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As some of you may know, I spent Spring Break plowing through the first half of Carnivàle, and though I have not yet seen season two, I am very sad that this show was cancelled. It's slow, perhaps, but it has practically everything that pushes my supernatural plot buttons: secrets, Reasons with a capital 'R', mysterious backgrounds, that lovely dichotomy of grit and ghosts - the reality and unreality inherent in circuses. Most especially, I love worlds - such as that of Supernatural, and Pearl in Torchwood - where what you might call "magic" exists, but it's not recognized or regulated, but rather is found in trickery and peasant tales. Where it's recognizably our world, but with the edges blurred out a little more, and I don't think I'd be nearly as happy if everything was explained.
Perhaps it's because I'm in that mindset that I enjoy Vienna Teng's "In Another Life" so much. Off her new album, Inland Territories, comes this song, and it's very Carnivàle, very 1930s with jazzy piano and clarinet, more layers than an onion. It's about these two people, and the times they live in, but more than anything it's the Multiverse, cycles of karma, it's![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
toft_froggy's All These Places We Have Met but not as obvious about it. Seriously, you guys. My previous recommendation "Watershed" was the "Pontchartrain" of the album - vast open spaces, pounding and powerful and very solid ghosts. Sea-creatures, and "Here Be Monstyrs". This song, however, is the same amount of creep and haunt, but slyly ironic, almost taunting, because someone knows exactly what's going on, but isn't telling, and the narrator doesn't know, not necessarily, but they have a guess.
VIENNA TENG : IN ANOTHER LIFE
Like Terry Pratchett said: "God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."
Then in this song, my friends, is God. Is Management. Is Apollonia, and Lodz, and everyone who Knows Things.
Perhaps it's because I'm in that mindset that I enjoy Vienna Teng's "In Another Life" so much. Off her new album, Inland Territories, comes this song, and it's very Carnivàle, very 1930s with jazzy piano and clarinet, more layers than an onion. It's about these two people, and the times they live in, but more than anything it's the Multiverse, cycles of karma, it's
toft_froggy's All These Places We Have Met but not as obvious about it. Seriously, you guys. My previous recommendation "Watershed" was the "Pontchartrain" of the album - vast open spaces, pounding and powerful and very solid ghosts. Sea-creatures, and "Here Be Monstyrs". This song, however, is the same amount of creep and haunt, but slyly ironic, almost taunting, because someone knows exactly what's going on, but isn't telling, and the narrator doesn't know, not necessarily, but they have a guess. Like Terry Pratchett said: "God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of his own devising, which might be compared, from the perspective of any of the other players, to being involved in an obscure and complex version of poker in a pitch dark room, with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won't tell you the rules, and who smiles all the time."
Then in this song, my friends, is God. Is Management. Is Apollonia, and Lodz, and everyone who Knows Things.
