(adding Nilly and Anne to beta list)

Nilly, which email addy is best for you?

I don't speak Music. I have no better way to explain my lack of ability to, well, communicate with it.

You're in some very good company there, if the school of thought that believes Shakespeare was completely tonedeaf is correct. But music is also about the lyrics, sometimes; do you do poetry?

Also, I don't speak music, either - I can't read a note. I just get naked and roll around in it. Alternately, it serves as a nice proxy for the booze I don't like; makes me very drunk.

This is pretty sentimental from me.
Janis’ Drabble
I can’t believe I’m older than you are now, in terms of not being in the 27 club. I could’ve been, the “kosmic blues” were rough on me, too, when I was 27. I was not in a position to wait for heroin, or even alcohol then, and now I can’t imagine having a talent like yours and wanting to. Sadly, I would still rather be like you than like me. I’m taking too long to get started, and you finished too fast. Maybe it’s one or the other, sometimes.
When I was a kid, I used to wonder what you were so pissed off about. I think I might understand now. Kids don’t really get rage and it took me a while, the growing-up thing.(I hate to tell you how old I was before I got that you could read “Down on Me” two ways. Too old.) Your voice still sounds really alive. I think you’d get a smile listening to me mangle “Piece of My Heart” because I’m from Arizona and I think we have our soul systemically extracted. Maybe it was Goldwater. That was before my time.

Oh, man. erika just broke me in half.

My friend Pigpen (Rod McKernan) from the Dead is the person who taught Janis how to drink Southern Comfort. He died of liver disease. No surprise.

Music Drabble I

The Everly Brothers and Elvis were on the radio and the Beatles were on the way. Two girls sat in the basement next to the faux antique hi-fi, carefully placing the tone arm back again and again until they had memorized each song. They sang along: "It takes a worried man," "I don't give a damn about a greenback dollar," giggling at the "damn" and playing acoustic air guitar. Two girls obsessed with the Kingston Trio, while their friends practiced the Twist.

I was out of step with time and fashion, for the first time perhaps, but not the last.

Oh dear, Ginger is me. Not for the first time, either. Only for Nancy and me it was PP&M.

And then Love, Love Me Do.

She could hear the promise in every note; see the lush fields and sparkling waters. If she closed her eyes, she would see them clearer yet, and find herself half-standing, about to join the stream of merry children following him to the hillside.

But when she opens them, she sees herself in the room, with ripening breasts and widening hips, and feels the dull ache presaging monthly blood, tying her to this hearth.

She watches instead, as they run into the newly opened cavern, and when it closes, leaving one behind, she stands at last, and moves to comfort him.

Looking for a little advice -- a friend of a friend has asked me if I know any agents who specialize in fantasy. I never worked in the genre, and I don't think any of the agents I know handled it. Any suggestions for reputable people I could refer her to?

Ginger, I love your drabble. I used to listen to my dad's Kingston Trio records -- he and my mother were definitely the Harry Belafonte, Carpenters, Hi-Lo's types. I think the funkiest record they had was Jesus Christ Superstar.

So powerful, ita -- such lyric language ("tying her to this hearth") but such rich emotion.

Oh, ita.

My father was a jazz musician and producer. Music runs through the family like a particular gene, or something. We all have it. Hell, my brother's daughter is AD of a major municipal symphony orchestra, and also first chair violin, and her brother is doing a PhD for something called "modern somethingorother piano" at San Diego State. The music in my immediate family is ridiculous; my poor sister Alice, who loves it with a passion, is the model for Penny's musical inabilities in the current series: she knows songs in seven languages and can't hum any of them, or play an instrument.

ita, that was lovely.

Ginger! That brought back some memories; I was the first acid rock lover I knew in my own age group, and it definitely polished the edges of me being One Apart.

ita, will you write for me forever?

I'm drabble-less, but I'm thinking about it. It's sneaking around the back edges of my brain.