Occasionally I will write a song that is a story – not about anything true but perhaps conveying something someone will recognize.  That is the case in the song Amber Lee.

This song was born on the night before Valentine’s Day several years ago, when I was sewing bead eyes on some little lizards I had made, from rainbow colored fleece, to be Valentine’s Day presents for my kids.  As it happened, the beads were amber.  So the line came up, with its tune: Amber Lee has amber eyes.  The rest of the words came, in bike rides over subsequent weeks, to fill in the tune.  No real person behind this – just a story that arose from lizard eyes:

Amber Lee 

has amber eyes

shining out like some bright prize

If you want to understand, you must

be wise

Amber Lee,

what satisfies you?

Amber Lee

has honey hair

shot with gold like some deep prayer

if you want to go within, you must

be there

Amber Lee, 

what makes you care?

Amber Lee

has limbs of fire

laced throughout with swift desire

all the worlds that bend to her

she could acquire

Amber Lee,

what takes you higher?

©Wendy Mulhern

My daughter mentioned today that the first line of a story contains the story.  Should, anyway.  A fascinating concept; I looked through several books I like to see if this were so.  The first book I looked at was one I just read, by Guy Gavriel Kay, called Ysabel.  The first sentence is: “Ned was not impressed.”  I was impressed, though, by how much is in this sentence – the presupposition that something was impressive, or trying to be, but that it wasn’t having the expected effect on the character.  It suggests that the character might, for some reason, not be as easily impressed as some people.  These things turn out to be true, and important to the character and the story; the whys and hows of them unfold gradually, but the kernel is there.

Here are a few others: “My suffering left me sad and gloomy.” (Life of Pi, by Yann Martel)

“Imagine a ruin so strange it must never have happened.” (The Poisonwood Bible, by Barbara Kingsolver)

“Until I began to build and launch rockets, I didn’t know my hometown was at war with itself over its children and that my parents were locked in a bloodless combat over how my brother and myself would be raised.” (October Sky, by Homer Hickam)

“I hadn’t meant to shoot the cat.” (Telempath, by Spider Robinson)

“Amid the ten thousand noises and the jade-and-gold and the whirling dust of Xinan, he had often stayed awake all night among friends, drinking spiced wine in the North District with the courtesans.” (Under Heaven, by Guy Gavriel Kay)

Most intriguing.  I have so much to learn.

Yesterday I wrote about how a poem led me back to writing stories, and I mentioned that it first engendered a companion.  I got to thinking about what a male muse might be like, and came up with the following:

I had talked myself out of writing stories, though it had been an elemental urge, one of childhood’s strong attractions.  I told myself I didn’t have any, didn’t have a voice. In truth I just didn’t know how to take on the monumental task of crafting fiction.  It was a poem that led me back.

The poem started with two lines that floated into my thought on a bicycle ride.  I worked on it later,  at home, at Carkeek Park, at home again, teasing out the images until a story emerged.  That poem later inspired a companion, and those two poems became the basis for my first attempt at writing a novel.  Though I have much to do to hone that craft, the joy it brings me keeps me at it.  So in a real way, this poem I wrote in the spring of 2009 has been my muse:

She slips between the curtains of the day

To walk the secret landscape wide away

Vistas lift along the rise of hills

Colors shifting on the lake

She slips between the curtains of your mind

Down your enshrouded corridor to find

You waiting by your quiet bulb

Her clasp is cool, her hands are slim

She leads you like a ripple in the wind

Light darts quickly, runs in sparkling lines

While water underneath it moves more slowly

Revealing glinting glimpses of the depth.

You follow, and you don’t know where you’re going

Your solar plexus full of light and air

The view too huge to paint, beyond all knowing

The touch too true to speak, too soft to bear

You feel a stab of desperate dependence

Aware her frame is far too light to lean on

Beyond your overwhelm, you seek transcendence

And something solid to believe on.

Don’t be afraid – she isn’t going to leave you

She’ll shine through you like light through water

You won’t need to live, create without her

She came to you because you thought her.

©Wendy Mulhern