NaNo and Carmina Burana

God, there are a thousand things I should probably be blogging about, like the Philae landing or that dude's shirt with the half-naked ladies, but I'm going to have to miss those awesome blogging opportunities (or write about them later) because all of my spare energy has been thrown into my NaNo project this year, Your New Fan.

The title is subject to change but I think it's a good one.

This is an idea I've been sitting on for a couple years, at least in a vague way. You see, I listen to a lot of NPR in the states, and my particular affiliate (WDIY out of Allentown, PA) has a really great mix of indie music, local events, and syndicated NPR material. ("I'm Terry Gross and you're listening to Fresh Air.") But my favorite show, by far, is the three-hour weekday afternoon indie binge that is The Blend. If it was a good day at work, we'd have the dial tuned to NPR and those three hours during the slow winter months would just fly by. Then an hour of the news and then it was closing time.

It occurred to me on a drive once, on a day off, that it would be really easy for a mentally unwell person to fall in love with the DJ of just such a show, with only the music selection, the DJ's voice and a bit of banter or explanation in between songs to go on.

This year I finally decided to make that story happen. I also decided to go a little postmodern/House of Leaves with it and present the whole thing as a "found footage" story-within-a-story: someone discovers the letters addressed to a local DJ in their new apartment and presents their own commentary and thoughts on the letters; the more we learn about the author of the letters the more we also learn about the person who found the letters.

It is almost aggressively complex and ~literary~ but why not? I think this NaNo, more than my other attempts, is becoming a useful psychological exercise for me, but that's a topic best left to another day.

So, anyway, that's why I haven't been posting so much. And it isn't even NaNo that's prompting me to post today, but the fact that THIS IS HAPPENING AND I HAVE TICKETS FOR IT AND I'M GOING TO SEE IT IN A FEW HOURS:

I know Carmina Burana is like the super sexy popular kid of Modern orchestral music and is probably way overplayed but I don't care, I think it's a fantastic concert cantata.

If I lost you at "Carmina Burana" let me embed a selection from it that you absolutely positively know because at this point it's become something like a musical trope (especially in movie soundtracks).