Bars And Melody Quotes

Dandelion, staring into the dying embers, sat much longer, alone, quietly strumming his lute. It began with a few bars, from which an elegant, soothing melody emerged. The lyric suited the melody, and came into being simultaneously with it, the words bending into the music, becoming set in it like insects in translucent, golden lumps of amber. The ballad told of a certain witcher and a certain poet. About how the witcher and the poet met on the seashore, among the crying of seagulls, and how they fell in love at first sight. About how beautiful and powerful was their love. About how nothing - not even death - was able to destroy that love and part them. Dandelion knew that few would believe the story told by the ballad, but he was not concerned. He knew ballads were not written to be believed, but to move their audience. Several years later, Dandelion could have changed the contents of the ballad and written about what had really occurred. He did not. For the true story would not have move anyone. Who would have wanted to hear that the Witcher and Little Eye parted and never, ever, saw each other again? About how four years later Little Eye died of the smallpox during an epidemic raging in Vizima? About how he, Dandelion, had carried her out in his arms between corpses being cremated on funeral pyres and buried her far from the city, in the forest, alone and peaceful, and, as she had asked, buried two things with her: her lute and her sky blue pearl. The pearl from which she was never parted. No, Dandelion stuck with his first version. And he never sang it. Never. To no one. Right before the dawn, while it was still dark, a hungry, vicious werewolf crept up to their camp, but saw that it was Dandelion, so he listened for a moment and then went on his way.

I’m passing the bar Where you first got in my car I’m not ashamed to admit That it’s you I won’t forget I saved your cigarettes and Bad habits I regret But the hours flew by like clouds Whenever I had you around Parachute lover Take me away From the plane that went crashing And the earth that’s in flames Saving you is saving me High above the redwood trees But down below I see shadows And parachute debris We're drifting like children Along for the ride Each time we find love Another parachute arrives Our madness will burn As bright as the sun And I’ll keep finding lovers But you were the one

My mom always said, there are two kinds of love in this world: the steady breeze, and the hurricane. The steady breeze is slow and patient. It fills the sails of the boats in the harbor, and lifts laundry on the line. It cools you on a hot summer’s day; brings the leaves of fall, like clockwork every year. You can count on a breeze, steady and sure and true. But there’s nothing steady about a hurricane. It rips through town, reckless, sending the ocean foaming up the shore, felling trees and power lines and anyone dumb or fucked-up enough to stand in its path. Sure, it’s a thrill like nothing you’ve ever known: your pulse kicks, your body calls to it, like a spirit possessed. It’s wild and breathless and all-consuming. But what comes next? “You see a hurricane coming, you run.” My mom told me, the summer I turned eighteen. “You shut the doors, and you bar the windows. Because come morning, there’ll be nothing but the wreckage left behind.” Emerson Ray was my hurricane. Looking back, I wonder if mom saw it in my eyes: the storm clouds gathering, the dry crackle of electricity in the air. But it was already too late. No warning sirens were going to save me. I guess you never really know the danger, not until you’re the one left, huddled on the ground, surrounded by the pieces of your broken heart. It’s been four years now since that summer. Since Emerson. It took everything I had to pull myself back together, to crawl out of the empty wreckage of my life and build something new in its place. This time, I made it storm-proof. Strong. I barred shutters over my heart, and found myself a steady breeze to love. I swore, nothing would ever destroy me like that summer again. I was wrong. That’s the thing about hurricanes. Once the storm touches down, all you can do is pray.

The truth was that upsilamba was one of Nabokovs fascinating creations, possibly a word he invented. I said I associate Upsilamba with the impossible joy of a suspended leap. Yassi, who seemed excited for no particular reason, cried out that she always thought it could be a name of a dance- you know, "C'mon, baby, do the Upsilamba with me". Manna suggested that the word upsilamba evoked the image of small silver fish leaping in and out of a moonlit lake. Nima added in parentheses, Just so you won't forget me, although you have barred me from your class: an upsilamba to you too! For Azin it was a sound, a melody. Mahashid described an image of three girls jumping rope and shouting" Upsilamba" with each leap. For Sanaz, the word was a small African boy's secret magical name. Mitra wasn't sure why the word reminded her of the paradox of a blissful sigh. And for Nassrin it was a magic code that opened the door to a secret cave filled with treasures.

Toby is a musician, and the signs of his art are everywhere. In the instruments that lean against the walls. In the scribbled lines and notes scattered on tables- bars of half-remembered melodies mixed in with grocery lists and weekly to do's.

Yes, you do. You look at him like he’s a damn candy bar sometimes,” Melody said. “I mean, so do I, but I’d eat him. You just look at him like a fat kid on a diet.

The piano sounds vibrating from the bar below made the floor a playground for my shoeless toes. Down my throat, I swallowed brown. And thus my heart was happy. And up through the floorboards, my feet soaked in the melodies.

As a songwriter, I'm gathering clues and possibilities all the time, whether I see a piano that day or not. I've tried to explain to people how I collect these dispatches, because I think anybody can do what I'm talking about. Once I do plug in, I might get only one line and two bar phrases of the melody. I always have elements of songs around that may never ever get recorded. As far back as Little Earthquakes, I began to realize that I needed to have a library of notes, phrases, words, things that might prove useful at any given time. Within a few months' time I'll gather hundreds of those fragments. Half won't be used. And then the craft comes in, the part that is about painting a world. You want listeners to smell the lavender, to feel the point of those knitting needles in a handbag of the granny who happens to harbor a loyalty to Madame Defarge. You want the listener to know the wood's burning in the stove when they walk into the song with me. Music is about all of your senses, not just hearing.

Then it was horn time. Time for the big solo. Sonny lifted the trumpet - One! Two! - He got it into sight - Three! We all stopped dead. I mean we stopped. That wasn't Sonny's horn. This one was dented-in and beat-up and the tip-end was nicked. It didn't shine, not a bit. Lux leaned over-you could have fit a coffee cup into his mouth. "Jesus God," he said. "Am I seeing right?" I looked close and said: "Man, I hope not." But why kid? We'd seen that trumpet a million times. It was Spoof's. Rose-Ann was trembling. Just like me, she remembered how we'd buried the horn with Spoof. And she remembered how quiet it had been in Sonny's room last night... I started to think real hophead thoughts, like - where did Sonny get hold of a shovel that late? and how could he expect a horn to play that's been under the ground for two years? and - That blast got into our ears like long knives. Spoof's own trademark! Sonny looked caught, like he didn't know what to do at first, like he was hypnotized, scared, almighty scared. But as the sound came out, rolling out, sharp and clean and clear - new-trumpet sound - his expression changed. His eyes changed: they danced a little and opened wide. Then he closed them, and blew that horn. Lord God of the Fishes, how he blew it! How he loved it and caressed it and pushed it up, higher and higher and higher. High C? Bottom of the barrel. He took off, and he walked all over the rules and stamped them flat. The melody got lost, first off. Everything got lost, then, while that horn flew. It wasn't only jazz; it was the heart of jazz, and the insides, pulled out with the roots and held up for everybody to see; it was blues that told the story of all the lonely cats and all the ugly whores who ever lived, blues that spoke up for the loser lamping sunshine out of iron-gray bars and every hop head hooked and gone, for the bindlestiffs and the city slicers, for the country boys in Georgia shacks and the High Yellow hipsters in Chicago slums and the bootblacks on the corners and the fruits in New Orleans, a blues that spoke for all the lonely, sad and anxious downers who could never speak themselves... And then, when it had said all this, it stopped and there was a quiet so quiet that Sonny could have shouted: 'It's okay, Spoof. It's all right now. You get it said, all of it - I'll help you. God, Spoof, you showed me how, you planned it - I'll do my best!' And he laid back his head and fastened the horn and pulled in air and blew some more. Not sad, now, not blues - but not anything else you could call by a name. Except... jazz. It was Jazz. Hate blew out of that horn, then. Hate and fury and mad and fight, like screams and snarls, like little razors shooting at you, millions of them, cutting, cutting deep... And Sonny only stopping to wipe his lip and whisper in the silent room full of people: 'You're saying it, Spoof! You are!' God Almighty Himself must have heard that trumpet, then; slapping and hitting and hurting with notes that don't exist and never existed. Man! Life took a real beating! Life got groined and sliced and belly-punched and the horn, it didn't stop until everything had all spilled out, every bit of the hate and mad that's built up in a man's heart. ("Black Country")

THE MEETING" "Scant rain had fallen and the summer sun Had scorched with waves of heat the ripening corn, That August nightfall, as I crossed the down Work-weary, half in dream. Beside a fence Skirting a penning’s edge, an old man waited Motionless in the mist, with downcast head And clothing weather-worn. I asked his name And why he lingered at so lonely a place. “I was a shepherd here. Two hundred seasons I roamed these windswept downlands with my flock. No fences barred our progress and we’d travel Wherever the bite grew deep. In summer drought I’d climb from flower-banked combe to barrow’d hill-top To find a missing straggler or set snares By wood or turmon-patch. In gales of March I’d crouch nightlong tending my suckling lambs. “I was a ploughman, too. Year upon year I trudged half-doubled, hands clenched to my shafts, Guiding my turning furrow. Overhead, Cloud-patterns built and faded, many a song Of lark and pewit melodied my toil. I durst not pause to heed them, rising at dawn To groom and dress my team: by daylight’s end My boots hung heavy, clodded with chalk and flint. “And then I was a carter. With my skill I built the reeded dew-pond, sliced out hay From the dense-matted rick. At harvest time, My wain piled high with sheaves, I urged the horses Back to the master’s barn with shouts and curses Before the scurrying storm. Through sunlit days On this same slope where you now stand, my friend, I stood till dusk scything the poppied fields. “My cob-built home has crumbled. Hereabouts Few folk remember me: and though you stare Till time’s conclusion you’ll not glimpse me striding The broad, bare down with flock or toiling team. Yet in this landscape still my spirit lingers: Down the long bottom where the tractors rumble, On the steep hanging where wild grasses murmur, In the sparse covert where the dog-fox patters.” My comrade turned aside. From the damp sward Drifted a scent of melilot and thyme; From far across the down a barn owl shouted, Circling the silence of that summer evening: But in an instant, as I stepped towards him Striving to view his face, his contour altered. Before me, in the vaporous gloaming, stood Nothing of flesh, only a post of wood.

Sometimes,” he said quietly, “I wonder if there is a greater plan, if things are just meant to be. If all my life I was supposed to circle back to Broken Bar, and meet you.” Her broken eyes met his. Her hand still rested on Ace. “That’s what I asked Melody Vanderbilt once. She was Gage’s wife, a journalist who used to come and sit with me in the hospital. I asked whether she thought we could pinpoint the exact moment our life first started on a collision course with another’s—

This sludge oozes like a dying sea snake, though it tastes like it's already dead. Some evil force made up this concoction, intending to release it to wreak havoc on an unsuspecting world. But the creator made the mistake of tasting his creation and passed on. The world was saved for a moment. Still, like the black plague, this thing refused to fade out forever. I'm sad to report that our good friend Cliff behind the bar rediscovered it. Now it's spreading around the world as if carried by rats.

Long ago, when New York City was affordable, people who felt they didn’t fit into the mainstream could take a chance and head there from wherever they were. Bob Dylan came east from Minnesota in the winter of 1961 and made his way downtown to Greenwich Village. Like countless others before him, he came to shed the constricted definition of his birthplace and the confinement of his past. I first saw Bob at Gerde’s Folk City, the Italian bar and restaurant cum music venue on the corner of Mercer and West Fourth Streets, one block west of Broadway and a few blocks east of Washington Square Park. Bob was playing back-up harmonica for various musicians and as a duo with another folksinger, Mark Spoelstra, before he played sets by himself. Mark played the twelve string guitar and had a melodious singing voice. Bob’s raspy voice and harmonica added a little dimension to the act. Their repertoire consisted of traditional folk songs and the songs of Woody Guthrie. They weren’t half bad. Bob was developing his image into his own version of a rambling troubadour, in the Guthrie mode.

May 15 MORNING “All that believe are justified.” — Acts 13:39 THE believer in Christ receives a present justification. Faith does not produce this fruit by-and-by, but now. So far as justification is the result of faith, it is given to the soul in the moment when it closes with Christ, and accepts Him as its all in all. Are they who stand before the throne of God justified now? — so are we, as truly and as clearly justified as they who walk in white and sing melodious praises to celestial harps. The thief upon the cross was justified the moment that he turned the eye of faith to Jesus; and Paul, the aged, after years of service, was not more justified than was the thief with no service at all. We are to-day accepted in the Beloved, to-day absolved from sin, to-day acquitted at the bar of God. Oh! soul-transporting thought! There are some clusters of Eshcol’s vine which we shall not be able to gather till we enter heaven; but this is a bough which runneth over the wall. This is not as the corn of the land, which we can never eat till we cross the Jordan; but this is part of the manna in the wilderness, a portion of our daily nutriment with which God supplies us in our journeying to and fro. We are now — even now pardoned; even now are our sins put away; even now we stand in the sight of God accepted, as though we had never been guilty. “There is therefore now no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus.” There is not a sin in the Book of God, even now, against one of His people. Who dareth to lay anything to their charge? There is neither speck, nor spot, nor wrinkle, nor any such thing remaining upon any one believer in the matter of justification in the sight of the Judge of all the earth. Let present privilege awaken us to present duty, and now, while life lasts, let us spend and be spent for our sweet Lord Jesus.

THE sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually. As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow, spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woollen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp reused it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold. The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue fingerprint of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.

From the hills behind, came the solitary voice of a girl. She must have been bringing down the goats, and she was singing wildly. At the limit of her uninhibited voice, without any recognizable melody in Turkish Muslim intervals. It sounded disembodied, of place, not person. I remembered having heard a similar voice, perhaps this same girl's, singing one day on the hill behind the school. It had drifted down the hill into the classroom, and the boys had begun to giggle. But now, it seemed intensely mysterious, welling out of a solitude and suffering that made mine trivial and absurd. It held me under a spell. I sat with the gun across my knees, unable to move while the sound floated down through the evening air. I don't know how long she sang for, but the sky darkened, the sea paled to anachronous grey. Over the mountains, there were pinkish bars of high cloud and still strong light from the set sun. All the land and the sea held light, as if light was warmth, and did not fade as soon as the source was removed. But the voice dwindled towards the village, then died into silence.

The sun had not yet risen. The sea was indistinguishable from the sky, except that the sea was slightly creased as if a cloth had wrinkles in it. Gradually as the sky whitened a dark line lay on the horizon dividing the sea from the sky and the grey cloth became barred with thick strokes moving, one after another, beneath the surface, following each other, pursuing each other, perpetually. As they neared the shore each bar rose, heaped itself, broke and swept a thin veil of white water across the sand. The wave paused, and then drew out again, sighing like a sleeper whose breath comes and goes unconsciously. Gradually the dark bar on the horizon became clear as if the sediment in an old wine-bottle had sunk and left the glass green. Behind it, too, the sky cleared as if the white sediment there had sunk, or as if the arm of a woman couched beneath the horizon had raised a lamp and flat bars of white, green and yellow spread across the sky like the blades of a fan. Then she raised her lamp higher and the air seemed to become fibrous and to tear away from the green surface flickering and flaming in red and yellow fibres like the smoky fire that roars from a bonfire. Gradually the fibres of the burning bonfire were fused into one haze, one incandescence which lifted the weight of the woolen grey sky on top of it and turned it to a million atoms of soft blue. The surface of the sea slowly became transparent and lay rippling and sparkling until the dark stripes were almost rubbed out. Slowly the arm that held the lamp raised it higher and then higher until a broad flame became visible; an arc of fire burnt on the rim of the horizon, and all round it the sea blazed gold. The light struck upon the trees in the garden, making one leaf transparent and then another. One bird chirped high up; there was a pause; another chirped lower down. The sun sharpened the walls of the house, and rested like the tip of a fan upon a white blind and made a blue finger-print of shadow under the leaf by the bedroom window. The blind stirred slightly, but all within was dim and unsubstantial. The birds sang their blank melody outside.

the first published blues was a song called “I Got the Blues,” which appeared in New Orleans in 1908. Its composer was an Italian American named Antonio Maggio, and it began with a twelve-bar section using a melody that is a clear predecessor of W. C. Handy’s “St. Louis Blues.

At the corner of the bar, a conversation rose in decibel, becoming animated. “Yo, Frank, take a look at what just walked in! Is it Christmas already? ‘Cause that sure is a pretty package.” “You got that right. . . . Wouldn’t mind unwrapping her bows.” Instinctively, Sean cast a glance over his shoulder and groaned in despair. The scene from Casablanca played in his mind. . .Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she had to walk into mine. This could not be happening. This was his turf, his town, his bar. She had no right to trespass. Okay, so this wasn’t Casablanca. This wasn’t Rick’s Café. Sam’s fingers weren’t summoning the haunting melody, “As Time Goes By,” from the ivories of an old upright piano. There weren’t any ceiling fans with long propeller-like blades slicing through thick clouds of cigarette smoke, nor were the voices that could be heard an exotic mélange of foreign languages and accents. But those differences were superficial, of no consequence. The only thing that really mattered was that Sean understood exactly how Bogie felt when his eyes lit on Ingrid Bergman. That terrible mix of bitterness, longing, and fury eating away at him. He groaned again. At the sound, the two men sitting at the corner of the bar broke off their conversation, eyeing Sean curiously. Just as quickly, they dismissed him and returned to their avid inspection. “Must be lost or confused. Palm Beach is twenty-five miles north.” “Let’s be friendly and give her directions. How ‘bout that, Ray?” “You frigging nuts? The only directions I’m giving her are to the slip where my houseboat’s moored.

The pastry came first. If cooks had their mother sauces, pastry chefs had their mother doughs, and pâte à choux was the grand dame among them. It was one of the first things she'd learned to make and still one of her favorites. There was magic in the way the dough went together, butter and flour and salt, cooked until the raw flavor of the flour disappeared, but not so much that it went dry and crumbly. Then four or five eggs got added one at a time until it transformed into a thick batter. It was traditional to beat it by hand, but Melody had learned long ago she got more consistent results with far less effort by using a stand mixer. Then she spooned the batter into a piping bag fitted with star tip and piped long, uniform lines of dough onto a parchment-lined baking sheet. As soon as those went into the oven, she began to concoct her flavors. A maple-and-vanilla crème that would be topped with a maple glaze and bacon bits. A lemon curd topped with toasted meringue, the filling for which was already prepared and jarred in her fridge from her lemon bar experiment earlier that week. A cardamom-scented custard paired with a brûléed sugar glaze.

Just because they were homey didn't mean they were ordinary. Most versions of this recipe relied on butterscotch chips, waxy little chunks of hydrogenated oil and synthetic butterscotch flavor. Bev's used malted milk powder and a truckload of butter, relying on the interaction between the oven's heat and the milk powder to give that toasty, caramelized flavor that suggested rather than screamed butterscotch. Melody's version also subbed brown sugar for some of the white with a healthy shot of molasses to add a deep, earthy note. At the last moment, she added some chopped hazelnuts from a little glass jar in the cabinet for extra texture and flavor. Thoughts of Justin faded as she mixed and spread the batter, then slid the shallow jelly roll pan into the oven where it would bake into a sheet of butterscotchy, nutty deliciousness. When it came out dozens of minutes later, fragrant and golden brown, she inhaled the aroma, basking in her sense of accomplishment at a perfect result. There was nothing like taking basic ingredients and transforming them into something both beautiful and tasty.

Rachel reappeared with a wooden peel holding a free-form pizza heaped with vegetables, its edges blackened by the flame. Melody's mouth practically watered at the sight of it. The moules on Saturday had been amazing, but after the day she'd had, pizza and wine and butterscotch bars- hopefully with good coffee- would feed her soul as much as her body. Her friend cut the pizza into diagonal strips with a dangerous-looking mezzaluna, and then it was a free-for-all to grab the crispiest slices. Melody closed her eyes to savor the perfectly tender vegetables on top of the crisp pizza crust and sighed with happiness. "You did a garlic Parmesan cream sauce." "I figured I was allowed to deviate from traditional primavera since it's pizza." "It's good Parmesan." "Local. Makes up for the fact it's not Italian.

The symphony of life moves on but you keep looking back, clinging to a few bars of the melody, blocking your ears to the rest of the music,

At 1:11 a.m. on Sunday, August 13, the East German radio service interrupted their Night-time Melodies show for a special announcement: “The government of the States of the Warsaw Pact appeal to the parliament and government of the GDR and suggest that they ensure that the subversion against the countries of the Socialist Bloc is effectively barred and a reliable guard is set up around the whole area of Berlin.” The message was clear, but many in the West didn’t hear it, as tuning into East German radio programs for enjoyment was unheard of. The

Another piece of her melody clicks in place, another bar of music that makes my fingers itch to play it on the keys, to see if it sounds the same in real life as it does in the perfect concert hall that is my head.

Manna suggested that upsilamba evoked the image of small silver fish leaping in and out of a moonlit lake. Nima added in parentheses, Just so you wan't forget me, although you have barred me from your class: an upsilamba to you too! For Azin it was a sound, a melody. Mashid described an image of three girls jumping rope and shouting "Upsilamba!" with each leap. For Sanaz, the word was a small African boy's secret magical name. Mitra wasn't sure why the word reminded her of the paradox of a blissful sigh. And to Nassrin it was the magical code that opened the door to a secret cave filled with treasures. Upsilamba became part of our increasing repository of coded words and expressions, a repository that grew over time until gradually we had created a secret language of our own. The word became a symbol, a sign of that vague sense of joy, the tingle in the spine Nabokov expected readers to feel in the act of reading fiction; it was a sensation that separated the good readers, as he called them, from the ordinary ones. It also became a code word that opened the secret cave of remembrance.

Music is a universe of sound, constantly expanding and dividing. Compositions are carved into movements and passages. A half note branches off into quarter notes, sixteenth notes—the same tone, yet held for a different duration, a different effect. A harmony of multiple notes, a counterpoint of multiple melodies, an orchestra of multiple instruments: separate spheres, playing in parallel. “A composer must make order out of this hopeless profusion of noise. To play every note at once—one big, all-encompassing dot—would produce chaos. To play none would produce silence. But to space them out artfully on a staff of time: that would produce a masterpiece. “And so the composer splits the piece into measures and meter. The notes are held tight within bar lines, told when to ring out and when to die out, when to attack and when to decay. They are given finite boundaries. *You will last for eight breaths, and no more.* To them, time is fixed; to the composer, it is fluid. She could speed it up, slow it down, change duple meter to triple meter or a march to a waltz. She knows that the beauty lies not in how long the note lasts, but in the sound that it makes while it does. “Maybe, the woman thinks, our composer has done the same with us. Lest eternity seem too long and infinity too loud, she imposes measures on our existence, divides it into years, generations, incarnations. We count beats and birthdays. We emerge from the silence, and we fade back into it. This is not a punishment or a curse, any more than it is to assign a time signature to a song. After all, if there is no beat, how can there be a dance? “She does not do this to make us suffer. She does this to make us music.

First, there is no evidence for the assertion that Luther “took tunes that were sung in bars and wrote God-inspired words to go along with the melodies.

The melodies of bar form chorales have nothing to do with bars or taverns and whatever songs might have been transmitted orally in the popular culture.

As she left, he began playing something as soft and haunting as the last roses of summer. She recognized it in two bars: Liebesträume. He and Mrs. Rowland had played it together that first night of their acquaintance. Even Gigi, incompetent musician that she was, could pick out that melody on the piano with one hand. Dream of Love. All that she ever had with him.

While this signifier can be difficult to pin down with precision, it can clearly be heard in the records of Duane Eddy and many other guitarists of the period. It usually involves a relatively nondistorted electric guitar timbre articulated with a strong attack and a melody played on the lower strings. Reverberation is ubiquitous, and almost equally common were echo, amplifier tremolo, and use of the guitar’s vibrato bar. This overall guitar sound is often called a Fender sound, but that is a bit misleading, since Gretsch guitars were equally specialized for the purpose, and many other brands were also used. What makes the twang guitar interesting in topical terms is that it not only signified the western topic but also was key to a linked set of genres that intersect one another in complex ways: western, spy, and surf. Because these were all signified by overlapping musical features and in turn resemble one another in some of their broader connotations, we could speak of a twang guitar continuum: a range of topics that coalesced only shortly before psychedelia and were cognate with it in a variety of ways. Philip Tagg and Bob Clarida point out that the twang guitar, often in a minor mode with a flat seventh, was a common factor between spaghetti western and Bond/spy scores in the late 1950s and early 1960s. I would add surf guitar to the list, with its sonic experimentation and general relationship to fun, escape, and exoticism: “[The twang guitar] probably owes some of its immediate success as a spy sound to its similarity with various pre-rock ‘Viennese intrigue’ sounds like Anton Karas’s Third Man zither licks (1949). But in the 1962–64 period that produced The Virginian (1962), Dr. No (1963) and Leone’s A Fistful of Dollars (1964), steely Fender guitar was well on its way to becoming an all-purpose excitement/adventure timbre” (Tagg and Clarida 2003, 367).

Well, you musta pissed in someone’s apple juice,” Trevor said, clapping a hand on Kieran’s shoulder. “Haven’t we all.” Kieran cast one look around this tragedy of a bar, consisting of overturned tables, pools of black blood from the two dead rakshasas, and a dead, slumped over bartender.

Art was like that, it could set you free, or reveal the bars set just outside the window; it could show you a life you’d never dreamed of, and make a heart swell or break.