Tag: Rhiannon

Say Goodbye

Christine McVie died yesterday, or it was announced yesterday. It came as a bit of a shock to me, particularly realizing that she was nearly eighty. Eighty. I never really think too much about how old celebrities are (unless someone is making a big deal about it) and like people I know, I think my brain freezes everyone in amber at the age they were when I first found out about them/met them.

I discovered Fleetwood Mac when I was in high school. One of my friends was really into them, to the point where it was almost tiresome, so I was initially resistant to their allure. The fact that the band had three different lead singer/songwriters who all had their own distinctive style didn’t help–I had heard “Dreams” and “Go Your Own Way” and “You Make Loving Fun” all on the radio but had no idea it was all the same band because they sounded like three different ones. One day when I was at my friend’s house, he put the Rumours album on the stereo while we were studying…and I not only liked it, I loved it. I was stunned to learn it was all the same band! The next time I went to a record store (or a department store that had a records section) I bought the first of three copies of the album I owned on vinyl (I wore the first two out, and the third was well on its way to unplayability but we’d moved on to CD’s by then; Rumours was one of the first three CD’s I bought once I had a CD player; that CD is in the glovebox of my car right now because I do have a CD player in the car I bought), and then went back and bought the first Fleetwood Mac album released after Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham joined the band (I also hadn’t know they had recorded “Rhiannon” and “Say You Love Me,” either). From thereon out, I bought every new Fleetwood Mac album on the day it was released, and I’ve enjoyed them all. Rumours is the gold standard, but one of the things I’ve always loved about the Mac was that every album was different, had a different sound and structure, than any of the preceding ones. And of course, while I definitely could tell who wrote and sang which song by simply listening, I never tired of them. Some of the albums aren’t as good as others–we all have preferences–but Rumours has remained my favorite album for almost fifty years.

Fifty years. Fuck.

Stevie Nicks, of course, is the band member I became the biggest fan of–of the three, Lindsey has always been my least favorite, despite the fact my favorite song of theirs is his, “Go Your Own Way,” which is absolute genius–but I always loved Christine’s voice and her songs. Some of the ballads (“Oh Daddy” and “Songbird”) aren’t my favorites–I really have to be in the mood to listen to either–but she is responsible for some great Fleetwood Mac music–“Say You Love Me,” “Little Lies,” “Hold Me,” “Mystified,” “Everywhere,” “Don’t Stop,” among many others–and her voice! So smooth, so beautiful, so calming and capable. She released a solo album in the mid-1980’s called simply Christine McVie which is another one of my favorite albums of all time, too–there’s not a bad track on it, and I have it on my Spotify–listen to it and thank me later–and I actually should listen to it more myself.

I knew eventually the day would come when the door would close on the possibility of any new Fleetwood Mac music from my favorite line-up of the band, but I rather hate that the day has finally come.

But I choose to be grateful to Christine McVie for the legacy of great music she left for us rather than sad that she’s gone. She was a gift we didn’t deserve.

Confusion

Wednesday and it’s Pay Day, and it’s also the day the IRS app claims my stimulus check will arrive in my checking account. I haven’t checked yet–probably won’t until after I finish this post–but it will be a lovely and welcome addition to my bank account. My big splurge will inevitably be a trip to Costco and paying some bills, most likely, trying to get ahead of things. I have been sleeping extremely well this week–although always feel like I am “untimely ripped” from my bed every morning. Tonight I am going to the gym after work and coming home to complete putting the corrections/edits into the manuscript, preparatory to the big final push to get everything finished. I have some more writing–and probably editing–to get done, and I am seriously hoping I can get it all done relatively soon; hopefully over the course of the weekend, so I can spend the rest of the month line editing and tightening everything.

It’s supposed to thunderstorm all day, starting around the time I generally leave for the office (yay!) which will also make walking to the gym tonight a lot of fun; but I lost another pound-ish since the last time I weighed myself, and I am thinking I may actually be at a good point with my exercise and dieting (I’m not really dieting, I am just not eating late at night before I go to bed anymore, and it’s remarkable what a difference that has made. I’m also really glad I have incorporating a good stretching warm-up to my workouts; sometimes I work on improving my flexibility, others I just try to maintain a good stretch rather than trying to improve it–or get to the level I once had (the ship, alas, may have sailed on that one now that I am so old). I just know my body and my muscles feel better than they have in years, and feeling better and getting good sleep was my main motivation with the gym return in the first place. Yes, it would be great if it helped with my cholesterol and blood sugar; but if it doesn’t, so be it. The feeling better is more than enough for me.

It might seem rather obvious, but lately I’ve been listening a lot to Fleetwood Mac again–seriously my favorite band of all time, bar none; there’s really no comparison–and last night, as I deep dove into a Youtube wormhole of young people doing reaction videos to listening to Fleetwood Mac music for the first time, it occurred to me that Fleetwood Mac should have always been my playlist for the writing of this book. Yes, Fleetwood Mac has had a long and storied career–recording some incredibly great and original music (one person who was listening to them for the first time kept going back to “every song from them is a completely different sound, like every song is by a different and new band that is great”)–but if there’s any music forever linked to the five years I lived in Kansas, it’s definitely Fleetwood Mac. “Rhiannon” was released the summer we moved (I think), and I began developing my strong relationship with them the following year, with the release of Rumours, which to this day remains my favorite album of theirs. There’s just something about those two albums that just takes me back there, every time I listen to any of the music from either album….I can smell the corn fields after the rain, and driving on the county roads to get around, and being a car load of kids all singing thunder only happens when it’s raining….players only love you when they’re playing and its almost like going back in time….and the music still holds up. SO, yes, this weekend as I am a Festival widow yet again, I am going to listen to some Fleetwood Mac while I clean and organize and write my book.

My love for Fleetwood Mac and Stevie Nicks should come as no surprise to you, Constant Reader–or to anyone who’s ever known me. And now I want to listen to Tusk again.

And on that note, tis back to the spice mines with me. Have a fabulous day, Constant Reader!

Rhiannon (Will You Ever Win?)

I first read Mary Leader’s novel Triad when I was either eleven or twelve. I was creepy, and I really enjoyed it; but I had trouble pronouncing one of the character names: Rhiannon. It was a Welsh name, of course, and I’d never heard it before, so I was pronouncing it RYE-uh-none. I actually thought it was an ugly name. Flash forward a few years, and I heard a song unlike any other I’d ever heard before on the radio–KCMO AM out of Kansas City, I think it was–and after it was finished playing, the deejay said it was “Ree-ANN-un” by Fleetwood Mac (a band I’d never heard of). The next time I was at a record store, I looked for it in the 45’s rack, and there it was: RHIANNON (Will You Ever Win” by Fleetwood Mac.

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Oh, THAT’S how you say it, I thought to myself, and bought it. I eventually bought the entire album–one of the first albums I’d ever owned that I could listen to from beginning to end–and have been a Fleetwood Mac fan ever since.

A few years ago, I either read an interview with her, or saw her talking about the song on television somewhere, and Stevie Nicks said she’d read a book where she came across the name, and the book actually inspired the song. It was one of those moments where you feel a connection with an artist you love (“Oh my God, I read that book too!”)

Recently, and I don’t remember where or how or why; it may have been my October blogging, but as I said, I don’t remember how, but I remembered the book again. I hadn’t read it in over forty years, and I remembered that the author had written another book I’d enjoyed–Salem’s Children–and so I went on-line and ordered copies of both.

And I reread Triad this past week.

triad

It didn’t start all of a sudden. As I think back now, there were so many little unexplained incidents that I shoved aside and forgot about until later. There began to be those gaps in my life, little ones at first, but then longer and longer as time went on. I would wonder if my memory was failing me and I worried about the headaches to which I’d become prone, but my doctor told me that it was probably shock due to the baby’s death.

That has been so unexpected. I put him to bed one night, all rosy and dimpled with health. He looked at me with those big bright eyes, as he lay fingering the handle of his rattle, then drowsiness drew down his lids and he flipped over on his stomach as he always did and went to sleep with his fist curled around the rattle. The next morning I awakened to the sound of children on their way to school and the disposal truck grinding garbage under our apartment window. Alan was away on one of his projects, so I must have slept right through breakfast. I started to stretch lazily in those moments of waking when one lies between forgetting and remembering, and then sat up with a jerk. Timmy has missed his four o’clock feeding! Had he called and I hadn’t heard him? That wasn’t possible. I always woke at the slightest sound he made. I hurried to the crib and there he was, just as I had left him, but his little body was cold.

“Unexplained crib death” was what the doctor wrote on the death certificate after the autopsy, which meant that Timmy went to sleep a normal child and just stopped breathing for no apparent reason.

Branwen is our young point of view heroine, and the sudden, unexpected death of her child has obviously had a terrible effect on her; I cannot even imagine what it must be like to lose a child, let alone a baby. In an effort to get her over the tragedy, she and her husband, Alan–a civil engineer who is thus away for work most of the time–leave their Chicago apartment behind and buy a beautiful old Victorian house in a small town north of the city on the lake shore.

And then the weird things start happening.

Branwen has guarded a secret most of her life, you see. When she was a little girl she had an older cousin, Rhiannon–their parents were two sets of identical twins–who was jealous and cruel to her, and as such, Branwen hated her. After Rhiannon killed a kitten of Branwen’s–and made it look like it was Branwen’s fault–during a game of hide-and-seek, Rhiannon was inside an old freezer, and Branwen closed the lid on her.

Unfortunately, the handle broke and she wasn’t able to get her out. She went for help, but by the time she was able to get help, Rhiannon was dead.

And now, in the big empty house, with its speaking tubes and old-fashioned stylings, she can hear Rhiannon whispering to her…and strange things start happening.

Has Rhiannon come back? Is the house haunted? Has the loss of her child driven her mad? Is she being possessed?

The atmosphere of the book is terrifying and creepy–those speaking tubes! One of the things I remembered before the reread, over forty years later, was the speaking tubes and the hollow voices coming out of them.

In tone and voice and atmosphere, it’s very similar to Thomas Tryon’s The Other as well as something Shirley Jackson might have written.

Long out of print, it’s a shame. The book is a gem of a read, and short–less than 200 pages–and it’s also a shame Leader only wrote two books.

And as you read it, you can see echoes of the Stevie Nicks song in its pages, and you can see how it inspired her to write the song.

It’s a haunting book–like I said, I’ve never forgotten it–and I’m glad I got the chance to reread it.