fannishliss

If you'd like to vote for this song, here is the poll.  There are dozens of great entries!

This is fiction, for the LJ Idol prompt Heel Turn.
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“Changes fill my time"

Up until a year ago, Maddy hated Led Zeppelin.

Two years ago, she hated the loud guitars and the singer’s nasal wailing.  Then Mom got hurt and things got weird.  Everything went downhill.  Mom had to go away.  They had to make her go to rehab, just like in that song where the singer says, no, no, no.

But when Mom came back, things didn’t get better, even though she was off the oxy.

( read the story! )

link to the song: Ten Years Gone

“I don't skate to where the puck is. I skate to where the puck is going to be.” —Wayne Gretzky

When I was a little girl, I wanted to grow up to be Dolly Parton: beautiful, talented, famous and rich. I was a good singer and loved to perform at any opportunity.  Every so often someone would tell me I should move to Nashville. I would just laugh, because I’d never been more than sixty miles from home.  Nashville may as well have been another world.  So, I kept singing, learned to play piano, sang in choir, learned the guitar, and started writing lyrics.

This is not a story where I grow up to become Dolly Parton.

I went to college and double majored in English and Music. When my poetry teacher asked why we were studying poetry, I replied that I wanted to be a rockstar.  My dream of becoming Dolly had widened to include becoming Robert Plant or possibly Sting. (I actually dreamed of surpassing Sting.  His ability to mix a metaphor is shocking: “packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes, contestants in a suicidal race!”)

This is not a story where I grow up to become Robert Plant or Sting, either.

I did very well in college and headed off to grad school, where I worked for two years to get an MFA in poetry.  I was the lead singer in a heavy metal band, and I wrote the melodies and the lyrics.  No, you’ve never heard of me.  Heavy Metal was not on the ascendant in the early 90s.  We did play a couple of gigs (literally two) and I’m still very proud of our demo.

I spent the next ten years getting a PhD in English lit and during that time, I realized that Academia wasn’t really where I wanted to be. By the time I finished my dissertation, I had already become a music teacher, the kind that comes to your house and teaches you or your kid how to play piano, how to sing and play guitar— how to bring into reality whatever musical dreams you have inside you.

I had a kid of my own and lost my high register.  So long Dolly, hello Odetta.

Now, I mostly perform at farmers markets and church events.  I still write songs. (I write songs to order — just ask!)   I never realized how much I would love helping kids and adults become musicians. It’s not a thing where I’m dreaming they’ll play at Carnegie Hall (though one of my newest students just told me that was her dream, and I’ll help her get there as best I can).  It’s more that music is so deeply a part of who I am and how I think.  Music enriches, calms and trains the brain.  Music reaches deep into the soul and lets your spirit soar.  Music provides a rhythm and a dance to everyday life.  Music puts shape to exuberance and sorrow, devotion and ferocity.  Music underscores everything in life.

Here’s a mouse, a tiny John Cusack, serenading the girl he dreams of going out with.

When my baby was born, I thought, I’ll do an experiment.  I’ll only expose him to perfectly tuned instruments, and see if he manages to keep his perfect pitch. The Suzuki theory is that babies are born with perfect pitch and only lose it when they are exposed to all the poorly tuned or untuned noises in the world.  So my kid now distinguishes pitch and key much more perfectly than I ever could, and he can’t stand Robert Plant, king of the bent note.

I’m always picking up a new instrument. The lap dulcimer, hammered dulcimer, and ukulele taunt me with their seductive strings, so easy to pick up and so hard to master.   The organ terrifies me--too many pedals!  The tin whistle exasperates, while the Native American flute soothes in its organic simplicity.

So here I am, 48, still haven’t taken the internet by storm.  People still say to me, “you should be a professional!” and I say, “actually, I am.”

Sometimes you’re the skater, calculating trajectories.  Sometimes you’re the puck, flying across an icy world, taking hit after hit.  And sometimes, the skater and the puck are slicing figure eights into the ice, perfectly harmonious, until the zamboni melts it all down into silence.

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Real LJ Idol Week 4 entries and voting here

Days passed, weeks, and the Devil didn’t show.  Pickpockets and muggers swarmed like rats to the Kitchen, playing now that Matt was away.

It was trivial and stupid and it made Foggy mad. Matt was gone, and the world’s only response was a slight rise in petty crime.
( Read more... )

For LJ Idol, we've had a break week, with four non-mandatory prompts, so I've decided to write a Matt/Foggy fanfic in four parts. Author's notes at the end of each part will explain a little more of my thought processes from prompt to story.  Thanks for reading!

Quick summary of Daredevil for those unfamiliar with the fandom: Defense attorney Matt Murdock (aka Daredevil) is blind, but the accident that took his eyesight left his other senses super heightened. Matt's father was a boxer, and he trained with a strict master called "Stick" to become a skilled martial artist.  Foggy Nelson was Matt's room mate at Columbia; they became best friends, went to law school together, and opened a law practice in Hell's Kitchen as partners. They are estranged because Matt lied to Foggy about his senses, and Foggy doesn't approve of Matt's life as a vigilante. Created by Stan Lee in 1964, Daredevil is now a Netflix series, with Charie Cox as Matt and Elden Henson as Foggy.

Please note: this story is Gen, deep friendship between Matt and Foggy. Takes place after Netflix Season 2. 

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Foggy nodded at the bartender, and she poured them another round. The bartender’s name was Madison, not Josie, and she was pouring the Macallan, not the Eel.( Read more... )

That one friend
Journal entry
by Fannish Liss
for LJ Idol week 2

I have a friend who wanted to get married in Princess Leia boots, so I built them for her out of silk and tennis shoes.  She is now a godparent to my son!

I have a friend who loved James Bond so much that I made her teach us how to play baccarat. The gambling chips were delicious — peppermint patties for fifties and mini Reese’s cups for hundreds.

I have a friend who taught me how to make tortilla soup the way she learned in San Antonio.  Now she lives in Michigan, dodging killer icicles.

My friends have given me so much: dinners together in our college town holes-in-the-wall, Twin Peaks marathons complete with pie and damn fine cups of coffee, crab feasts, fondue parties, and phone conversations so long my ear was completely numb by the time we had to hang up to get some sleep.

I have a friend who put me up at the Chateau Marmont, and we ate breakfast right next to Courtney Love.

I have a friend who sent me a box of chocolate-covered potato chips out of the blue with no explanation.  I rationed them out to myself, one a day for a month!

My friends are beautiful and I’ll love them forever.  But only one person has sworn to stay by my side until death tries to keep us apart.

When I’m loud, and opinionated, and angry, that one friend hears me out and argues just as loud.

When I’m sad, and full of doom, and listless, that one friend makes me laugh till I can see the light again.

When I need to take a long walk, that one friend comes with, and recounts the latest podcast about Rome or Byzantium or the English Language.  One of us holds the leash on our feisty little chihuahua while the other one picks up the poo.

When I wore the Tenth Doctor’s brown pin-striped suit, that one friend put on a blue hoodie and high tops to be my TARDIS.

When I get hooked on a new celebrity, that one friend listens to all the factoids and quotes and anecdotes, watches whatever I dredge up on Netflix, and mixes us strong drinks if the shows turn out too dumb to watch completely sober.

That one friend of mine is patient when I consider and reject every spatula at Marshall’s; he even suggests we try Ross next.

When he was Natasha, I was Boris.  He wore the slinky purple dress and I carried the bomb.

He’s Han, and I’m Chewie.  When I say, “I love you,” he doesn’t say, “I know.” He loves me back.

He is that one friend who will be my partner for the rest of my life.  I won’t be satisfied until he’s a hundred and I’m a hundred and two.

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LJ Idol voting link :)

I was too late to actually enter my entry, but it's okay this week.  Here  is my Introduction!

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You’re invited to the annual solstice fondue.  “Alcohol, Fire, Bread and Cheese!” the announcement proclaims.

You don’t recognize anyone, but the hostess introduces herself.  “Hi, I’m Liss!  So glad you could make it!  Grab a drink — there’s mulled cider on the stove, wine on the hoosier, and beer in the cooler on the screen porch!”

You accept a mug of hot mulled cider.  The mug shows a picture of Shakespeare wearing sunglasses and is labelled “BARD TO THE BONE.”

The tiny home is crowded with friends.  Every wall is packed floor to ceiling with with art and tchotchkes and bookshelves.   All kinds of musical instruments in and out of cases cling to every surface.  Just from where you are sitting you can see an upright piano, two toy pianos, a lap dulcimer, four guitars, two ukuleles, a dumbek, two native american flutes, several hand drums and two mbiras.  You figure that giant pink conch shell would make a reverberating honk if you lifted it to your lips and knew what you were doing.

It’s hard to classify the books on the shelves — too many, too various! Graphic novels, Hebrew textbooks, Tarot user guides, field guides to birds, books about angels and gerbils and fairy tales and music and invertebrates and Chinese brush painting.

“Eat more cheese,” the hostess laughs.  Her moth mask is pushed back on her head.  Across the room, her pretty husband is enchanting the crowd through a matching mask.  That’s his stage foil on the wall under the deer skull.

Your head spins a little.  So many details. Is it clutter or does it paint a picture?

Over time, chaos sorts itself into bodies, held together by the laws of matter in motion.  Three hundred starlings fly up from one oak, soar into a cloud whose black shadows flit across the blue November day, and scatter to reform in some other, choicer oak.

The stories are waiting.  You’ve tasted the apple and cloves, the wine and the bread.  You reach for a long fork, ready for more!