Let’s talk a bit about an aspect of movies that is often not even really noticed, but which can make or break a story–the soundtrack.

Something of a tangent, but not entirely: last weekend I went to see Elizabeth: The Golden Age. I was really looking forward to it, since I liked the first Elizabeth film. The Elizabethan era is one of my very favorites. In grad school, I specialized in Elizabethan poetry, so I know that the history in that movie was, well, a big crock of almost total nonsense. I expected that would be true of The Golden Age, as well, and also that the costumes would be stupendous (if sometimes a bit silly–what was up with that gigantic flower??). I wasn’t disappointed by either. What I didn’t expect was that it would be something of a snooze-fest. It even made Mary Queen Scots and the Armada dull going, and even Clive Owen (looking quite yummy in his scruffy-explorer Walter Ralegh get-up) seemed to be sleep-walking through it all.

The first movie was highly suspenseful, dark, almost claustrophobic. It captured the danger of the times so well, and also the lavishness and the delicious bawdiness. Christopher Eccleston was an intensely menacing Duke of Norfolk; Cate Blanchett an astoundingly perfect queen (as she also was in TGA, though far too young-looking). That tension was lacking in this new film. It gave me way too much time to eat my Sour Patch Kids and ponder such stream-of-consciousness matters as–“Why does Phillip II persist in giggling constantly? Why does he only have such lame lines as “What of the Jesuit?” And which one is the Jesuit anyway? Rhys Ifans? Or that crazy kid who looks like a Calvin Klein underwear model? No, I think he’s supposed to be Babington. Maybe. Why get an actress of Samantha Morton’s caliber to play Mary Queen of Scots if they’re not really going to use her? She should star in her own movie. Mary: Age of Extreme Foolishness. I would definitely go see that. She’d have to lose that weird Scottish accent, though, and sound French like she’s supposed to. Wow, I do like that gown Abbie Cornish is wearing. Wonder where I could get one?”

Anyway, the point of all this is that there were a few scenes I liked. The one where the crazy underwear model tries to shoot Elizabeth; Mary’s execution; the one where the storm that will destroy the Armada (not, as the movie would have us believe, Clive Owen) is brewing, and Elizabeth walks out on a cliff in a flowing white chemise. Oh, and the Volte dance bit. I do love bits with dances. Those scenes had a power lacking in much else, and one of the important reasons was the very effective use of music.

Another movie that did this very well was Marie Antoinette. I liked it despite the very bad screenplay and the less-than-stellar acting because, aside from looking gorgeous, it sounded weirdly great. The montage of life at Versailles set to Vivaldi; the masked ball where dancers twirl around to Hong Kong Garden. Terrific, if also very, very odd.

I like to set my books to soundtracks, too. This is a great way to waste time not writing while also feeling like I am doing something productive for my creative process. My current WIP is the second in my “Muses of Mayfair” series, Clio’s story, set in Sicily in 1818. Here are a few songs I’ve found for it:

1) Albinoni’s Adagio

2) Dave Matthews Band, Crash

3) Mozart, Der Holle Rache (the Queen of the Night’s second aria), The Magic Flute

4) Nickelback, Rock Star (I’m usually contemptuous of Nickelback, I admit, but this one has a Big Dumb Fun infectiousness, much like that “tell me what you want what you really really want” Spice Girls song. Maybe I should include that one, too)

5) The Cure, Pictures of You

6) BowWowWow, Aphrodisiac (stolen from the Marie Antoinette soundtrack, which I like to listen to when on the treadmill)

7) Mascagni, Intermezzo sinfonico from Cavalleria Rusticana

I need something for a skinny-dipping scene, too, if anyone has any ideas…

If you did a soundtrack for your own WIP, or your favorite book, what would it include? Anyone seen any good movies lately???

On Saturday, I saw the final concert in what is possibly the final tour ever for the rock band Genesis. Fantastic concert, fabulous band, great experience.

So how, you ask, does a Genesis concert relate to the Regency? In, oh, so many ways! Here are just a handful:

1. The founding members of Genesis all met while students at Charterhouse School, which Wikipedia explains is “one of the original nine English public schools as defined by the Public Schools Act 1868.” (The other eight are Eton, Harrow, Rugby, Westminster, Winchester, St Paul’s, Merchant Taylors’, and Shrewsbury.)

Other famous alumni of Charterhouse (which was founded in 1611) include Joseph Addison, Richard Steele, William Blackstone (of “Blackstone’s Commentaries”), Henry Luttrell, Henry Siddons (son of Sarah Siddons), William Godwin (Mary Shelley’s half-brother), and Thackeray.

2. If Gerard Butler exemplifies how an insanely muscular Regency man might look under his clothes, then surely Genesis are a great example of what a Regency progressive rock band would sound like???

3. Casual radio listeners probably associate Genesis with their hits from the late 1970’s through early 1990’s, songs like “Invisible Touch” and “I Can’t Dance,” which were often accompanied by lighthearted videos.

But many of their fans are more interested in their earlier albums, both those with their first lead singer, Peter Gabriel, and also the first few with their second lead singer, Phil Collins. (Phil, by the way, did not go to Charterhouse; he was a child actor who once played the Artful Dodger in a London production of the musical “Oliver!”)

Songs on these earlier albums were rife with the sort of allusions that might occur to a well-educated public school boy: references to classical mythology (Narcissus, Tiresias, Salmacis, Lamia), Lilith, Arthurian legend, the Book of Revelation, Marlowe, Shakespeare, John Bunyan, Keats, Wordsworth, and Wuthering Heights, to name a few.

Of these, it was the classical allusions that have always struck me most. I think it’s far too easy, as writers, to have our Regency gentleman running around talking about Shakespeare and Johnson and Fielding and Sheridan and Austen and Burney and Byron — folks who come to our minds when we think of either England or, more specifically, the English Regency. But I try to remind myself that our Regency gentlemen had educations that focused on the classical world, not on England. They probably went around talking about Hector and Neptune and Cicero much more than we give them credit for.

So, you see, Genesis have helped me write better Regencies. 🙂

And don’t forget our next meeting of the Jane Austen Movie Club, on November 6. (Always the first Tuesday of the month.) We’ll be discussing the 1996 BBC/A&E adaptation of PRIDE AND PREJUDICE, a.k.a. the Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle version!

Cara
Cara King, who never saw a lamb lie down on Broadway

A few weeks ago, I did something I know people here at Risky Regencies will sympathize with–I ordered a couple of books from abebooks, and when they arrived realized I already had them. Ooops. (The duplicates will probably pop up here as a giveaway soon, so stay tuned!). Then I knew it must be time for a Book Check.

I do this once or twice a year, going through my shelves, the stacks of books on the floor, and the plastic storage tubs of books. It gives me a chance to do some much-needed dusting (I am really glad you can’t actually see my house, because honestly housekeeping isn’t my forte), find books to donate to the library book sale (though this doesn’t really often happen–I think I got rid of all of 2 books last time), and see what I have that I might have forgotten about (and thus not order them again). This process takes quite a while, as I usually end up sitting on the floor re-reading stuff or looking at pictures in art books.

One book I found hiding on the shelf this time was Benjamin Woolley’s Bride of Science: Romance, Reason, and Byron’s Daughter. Ada Byron, Countess of Lovelace, aside from her father (who she never knew, of course, her parents having separated so acrimoniously when she was an infant) was a very interesting person in her own right. Raised by her wackadoo mother in an uber-strict manner, emphasizing science, logic, and morality (i.e. the anti-Byron), she was a part of the early Victorian interest in new technology and science. She was a gifted mathematician (something about using punch cards to calculate Bernoulli numbers, and an interest in the concept of imaginary numbers), and although some of her interests were, er, questionable (mesmerism and magnetism, and later using her own mathematical system to lose disastrously at the horse races) some was of lasting impact. She worked with her friend Charles Babbage on an invention called the Analytical Engine (this is where the punch cards came in) that is considered an early forerunner of the computer. She died at 37 (still harangued by her mother) and was buried next to her father, but her influence can still be seen–the US Department of Defense called their computer language “Ada.”

I’ve often said that the one kind of hero or heroine I could never write about would be a mathematician. I’m a terrible dunce with numbers–they lost me somewhere around first grade with those pesky multiplication tables. In school, my abstract brain preferred things like analyzing poetry, where there was no “right” answer. After all, who can say what “Disillusionment of Ten O’Clock” really means, yet 2+2 is always 4 no matter how you might feel about it at the moment. I’m so deeply impressed by people like Ada (or like my future sister-in-law, an engineer) who are good at such things. They’re so mysterious and strange to me. It would take an immense amount of hard research to make any mathematical character I wrote about believable. And yet inspiration is a strange thing. A heroine who is interested in algebra has taken up residence in my mind, and may one day have to come out on the page (though she is in line behind at least 4 other projects, all with stubbornly non-scientific heroines).

What were your favorite subjects in school? Any that you hated? What sort of character would you feel challenged to write or read about?

And be sure and sign up for our Newsletter at riskies@yahoo.com, with “Newsletter” in the subject line. I promise there will be no pop quizzes, math or otherwise, just fun news and contests!

interview

… the smell of the crowd…and other things

Today is the birthday of Philip Astley (1770-1814), founder of the famed Astley’s Amphitheatre, one of the hot spots of Regency London. He’s now seen as the father of the modern circus, and in fact established the standard circus ring size of 42 ft. diameter.

He began his career in the army where he fought in the Seven Years War and distinguished himself with his horsemanship and then left to become a riding instructor and performer. He rejoined the army again in 1793 when England and France were at war, taking emergency leave when his Amphitheatre caught fire.

Tracy Chevalier has a terrific page on her site about Astley, who appears in Burning Bright, her novel about William Blake. And now it seems I’m going to talk about Burning Bright, which I enjoyed–sort of–I actually liked the circus stuff best, and admired the way she wrote about artisans. There’s a family who makes chairs and another character who makes Dorset buttons, something of which I was woefully ignorant; buttons were made of thread, woven together in intricate patterns, so all my characters whose buttons made a “pinging” sound as they hit the floor are about twenty years ahead of their time.

This illustration, of a Dorset basket weave, is one borrowed from the site of the British Button Society (yes, there is actually such a thing). What I didn’t get from the book is a clear sense of Blake and that was disappointing, but her depiction of Blake’s London was vivid and exciting.

There are any number of directions I could go from here, but I also wanted to add that I had a blast in NJ last weekend, signing as two people and giving readers the choice of the dirty book or the funny one; I finally got to meet Santa and a lot of other cool people; and Smartbitches are talking about Jane today.

So: have you been to the circus or read a good book recently?

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