obsolete_theory

My mind is somewhat boggled at my current streak of luck. Even as some things in my life continue to go poorly, I had excellent fortune at the library yesterday. I found a book. An awesome, awesome looking book. It was the only one in the library like it! And I got it out. ^_^

So, to give this discovery context, I've been working on a fanfic. You know, the vaguely nautical, AU Saiyuki one. And I've been listening to a lot of sea chanties and stuff to help set the mood for when I write some of the parts for this story. And then, I got kind of curious about the actual songs themselves (and, in fact, I wrote that ballad, drawing influences from sea chanty styles and motifs.)

Well! The book I found? It's a historical collection, with context, of (I think) North American sea chanties and, as if sea chanties weren't cool enough, lumberjack songs! XD It's a massive, massive book, containing something like two hundred songs in it. I'm really excited to take a look at the lyrics and forms and stuff. Who knows? Maybe I'll take another crack at writing sea chanties...

I can only guess that printed works on sea chanties are somewhat of a rarity. And, even if they're not as rare as I think they are--being devoted to such a particular area of music/history--I'm flat out amazed that my library had any books on the subject at all! Not that my library is a bad library, or even a really small library, but the discrepancies in the collection continually surprise me. There will be tons of books on, say, woodworking, but almost none for a comparable craft. Or, how about this? The visual arts section--paintings, et. al. was about five times as large as the music section, and within the music section, there were three times as many books on opera as classical music.

Anyway, must away to do errands and chores!

~ciao

Okay, so I spent a little while today writing a ballad. Yeah. A ballad. An actual ballad....(It's not done yet, but soon I shall have a full rough draft of it. ^_^) Ballads are awesome vehicles for narrative, really they are. But it isn't an ordinary ballad, in my opinion. I've been listening to sea chanties a lot lately, to help with the mood for the mer-Gojyo Saiyuki story which continues to eat my brains. So I've tried to incorporate some of the stylistic elements of sea chanties into the ballad. (Namely, chanties tend to repeat phrases/lines because they're made to go with repetitive work...and also because that makes them easy to remember/sing.)

The part I am in a quandary about is where/if to stick it in with the rest of the story. Is it too ridiculous to break from normal chapters to put in what is, technically, a poem? (If I could compose music to suit it, I totally would. As it stands, it is music-less.) Should I just have it hanging around as a sort of bonus? Is anyone even interested in reading this utter crack?

If I were to put it in with the rest of the chapters, I have a couple of choices as to where it might fit. I'm reluctant to talk about where it might fit in in detail, just because I haven't posted the chapters it could go with, but basically...I'm looking at before certain chapters versus after them. If you had your druthers, would you choose to read the backstory on a character sooner or later? (Not that I'm not going to cover the backstory in the regular prose narrative...) Can I get away with sticking this poem about a character's past in before the character is even properly introduced in the story?

....okay. I give. I'll put in just the smidgingest smidgen of the ballad. It doesn't really spoil anything, especially when you consider that, historically, ballads tend to contain only a partial or skewed truth (assuming they're documenting a real event at all.)

Chin Yisou was a foolish man,
a foolish man was he.
He hurt Cho Gonou's dear Kanaan
and fled across the sea.

Decisions, decisions. Also, I have no idea if I'm going to be doing more ballads or not. Would it be weird to have four or five chapters of story, then a ballad, and then more story followed by another ballad? Not that I see a lot of writing that mixes them both together at all. Truthfully, the only instance I can think of at the moment is Jane Yolen's Great Alta saga--"Sister Light, Sister Dark"; "White Jenna"; and "The One-Armed Queen." (Awesome books, by the by.)

Augh. Brains spinning with ideas! Maybe I'll work on it some more...

~ciao