I nicked the title for one of the six stories I published recently from a Neil Young album title and song - On The Beach. It's a great song on a great album - the sound of Hippy dreams crashing into the dust. (One of my favourite sounds!) My story uses key lines from the lyrics as structural bones. For example the song opens with the line "The world is turning, I hope it don't turn away" and goes on "all my pictures are falling, from the wall where I placed them yesterday". In the story Daniel, the main character, wakes up when a picture falls off the wall in his hotel room.
He woke slick with sweat. A picture from the hotel room wall had fallen to the floor. The space in his head stretched eight miles wide. Honey slides. Gradually the evening came back to him. Suzy smiling until he realised she wasn't Laura.
"You're half way round the world, move on Daniel."
You see what I did there? Sweet huh?
I'll leave you to finish the detective work if you have the time or inclination...
I felt it was an interesting way to write a story. The tone of the song is really down-beat but there is a kind of hope in there too. I tried to get that into the story. Maybe you don't know the song? Here is an acoustic version from 1974. You can hear people chatting and bottles clinking in the background. What was I doing in 1974? Being born man, being born...
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