JP's Song to Story

Link to Original Story: Song to Story - JP

For those unfamiliar with the song, this is based off of “The Stolen Child,” by the Waterboys, which is itself the Yeats poem of the same name set to music. Though the poem is about liberating a child from the sorrows of the human world to the joys of a magical realm, I always thought there was an element of sadness to it; “he’ll hear no more the lowing of the calves on the cold hillside,” I think personifies that sense of loss that is embedded somehow in the words and in the music the Waterboys added. It took me a while to come up with this idea, but when it came, I was possessed to write it… I just suddenly got the image of the boy underwater, bubbles trailing from his mouth, reaching out to a smiling fairy. This is probably the saddest piece I’ve ever written, and to me, it’s very haunting. I’m still not sure that the ending isn’t too abrupt, but I have difficulty wading back through the emotions involved to fix it. Maybe that’s the sign of an amateur.


JED says thusly: