EXPERIMENTAL WRITING: Can Reading A Story Be Enhanced By Listening To A Song?

I tried this once a year or so ago – and I sort of liked the effect. I thought I’d try it again and this time, tie the story closer to the lyrics. My hope is that the story will be enhanced by the music and the music will enhance the story. Your thoughts on the matter would be greatly appreciated!

1) In a second tab, go to this Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LartL77Nuqs&feature=related and queue it up.

2) Hit play on the Youtube, go to the story below and while listening to the music on low, read it.

The Story –

WHERE HEALING BEGINS

A bolt of actinic lighting slashed the sky, flooding an immense silver web of wires suspended from hot air balloons. Thunder growled faintly in the thin air of the gas giant, River.

Turin Beejis Ramone growled inside his spacesuit, “Give me what I want!” The spider WAS what he only dreamed of being: useful. Salt-ice lattice shell, a Faraday cage protected secret messages delivered by hand and small flyers. It gave the spider its purpose, so that gulping messages to protect them from the lightning, it took them out later, slotted them into a program that broadcast to moons above. Then messages flew to five million grenan, imp, mod, envadan, art, cold and virtual Humans. One chip held Turin’s deepest secret.

As he raged against that thought, the lattice of the envadan melted in his hot, gloved hands. Its death agony vibrated the carbon fibers of his suit like guitar strings. Jamming his hand into its stomach, he grabbed the treasured metal chips.

He dropped the body and it spun away in the thin arctic wind tugging at his glider. He looked wildly around but no one had seen. Floating through the frigid upper levels of Mekong Band, the antenna was one of a thousand joining data of hot and cold, hydrogen and helium, water and ammonia hurricane gas giant River stripes.

Lightning struck the web, sparking on silver antennae threads. Startled, Turin slipped and fell, wires slicing neatly through his glider cords. He fell screaming, onto a three-meter-long VHF prong. It punctured his self-sealing suit twice and hit neither vein nor artery. Staring up, his hand spasmed and the chips fell into the clouds. Freezing blood slick triggered an automated call to the nearest paramedic as Turin moaned, cursing everything inhuman.

Far below, Irog, an environmentally adapted Human manta ray with a five-kilometer wingspan heard the call and pitched himself into a steep dive, opening his maw to scream a stuka siren. Inside an oxygen-nitrogen bubble, rode gear and paramedics. The younger shouted, “I told you to warn us!”

Snickering, Irog the hūmbūlance leveled off. “It’s ten klicks straight up.”

“See anything?” asked an older paramedic.

“There’s a thunderhead between us and the accident.”

Gordon sighed and said, “You know what to do, bud?” He slapped the wall of flesh.

“Ouch!” Irog exclaimed, the floor rippled, “And yes, I do know what to do. ETA in five.” Spinning and twisting up through roiling storm clouds, he circled the antenna. “I have a read on his suit biosigns: stable but critical. Gordon, take the glider down. Rane prep the ER.” Rane hurried through a hall tube; Gordon up through a throat and mouth. With blue kit and a glider, outside, he leapt into a gale and dropped down beside Turin.

“Patch me into his comm.”

“Done.”

“Turin?” A faint moan. “I’m a paramedic with a hūmbūlance and another paramedic. We’re here to…”

Turin struggled, gasping, “Not genetic freaks!”

Gordon scowled, “Purity League again?”

“Two in one month,” said Rane. “Ready here.”

Turin struggled on his antenna spit, “No!”

Gordon read the bioscan completely and said, “You’re not even Human, why scream at us?”

Turin wept, stopped moving and wheezed, “You’ll tell everyone…I’d rather die.”

With a metal cutter, Gordon clipped the antenna, squatted, put his arms under Turin and said, “I won’t tell anyone.” Gordon stood, disimpaling Turin as he screamed until he passed out.