Destiny Calling

“Destiny Calling” (James - The Best of James - Destiny Calling) came on the old iTunes today… I don’t know what it is about this piece of music, but it sets off something… well, I was going to say literary, but maybe we’ll call it “something of the writerly mind.” Well, that also sounds lame. In fact, admitting to liking James and that particular song may make me lame. I have no idea, really, if it’s cool to like them or not. All I know is I saw their last concert before Tim Booth left the band, and they were one of the best live performances I’ve ever seen.

It’s one of those songs that just sets off a whole slew of memories of living in that dingy little third (fourth) floor apartment in Brooklyn with the writing desk gotten from the guy down the block who claimed to have been good friends with Miles Davis and always alluded to something… something with the Black Panthers and even Mike Tyson. Nizam was his name. Interesting guy. Memories of working on (and finishing) that first novel, walking across Atlantic Ave that one morning to get to the subway station and nearly being blown down the street by violent gusts of wind. The heat breaking on a lonely New Years Eve in front of the television, piled high with blankets and a mild cold due to the aforementioned broken heating system. The cockroaches, soon to be scared off by the cat from hell my roommates brought home. Typing on that PowerBook 1400 (I didn’t know that off the top of my head, I had to look it up). Returning home from my first trip to London, having finished “Timequake” (Kurt Vonnegut) on the flight back to JFK, dropping my bags in my bedroom, turning on the CD player with that James CD, powering up the PowerBook, running in, having a shower with the apartment empty, “Destiny Calling” blasting, and having to cut it short to dash out and write the story, “Destiny Calling, (PDF link)” right there and then.

At any rate, why am I telling you this? I suppose it’s because I’ve a sort of fresh reaction to the song because I just recently saw the theme of music on a writing prompt site (you may need to reload a few times to get it to come up – the gist of it is about letting the song in your head, or the first one that comes to mind be your muse). What’s the song that’s gotten you going?

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