In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Casey Scieszka’s debut novel The Fountain is one of the year’s best books, speculative fiction with a big heart that poses even bigger questions about mortality.
Kirkus wrote of the book:
“As psychologically rich as it is philosophically probing, Scieszka’s book offers readers a heady blend of imagination, mystery, and finely crafted storytelling. A provocative novel that incisively explores the question of what makes a meaningful life.”
In her own words, here is Casey Scieszka’s Book Notes music playlist for her debut novel The Fountain:
OK, I can’t I say I recommend this as traditional playlist in the style of old mix tapes where you listen to ‘em all the way through— unless you’re down with some serious genre hopping! But here are a bunch of songs that contributed to the creation of my novel The Fountain.
Mine Forever by Lord Huron
My main character Vera is a “young” woman who’s secretly 214 years old. I thought a LOT about what “forever” means, and what being forever linked to your family members or a spouse would mean. Like, several hundred pages worth of thinking in the form of fiction.
Lord Huron is also great driving music and the book opens with Vera driving down her old road after nearly two centuries away. A road which is pretty darn similar to the one I live on here in the Catskills. (Where do us writers get our inspiration??). So, many times throughout the publishing process, I’d be driving home from some errand and thinking about the book and I would turn this song on as I turned onto (Vera’s and) my road and I would be put instantly into her world. And in this frame of mind, I could mull over new scenes or revisions or whatever it was that still lay ahead of me.
Cold War by Cautious Clay
This one came to me via an algorithm suggestion which pains me to say because I root for human creativity over bots, BUT I wound up listening to it on repeat a ton while writing. There’s something about it, his voice in particular, that for me mirrors my main character’s nonchalant front with her deeper pain and it could really set the mood when I was trying to evoke her in a scene.
Oh Devil by Electric Guest, Devin Di Dakta
Writing is a lot of sitting which after a while just hurts. Standing up to get a snack is great. But taking a full-blown dance break is even better. Beyond it being kind to my muscles and bones etc, I am routinely amazed by what moving my body will unlock in my mind. It’s like dancing sometimes literally jostles an idea free that was stuck, or I’ll make new connections between ideas that felt previously unrelated.
The Greatest by Sia
Sometimes a dance break won’t cut it and I have to go on an all out pink-in-the-face, absolutely-have-to-shower-afterwards run down my road. Sia will always get me moving.
Get Low by James Vincent McMorrow
That guitar riff. That chorus of voices that echo him. A baseline that’ll rattle your teeth! I am not above listening to a song ten times in a row if I like it. If I like it AND it’s keeping me in a scene as I’m writing? Oh man, I probably hit this one forty times one day, I’m not even joking.
There were also snippets of lyrics that rang louder than others to me because they felt related to this story about someone who’s never allowed to grow, who watches everyone around her age and die:
Digging in the dirt gets old when you’re left with no one.
Everything about it always stays the same.
Symphony No. 5 by Beethoven
It was fun trying to imagine my main character’s experience of music across all 200+ years of her life. In a very early draft I had her really into Janis Joplin and that whole scene, but as my story developed, I realized that was more her also-immortal brother’s vibe and that Vera was the one who was often more reluctant to embrace change. Music is one of the only places her taste could remain anachronistic and old fashioned and not raise alarm bells, so instead, she’s really into classical, orchestral music.
I think I also partially made this choice because at the time, my toddler-ish daughter Amina was REALLY into Beethoven’s Symphony No. 5. She would sit at a table with our bluetooth speaker and listen to it on repeat and just blast it in her own face as loud as we would let her. It’s such an amazing piece of music that has obviously stood the test of time. One I think I would personally still love even two hundred years from now.
Cerca De Ti by Hermanos Gutiérrez
Sometimes if you’re writing with music, you need a song with no words. Just vibes. My husband, the artist and author/illustrator Steven Weinberg, famously loves completely bizarre 9 minute long jazz songs that are basically six songs in one. I can’t with jazz (I’m sorry, I respect it deeply, but it stresses me out!), so instead I’ve got the Hermanos Guitérrez.
Call Me In The Afternoon by Half Moon Run
At a little past the three-quarter mark in the book, like most stories, there is some Act III, high stakes chaos and the frantic pace of this song and tenor of his voice matched that for me. So, if I needed to slip into that high tension mindset after say, having a calm breakfast, I could pop this on and I would be instantly on edge, haha.
It Is What It Is by Blood Orange
I came across this album in the incredible tv show We Are Who We Are directed by Luca Guadagnino (of Call Me By Your Name fame) and the whole thing got so much playtime from me throughout the days of early drafts. It’s dreamy and odd in all the best ways.
Ladies Don’t Play Guitar by Tennis
This song is on one of the playlists for my little bar at the hotel I own and operate, the Spruceton Inn: a Catskills Bed & Bar. Running this place— the bar in particular—is the very necessary counterpart to writing alone in my room. I need to write stories (why else would I punish myself like this??) but I also neeeeeed to connect with people face to face and have these immediate, rewarding, and deeply human interactions. Though you better believe the number one thing I talk about with hotel guests and bar patrons after hiking recommendations is books.
Casey Scieszka is a born and raised Brooklynite who has lived in Beijing, San Francisco, Fez, and Timbuktu where she was a Fulbright Scholar. In 2013 she and her husband, artist Steven Weinberg, moved to the Catskill Mountains and opened the Spruceton Inn: a Catskills Bed & Bar, which runs an annual Artist Residency hosting world-renowned painters, bestselling authors, and Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award finalists.