_{*Yes, it's heavily inspired by My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. No, I don't know the band. No, I'm not doing this for profit. You know. In case anyone asked...}

...Than Starbucks.

So here it is, 1:20AM. I have currently running both of the Dresden Dolls albums that I own (minus a song from each, because they are two songs I'm not particularly interested in hearing tonight) and working on two stories at once. Not major work; for major work, I only focus on one. It's just little snippets--a bit of fooling around here, a bit of apologizing there...that sort of thing. Whichever one I work on seems to change depending what song comes up next. Right now, "Slide" is playing, and instead of writing in either story, I'm blogging. I'll probably blog right through most of "Truce" and then go back to either the fooling around or the apologizing once the dramatic piano kicks in towards the end. Blogging. That word still mystifies me.

("Blog you!" "Go blog yourself." They're jokes you won't get unless you were there--like "HAW-HEE!"--but you know. They're funny in their own way.)

I wonder what it is that connects my writing so deeply to music. It fascinates me. I can write in silence, but a good lot of my work stems from music. I can't walk into an FYE and leave without buying something. I hit up the Zune Marketplace constantly, buying/downloading whole CDs like a fiend. Last Saturday, I started tweaking on the car ride home because my Zune was showing the low battery symbol. (Which, if you don't own a Zune, looks like a battery with the ! in it.) I have a serious addiction to building playlists when I write stories. My biggest highlight in recent weeks has been the 16 CDs I got in the mail today (along with some other really, really, really neat stuff). I'm freaking that I won't get to see Lola Ray in August and that Projekt Revolution is still so very far away--and amazed that I have one of the best fucking seats in the house for that show. My biggest influences at the moment include (and are certainly not limited to) four guys from Jersey plus their drummer from Chicago, a piano/drums duo from Boston, a group from Indiana and still another group from Brooklyn. Oh, and of course there's still yet that other band that started in Chicago...

And let's not get started on my renewed love for stringed quartets and trios. Please.

Writing is my background, is what I love and what I'm good at, but I don't read as much as I used to--though I still read quite a bit. But there's only so much you can get from your given medium. There's only so much I can learn from Stephen King or Neil Gaiman or Emily Dickinson or even the great Poe and Shakespeare. An artist who only consorts and learns from their own medium is an artist stunted in development. One has to look elsewhere for opinion, inspiration and influence. It doesn't do to stay reading books all the time for me. I have to hear people talk; I have to see them move or I risk failing at what I want to bring through. Or so goes my thought...

I think that's what makes music so great. With music, you basically have to move around. You have to make noise. You can't stay still and flat, or what's the point? You have to move around. You have to be energetic. I have this picture of Frank Iero from MCR sent to me recently--proving once again that Frank is both A) fucking awesome and B) a perfect example of what I think I'm trying to express--that just left me stunned. What I love about watching him on stage is how much he moves. How alive he is. He plays and he really gives himself to the music and the crowd and just the moment in itself...

But I think you probably stopped paying attention after I said "I have this picture of Frank Iero from MCR..." Right? Alright, alright. I'll show you. Because I'm nice that way. And because it helps me prove my point anyway.



I can't say why this picture, exactly, does what it does for me. But it's one of my favorites. He's one of my favorite musicians to watch in action--yes, even more so than Mr. Gerard Way--and this picture captures it beautifully. It...well...to me, it highlights so much of what I keep trying to pin down on paper, among other things. A sense of life. A sense of vibrancy that just transcends words read on paper. Although I'm sure there are plenty willing to say that I have succeeded (and believe me, I can see it, too), but I still have some work to do. There are areas that are still awkward to me that I guess will always be awkward, perhaps because they're supposed to be awkward... But I don't think it would hurt to be able to write them without having to stop every few words without second-guessing myself.

I think this is why I write most of the really good stuff late at night. Less inhibition, less distraction...and I can listen to all the music I want without interruption from anyone else!

Albeit, all at a low volume. It's never very good to wake up the whole house at two o'clock in the morning.

---

The whole look of him at this distance is dazzling. His eyes seem darker, more intense. With his eyes half-lidded the way they are, the color shows brilliantly through the fan of his long, dark lashes. (Bedroom eyes, she thinks. They call the look “bedroom eyes”.) If she had pen and paper, she’d romanticize him and his look to the point of making him angelic and pure when really he seems about as pure as city snow and almost…dangerous, in a way. Like handling-a-weapon dangerous. Like firecrackers… He’ll blow you up if you don’t pay attention. And she’s sure--in some good way, obviously--that he’s done that for everyone written down in his black book. And being a girl of twenty as she is, pinned beneath him when he happens to be showing serious interest in her, it’s hard to remember that he’s faking it. She’s never quite had a boy (Living or Dead) get this close before. Even Present, for all his lessening in nervousness about intimacy between them, has never been quite like this. He’s always been careful…careful… Always pulling away when the kisses start to scare him or still subtly flinching when she hugs him. He has his reasons, sure, but sometimes she wishes that he would be a bit more like Viticus. More daring. More bold.

And yet…even if it’s all pretend, acting as if he really wants her is something of which she has never really experienced. And he really is quite convincing at it…

---

Cheers, kids. Substitution can be a wonderful little thing.




<sub>PS: Anyone going to an MCR show soon? Take Gerard a Subway sandwich. You know what kind. See if he gets the joke.

Kidding! Naturally. Maybe.</sub>

Edit: I'm thinking about submitting this blog (or most of it) as a News article. Thoughts? Opinions?