Ὅσον ζῇς, φαίνου,
μηδὲν ὅλως σὺ λυποῦ·
πρὸς ὀλίγον ἐστὶ τὸ ζῆν,
τὸ τέλος ὁ xρόνος ἀπαιτεῖ.”

“While you live, shine
Don't suffer anything at all;
Life exists only a short while
And time demands its toll”

Song of Seikilos, oldest surviving complete musical composition, somewhere between 200BC-100BC.

I've spent a surprising amount of time researching music for NaNoWriMo this year - hours one day looking into wax cylinders and variants, how they worked and how they sounded and the sort of music that was put on them. Hours another day looking into music from ancient Greece, the instruments and lyrics and actual sound of the songs. The Song of Seikilos is short enough, and sweet enough, that I decided to teach it to myself - I occasionally forget a word or two here and there, but after repeating it 4783902 times, I finally got it down. (It's a tough melody, to our current music system... plus, obviously, I knew no Greek prior to this.)

The words to Seikilos really struck me on first reading - while there are older tunes, and more eerie melodies, this one seemed... oddly accessible, actually. The words could have as easily been written today. The song isn't a long list of the attributes of deities, or hero's praise... just a short, sweet little thing. Brief enough that I could have a character sing it in my story, and then I realized how struck by it another character would be, and with as light and happy as the song could be, it would make a really nice scene.

I'm happily surprised by how much joy has worked its way into the novel this year. I hadn't planned for Mephisto to be happy much at all, really, and here he is absolutely rapturous. (Definitely going to have to re-build the scene where it all falls apart - it's nowhere near epic enough anymore!)

...anyway, point of all this being. I've been listening to a set of U2 outtakes (mainly "Mercy", obsessively), and singing Song of Seikilos. "Love puts the blue back in my eye, love will come again...", "while you live, shine", and it's had me all warm and fuzzy and safe and happy, despite the occasional bouts of drama around.

Next post (which I'm not allowed to write until AFTER I get my wordcount in for the day! I shouldn't have done this post either, but, it got longer as I wrote), will be the story of our Thanksgiving trip to NC - and the fact that I am now engaged.

^________________________^

(...honestly? I just felt there HAD to be a buffer here. My last post, I was so angry at Tom! So frustrated and $^#*@(*! and upset, leading up to the trip. Trip itself went fine, and became really lovely, and then I got proposed to and could barely speak for an hour. Bit of an extreme.)

Labels: life in general, music, nanowrimo, reference, writing