Ethereal Girl

Current Music: in my head: the chorus of Ethereal Girl

Last weekend, saracariad, moonzie, geeoff, and I got together to play music. Our fearless leader wrote lots of cool lyrics and music, even though she was pretty critical of her own stuff. My favorite part is the start of the chorus with the words "ethereal girl" that were found after a long search of words like effervescent, elusive, apparition, etc. And it sounds like the opposite of "material girl" so it's quite amusing. I can't wait to make a complete version of this song as well as other new ones in the works. As often happens, we should have started this at the start of the summer!

Ethereal Girl is about missed opportunities, etc. with a girl who appears at an airport, bus depot, etc. and quickly disappears again before the guy gets up the courage to talk to her, and as such it reminds me of Jonathan Lethem's story "Vivian Relf" from his collection Men and Cartoons. In the story the protagonist, Doran, keeps meeting Vivian but they never talk about anything other than how they thought they recognized each other but actually didn't know each other before. And that's basically all they ever talk about, but Doran gets fixated on the idea of her. Eventually he writes a poem about her after a chance meeting on an airplane:

Oh Vivian Relf! Oh eclipse, oh pale penumbra of my yearning!
Pink slip, eviction notice, deleted icon, oh!
Stalked in alleys of my absent noons, there's nobody
knows you better than I!
Translucent voracious Relf-self, I vow here
Never again once to murk you
With pallid tropes of familiarity or recognition
You, pure apparition, onion --
Veil of veils only!