I have somewhere in the ballpark of 20,000 songs in my music library, which translates to just shy of 2,000 albums. Earlier this year I wrote a blog post in which I came up with the definitive list of my 10 favorite albums:
4 - “A Thousand Suns” by Linkin Park. Percussive, aggressive electronic post-millennial rock. A masterpiece of the genre.
That’s #4. Out of about 2,000.
I wouldn’t call “A Thousand Suns” a true concept album in the sense of having characters and a plot line linking the songs together, but it’s definitely the kind of thematic work that is best appreciated as an entire continuous piece instead of a collection of individual songs. It was a huge departure for a band widely seen as one of the originators of the rap-metal genre. For this album, the metal side of the music had been downplayed in favor of a broader, heavily electronic sonic palette. It was hugely divisive throughout Linkin Park fandom when it came out, as either being a groundbreaking work or too much of a departure.
I firmly came down on the groundbreaking side.
The two frontmen of the band, Chester Bennington and Mike Shinoda, had always been an incredible vocal tandem, whether they were alternating between singing and rapping or melodically complementing each other. Mike has always been the kind of frightfully gifted artist that forces people to look past the stigma of someone playing loud music in a rock band not having any talent. Chester’s vocal range could go all the way from melodic and lullaby-gentle to a scream of pure rage that would hurt your throat just to hear.
For me, favorite songs or albums, the real favorites that resonate in the core of my being, usually aren’t the ones I learn to love after months or years, but instead connect with me almost right away. From the beginning I could tell “A Thousand Suns” would be something different. I actually wrote a very short blog post about my reaction on the day it came out:
It was release day for Linkin Park's new album "A Thousand Suns." I downloaded it before going to school this morning, and have played through it twice now.
At the risk of falling into cliché territory, it's really next-level stuff for them. Not so much metal, more industrial but still melodic, and very dark and moody.
I can barely wait for the next time I feel depressed so I can put it on and really enjoy it in the way it seems to have been intended.
In another short post five months later, I added this:
Being there now I can honestly say...wow.
This was in the wake of my dog dying. Yeah, I was sad about that, but in retrospect losing the dog and the dark months that followed were ultimately less about losing him and more about other feelings being triggered. If you were around in those days and saw what I was going through and were concerned about how badly I was hurting…well, that concern was not misplaced.
Everyone has pain. Despite the facades we put forth on social media, or the smiles we use in real life to hide it, or the mindless, reflexive way we answer the questions “How are you?” or “How have you been?” with “Fine,” we all have something we keep hidden. The lucky ones, the people closest to being actually happy, are either fortunate enough to have less pain than most, or they’ve just found ways to manage their hurt.
We aren’t all there, though. Some of us need help. But help isn’t always going to take the same form. Sometimes we need something external to help articulate the pain, to translate what we feel. To show us we aren’t the only ones struggling. We need something that will give us a place to retreat while we heal that will also provide us with the extra strength needed to push our way out of whatever we’re enduring.
When you’re touched by the emotion an artist implants into their work, it stays with you. You feel connected to the artist that brought that into the world, since you know that, at some level, they understand what you’re going through.
After decades of being a fan, I finally saw Linkin Park perform live at the Minnesota State Fair a few years ago, while they were on tour to support their album “The Hunting Party.” It was a great outdoor show. A band I was barely aware of, AFI, opened, and played a few songs I liked from the album of theirs I had downloaded in preparation of the show. 30 Seconds to Mars played in the second spot. Jared Leto was a great frontman and they put on an energetic show; their album “This is War” is another favorite of mine, and I enjoyed hearing so many songs from it.
Linkin Park came out just as darkness was beginning to settle. It was a musically tight show with plenty of vocal superpowers on display from Chester and Mike. The lasting image that has stuck with me all this time has been from a vocal break during their performance of “Final Masquerade,” when Chester was spinning around on the stage, arms out, eyes closed, retreating into his music, maybe hiding from whatever pain brought on his suicide this past week.
Hopefully he was finding a moment of safety in the beauty and power of his song from whatever the pain was that plagued him. It's horrible to think that one of the people who had helped pull so many millions of people through their own hard times couldn't find a way to escape his own.
Dear Hollywood,
“A Wrinkle in Time” was the book that defined my childhood. There is no book in all of literature I have reread more; I would conservatively put the number at more than twenty times.
This was the book that introduced me to science fiction, real hard-core science fiction that took advantage of actual science. It was the book that pushed me beyond reading about Henry Huggins and the Hardy boys in 3rd grade, and got me to borrow something from the school library other than the popular collection of Peanuts cartoons or the enormous book of D’Aulaires’ Greek Myths. Encountering this book and the first Star Wars movie within a year of each other was probably the most formative pair of experiences I had in becoming a writer. My almost nine-year-old brain stood no chance.
This was the book that inspired another author, decades later, to write her own science-based science fiction story, which became one of the most popular books I’ve ever read to a class. Because this other book, “When You Reach Me,” referenced “A Wrinkle in Time” so heavily, the students demanded I read it as a follow-up, and I was all too happy to oblige them.
I’m not saying its perfect, but even its imperfections are things I’ve come to love, because they are such important parts of the book. (For example, I never bought Calvin caring so much about displaying proper manners in a moment of crisis that he would have had the presence of mind to yell, “Tesser, sir!”)
The teaser trailer for “A Wrinkle in Time” went online yesterday. I watched it, hoping to spot the filmmaker’s visualizations of important characters and scenes and settings from the book.
I was dismayed by the sight of so many palm trees.
Never in my life did I ever think of Mrs. Whatsit looking anything like Reese Witherspoon.
I understand giving big stars screen time, but Mr. Murry, although serving as the catalyst for the entire story, was a minor character at best. Why was Chris Pine featured in half of the trailer?
Is Oprah’s Mrs. Which pep talk speech to Meg happening when she delivers her alone to Camazotz? Because Mrs. Which is supposed to be INTANGIBLE. And don’t get me started on the voice.
Why was there so much running and screaming? The book was an adventure, but one based more on philosophy and science than action. Was that sandstorm looking thing destroying the forest supposed to be The Black Thing? Because…no. Just, no. The Black Thing was more presence than present.
Why are the kids bouncing red balls in unison in a cul-de-sac?
Why are Meg and Calvin basically the same height?
What about all those weird planets? Am I just having a hard time reconciling those images with what I’ve seen in my head for the last forty years, or have has the visionary director gone that far off book?
And on top of it all: A spooky cover of a crappy Eurythmics song was the best match you could find for the teaser soundtrack?
Please, please don’t screw this up. It would break my heart to have to skip this, but I’ll do that before I let any multi-million dollar attempt at creative reinvention ruin the book for me.
View the trailer, and cross your fingers
One day in early spring, I was struck with one of those “what if” ideas that sometimes come to writers, if they’re lucky. I talked with a friend about it and told her what I wanted to try. She immediately began throwing questions at me, pushing me to branch off in new directions and add layers to what I was thinking. My answers fell into place so easily it was more like discovering a story outline that already existed than working to create a new one; it was kind of an extraordinary ten minutes. I let the whole thing percolate for a few weeks, getting into a habit of frequently adding to a list of ideas on my phone whenever they came to me.
About a month later I spoke with Carrie, partly so we could discuss some client-agent business and so I could tell her about the new idea. She encouraged me to spend time reading books similar to what I had in mind, giving the ideas more time to develop, and then start working on it in earnest when I reached summer break. We agreed on a word count goal and a deadline for me, so I could share my progress with her.
Summer arrived and I slipped into a writing habit that was soon dominating my waking hours. I gave myself permission to put aside the list of summertime chores I had in front of me, instead investing that time into building the word count. The writing quickly jumped outside of my usual process; I wasn’t mapping things out but writing with only a vague outline, forcing me to figure out how the details came together, to learn who the characters were, and to discover the motivations and machinations that would drive everything forward.
This brought on another big change for me: Without realizing it at first, I was telling the story chronologically. This is kind of a big deal, since I usually jump around through the story then fit it all together later. So far I haven't needed to do that, because the part I've always wanted to write the most has been whatever happens next.
I reached the goal Carrie and I had set, even a few days early, which gave me time for some quick proofreading before I sent the first chunk off to her. Some of the writing was still very much first draft ugly, but some of it wasn’t. More importantly for me, the story was coming together in ways I was excited about.
It’s the last day of June as I write this. I’ve ended more days than not this month feeling physically and mentally exhausted in the best possible ways. I’ve worked on, and even completed, a handful of manuscripts in the past couple years, but those have all largely been misfires. That’s not the case with this one so far. In fact, I’d go as far as to say that I haven’t had a story fall into place as readily as this since the original draft of “Following Infinity,” which is giving me a lot of hope right now.
I don’t want to give much away, but, if you’re curious, I’ll tease you with some of the comparisons I offered Carrie back when I was first getting started. Think of it as “Ghostbusters” meets “The Sandlot” meets “IT,” with a healthy dose of the “Welcome to Night Vale” podcast thrown in the mix to weird everything up, and even a touch of Harry Potter, specifically “The Goblet of Fire,” for reasons I won’t discuss. As of today the word count sits just a little north of 27,000, which would translate into roughly one hundred double-spaced pages.
I’ll do another progress post at the end of July, both to let interested people know how things are going and to help myself stay accountable.
Until then, I’ve got some word count to build….
