In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Pamela Ryder’s novel Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him is a vivid retelling of the life of Billy the Kid.
Gordon Lish wrote of the book:
“Land-a-mercy, that scamp Billy the Kid was a hard-thinking scoundrel back in his untamed day, but scribbler Ryder―she’s a terror of beautification in this era of timified politicized pop gunning shootouts among the publicists of publishers of card-flaring ID. Zane Grey’s a goner, but Ryder’s with us―and with you―for everlasting good.”
In her own words, here is Pamela Ryder’s Book Notes music playlist for her novel Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him:
Hello all and thank you for coming to this remarkable site to explore the music of the novel, Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him: The Lives of Billy the Kid. If you are not familiar with Claudia’s Theme from the revisionist Western film, Unforgiven (composed by Clint Eastwood – who knew!), please listen to it here; it’s one of the most heart-wrenching compositions. The first opening notes from a guitar—just five notes (and the first two notes are the same)—played simply, almost haltingly – may set you reliving past moments of a purest interval of past joy or sadness – moments – as such indelible moments always are—tinged with a profound poignancy as you recount the terrible weight of the many moments—perhaps many years—or even decades—that you have allowed to slip by, wasted, unexamined, or lived without humility or kindness. The music herein may take you a place you may not want to go: to a graveside perhaps, or a deathbed, or simply to a wasted day. It may remind you what the Navajo believe: that if a sunrise finds you still asleep, God will simply assume you are dead. Or the music may take you to a memory of beauty and peace: for me, a windy bluff overlooking the magical landscape of the canyonlands of the American West, while above in the dome of the darkened heavens spin the swarms of stars–so many—have you ever seen it?— with hardly a space between them, and such a thing may set you to wondering how it is that you know so little of the world all around you, and how it is that you have become who you are, and how you have endured the hardship and the burden of a life shot through with regret for perhaps a lost love or remorse for your despicable deeds. And like Billy the Kid, a boy desperado always on the run from himself, you may try to recount the moments of joy you have had, because: well, certainly you have been lucky enough to have had a few. Perhaps: a few. And as those opening notes build and build as the theme evolves, it quickly—unexpectedly— sounds a single high note—a plucked guitar string that plucks at your most vulnerable of heart strings—the one that is already frayed or torn—and it will take you where you may not want to go: back to the pain of the hardships you have borne, and strangely, you do not resist this recollection; you will not resist, because now you understand that the time has come for remembering. So, it was with William Henry Bonney McCarty, so known as Billy the Kid, bearing his own terrible and inescapable history—a victim of the proverbial fate and circumstance who lives knowing that he hasn’t long to live. And as the music of this lovely and somber guitar evolves into a simple melody, it will take you to the edge of grief and you may wish for forgiveness, even knowing that forgiveness will not come, will never come until that melody unexpectedly blossoms into the rush of a full orchestra, a veritable wave that can pin you to the earth you have scorched, and you will be thankful that you can still feel…something. Thankful that while you have been shot through with mourning for what you have lost, for what you could have become, for old dreams you have abandoned, and for those stars you might have reached for – you will hope that all is not lost–-not yet—and you will be glad that you suffer. You may very well turn your back on the forgiveness you know you do not deserve. Such is wrought the soul of Billy the Kid, as he really was. Not the reckless gunslinger of American myth. Not the reckless rebel. Not the cold-blooded killer. But the true Billy, the young outlaw who remains the definitive icon of the America West, as he is portrayed in Daybreak Birdsong Always Wakes Him: The Lives of Billy the Kid. This is a coming-of-age saga like no other and an unflinching account of his deeds and his killings, and his desperate attempts to escape a childhood and adolescence beset by loneliness, loss, and regret. Herein is a Billy haunted by his small stature and birth deformities, and by his grim childhood in the Irish slums of New York. Here is Billy, orphaned at age fourteen and abandoned in the lawless Territory of New Mexico, where he is left to fend for himself, surviving as cattle thief and killer. On the run through desert and mesa and mountain, he becomes a keen observer of birds, envious of their ability to simply fly away from trouble. In an attempt to impose order on a life of chaos and uncertainty, he becomes the keeper of lists, including a list of his bird sightings as well as his killings. And while he finds a fleeting joy in the love of a young Mexican girl and the friendship of a flamboyant rancher enamored of the already infamous Billy, it all goes wrong, of course. As things so do. Love is lost to revenge, the killings commence, and he is haunted by his own violence and by the lives he has taken, for which redemption never comes. The music takes us though the machinations of memory: from sadness to hope to hope dashed—and in the end, the guitar’s single opening notes win out. Listen as your heart is laid bare while you ride along with him now. Follow him as he makes his way through wild country on his Choctaw pony—the horse he loves but will not name: he knows it will not be in his company for very long. Follow him as the buzzards do, circling over him as he travels a landscape of beauty and desolation that reveals the inner journey of a young desperado adrift in the high deserts of New Mexico, fated to ride ever closer to the end of his short and violent life.
also at Largehearted Boy:
Pamela Ryder’s playlist for her novel in stories Paradise Field
Pamela Ryder is author of the short story collection, A Tendency to Be Gone and two novels-in-stories: Correction of Drift and Paradise Field. Her work has been published in many literary journals, among them Bellevue Literary Review, Quarterly, Prairie Schooner, Quarterly West, Unsaid, Propagule, Black Warrior Review, Tyrant, Jewish Fiction.net, and Conjunctions.