MUSIC

What started out as a “I just wanna see if I can actually do it” project quickly turned into this. Have fun and lulz this Valentine’s Day… whether you’re single or not

I wrote this song for someone I know. It took me sixteen tries and four months to get it right: so I called it “Four Months”.

Of all the people Bran meets in his search to find his past, Astara is the most mysterious, and perhaps the most significant. Readers of the book might find it interesting that Astara’s character existed for years before I ever had the idea for Bran: she has had roles in unpublished stories I wrote as far back as when I was 12 years old. It takes strength for the idea of a character to withstand that many years, and in some ways I feel this strength has helped to build Astara into who she is today.

There is a reason this song uses similar instruments as “A Boy Named Bran” because in a way, the songs are connected, like their characters. Like Bran, Astara is fourteen. Her past is unknown. And she is perhaps the only friend who can really relate to him.

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This was one of the hardest songs for me to write, and I very nearly threw it out completely on the first day. But I came back the next morning, rewrote the piano and added a guitar, and ended up making one of my favorite pieces. The reason I think this song was so hard to make is because Bran’s character is so complex to me — and like many things in The Farfield Curse, his story is both happy and sad at the same time. I feel that this song helps to set him and his history to music, and fits especially well after the Prologue, when I imagine Bran would be growing up without any idea of The Farfield Curse — a time when he is just a boy named Bran, and yet is destined for great things he has yet to discover.

The story of The Farfield Curse is a mixture of hope with a little sadness — a happy ending but tinged a little. I don’t believe that any story should end with everyone getting exactly what they want. Real life never goes according to plan, and every ending will have some shade of sadness over it.

The best of endings, in my opinion, is one that can press through the sadness and the pain with hope for something better. In a way I feel this song echoes the part in the story where Bran visits the grave of his mother, and the ending of the book.

When I first started writing, I had a particularly hard time connecting with Bran. This, obviously, is not a good predicament, as the main character should usually be the one the author connects with the most. I later realized that the reason I was not relating with Bran was because I was suppressing who he really was, in favor of who I wanted him to be. When I came to this conclusion, all of a sudden Bran seemed to explode off the page with all these new facets to his character: one of these, which followed automatically, was his penchant for drawing. I discovered that Bran was actually more like me than any other character in the book – just as I connected with my writing, so also did Bran connect with his drawing. This small piece of Bran’s life, which has nothing to do with magic, is an enormous part of who he is.

In the beginning of The Farfield Curse, Bran is found locked in a vault with no memory of who he is. Years later, when he is 14, he is nearly kidnapped by someone who knows far too much about him, and he realizes there is something dark in his past he hasn’t yet discovered. Searching for the truth leads him to a bookstore, where he discovers that the very city in which he lives harbors secrets of its own. This song represents the part in the book where Bran first begins to realize how big of a thing he is getting himself into: and how dark and sinister his past could be.

I originally wrote this song for a different part of The Farfield Curse. It was only after months of listening to it and debating its title that I realized it fit far better as a theme between Bran and Rosie: the feeling that the only real friend he’s had since he appeared in Dunce might soon be leaving. It is almost an attempt to sum up all the memories he’s had with the person who has been more a mother to him than anyone else.

THE FARFIELD CURSE begins with sadness: of past mistakes, and their consequences. In the Prologue, Emry Hambric desperately tries to escape with her son Bran, heading for the one city in the world where he might go unnoticed. Emry knows she’s being followed, by police and criminals alike. There is nowhere left for her to hide. With this song, I wanted to give the feeling of Emry driving away at night, in the feeble hope that she might protect Bran from the crimes of her past–while at the same time knowing she would not survive the night to see him again.

I composed this song as a tribute to one of my favorite settings in the entire novel – one that is filled with many mixed feelings and ideas, all bound together in this place I call Bolton Road. This is the street that Bran grows up on, not knowing anything about the plots and magic that are deeply connected with who he is. Like Bran, there is far more to it than meets the eye.

This is one of my older tracks from before 2008, when I was still learning how to make music.

Another one of my older tracks from before 2008.