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Latest installment in Adventures in Old WIPs: So just was I was starting to drift out of Dresden Files fandom, there was a fic fest where you were assigned something in Real Chicago and had to work it into a fic, and I got assigned the Chicago Blues Festival. Which was exciting! I like the blues, and music + magic is always fun, and I'd been wanting more fic that involved Harry's guitar-playing. And Real Chicago. So to get some ideas I re-watched that episode of Due South where Holly Cole sings Neon Blue, and I read a couple of articles on Chicago's music history, and watched a documentary on Chess Records, and read a biography of Robert Johnson, and started putting together a setlist on spotify, fell a little bit in love with Muddy Waters' sound and a lot in love with Howlin Wolf's, watched a bunch of Youtube videos taken at the festival, attempted to get better at playing the harmonica, mourned that there was no clean recording for most of Ma Rainey's songs... and then realized it was a couple days before the deadline and I should probably, like, write something.
So I sat down to write a story and this is what came out, which was not AT ALL what I was planning to have come out:
It was strange, having Eb's friends from the Inner Council treat him as an equal instead of a small and stupid child. Diplomatically, he supposed, they could hardly do less, to Mab's chosen Knight, but it was still. Strange. And he'd hoped that here of all places - sitting around the old firepit at his mentor's (grandfather's) house, drinking sweet local wine and staring up at that depthless, black black sky that never happened in Chicago or in the Nevernever either, that he could leave some of that behind, and go back to the small boy he'd been when he lived here.
But if he couldn't have that, he supposed having them invite him into their circle, and talk around him candidly, and even ask for his opinion once in awhile, like it was worth something in this company - it was good.
Even if it did sometimes just mean being treated like a large and stupid man instead of a small and stupid child.
"She wants you to sing?" Eb cackled. "Why'n hell she want you to sing? She think she got Thomas the Rhymer or something?"
"I haven't figured it out yet," Harry said, and shrugged. "She's asked worse."
"Hah," Eb said. "She wants you to sing for Summer, she clearly hasn't heard you try yet. Or try to play the harmonica, either."
"Hey!" Harry said, stung. "I do all right, old man. Here, who's got the guitar?" It was a battered old odd-sized thing that had appeared an hour or so ago; Harry had no idea who'd brought it but they'd been passing it around. It was delivered to him from the shadow on the other side of the bonfire, and he bent over it with a "thanks," and a few sample chords. He hadn't done this in a long time - he'd been afraid to - but it came back to him, just as easy and pure as ever.
"Not sure what to sing, though," he said. "Maeve liked swing, but Leah still goes for the classical. I was thinking maybe something to remind me of home. Maybe the blues." He strummed through the opening of 'House of the Rising Sun' and then switched to something simpler and older that he remembered hearing around one of these circles decades ago.
"Give me that," Martha Liberty said, and plucked the guitar out of his lap. "You may know how to play, boy, I'll give you that, but you don't know anything about the blues, do you?"
"Not really," Harry admitted willingly. "I went to the Blues Festival in Chicago once." It'd been for a case, admittedly, but he'd stayed around to listen. Some of it had seemed to be just pretty music. Some of it had been disconcerting, like it was almost something it wasn't, and then the musicians had shied away from it. And that had been long before he'd learned to play.
"You sing the blues, Martha?" Eb asked. "I had no idea."
"I do not," she said. "That is not where my particular talent lies. But one of my grandsons taught me the basics, oh, a hundred years ago now. And somebody's got to teach this boy what's what before he makes a mess of things again, Ebenezar. Let's see if I remember." She strummed the guitar - basic chords in C on a steady four-note beat, none of the complicated syncopations or slides Harry had been planning to do - and then started singing in a voice that was more like a growl than a melody, and more empty spaces than it was song.
"If you gonna sing the blues, boy, you gotta know what you do
If you gonna sing the blues, boy, you gotta know what you do
If you don't know what you doing, you gonna turn the whole world blue.
Now my ma played me a name once, she played it on a drum
My ma played me a name once, she played it on her drum,
she say, Martha, this is how I tell your daddy come.
Everything I say twice then you know I say it true
Everything I go singing and I sing it twice it true:
Third time is the changing, third time is the blues.
There's power in a word, boy, and there's a power in threes;
There's power in your words, boy, and there's power in a three;
When I sing the blues there's everything in me.
I ask a hoodoo man, I ask him is it the blues he sings;
I ask a hoodoo man, I ask him ain't it the blues he sings;
He tell me lady, I keep far away from them things.
If there's mojo in your bones then the devil gonna hear you play
If there's mojo in your bones then you know the devil gonna hear you play
The devil gonna come and getcha then you gonna lose your way
I ask my woman, she say they gets into your head;
I ask my woman, she says them blues gets to your head;
They ain't getting out again even when you dead."
Harry shivered. "Maybe I'll do polka instead."
"You think that's dangerous," she said, her voice still running in the century-old accent she'd sung in, "You should'a heard what they was singing when I was a girl, before they'd gone and thinned it down with white people rhymes."
...and then I decided that if Martha Liberty was warning me off then maybe I should just. Not. Not right then, anyway.
So I defaulted. One of only three times I've totally defaulted on a formal fanfic fest.
This has been your official glimpse into my writing process.
(...and now I guess I should go do my nano words, ugh.)
So I sat down to write a story and this is what came out, which was not AT ALL what I was planning to have come out:
It was strange, having Eb's friends from the Inner Council treat him as an equal instead of a small and stupid child. Diplomatically, he supposed, they could hardly do less, to Mab's chosen Knight, but it was still. Strange. And he'd hoped that here of all places - sitting around the old firepit at his mentor's (grandfather's) house, drinking sweet local wine and staring up at that depthless, black black sky that never happened in Chicago or in the Nevernever either, that he could leave some of that behind, and go back to the small boy he'd been when he lived here.
But if he couldn't have that, he supposed having them invite him into their circle, and talk around him candidly, and even ask for his opinion once in awhile, like it was worth something in this company - it was good.
Even if it did sometimes just mean being treated like a large and stupid man instead of a small and stupid child.
"She wants you to sing?" Eb cackled. "Why'n hell she want you to sing? She think she got Thomas the Rhymer or something?"
"I haven't figured it out yet," Harry said, and shrugged. "She's asked worse."
"Hah," Eb said. "She wants you to sing for Summer, she clearly hasn't heard you try yet. Or try to play the harmonica, either."
"Hey!" Harry said, stung. "I do all right, old man. Here, who's got the guitar?" It was a battered old odd-sized thing that had appeared an hour or so ago; Harry had no idea who'd brought it but they'd been passing it around. It was delivered to him from the shadow on the other side of the bonfire, and he bent over it with a "thanks," and a few sample chords. He hadn't done this in a long time - he'd been afraid to - but it came back to him, just as easy and pure as ever.
"Not sure what to sing, though," he said. "Maeve liked swing, but Leah still goes for the classical. I was thinking maybe something to remind me of home. Maybe the blues." He strummed through the opening of 'House of the Rising Sun' and then switched to something simpler and older that he remembered hearing around one of these circles decades ago.
"Give me that," Martha Liberty said, and plucked the guitar out of his lap. "You may know how to play, boy, I'll give you that, but you don't know anything about the blues, do you?"
"Not really," Harry admitted willingly. "I went to the Blues Festival in Chicago once." It'd been for a case, admittedly, but he'd stayed around to listen. Some of it had seemed to be just pretty music. Some of it had been disconcerting, like it was almost something it wasn't, and then the musicians had shied away from it. And that had been long before he'd learned to play.
"You sing the blues, Martha?" Eb asked. "I had no idea."
"I do not," she said. "That is not where my particular talent lies. But one of my grandsons taught me the basics, oh, a hundred years ago now. And somebody's got to teach this boy what's what before he makes a mess of things again, Ebenezar. Let's see if I remember." She strummed the guitar - basic chords in C on a steady four-note beat, none of the complicated syncopations or slides Harry had been planning to do - and then started singing in a voice that was more like a growl than a melody, and more empty spaces than it was song.
"If you gonna sing the blues, boy, you gotta know what you do
If you gonna sing the blues, boy, you gotta know what you do
If you don't know what you doing, you gonna turn the whole world blue.
Now my ma played me a name once, she played it on a drum
My ma played me a name once, she played it on her drum,
she say, Martha, this is how I tell your daddy come.
Everything I say twice then you know I say it true
Everything I go singing and I sing it twice it true:
Third time is the changing, third time is the blues.
There's power in a word, boy, and there's a power in threes;
There's power in your words, boy, and there's power in a three;
When I sing the blues there's everything in me.
I ask a hoodoo man, I ask him is it the blues he sings;
I ask a hoodoo man, I ask him ain't it the blues he sings;
He tell me lady, I keep far away from them things.
If there's mojo in your bones then the devil gonna hear you play
If there's mojo in your bones then you know the devil gonna hear you play
The devil gonna come and getcha then you gonna lose your way
I ask my woman, she say they gets into your head;
I ask my woman, she says them blues gets to your head;
They ain't getting out again even when you dead."
Harry shivered. "Maybe I'll do polka instead."
"You think that's dangerous," she said, her voice still running in the century-old accent she'd sung in, "You should'a heard what they was singing when I was a girl, before they'd gone and thinned it down with white people rhymes."
...and then I decided that if Martha Liberty was warning me off then maybe I should just. Not. Not right then, anyway.
So I defaulted. One of only three times I've totally defaulted on a formal fanfic fest.
This has been your official glimpse into my writing process.
(...and now I guess I should go do my nano words, ugh.)
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Ugh, NaNo words.
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African-American female wizard and her adventures as a hip single in Chicago, because that would be amazing. (There's so much diaspora magic she must know that nobody without her exact life experience has ever heard of...)
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...
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#$^%$^ Butcher."
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