Music

I have a tendency to listen to music while I write, and not only is this novel no exception, it dates back to the days when I was just getting into the habit. I’d post mp3s if I could, but I’d rather not have the RIAA breathing down my neck, so I’ll have to settle for just listing the relevant music.< The major song for Doppelganger comes from the Cirque du Soleil show Saltimbanco. The fourth track, “Amazonia,” is actually the second half of the novel, if you know what to listen for. By which I mean that one day I was lying on my bed, listening to music on headphones and trying to take a nap, and my half-asleep brain had one of those “whoa, duuuuuude” moments where the shape of the song seemed like a map of what would happen in the rest of the book. I don’t know if what I thought up then is what I went with in the end (those Brilliant Ideas tend to slip away like mist as you wake up), but what I went with is still there in the music.

Though “Amazonia” definitely holds supremacy in this case — yes, I really do mean I stuck it on repeat while I wrote and revised; I’m terrified to think how many times I’ve listened to it — two other songs deserve mention.

One is “Ameno,” a song by the group Era, which I heard for the first time on the radio while working on an archaeology dig in Israel, and for the second time while walking past a record store in the Old City in Jerusalem. I walked straight into the store and bought the CD on the spot, because the tune had blown me away the first time — if for no other reason than because it was so different from the crap Gelgalatz usually played. It’s a beautiful choral/techno piece, and stands in my mind for the fact that the witches sing their spells.

The final song, “The Eyes of Truth,” is the second track from Enigma’s album The Cross of Changes. Weirdly, I can only call it the trailer music for this novel. (And I thought of it that way before it got used as trailer music for The Matrix, as I believe it did.) I can’t list off specific shots or anything, but the bit near the end — the dark and grand bit after the quiet bit, if you know the song — is a trailer in my head.