Usually when I’m writing I prefer silence – a rare and precious commodity around my house. My second choice is usually instrumental, because I typically find lyrics distracting when I’m trying to summon words of my own. But I think maybe this year I was already in the mode of mixtape making (I try to make a keepsake CD to represent the highs and lows of each year as it’s passing, and have recently been working to assemble both a belated 2008 and 2009) when NaNoWriMo came along, because for the first time I’ve found myself stumbling into a variety of songs that seem to mesh well with my story and will occasionally even inspire it as I’m listening and writing. I’ve assembled thirteen of these songs here:

1. As the World Falls Down – David Bowie
I’ll paint you mornings of gold
I’ll spin you Valentine evenings
Though we’re strangers till now
We’re choosing the path between the stars
I’ll lay my love between the stars

2. Christmas Time is Here – A Fine Frenzy
Christmas time is here
Happiness and cheer
Fun for all that children call
Their favorite time of the year

3. Clementine – Elliot Smith
You drank yourself into slow-mo
Made an angel in the snow
You did anything to pass the time
And keep that song out of your mind
Oh my darling Clementine

4. Don’t Fear the Reaper – Alana Davis
Came the last night of sadness
And it was clear she couldn’t go on
Then the door was open and the wind appeared
The candles blew then disappeared
The curtains flew then he appeared…saying don’t be afraid

5. I Don’t Feel So Well – Vienna Teng
I thought that you should know
That I don’t feel so well
I thought that you should know before you fall

6. In the Dark – Poets & Pornstars
Don’t get lost in here

7. My Boy Builds Coffins – Florence and the Machine
My boy builds coffins he makes them all day
But it’s not just for work and it isn’t for play
He’s made one for himself
One for me too
One of these days he’ll make one for you

8. O Death – Jen Titus
My name is Death
and the end is here

9. San Francisco – Ingrid Michaelson
A jumper is what they’ll name you
Just another jumper, not the first
When you’re broken
You can’t tell them where it hurts

10. Such Great Heights – Iron & Wine
They will see us waving from such great heights
“Come down now,” they’ll say
But everything looks perfect from far away
“Come down now,” but we’ll stay

11. Superman’s Song – Lucy Wainwright Roche
But he stayed in the city, and kept on changing clothes
In dirty old phonebooths till his work was through
And nothing to do but go on home

12. Welcome to the Black Parade – My Chemical Romance
When I was a young boy,
My father took me into the city
To see a marching band.
He said, “Son when you grow up,
would you be the savior of the broken,
the beaten and the damned?”

13. Within You – David Bowie
How you turned my world, you precious thing
You starve and near exhaust me
Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for you
I move the stars for no one

You can listen to these from the player over there in the sidebar, or you can go here to listen to them and a few others from Babyshambles, The Police, and The Presets among others.

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