Hey, everyone! This Ellie. It’s been a bit of a long day and a longer night, but things are quiet and calm as the sun is coming up. So I’ve put our cozy East Coast playlist on and am rambling here to get my thoughts out before I finally pass out for a while. I had an idea to write about the first song that comes up here and any associations that come up with it. The song that came on first was “I Wish I Was The Moon” by Neko Case, an exquisite and warm sounding folky song (I apologize for not being the most articulate at present). Fortunately, I have associations aplenty with this song via my headmate Allēna’s memories.

It All Started In Our Teens

Allēna may have in fact wished she was the moon when she discovered Neko Case in the system’s teens (see: our Tragic Backstory and Lore) but we didn’t discover “I Wish I Was The Moon” first. Instead, Allēna heard a song of Case’s playing on our local public radio station back where we grew up in Texas, “Night Still Comes”. At the time, she was taking a break from writing the story that would later become her science fiction audio drama The Third Prophecy and preparing to revisit her post-apocalyptic novel 2029, which she had written entirely longhand some years prior when she couldn’t access the Internet during school days. As she reconstructed 2029 in her mind, she played “Night Still Comes” on a loop. She played the goddamn thing so many times, in fact, that our brother, Blue, loudly complained about it to anyone who would listen.

2029 and Other Writings

I will put it to you all bluntly, 2029 sucked ass the whole way down. There are no two ways about it. However, it was a fascinating concept she simply didn’t have the skill at the time to execute. Set in the nearish future in Central Texas after a massive solar storm takes out all of the power worldwide, it was chillingly prescient in a lot of ways, especially in light of the recent solar storms in the past few months, and considering that she began work on the story when she was only fourteen!

She also later married a man she had based a character off of, Fang, who was an unhinged Doomsday prepper in the story. This ended up not being too far from the truth. When she revisited the story, however, she drew heavily from “Night Still Comes” and music like it, creating a very dark folk/alt country soundtrack for herself to listen to while she wrote. She followed this pattern for a lot of her later work, as well, using the music she loved to listen to as a tool to help with world building and to unblock her when she got stuck. I believe she made a grand total of four playlists while drafting the first Third Prophecy audio drama that we later combined into one huge playlist.

With the first Third Prophecy audio drama, the musical tie ins went a bit deeper than simple musical accompaniment. While not necessary to understand the plot, several songs did play key roles in helping her shape the setting and determine where the story was going. One such example of this is a town called Sunday. She named the town Sunday in honor of a song she cherished, “Sunday Bloody Sunday” by U2. Now, I don’t want to spoil anything for you, but if you listen to the song and read the script (or listen to it once we have a production of it ready), you’ll notice some, ah, key similarities. These are intentional.

What About The East Coast Playlist Itself? What Is That One For?

If you recall, we’re practicing sorcerers. This playlist is, in simplest terms, a spell. It’s intended to manifest a move back to the East Coast over time. Eight made a mad dash to Philadelphia in 2021 and had to leave pretty shortly thereafter, but we keep getting summoned out there for one reason or another about once yearly and we miss it every day in the interim. So we want to move back there and stay there. The East Coast is home, even though we were born and raised in Texas. We feel like we’re in exile living in the Midwest in the meantime, and we hate it here, to be entirely honest.

Yet, while we’re stuck out here, we are determined to make the best of it to the fullest extent of our ability. And if we hadn’t moved out here, we would have never met our beloved Emerson, so good things come even from shitty situations sometimes. He feels even more like home than the East Coast does, and he makes this place with its overly friendly people tolerable. He’s a very sweet baby.

So three cheers for a very slow acting spell in the form of this delightful East Coast playlist! Hip, hip, huzzah! You get the picture..

In Closing

I hope any of this made sense. Having a brain that feels like it is filled with 85% cotton balls and 15% water has its challenges. Mostly in the form of wet cotton. Oh, hey, “Angelina” by Pinegrove is on, but that’s a ramble for a different day. Now, if you will excuse me, I have a snake themed rager in the headspace to crash attend. I mean, attend. You didn’t see anything. It wasn’t me, I swear!

Stay tuned for more magic (and strange rambles), as always!

-Ellie, Your Faithful Super-Admin