My upcoming book of short short stories, Shake Away These Constant Days, originated as a project called Our Band Could Be Your Lit, in which I wrote a story under 1000 words every week. To generate this much content, I based the stories on songs suggested my musicians and writers from around the world. The original idea was 100 songs, 100 stories: find the creative common ground between two mediums and cultivating the virtue found therein.
Until September 25th, I'll be doing a blog post a day about the stories in the book. After that, it's all up to you.
"Crosseyed & Painless" by The Talking Heads, as suggested by writer Kirk Nesset, was the inspiration behind the story "Facts"
Originally OBCBYL #3. There’s a lot of sophomoric ranting to be done on the subject of truth, whether or not it’s a matter of majority rules (“Terministic Screens” and the such) or if it’s a matter of actuality (Science and whatever). But I’m not the one to do it. I’m sure that, if cornered a decade ago, I would have been more than willing to tell it like it is, as only a seventeen-year-old can.
I’ll settle for this story, in which a photographer takes nude photos of a barely-legal Czechoslovakian girl, who later catches him taking the pictures into photoshop and turning her into something fairly grotesque.
Not that it should matter with the exercise being what it is, but I had a hard time with this because I fucking hate The Talking Heads. I’m barely comfortable with coming out on this, especially on the internet, which is full of exactly the sort of nerds who would love The Talking Heads. Don’t execute me, please.
I had a hard time deciding on a Czech name for the girl. They all sort of sounded like something from a Longmont Potion Castle skit. I settled on Zuza--graceful lily—because it sounded nice. Thankfully, after getting stuck at some point, I went back and looked at the meaning of the name again. Of course that’s what a beautiful eighteen-year-old woman would be named when completely naked and questioning her beauty, proving that I’ve got dumb luck, but at least I’ve got luck.
Tomorrow: A story named "Sweet Tooth" that is based on the song "I Wanna Be Your Dog" by The Stooges. Suggested by musician Ted Nesseth of The Heavenly States.
SATCD on Goodreads
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