I can only hear Noir in my head, but they are very loud there. The way I work — my way into story and character — is through mirror neurons, and so my people live large within me. To me they are utterly real.
But, sadly, not real in the “let me play you this really cool song by Noir” way: so the best I can offer is a selection of what goes through their ears when they plug into other people’s music. Think of it as a random sampler of the iPods of Noir (ouch, that sounds like something from a bad fantasy novel, but never mind).
This is a longer playlist, eight songs — two each from Duncan, Johnny, Angel and Con. You do not need to have read their story to appreciate (or not) their taste in music: but perhaps if you have enjoyed traveling with them, you’ll find some fun here.
Duncan’s always a little dramatic: from him, you get Gotye and Nine Inch Nails, and he’s planning to send an audience right over the edge with them any day now — there won’t be a dry eye or a dry seat in the house. Johnny is the rock poet and the Holy shit, look what you can do with music guy: he likes Bowie and would walk through fire for Patti Smith. Angel is… well, he’s Angel: he’d always rather have more, and he thinks resistance is silly, hence his fondness for Cafe Tacuba and “Super Freak.” And Con loves “Bad Medicine” (although for a while he was sorry because the song made a lot of trouble for everyone), and since he saw U2 and Green Day play the Super Bowl he has dreamed, dreamed of Noir having that moment someday. Because they would kill.
Enjoy.
Wow. This is very cool. Thanks. Interesting to think about the kinds of music people listen to and what it might say about them.
It was summer, the sand at State St. beach, sizzling at my feet as I dragged my board from the surf. She was my wife’s kid sister. Her friend and she were totally engrossed in the buzz of sound coming from small hand-sized transitor radio. “Here, listen to this.” she said shyly, slyly watching to see my reaction to “GLORIA” blasting my salt water backed up ears. She, they, wanted some reaction from me, some response to the audacious story of the song. I smiled but decided it was a good time to head back out to the silence of the waiting waves.
But speaking of Noir, I just picked up a copy of a 2005 French novel by Olivier Pauvert by that name. I’ve always been fascinated by the idea of this genre. Or at least since I first heard Dick Powell in Murder My Sweet.
All great. But what about Mars? 🙂
Alexa, someday… 🙂