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People have been asking for a music post and sovay, in particular, is interested in songs that remind me of Carraclough Devize. But first, a bit of an explanation:
Carra is one of my oldest characters, hands down. She was the protagonist of my best trunk novel back in high school--the first one I ever sent anywhere, only to get back a fairly kind rejection letter in which the editor name-checked my sources and suggested I should probably try to either disguise them better or re-frame so they weren’t so obvious. After years of thinking she was unsalvageable, I revived her as a secondary character in “The Narrow World” and used her to define antihero Jude Hark Chiu-wai, with whom she has a longstanding, weirdly intimate relationship (he’s gay, she’s probably straight, they’re both the only opposite-sex people they’ve had sex with, he considers her his mentor in matters magical but also someone he’s outdistanced, a vulnerable and unfixable burden, the one person he cares much about at all, which annoys him).
What we know about Carra is this: She’s descended from Scots witch Jonet Devize, one of the Five-Family Coven, who was betrayed by two of the others and burned under King James the First and Sixth. After her father’s early death via drug overdose, her mother Gala--abandoned by his heavily religious family for having made him “revert” to Spiritualism--started “pimping her out” as a child medium, a prodigy who’d never known a time when she wasn’t able to see and talk to ghosts. At thirteen, she was discovered by Doctors Jay and Jay, the husband-and-wife team of parapsychologists who founded Toronto’s Freihoeven Institute. They were so impressed by her readings that they invited her to apprentice with their in-house medium, Glenda Fisk, and come along on the exorcism of Peazant’s Folly.
In the wake of that disaster, Carra ended up establishing a routine which saw her checking herself into the nearest mental hospital whenever things became too unbearable. Though her physical injuries were slight by comparison, her filters seemed almost completely gone--she was constantly under fire from ghosts who would assail her anywhere and everywhere, demanding to be heard, channelled, laid to rest. (One of her most offputting lingering symptoms is automatographic stigmata, whereby bruisey messages from invisible companions often come crawling up her arms and over her face whenever she’s under stress.) Gala, crushed by guilt, became an alcoholic recluse, and the two of them shared a tiny house in the Annex for decades, rarely seeing or speaking to each other.
Though she briefly attended Ryerson University (for Photography), where she attempted to “cure” herself through participation in a group that called themselves the Black Magic Posse, Carra has remained a consultant with the Freihoeven for the bulk of her adult life. Her boss, Dr Guilden Abbott, treats her as a combination of surrogate daughter and secret weapon, the “psychic asset” by whose standard all others much be judged. Up until Gala’s recent death from cancer, she used most of the money she got from her cases to make sure Gala didn’t lose her house; most of her friends are dead or otherwise indisposed. And she just keeps on keeping on, because this is all she knows, all she is.
But maybe things are finally starting to change for Carra--maybe she doesn’t have to be the conceptual poster-girl for “wound as superpower” anymore. I think I’d like that.
Anyhow: Some songs which remind me of her include (momentarily without links--I hope to remedy this later on)--
“Leave it Open”, Kate Bush (plus most of The Dreaming)
“And Dream of Sheep/Under Ice/Waking the Witch” and "Hello Earth", Kate Bush
“How To Be Invisible”, Kate Bush
“No Skin”, the Golden Palominos
“The Jezebel Spirit” and “Moonlight in Glory”, David Byrne and Brian Eno
"Eggs in a Briar Patch" and "Poison", David Byrne
“Born, Never Asked”, Laurie Anderson
“Gravity’s Rainbow”, Laurie Anderson
“Freefall” and “Poison”, Laurie Anderson (plus most of Bright Red)
“Coast is Clear” and “Blindfold”, Curve
“Black”, Sarah McLachlan (original and William Orbit remix versions)
“Persephone” Cocteau Twins
“The Thinner the Air”, Cocteau Twins
Carra is one of my oldest characters, hands down. She was the protagonist of my best trunk novel back in high school--the first one I ever sent anywhere, only to get back a fairly kind rejection letter in which the editor name-checked my sources and suggested I should probably try to either disguise them better or re-frame so they weren’t so obvious. After years of thinking she was unsalvageable, I revived her as a secondary character in “The Narrow World” and used her to define antihero Jude Hark Chiu-wai, with whom she has a longstanding, weirdly intimate relationship (he’s gay, she’s probably straight, they’re both the only opposite-sex people they’ve had sex with, he considers her his mentor in matters magical but also someone he’s outdistanced, a vulnerable and unfixable burden, the one person he cares much about at all, which annoys him).
What we know about Carra is this: She’s descended from Scots witch Jonet Devize, one of the Five-Family Coven, who was betrayed by two of the others and burned under King James the First and Sixth. After her father’s early death via drug overdose, her mother Gala--abandoned by his heavily religious family for having made him “revert” to Spiritualism--started “pimping her out” as a child medium, a prodigy who’d never known a time when she wasn’t able to see and talk to ghosts. At thirteen, she was discovered by Doctors Jay and Jay, the husband-and-wife team of parapsychologists who founded Toronto’s Freihoeven Institute. They were so impressed by her readings that they invited her to apprentice with their in-house medium, Glenda Fisk, and come along on the exorcism of Peazant’s Folly.
In the wake of that disaster, Carra ended up establishing a routine which saw her checking herself into the nearest mental hospital whenever things became too unbearable. Though her physical injuries were slight by comparison, her filters seemed almost completely gone--she was constantly under fire from ghosts who would assail her anywhere and everywhere, demanding to be heard, channelled, laid to rest. (One of her most offputting lingering symptoms is automatographic stigmata, whereby bruisey messages from invisible companions often come crawling up her arms and over her face whenever she’s under stress.) Gala, crushed by guilt, became an alcoholic recluse, and the two of them shared a tiny house in the Annex for decades, rarely seeing or speaking to each other.
Though she briefly attended Ryerson University (for Photography), where she attempted to “cure” herself through participation in a group that called themselves the Black Magic Posse, Carra has remained a consultant with the Freihoeven for the bulk of her adult life. Her boss, Dr Guilden Abbott, treats her as a combination of surrogate daughter and secret weapon, the “psychic asset” by whose standard all others much be judged. Up until Gala’s recent death from cancer, she used most of the money she got from her cases to make sure Gala didn’t lose her house; most of her friends are dead or otherwise indisposed. And she just keeps on keeping on, because this is all she knows, all she is.
But maybe things are finally starting to change for Carra--maybe she doesn’t have to be the conceptual poster-girl for “wound as superpower” anymore. I think I’d like that.
Anyhow: Some songs which remind me of her include (momentarily without links--I hope to remedy this later on)--
“Leave it Open”, Kate Bush (plus most of The Dreaming)
“And Dream of Sheep/Under Ice/Waking the Witch” and "Hello Earth", Kate Bush
“How To Be Invisible”, Kate Bush
“No Skin”, the Golden Palominos
“The Jezebel Spirit” and “Moonlight in Glory”, David Byrne and Brian Eno
"Eggs in a Briar Patch" and "Poison", David Byrne
“Born, Never Asked”, Laurie Anderson
“Gravity’s Rainbow”, Laurie Anderson
“Freefall” and “Poison”, Laurie Anderson (plus most of Bright Red)
“Coast is Clear” and “Blindfold”, Curve
“Black”, Sarah McLachlan (original and William Orbit remix versions)
“Persephone” Cocteau Twins
“The Thinner the Air”, Cocteau Twins
