Tag: Writing

Music, My Books, Writing

INVISIBLE VIOLETS PLAYLIST EXTRAVAGANZA

Chrys Buckley

It’s finally here, whether or not you knew you were waiting for it: my book Invisible Violets, which is chock-full of music references, has playlists!

There are two versions. Both are built upon the references and allusions in the book and follow the text in order.

Invisible Violets Unabridged Playlist

The first version is the all-out, maximalist, go-big-or-go-home, completist playlist of excess.

Still, it was created with strict rules, though it may not seem like it. I will have further posts about how I constructed the playlists, what songs I had to leave off, and so forth, but for now, here is the feast of a playlist.

This playlist is essentially my debut book if it could only be told in songs.

Unabridged Invisible Violets playlist on Apple Music

Unabridged Invisible Violets playlist on Spotify

Invisible Violets Abridged Playlist

Aaaaand this is the playlist with a more sane length, distilled to only a hundred songs. The culling was painful and difficult, but sometimes we must sacrifice for our art.

I am not capable of giving a shorter version, so, this is as short as it gets.

Abridged Invisible Violets playlist on Apple Music

Abridged Invisible Violets playlist on Spotify

A Little Peak

To either entice or horrify you, here’s a word cloud of the music references in the book. By far and away the most referenced musical artist is Chris Cornell. And if you add up the references to him plus his bands, well, it gets even more lopsided. So if you don’t like that man’s voice, probably skip the playlists but also get your head examined.

Word cloud featuring musical references and allusions in the book 'Invisible Violets', highlighting artists like Chris Cornell, Tori Amos, Soundgarden, and Nirvana.

Coming Next

You all, I have so much cooking right now, you wouldn’t believe it. I hardly believe it. Who knew that finishing grad school would unleash me into the creative prime of my life?

I’ll hint at three things.

There’s something in the works to explore all of the music in Invisible Violets in more depth in ways that I hope are highly entertaining, and sometimes at my expense. Soft launch for that is scheduled (in my head) for December and the hard launch is January 1st, as this will be a hugely fun 2027 project.

A live show for Invisible Violets is in the works. Also look for more about that in 2027.

I’m working on Book Two. It’s very different from Invisible Violets in some ways, including structure, but there’s some overlap in topic, and of course, it’s still me with all my writing quirks and my incurable music referencing. I have never in my life had such a blast writing. Even when the writing is hard and it takes me seven hours to write three paragraphs (which for anyone who knows my typical writing process, this is not at all how I normally work) and even when I revisit things I really would prefer to pretend don’t exist and feel like I’m suffering for my art, it is still fun. Everything is hilarious if you give it enough time. For this one, I can’t give a specific date to expect it, but oh my freaking god, I can’t wait till I can. And the playlist for this project is going to make the Invisible Violets playlist look like a paragon of restraint.

Speaking of hilarious, I’ve been doing some stand-up comedy, but that’s a topic for another day.

Chrys

Blindness and Disability, Music, My Books, Writing

If You Are a Music Fan . . . You Might Like INVISIBLE VIOLETS

Chrys Buckley
a silhouette of a person with hair flying like they're head banging, with music symbols in the background, including treble clefs, bass clefs, sharp symbols, flat symbols, and music notes.

If you know (and everyone you know knows) you talk about music too much . . .

If you ever had the urge to cover a driveway or sidewalk with chalk drawings of band logos, song names, and lyrics . . .

If you credit music for getting you through your toughest times and hardest heartbreaks . . .

If you frequently have the urge to blast music while driving (or while riding in a car if you’re like me and can’t drive) and sing along at the top of your lungs . . .

If you remember your life by what albums you were listening to when and understand your life through lyrics . . .

If you were the kind of kid who answered parental questions about how the latest visit to the doctor’s office went with what songs you heard while in the waiting room . . .

If you love the 60 Songs that Explain the ’90s podcast (now 60 Songs that Explain the ’00s) or would listen to a similar podcast for your specific favorite music decade . . .

. . . then my forthcoming debut book, INVISIBLE VIOLETS: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays is a book for you. It’s a memoir in 7 essays with a few different themes running through its tracks (essays).

One of the strongest themes is disability (see this post about the disability aspect of the book), and as I write in Track 3: The Caduceus and the Muse:

Not all my writing, not even all my more personal writing, addressed albinism or disability, but I was constitutionally incapable of not writing about music.”

Music is all over this book. Obnoxiously so, even. Music was such a saving force in my life when I was young, and I hope my book evokes that particular sense of connecting with music as a teenager and how that resonates and evolves long after adolescence. How music can reach you when you’re an isolated and outcast kid in a way nothing else can reach you. How music can buoy you when you’re in your twenties and finding your way in the world. How music will always be with you, through all the ups and downs of adult life, as your tastes expand over time. I hope I’ve done a decent job of capturing something that feels beyond and before words.

Your particular favorite genres might be different from mine, and I hope that what I’ve written, while deeply specific, speaks to feelings that transcend genre. Still, you might be especially drawn to this book if you are or were a fan of ’90s rock, especially any of the many musical projects of Chris Cornell, to whose memory the book is dedicated. Almost every band that was on the Singles soundtrack is in the book. The artists and genres mentioned lean grunge and heavy and rock, and there’s also modern pop, singer-songwriter girlies across the ages, classic rock, and weirdly mentions of two very different artists doing covers of Joni Mitchell songs.

Again, though, my hope is that even when our specific tastes and faves differ, the feeling of the primacy of music that infuses this book will still resonate with you as you read.

I’m working on book playlists based on musical references and allusions in the book. One is a maximalist version that’s over the top, excessive, and 1.3 days long. The other is an abridged version that I’ve so far only been able to whittle down to 100 songs, which seems long for an abridged version but might have to stand as is. I’m also working on a word cloud of all the music in the book. So those will be incoming at some point before my book launch on March 13th!

Music as a theme is over-the-top, excessively prominent in these essays:
Track 3: The Caduceus and the Muse
Track 5: Can’t Change Me: An Unnatural History of My Names
Track 7: Distant Lights
Acknowledgments

Music as a theme is central in these essays:
Track 4: August is a Burnt Burgundy-Violet Haze
Track 6: Reasonable Doubt

Disability is present but more peripheral in these essays:
Track 1: Invisible Violet: On Seeing and Not Seeing
Track 2: Blue Alchemy

Cover image of Invisible Violets: A Mixtape in Lyric Essays by Chrys Buckley. Words are green against a textured background of different shades of purple. Near the top of the cover, there is an author blurb that reads, "A fierce manifesto about claiming your own story. This book will change you and linger long after the final page." This blurb was written by Tarn Wilson, author of In Praise of Inadequate Gifts.

~~~

For all the book details, check out the INVISIBLE VIOLETS page!

This post is part of a series, published the second Tuesday of every month, where I think about who my book is for.

~Chrys

Image Description: a silhouette of a person with hair flying like they’re head banging, with music symbols in the background, including treble clefs, bass clefs, sharp symbols, flat symbols, and music notes.

Music, My Books, Writing

How Did It Get So Late?

Chrys Buckley

When I think about INVISIBLE VIOLETS, my book that’s releasing on March 13 (9 weeks from today!), it mostly fills me with joy and pride. I still tear up with feelings of, I can’t believe this is really happening, OMGGGGG!

Mixed in with all that joy and pride and omfg, though, is sorrow. It feels important to talk about that too. Some of the sorrows are too big to go into on here. One of them I may write about eventually but am not ready for yet because it’s something I learned about very recently. For now, I’m going to stick to the survivable sorrows.

Here is one of them: I’m sad in a bone deep way that my first book is coming out so long after Chris Cornell is gone. I’m sad that my book is dedicated to his memory and not to him as a still living person in the world.

Many years ago, I wrote my first full-length memoir manuscript. It’s known around these parts (this site) as Moonchild (named after one of Chris’s songs). I was always going to dedicate to Chris Cornell because it chronicled the year that his first solo album, Euphoria Morning, had a profound impact on my life. I was thinking about that back in maybe 2007, give or take a year or so, when he was alive and well and making music.

I wanted to put it out there, in the world, in concrete words in a book, how much his music had meant to me. I hoped he’d read it someday and feel good that his art had had such a profound impact on someone. Lots of someones.

But then I put writing on the back burner for all sorts of reasons for a really long time, and Chris died in 2017 and now my first book, a different book, is dedicated to his ghost.

On Christmas, I found myself thinking all sorts of sad thoughts about time and regret and how I know it wouldn’t have changed anything if Chris had read a book of mine dedicated to him back in the day but still I wish I’d had a way to convey the magnitude of his art’s impact on me (and on so many other people).

What if I hadn’t put my writing on the back burner for all those years? What if I’d gotten my shit together so much sooner? What if I hadn’t thought there would always be time, always be later, until there wasn’t?

The funny thing is, all the essays in my upcoming collection are from the back burner years. And Moonchild, if I ever do anything with it, will now be dedicated to someone else, someone who was a very important and good friend to me during the year the book focuses on, someone who died in 2023.

Things always change, and mostly I’m at peace with that, but sometimes there are sorrows that need to be spoken. For me, having a book launching soon is bringing up some of those sorrows. I think that’s okay. Grief is weird and nonlinear and yeah, I’ve found myself unspeakably sad lately about a rock star death that happened almost nine years ago.

It doesn’t help with the sadness that I’ve been working on a book playlist and listening to so much Chris Cornell, solo and in all of his bands.

The title of this post comes from the song “Disappearing Act” on Chris’s second solo record, Carry On, and here I give you the music video:

Disappearing Act Video on YouTube

Chrys

Image Description: Picture of Chris Cornell

Blindness and Disability, Music, Writing

Yesterday I Did a Thing

Chrys Buckley
Screenshot of Duosuma Submission Manager showing trail to table and Wandering Angus Press Book Awards submission

Yesterday, on the new moon and the lunar new year, I submitted a full-length book manuscript to the Wandering Aengus Press Book Awards.

The manuscript I submitted is a collection of fourteen personal essays. The topics I explore within the pages are pretty reflective of this site in general but with less Breaking Bad. Not none, mind you, but less. There are essays discussing blindness and albinism and disability, essays about medical school, essays featuring the internet of the early 2000s, essays touching on pop culture in so many forms, essays rooted in land and place. Under the surface, they’re all contemplations of choice and time and memory.

They all, and I do mean all, touch on music in some way. In fact, I have a playlist underway and it is both massive and amazing.

My title, at least for now is

INVISIBLE VIOLETS: An Album of Personal Essays.

In some ways, it’s been in the works for over a decade. In other ways, it took shape over the last two or three. In yet another, it came together over the last eight weeks.

I plan on posting more about the process, as it’s been a wild ride I’d love to share.

But for now, for my first post in over four years, I’m just gonna bask in knowing that I did a thing.