Friday 28 August 2015

“The Green Fairy Speaks” (Preface)




A few years ago, I heard a song called “Dark Waltz” sung by Jackie Evancho on PBS. It was eerie as heck, hearing this very grown up lament sung by an eleven-year-old girl who sounded like a thirty-year-old woman. I tried to find her version of it on Youtube, but found this one instead. The video is glorious, the song perfect, and while not sung in the same mezzo soprano as the kid’s, Viktoria Tocca’s rendition does justice enough to the sentiment.

Who knows why something doesn’t ignite right away? I loved the song on first hearing, but wasn’t inspired to write from it until a few weeks ago. While one might automatically think “vampire”, the lyrics actually struck me as something that might be applied to someone on the precipice between this life and the next. It’s sad, it’s haunting, it’s romantic… as my Nicole would say, le sigh.

Imagine my surprise when a character I hardly know stepped up to finish a story begun more than a year ago, where a Parisian waiter named François rescued a girl named Odette from the clutches of her artist admirers. I wrote a fairly lengthy sequel to the original piece, but less has turned out to be more. It goes up tomorrow.

And so their story ends.

Enjoy.

No comments:

Post a Comment