Good afternoon, readers.
On this week’s Inspiration Through Music song, I’ll be focusing on one particular song that heavily inspired one project of mine. This untitled project (from now on called U.P.) is on the back burner while I finish The Monstrum Chronicles. I usually like to work on many different projects all at once. But the U.P. is a big idea with many characters and many plot threads. The Monstrum Chronicles is similarly complex and a longer series. I can’t focus on both at once so alas, this will have to wait.
30 Seconds to Mars released an utterly beautiful song a few years ago in 2009 entitled, “Hurricane.” While the lyrics are powerful and dig straight to the heart, the main controversy over this song was attributed to the music video that Jared Leto released for it. The video doesn’t have anything to do with the inspiration that I drew from the song so I won’t be discussing it.
For some reason or another, the first thing that enters my mind when I think of Hurricane is that several characters are all involved in one seminal event. Damage has occurred all around. Everyone’s reactions and emotions about it are varied. No one can imagine what’s going to happen next. While I haven’t quite figured out what central event draws these characters together, I know that it isn’t science fiction or horror related. This book is more in the vein of the 2005 movie “Crash“. That, my friends, is what I think of when I listen to this song.
There are several characters, all wrapped up in their own lives, who slowly are drawn together by connections that seem unlikely and may have good and bad connotations. There will definitely be dark subject matter in the story but I want for there to be innocence and lightness as well.
The beginning 35 seconds of the song suggest to me that the story begins at the anticlimax and then goes back to explain how the characters reached that point. There’s something that builds here, as if things are about to come to a head but we don’t understand exactly why. We need to be introduced to the characters and their lives. So we go back.
In “Hurricane”, I get the impression that the person singing the song is pleading with someone not to kill him/her. This can either be taken metaphorically or literally. He/she has done something terrible to this person, something that would in most cases be unforgivable. How far will this person go for love? Will they kill him/her to save their own principals, to avenge themselves, etc? Each verse of that song also pertains to a different character and a different situation that they are ensnared in. In the end, they are all “chased” by a hurricane, a storm of magnificent proportions that will eventually run them down. So they continue to hide from it “underground.” I know the hurricane won’t be literal in this case. Whether or not they all have the same “hurricane” or different ones has yet to be decided.
While allot of this book is still in the pre-planned stage, I do have an older manuscript of about sixty pages written. I’ve got three main characters down but I’ve got many more to figure out.
Other inspiration for U.P. came from 2011 PS3 game, Heavy Rain, the television series, Damages, and the television series, Prison Break.
Next week on Inspiration Through Music, I will be focusing on Javier Navarrette’s haunting original score for the film “Pan’s Labyrinth” and which songs have inspired aspects of my writing.
Until then,
KSilva
The Kat At Night 