, because it was supposed to be a solemn picture. Generally, I look more artistic when I'm not trying to “happy grin” for photos.

So… if any of you ever wanted to know what I look like, now you know

I may remove the pictures someday, or I'll probably just let this blog post sink into the sands of time. Enjoy!

Oh, and here are the two ID songs. The picture is best suited to Easy, in my opinion, but It's Ok is appropriate as well.

Words: 628.

Comment • View 3 comments

June 13, 2025 at 8:05am

#1091393

The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 3

Ever since I had a smartphone, I was using Google Docs to stash notes on my dream novel. I had everything in my head that I wanted, and I scribbled down character studies, themes, worldview, plot points, settings, sample scenes, and even goofy little things like a pop song ringtone and make and model of car for each character. I collected stock photos and pictures of actors that looked like my characters. Even the heroine's dog, Barkley, became embodied in a stuffed Wire Fox Terrier. I did everything except write the novel

I was always interested in designing my own book covers, and made myself a bunch of amateur digital collages which were more like concept boards than anything else. In those days the novel was called It Takes Courage.

In 2017, though, my novel obsession was pushed aside by my music obsession. I grew and matured and learned so much about the world, that when I peeked back into my old Google Doc a few years later, I was rather embarrassed at how naive and simplistic I had been.

So the novel returned to its place in my head, where I lived in the ever evolving yet steadily looping world I'd created in a way similar to Peter Pan's Neverland. It was always in the back of my head to write it someday.

One of the fun things I did in 2023, prior to joining WdC, was to install the Novelist app on my brand new Galaxy phone. If I remember correctly, I did so because I had installed Hoopla and read some fiction for the first time in several years, and it had reignited my novel dream.

My attempt at using the app petered out soon enough, but with a fresh look at committing my same old novel ideas once again to words on a screen, I gave it a new title: All My Secrets Away, inspired by the chorus of the 2007 OneRepublic song Secrets.

With the new title came a desire for a new book cover. I realized by now that a square, collage style image wasn't especially professional. This novel rehash was during my AI art obsession, so naturally I turned to Wombo Dream to help me make a cover.

In those days, AI art was generally super primitive, only beginning to rise out of a “primordial slime” of abstract blobs and swirls. I played around with prompts and settled for an approximation of a hand held up, sending off a flock of birds.

As you can see, it was an awfully sloppy image, but I liked the concept and how it related to the revealing of secrets.

So… after WdC, I discovered I didn't really want to write a novel at all. Apparently what I thrive at is short stories. I've spent the past two years honing my writing skills, moving away from my old constantly looping Neverland into a vastly more interesting and mentally healthy space.

Recently, though, it occurred to me that using today's advanced language model AIs, specifically ChatGPT, I would now be able to create a far more professional book cover exactly to my specifications. I could even have it add the title, without needing to bring the image file into a conventional photo editor to add text like in “the old days.”

So that's what I did. The image ChatGPT gave me is precisely what I wanted and what I described to it. The process was simple; the ability to write conversationally instead of in the brusque way the dedicated AI art generators expect is a huge improvement.

So… yeah. Two covers of a novel I will probably never write, but that occupied my headspace for a number of years. It grew with me, matured with me, and when I no longer needed it in my head, it was tucked away into various corners of my Google suite.

Here also, OneRepublic's Secrets

Words: 660.

Comment • View 1 comment

June 12, 2025 at 7:29am

#1091312

The Bard's Hall, June 2025, Entry 2

As I begin prepping this blog post, I'm sitting in a Walmart parking lot, waiting on an order. The din of noisy vehicles and clashing carts only slightly masks the music filtering down from the wall-mounted store radio, which is currently playing the “wrong way on a one-way track” song.

Every time I've heard that over the years, I think it's Tom Petty's voice and style. It isn't. It's from Soul Asylum, a 2004 song called Runaway Train. I haven't heard it in a long while, so I fell into the same delusion this time as well until I remembered it.

My idea today (at posting time, this means yesterday…) was to write a goals check-in, to let y'all know how I'm doing with that hefty to-do list I ran down at the beginning of the month. So…

I'm halfway through Rachel's Beatles Challenge, having written fourteen drabbles (really thirteen and one slightly longer poem.) I completed Merit Badge Magic, Cubby's Writing 4 Kids, and the 48 Hour Media Prompt Challenge. I'm up to date on Promptly Poetry, though nervous at the thought of composing a poem with unspecified iambic meter…

I wrote one out of the five remaining "Reflections"

tracks. And I've completed Hook of the Book.

Most of these are “small fry” for me, bits of writing under 1k words that get added to a book item or my blog, or in the case of the Book Hook, go solely to a forum. I have potentially three other, more important contests I want to combine the last of Reflections with: Kit’s Share Your Faith, Light in Mind’s Grill a Christian, and the Official WdC contest, which is Quotation Inspiration this month.

Last time I entered Quotation Inspiration, in February, I didn't take it seriously enough and ended up shoehorning the offered quote into something which, although a perfectly good story, did not meet the judges expectations. So this month I wanted to either take it seriously, or maybe on the flip side, just relax and have fun writing what I want, without the pressure. It seems like a flexible quote that could lend itself to the final story of Reflections.

I thought of bragging about the compliment I received from my new friend Kazi yesterday on "I Get Carried Away"

, or how my old friend Jack was impressed with "The Man in the Hat"

and will review it today, or being featured in two newsletters this week, but I don't want to be vain or tedious. If there's anything I learned from the kerfuffles last summer, it's an awareness of my tendency to be an obnoxious brat, and that's never a good way to behave.

I also thought of chattering excitedly about the process of writing Reflections, because I shared some of that with Brian K Compton in a review earlier, but… it ain't over yet

I would rather look back on it than try to analyze it for others while still in progress. And besides, that should be a separate (lengthy!) entry, which I should probably crosslink with the folder intro… which will need to be rewritten as a proper introduction to what I’ve created, rather than merely an explanation of why I chose that album.

One thing I need to keep working on is patience, both here and in real life. I have the disruptive tendency to panic at the beginning of the month, spinning my wheels knocking as many things off my to-do list as quickly as possible, because I'm afraid something terrible will happen and I won't have a chance to do anything anymore. For whatever reason, I fear the fragility and instability of life. This relates to a lack of faith and a tendency towards cynicism and nihilism. I need to find peace and take one day at a time, without anxiety for the future.

Here's the Tom Petty sound-alike song to conclude with. I've never listened to it with earbuds, only heard it in my surroundings, so I don't know how much it really resembles Petty's music “up close and personal.”

Words: 680.

Join "WDC Dragon Vale "

Comment • View 4 comments

June 8, 2025 at 6:30am

#1091035