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ferylcheryl · 3 years

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Three-Time

“Come, I’ll show you.” His hand extended.

“I don’t care to learn.”

“You just don’t want me to lead.” A quirked eyebrow, an incremental lift of the lips beneath his thick, neat mustache. How his eyes soften imperceptibly from sharpness to sly warmth. Cornelius rises to his feet.

“Once you learn,” Billy continues, “you can lead. Now, put your hand up on my shoulder—there—good. The waltz is a simple dance.”

“Where did you learn, then?”

“Never you mind. Now, this—”

“You’ll tell me one day.”

“Jesus, Cornelius. I may as well tell you now, else you’ll dog me to death about it.”

“Oh, I was just curious.”

“Please. I can see you turning green, ridiculous man. ‘Twas a neighbor girl. Taught me to amuse herself.”

“It’s certainly stuck well.”

“It’s—a nice, neat thing to know. I’d practice when I was alone.” This is true. In a hazy shaft of light in his garret bedroom, stooped so as not to strike his head, he’d sometimes trot a methodical box-step. It was neither the romance nor the grace of the thing, but its order; the mercy of its repetition. One might enter a space outside of time; each turn twin to the one before. It was as though there was always, somewhere, a room in which he might be found waltzing and he only had to step into it to meet himself there. (His mother characterized him as a lonely child, but she was wrong: he was a solitary one.)

“And when you weren’t alone?”

“Jealousy is unbecoming of you, Cornelius. You get a face like a kicked pup. All stung-looking and wide-eyed.”

“I’ll show you a kicked pup—I know a fine long greyhound could use a swift boot to the ribs.”

“Oh, darling. I’m not in the mood. And anyway, there’s no one else now, is there?”

“Is there?”

“As though you’d not trade me for that roustabout marine in a moment.”

“Not a bit, Billy. Truly.” He pauses, and then, his eyes dancing, “I do like a head of curls though.”

“The waltz,” Billy says sharply, sliding his hand down into the shallow tuck of Cornelius’ waist. “I step forward, like so—my left foot. And you, with your right, step back. Good. We move in three-time.”

“We’ve no music.”

“We’ll make the best of it. Three-time.”

———

Cornelius kisses the inside of his thigh, his knee, the freckled hillock of his shoulder, but nearly never his mouth. It’s not a gesture Billy misses until it’s Cornelius who doesn’t do it. Cornelius who talks of making him his bride when he’s hilt-deep in him, Cornelius who promises him wedding rings. It feels like so many coins thrown into a well.

Not that he doesn’t think he means it: but he’s a hard little man, and no matter what he wishes for it comes back to him as an echo, a splash.

Three-time. Their breath falls into three-time when they fuck, and Billy likes to imagine it as a kind of waltz. Parquet floor, heavy velvet curtains tied back with gold cord. A quartet playing. We’ll make do, he’d said, but to tell the truth he misses music terribly. He’d not heard it often but when one dances one should have it. He did not like things done in parts: when one fucks, one should kiss. When one kisses, it should be the upon the lips. And if men are to know each other they should do so wholly; they should be naked together. They should know one another’s bodies so they don’t mistake one another other for beasts. All Billy knows of Cornelius is his neat pink prick, its coppery nest, the luminous, dwarf-like handsomeness of his face. His hand, his boot.

Later, when he’s stripped for his lashing, Billy is astonished by Cornelius’ dense, clustered musculature. He’d thought he was all skin and bone under there, all rib and rope. Belly like a tea saucer. Instead, he’s compactly strong—sleek and rippling and certain, like a dog with a cruel master.

“Shh,” Cornelius hisses now, slowing the neat, hard pistoning of his hips. He’s got his hands spanned over the taut dip of Billy’s waist and now, as though to give teeth to his words, he clenches in with his nails. “Someone’s coming.”

There’s a shuffling step on the ladder, and then here’s Lt. Irving, peering into the dark with eyes smothered hot, like candles just blown out.

———

Lieutenant Irving has his hand on Billy’s knee as he tells him all about Cornelius Hickey, the devious seducer. What he says is not altogether true and it’s not quite false; like all fated things there was a compulsion to it that transcends blame. From the moment they met, Cornelius striking up conversation over a shared cigarette above board one of the fair, early days, it was clear what would happen. Yes, Cornelius had this way of looking at him, a gaze warm and sly and inviting, but Billy—Billy recalls moments of looking back at him the same way, heat in his cheek and his gaze (which he normally kept studiously shuttered) softening. He knew even as he gestured at resisting him that it would happen.

He’d dreamed, in those early days, of standing in a high open window, the wind singing at his knees and nose, tipping forward, forward. Or like this: the thing about waltzing in three-time is that the beat falls an eyelash short of time enough to execute the steps, so between the two partners vibrates this small, bouncing pull and if one will waltz at all one must move in this broken surging beat, even as, to untrained eye, it seems a stately and slow dance. It seems clear who is leading. But the dancers know better.

Not that any of this would matter to Irving. Irving asks what, exactly, they do together; how it works. He starts to sweat, leans in closer. His hand weighs heavy on his knee.

———

Tozer’s many things Billy’s not: muscular in a proto-masculine kind of way, one evolutionary step from pounding his chest in a jungle somewhere; he’s commanding in the grunting, stomping way of a beast too. His attractiveness is of the conventional kind—broad, milk-fed. A whiff of the rustic about him, as though despite his evident vanity one might faintly scent manure in the nooks of his body.

He’s also dumb. It pains Billy to think that that’s what Cornelius wanted all along, somebody lovely and stupid and easily cowed, for as much as he adores him he’d not be any of those things—especially the lattermost. Most infuriating are Tozer’s attempts to fake being the one holding the leash. One should not deceive oneself about the kind of man one is. Like out there alongside the boat, preparing for the walk-out. You’ve just given me permission for a good shove. Idiot. Billy nearly laughs aloud. But then Cornelius gives Tozer that disgusting up-and-down, charting the bulky sullen fact of him as he french inhales. Peacock. He never tried to court Billy so.

False, Billy chastises himself. Only after it was over between them did Cornelius slip that mysterious ring onto his finger, his eyes all dancing.

Later, huddled against one another in a tent beneath one blanket, Cornelius sees the ring around his neck. He lifts it to the light of the guttering candle, turns it in his fingertips. He can feel the scant, damp warmth of Cornelius breath on his lips and it is very nearly a kiss.

“I meant it when I gave you this, you know.”

“What, exactly, did you mean by it?” He makes his voice as glacial as he can manage for the roar of his blood.

“Well, for one thing, I’m sure Sol’d be a terrible dancer.”

“It’s too late for this.” <I>Too late. If you kissed me now you’d taste copper in my teeth.</I>

Cornelius cocks his head, smiles softly, lifts his mouth to Billy’s. A single, chaste glide of the lips.

“Dance with me, Billy,” he says, standing up and extending his hand.”

Billy thinks for a very long time before he drops his gaze to his knees. “Don’t be stupid, Cornelius,” he says. “We haven’t room.”

“We’ll make the best of it.”

Billy stands, stooping so his mouth grazes Cornelius’ hair. He lets Cornelius lead, and is touched he remembers the steps. They waltz a few tight rings, Cornelius humming off-key. Then he kisses him again and leaves the tent.

(In the morning, there’s a new bruise on Tozer’s neck, a plummy, amorphous shadow in the shape of an open mouth.)

———

In the dream they cling together tightly, their bones interlocked like key’s teeth and lock tumblers, and he can’t tell if they are in flagrante or in a mortal struggle or just pressed together against the cold, or maybe they’re just dancing in a crowded room: yes, that’s what they’re doing. They’ve got their quartet at last, their curtains with braided cord. But from the far end of the room comes dark like seeping watercolor, a rolling streaky blackness, and when he wakes it is not darkness at all but pain, pain, pain. A crystalline pinching in his knees and elbows. He goes to see Goodsir.

Rather, he goes to see the man he understands to be Goodsir. This man in their camp is not the awkward, genial stammerer who gave him his physical; not he who enthused over crustaceans with carapaces no man had seen before: he recalls him once pulling him aside to show him, waving one over-sized claw angrily, a crab with a shell the speckled cream and red of some kind of yardbird. Showed <I>him,</I> Billy, because he was there and he was brimming with love for it, this new quick thing caught in a bucket. (Billy had given him a tight smile and walked on, Irving’s bedding wadded and wet from the wash on his hip.)

Now with a gaze immeasurably indifferent, and a queer trace of pleasure in his voice, Goodsir delineates to Billy the agonies of his imminent death. Billy doesn’t mind. He deserves it because he did not love the crab, perhaps, or because he did love and choose badly, or because—his brain is fevered, his thoughts like: he can think of nothing. He stares emptily past the good doctor. He has never been vain, exactly (though he was once—it feels a lifetime ago—possessed of a certain fastidiousness that might be mistaken for vanity) but now he wonders if he looks as wretched as he feels. Carved, hollow: once he saw an egret’s ribcage predators and the wind had picked clean. For a moment he mouths at something, but then Cornelius is there.

He thinks of nothing as he gazes down at him, his eyes the color of surf, except perhaps—how lovely you are, little and glittering. And, I wish I’d kept you. Easy to say, now that Irving’s gone, one hopes, to his gracious and beloved maker. His bones turned up like broken china beneath the shale. Billy wonders, not for the first time if it wasn’t, in part, an act of vengeance—did Hickey care enough for such a thing? Then: Hickey’s eyes swim as he peers up at him, like, like: it feels like—dizzy, he feels, as Hickey disappears, for just a moment; when he returns it is with a knife neat through his ribs—what was it he felt when he looked in his swimming eyes that last time? It was pain, it was love, it was pain.

#cornelius hickey #the terror fan fic #billy gibson

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radiojamming · 5 years

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The Terror Meta - Tom Hartnell: Symbol of Death, Redemption, and Bravery

By now, I think it’s been established that The Terror’s writers went above and beyond when it came to making their characters. The question board picture has been circulated (including the question of when a character went from being in a high adventure story to horror), so it’s probably not a reach to say that every character had their place in the show carefully considered. And one of those characters is Tom Hartnell.

(Warning: Long post and spoiler heavy. Uh, people die. A lot.)

For the show’s time constraints, Tom’s backstory is mentioned in snippets, mostly in the first episode. David Young provides the majority of it:

“I don’t want you to do to me what you did to Tom Hartnell’s brother. [...] I want to go to my grave as I am. Don’t cut me open.”

Several times in the same episode, references are made to the men on Beechey Island, having been the first three casualties of the Expedition. Clearly, Tom’s brother was one of these three.

I’ve posted this on my blog before, but the original pilot script also gave Tom an extra role and provided deeper backstory, such as this:

With Tom on the Erebus watching Billy Orren drown and attempting to go after him, a role that was eventually given to Collins. And again in a removed flashback to Beechey Island, which provides not only backstory, but further explanation to why Tom is the way that he is:

While this isn’t included in the show, the writers probably kept this scene in mind with his character. Yeah, Tom walked in on his brother’s autopsy. From the very beginning of the Expedition, he dealt with death in the most direct and horrifying way possible. In the sense of the writer’s question of when it went from high adventure to horror? It was probably this moment, before the show even begins.

From this point, Tom is transferred to Terror for reasons not explained, but now everyone knows what’s happened to him. Even people as far down the hierarchy rungs as David Young know, and it makes them uneasy. But here’s where it gets interesting.

At the moment David Young starts coughing, Tom Hartnell appears in nearly every single scene involving a person either dying or about to die. Case in point.

He’s sitting right behind Hickey and looks over his shoulder when David starts coughing. Shortly after, when David retches, he’s standing up and watching him.

(It should probably be noted that David dies of exactly the same disease that killed Tom’s brother. Wuh-oh.)

“Okay, DJ, but that’s just one time. He’s an AB, so of course he would be there!” you might say.

You’re right! But the next time he appears in Episode 2 (”Gore”), look who he’s standing next to.

Lieutenant Graham Gore, that’s who! (And Morfin by extension, but that’s for later. Same with Des Voeux.)

Aaaand who goes next?

(Really big UH-OH.)

And if you want to go by extension, he’s also present when Silna’s father is shot, and is the one assigned to collect Silna’s things that are in the Erebus sick bay with her father’s body in Ep. 3 (”The Ladder”).

Where he looks, appropriately, uncomfortable. @theiceandbones absolutely brilliantly pointed out that yes, this is the Erebus sick bay where Tom walked in on his brother’s autopsy. It stands to mind that of course he’d be anxious. He knocks on the doorframe before he enters, walking in slowly and nervously. His body language here is interesting and hard to capture with just screenshots, but he keeps trying to look away from the body as much as possible, but is finding it very hard to look away. Even as he’s leaving the room, he looks again, while also bodily backing away from it. With his brother’s death in mind, he’s revisiting the place where it all happened, possibly for the first time since then.

While I think his death symbolism starts with David Young, it really picks up between here and the next scene, where he speaks to Silna.

In the short time he speaks to her, a few things are established, both said and unsaid. Unlike some of the crew, Tom doesn’t appear to be uneasy about Silna, but instead is sympathetic. His job was probably just to get her things and deliver them, but he goes out of his way to help her and extends kindness in packing her food. He offers his condolences, and again, in something that is hard to catch in screenshots, he thinks about it for a moment, looking conflicted before offering them and giving her the nickname she’ll have for the rest of the series.

It’s unsaid, but undoubtedly, he’s thinking of his own loss as well.

We don’t see Tom for a little while until near the end of the episode when Sir John is taken into the firehole. And then, sure enough:

There he is. (For an AB, he’s sure showing up with officers quite a bit.)

Tom is in-frame for death after death after death.

It gets subverted (like a lot of things) in Ep. 4 (”Punished, As a Boy”). Tom is not in frame during Private Heather’s attack, which may be owed to Heather not dying. Strong is taken off-screen, and Evans is only with Crozier when he’s killed. He reappears briefly and in-focus, sitting with Hickey and Peglar, when Tozer is talking about how baffled they all are that Heather hasn’t died.

He also doesn’t appear when the Strong-Evans mismatched corpse is found by Hickey, who proceeds to actually see the Tuunbaq for the first time. The next time he’s seen is at a very pivotal scene for not only him, but the entire plot.

At this point, Hickey’s claimed responsibility for capturing Silna, and Tom stands up a few seconds after to also claim responsibility. This is where I think the tone of his subplot changes completely, all in the matter of one scene:

The interrogation.

Now the above shot is kind of amazing, and I’ve only noticed it recently, but knowing how much detail the show crew put into this, I feel like it’s relevant to point out a few things. First, this shot is framed with Hartnell in the center and Hickey and Manson off to the side, just after Hickey says that Tom saw the Tuunbaq first. There’s a brief shot of Hartnell sort of side-glaring at Hickey with his lip twitching before he steels himself, and then this composition. Little and Fitzjames are looking at Hickey, but Crozier’s looking at Tom, fully and completely. He knows something, and it feels relevant to note that Hickey is level with a chessboard, while Tom is level with the light.

I’ve posted about Tom’s face journey here before, and I’ll recycle a few shots for this, but the turning point comes just after Crozier outlines what Hickey’s being accosted and punished for. He names the punishment (the lashes), and Tom’s face says it all.

Fear. His eyes are watering. He has to take in a few breaths, but then Crozier asks what do they have to say and without even a full second of hesitation (I counted):

Tom says, “Yes, sir!” as clearly as possible. He accepts the punishment immediately. Crozier’s reaction:

He stares at Tom for a long moment, thoughtful, until Little draws his attention away.

Now, what does this have to do with the theory of Tom being a symbol of death? Well, a lot. I’ll get to that.

First, during the lashing, you only hear Tom’s v/o telling Manson that the lashings will hurt, and that the pain is the point of why they’re lashed. He is deliberately kept out of sight and focus, because the punishment isn’t really for him in the audience’s eyes anymore. He was probably absolved the moment Crozier looked at him. The punishment is completely directed on Hickey after that.

Ep. 5 (”First Shot a Winner, Lads”) is where the change in Hartnell really shows. The episode starts off with scenes of life now. Officers and men are taking measurements of temperature and gauging the speed of sound and light. Fitzjames is working on the charts (towards Back’s Fish River). Goodsir and Lady Silence are talking and translating, and the trinkets from the men are shown as they’ve interacted with her. The show physically leans away from death for a moment, which up until now has been bloody and gruesome. The first person who dies is Hornby, and all that happens to him?

He simply falls to the ground. No blood. No viscera. His heart’s just stopped.

Of course, the next time Tom appears:

He’s handling Hornby’s body and taking it down to the dead room.

This scene is very poignant because it shows how four different characters handle the idea of death and the afterlife, all in very short order.

You have Magnus, scared of the hold because he’s certain he’s heard the voices of Strong and Evans. He’s afraid of the ghosts that he’s sure are there.

You have Irving, who is oddly indignant, technical when it comes to the dead with explaining that all that’s left of them are frozen remains and canvas shrouds, and furious at the idea of Manson believing in ghosts.

Hickey, who at first seems to be doing Manson a kindness, but probably just more eager to show Irving up.

And then Tom, completely unafraid of handling a body, and offering to Manson that he can get the job done if Manson lowers Hornby down.

The next shot we see is another interesting one, with Hartnell leading the way to the dead room, Hickey bringing up the rear, and Manson, the lantern-bearer, several steps behind. (You could say a lot for crossing the River Styx energies here, ya.)

And then the dead room is shown at a Dutch angle or Dutch tilt, a technique used to establish uneasiness or tension.

Manson is watching the two of them work in the dead room, out of the light, in a shot that is off-kilter (yes, the ship is off-kilter as well, but up until this point, everyone has been shown standing upright) to suggest that something is going to go wrong. But then:

Tom steps out of the dead room first, in the lantern light, standing upright against the angle, diffusing the tension. There are no ghosts, no eerie disembodied voices. And just like that, with a quiet affirmation--

The scene ends, with nothing having gone wrong.

To follow up on this in the sense of Tom’s character, he’s gone from being nervous and touchy around the dead to being completely alright with their presence.

Following this, there are more scenes of life against all odds. Tozer is cutting Heather’s nails and speaking to him as though he’s awake. Hodgson supervises another scientific experiment with the cannons. Goodsir and Lady Silence meet with Blanky and Crozier and speak, ending up with the fight that culminates between Fitzjames and Crozier. No one is killed. If anything, this is one the liveliest scenes thusfar.

The next time he appears?

Is when the Tuunbaq is on the ship and about to appear in full. Before, his appearance might have suggested that someone was about to die, but something kind of interesting happens.

The crew fire on the Tuunbaq after Blanky marks it with the lantern fire, and for one of the first times in the show, Tom actually appears happy.

He’s excited! He’s standing with Little, Hodgson, and Tozer, and they’re all thrilled. Even more amazing?

Blanky does not die.

He’s injured. His injuries require a pretty gruesome amputation, but of all the episodes in the show, Ep. 5 ends with the lowest body count.

Now Ep. 6 (”A Mercy”) is kind of all over the place for Tom and everyone else. He appears first talking to Hickey about Armitage, who is now revealed to have been part of their plot to kidnap Lady Silence. Hickey asks why Tom didn’t turn Armitage in, even after being flogged.

Hickey: You’d have been in your rights to.

Hartnell: I didn’t see the point in it.

Hickey: Even still? After getting flogged? That sort of thing can change your sense of what the point is.

Hartnell: It did. I’m grateful... is the point.

Hickey: [pause] Reformed you, did it?

Hartnell: I shouldn’t have listened to you. And I deserved to be flogged.

Hickey: [silence]

Hartnell: Yeah, and by ordering it, the Captain, he’s given me a chance to clean my record and start anew.

Hickey: Do you think Crozier sees it like that? A new Mr. Hartnell?

Hartnell: I do, yeah. [smiles] And I intend to use that charter well.

This is another turning point for both Hartnell and Hickey. Hickey is realizing that his list of allies is getting shorter (he starts by trying to drive a wedge between Tom and command, reminding him that he physically suffered because of them, and when he realizes that it isn’t going to work, he mocks him and leaves him) and now understands that Tom probably won’t work with him again.

Tom shows that his loyalty is now completely with Crozier. I’d even say that he never followed Hickey’s ideals in the first place, even with the kidnapping (remember how he acted toward Lady Silence before, and how quick he was to be held responsible). This is him now completely, as the phrase goes, on the side of angels. It’s going to add a new tone to his next few interactions, and really drive home his place as a death symbol.

Ep. 6 is as bloody and horrific as Ep. 5 was not. Fitzjames holds his Carnivale, Jopson and Crozier attend, and it all goes wrong very, very fast. One thing that @theiceandbones and I noticed was that before it-shay hits the an-fay, Tom is seen once in costume.

And he’s dressed as what appears to be a lion - a very poignant symbol of bravery (and Britain, if you want to go that far).

Of course, during the fire, Tom is there (as is everyone except Hickey who is outside of the tent), so I’d hesitate to call that a connection. His first mention after Carnivale is through Bridgens, who tells Crozier that Tom reported Dr. Peddie lost during the fire.

Going into Episode 7 (”Horrible from Supper”), Tom is officially an outlier to the people who are going to become the Mutineers. He’s excluded from anything Hickey begins to plan and is completely on the captains’ side. Literally. His next shot shows him between Crozier and Jopson.

But more relevant is the next time he’s seen with Crozier and Blanky, making notes of the ice and the movement of the compass. Blanky remarks:

Tom’s been completely redeemed in the eyes of Crozier, enough that he’s being asked to step outside the grunt work of hauling sledges, and his opinions and observations are trusted (”Very well. I’ll continue to rely on your eyes.”). The way he gives his observations also show an uptick in confidence and enthusiasm. He’s happy, and a far step away from his nervous, mournful attitude of earlier episodes.

Has he stepped out of the role of being a death symbol? Yes, and no.

Death has started to dog the crew of the Expedition again. Madness is seeping in with the lead. Hickey begins to weave the tapestry of his mutiny as the gruesome discovery of Fairholme’s party takes place (note that Tom isn’t present for this). Rescue seems impossible, and death is starting to become imminent.

Tom Hartnell’s role begins to change, and he goes from being present at the deaths to aiding in the recovery. Whereas death is everywhere, Tom is a symbol of something gentler (on a whole, this is talked about beautifully in this meta piece).

It starts with Morfin.

Remember that Tom was in the shot with Gore, Morfin, and Des Voeux in Ep. 2, and he’s seen with Morfin again with Lady Silence’s father in the Erebus sick bay later. His role changes with Morfin in Ep. 7 (I’d even through in the symbolism of Morfin singing The Silver Swan if we really want to go wild with the death icons). Morfin is shot, put out of his misery effectively, and Tom does not appear until after he is killed. More importantly, he’s now interacting with the scene - helping, as it were.

He’s at the center of the shot with Goodsir - not Morfin, who is technically the subject. His hand is on Goodsir, and he silently says something to him before Goodsir stands. Unlike with the other deaths, Tom is no longer directing his attention on the bodies, but on the people who are dealing with them.

Further on, he privately speaks with Crozier about Armitage’s involvement in Hickey’s earlier plot. Once more, he’s on Crozier’s side completely, which Crozier affirms for him, saying that he trusts him and does not want to put him in a position where he feels like he can’t speak. He says they’ll work together, and thanks Tom, earning a smile out of him.

D’awwww.

But back with his death symbolism, Tom is the first shown to be handling Morfin’s body, drawn into sharp focus against the corpse.

He’s responsible for the handling and burial, but rather than appearing nervous or upset about his job, he handles it as he did with Hornby’s body. It’s a job to do, and one that he doesn’t appear to mind doing anymore. He helps dig Morfin’s grave, juxtaposed with shots and conversation of Crozier talking about the lead in the cans that led to Morfin’s madness and death.

The episode ends with Jopson’s promotion and the start of Hickey’s bloody mutiny, in a way signaling the beginning of the end.

Tom doesn’t appear for a portion of Ep. 8 (”Terror Camp Clear”), removed from Irving’s violent death where he probably would have been before, and instead placed in the silent, mournful atmosphere of the dead Netsilik group.

He’s also removed from the general chaos of the imaginary raid on Terror Camp, but appears in probably one of the most pivotal and brilliantly-arranged scenes that he gets in the entire show.

The Tuunbaq attacks in full force, ripping the camp asunder, causing so much chaos that the mutineers manage to get away. Men are killed left and right, gruesomely torn apart. The fog makes it difficult to see what’s happening and where, and so only the sounds of roaring and screaming indicate what is happening around them.

And then there’s Tom.

He’s scared. Of course he is. He’s seen what the Tuunbaq can do, and he knows it’s coming. All he can do is tell the men with him to get down and out of sight, while he stands.

Trembling, he raises his gun and waits for the inevitable. He was on deck with they shot the Tuunbaq with the cannon, and he knows that even then, it got away. He knows its size and what it’s capable of doing. His gun will do nothing to it, and he knows this. All he can do is buy the men time and take at least one shot.

Tom Hartnell literally faces down death itself, and does not back away.

The camera pans in on him, drawing into focus how he steels himself, furrowing his brows, keeping his aim steady. If anything, this shot establishes his bravery in full detail. And then--

A rocket is launched at the Tuunbaq from behind -- completely parallel to Tom. In a similar focused shot is Fitzjames.

Complete with the same steely resolve and surety, establishing his own bravery. With him on one side and Tom on the other, the Tuunbaq is caught in a perfect intersection of selflessness and courage, even when no one’s around to witness it (”A man like me will do amazing things to be seen.”).

Ep. 9 (”The C, The C, The Open C”) opens with Lady Franklin formally, but with Tom and Golding on the Arctic side, dealing with the dead in the day after the attack on Terror Camp.

Once again, Tom is no longer present during the deaths, but is dealing with the aftermath. He offers to help Golding move the body. Golding wonders after the identity of the body, clearly shaken by what he’s seen. But Tom, turning his focus way from the corpse, puts his hand on Golding’s arm to comfort him, as he did with Goodsir.

“That won’t change what we do for him.”

It’s no longer a matter of the how’s and why’s, but rather how the men move on. Tom has come to represent something so much more in death than its execution. His own grief was mired in the memory of his brother and what was done to his body. Lashing out, curling into himself, allowing others to control his path, and then finding his own way to redemption, Tom has made the full walk of his own sorrow and gone through its stages, coming out on the other side with the sense of mind to help others cope with their losses.

Then, he’s standing before the row of the dead, hands respectfully folded in front of him. He’s in their presence again, but not in the violent hour of their death, but again, in the aftermath.

Crozier’s speech is examined so, so gorgeously in this post, with the words “courage” and “the end” focused on Tom. @theiceandbones also pointed out (and subsequently broke my heart) that after Crozier mentions bringing home the names of the dead so that their loved once can find solace, Tom’s bottom lip is trembling. I fully believe in his character, Jack Colgrave Hirst chose to keep the real Thomas Hartnell’s life in mind, thinking that he was going to have to go back to their mother with news of his brother’s death. He embodies this concept so well in that moment.

After Fitzjames’ death, Tom is seen again in that same role.

He’s at the center of the shot with Fitzjames’ body, sewing him into his shroud, surrounded and at the center of the focus of their party. He’s either volunteered or been chosen to the handle the body, which he does respectfully. As Shannon, my brilliant cohort noticed:

He’s working diligently and carefully. And again, it won’t change what he does for him.

Tom also helps with Peglar, who he has been shown with multiple times since the very first episode, possibly suggesting that they’ve been friends all along.

He helps lift Peglar into Bridgens’ arms, clearly worrying for him.

He’s not shown during Peglar’s death, but he helps handle him, allowing him to rest a little easier before he quietly passes on. Compared to what’s been happening in the mutineer camp, what Tom’s witnessing is a gentle passing of people.

It’s the last scene that stings the worst, as Crozier’s group is confronted by the mutineers, including Des Voeux, Hodgson, and Manson.

Des Voeux’s gun misfires, hitting Tom square in the chest.

Tom’s own death is not through the Tuunbaq, or through any of Hickey’s machinations, or anything more than an accident. It’s quick, but painful. Crozier kneels beside him, stroking his hair, comforting him as Tom’s done for others before. The next few lines speak for themselves.

It’s the end of Tom’s redemption, a sign of his bravery, of his own recovery and progress. Crozier calls him son, affirming a bond between them. Tom is not dying alone. Instead, he has someone at his side who cares for him, just as Tom had been for his own brother only a few years before.

He holds on, struggling against the agony of his wound, until Crozier, eyes filling with tears, lets him go with one phrase -- one that includes something that hasn’t been mentioned since Ep. 1.

John Hartnell hasn’t been mentioned since the first episode, and it’s been several years at that point since his death. But Crozier knows what Tom’s been through, and he’s certainly seen his displays of grief and development. If anything would cause Tom to let go, this would be it. With it, Tom goes quietly in only a few seconds. He goes without a sound, simply closing his eyes and letting out a breath.

Des Voeux, shaken, asks Crozier to stand up. With it, Crozier does Tom a final respect by asking Little to bury him, and to live. Tom’s body is kept out of sight completely, not seen again.

After his death, the others go quickly. By the time of Ep. 10, it’s almost wholesale loss, between Goodsir’s heroic suicide, the Tuunbaq, and others just disappearing into the mists of the Arctic. But Tom’s character appears to have represented a balance, showing grief and loss, but also recovery and redemption. He appears with nearly every major death in the show, going from anxious and shaken to brave and kind, more eager to help those left in the wake of death, making him the perfect representation to the concepts of loss, grief, and recovery for The Terror.

#amc the terror #terror blogging #thomas hartnell #jack colgrave hirst #meta #long post #really really long post #i just really love him a lot #this was originally titled THE TOM HARTNELL GRIM REAPER THEORY

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septembriseur · 5 years

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A comprehensive theory of The Terror, pt. V

Hickey.

Oh, Hickey.

Or should I say: not-Hickey?

Hickey is a man who, over the course of the series, undergoes a profound transformation. When we first meet him, he’s a sullen and fairly useless caulker’s mate whose clumsy manipulations always seem to go slightly awry— he mistakes Crozier’s eagerness to get sloshed as an overture of friendship; he deploys his awareness that the tuunbaq isn’t really an animal to an unimpressed panel of officers; his daring escapade to kidnap Silna gets him flogged. Yet by the end of the show, he’s become a kind of ragged, savage would-be prophet, an unstoppable and hardly-human consumer of other men.

The seeds of this are already present in his initial appearances. The first time we see Hickey as Hickey, rather than as one of a group of seamen, is when he helps to bury David Young in episode one. There is a miniature transformation that takes place here: at first, he’s a comic figure, flicking Tozer the V before hastily turning it into a thumbs-up, but when the other men leave him to work, he opts to climb down into Young’s grave. This is ostensibly so he can fix the broken lid of Young’s coffin, but in fact (we later learn) to rob Young’s corpse, and perhaps for some other, less articulable reason.

The scene in the grave is lit dramatically, which my terrible capping probably can’t really capture; there are several distinct moments at which the sun is positioned just above Hickey’s head, obliterating him like a particularly ruthless halo.

When it isn’t, he remains wreathed in a foggy light, or else struck by a sort of painterly chiaroscuro.

There’s something uncanny about the effect thus produced, particularly at the moment when Adam Nagaitis does a brilliant bit of physical acting: a lizard-like head-flick and lip-licking that will recur later, when Hickey kills Irving. It’s a gesture that looks wrong, at the same time as it communicates a kind of joy or a physical release.

Hickey wants to be in the grave, face-to-face with the dead body. I’m undecided how much he’s indifferent to any potential taboo— how much we should believe the casualness with which he later says, about the ring he steals from Young’s body, that he got it from “someone who didn’t need it anymore”— and how much it’s the very violation of that taboo that excites him, the touching-the-corpse and the going-down-into-the-grave. Either way, we know from this point on that he is someone whose nature is to transgress boundaries.

Sometimes that transgression is sympathetic! Why shouldn’t he get off with Billy belowdecks? He seems genuinely besotted with Billy, in a sort of feral, half-formed way. But the explanation he gives as to why Irving won’t inform on the two of them should raise red flags. Irving won’t say what he saw, Hickey says, because to do so would mean “he’d have to open his imagination to what he didn’t... That’s a man afraid of chaos. He’s not going to invite more if he can help it.”

Here, “order” becomes what is seen, and “chaos” what is not seen— not only what is not seen, but what cannot be seen without puncturing order. This is tremendously important, I think, because the grave scene above also features one of several moments in the show at which the camera deliberately does not follow Hickey, barring the audience from seeing what he sees.

This is what the audience sees while Hickey is actually in the process of rifling through Young’s corpse: a long, slow push in on the exterior of the grave. We hear Hickey’s noises of effort, but we don’t rejoin him until he’s slipped the ring into his pocket.

This is exactly the technique used in the scene in episode six where Hickey puts his fingers into Heather’s exposed brain. We see Hickey pull the “veil” back to expose Heather’s injury, then bend over his body to inspect him:

However, we then cut to an angle at which the camera is positioned behind the veil, watching Hickey’s face yet concealing his actions.

We hear the wet noises as he touches Heather’s brain, but the show has literally drawn a veil across his actions, preventing us from seeing them and allowing us to leave them unimagined. (There is, I must note, a grimly clever little cut from this scene to Jacko the monkey digging his fingers into a tin of food.)

This isn’t a show that shies away from gore. I mean, in the final episode, we get multiple straightforward shots of Goodsir’s naked, butchered, and partly-consumed corpse. So it seems significant that there are these moments when the camera specifically will not let us follow Hickey where he is going, as though it does not want to implicate us in his violation.

When I say violation, I don’t want to imply that these things are somehow inherently morally wrong. What they are is exactly what Hickey says: chaotic. (I should note that the scene in which Irving finds Hickey and Billy having sex draws on elements of this same pattern— we distinctly hear Hickey and Billy going at it, but don’t see them until they’re clothed— but everything about the way the show depicts not only their relationship but also that of Bridgens and Peglar suggests that we are meant to find these relationships tender and tragic, not unpleasant.) Hickey is, characteristically and centrally, chaotic. To paraphrase a wise man: he sees a boundary, he eats a boundary and washes it down with a cup of hot steaming rules. He’s a social transgressor, having sex with men and drinking with the captain. He’s a spatial transgressor: he sneaks back onto the ship during Franklin’s funeral and wanders through everyone’s private places, touching their intimate possessions. He takes a shit in Billy’s bed. There are other elements of confusion: he’s a man who’s “punished as a boy.” And, of course, deeper than all of these things runs the abiding formlessness at the heart of Hickey: he isn’t really Hickey. We never know who he is. He has no name, no past; he’s just someone who wandered onto the ship, looking for a “change of everything.”

We find this out about him in episode seven, the end of which marks the break between his nascent chaos and chaos unleashed. Something... happens to Hickey. In the scene that sees Irving return from his meeting with the Netsilik, Hickey is shot from angles and in poses that are designed to make him appear inhuman. First there’s this—

—a weird, disturbing shot in which Hickey is crouched, mostly naked, concealed under a greatcoat, and vaguely monstrous over Farr’s corpse. Then, as Irving approaches, Hickey springs animalistically at him, stabs him, and proceeds to squat over Irving and hold a hand over his mouth until he dies. We see Hickey through Irving’s eyes while this happens, at an unnatural angle that not only accentuates the sharp, triangular shapes of his body, but also seems to distort him slightly. He looks demonic, even before he repeats his restless and lizard-like head-flick...

And then: yikes.

It’s a shedding-his-skin motion, is what I think of that head-flick. From this point forward, Hickey is no longer a resentful man kicking against his confines. He has escaped those confines. He slips into an easy, ruthless, natural command of the mutineers, including men who outrank him and have previously mocked him.

He also slips further and further away from humanity, moving towards something else. “I’ve shot smaller hawks than you,” Jopson says, but Hickey isn’t a hawk, exactly. He looks like a man, albeit a man who’s mostly running around in his long underwear and a greatcoat in the Arctic, seemingly unable to feel the cold, but gradually all his previous strangenesses come to the fore. With a rope around his neck (once more lit strangely through a haze) he tells Crozier that he “must pierce this thing [Crozier] calls truth,” and takes on Crozier’s own voice/accent to do it— another absenting of identity, another piece of evidence that Hickey is not so much a person or a thing as a void of anything, a formlessness.

I can’t help but think that what the mutineers are following is not Hickey, but the formlessness that has broken free from within him. At the mutineers’ camp, Hickey takes on the demeanor and appearance of a prophet, embracing the air with his arms open (in the same pose that recurs throughout the series as an emblem of chaos and collapse) while skinned of most of his clothing—

—or meditating alone on hillsides for hours, “listening to his thoughts.” (“I dare not go up” to interrupt him, Tozer says.) He’s killed and eaten Billy by this point, and if we were looking for a logic to his actions, it would be possible to read it in the toast he reminds Crozier of: “Ourselves.” Crozier intended it as a self-deprecating joke, he says, but for Hickey it’s become a tenet: he is a wholly self-interested being whose principle is survival, a formlessness that wants to go on being a formlessness.

Yet he has contrived a strange plan that he doesn’t reveal to anyone, which rests on an observation that Crozier makes about him: “You must be a surpassingly lonely man, Mr. Hickey.” I’m not sure how sincere Crozier’s being in this moment; it’s pretty obvious he doesn’t agree that he and Hickey were each other’s only “equals” on the expedition. The observation is accurate, however, I think. Hickey is a surpassingly lonely man, but: “Not for long,” he tells Crozier. He plans to bind himself to the tuunbaq, becoming a shaman.

So let’s talk about this plan.

Hickey arranges this bizarre sacrificial tableau in which he stands atop the boat, again almost unclad in the middle of the Arctic, and rambles from what seems like a place of holy madness, cursing all the national and religious figures of England while offering what are pretty nakedly incisive truths. “What if we’re not the heroes?” he asks. “Our empire is not the only empire. I’ve seen that now.” Arguably, what allows him this vision is that he now stands outside of all the empires, having transcended every taboo, every boundary line.

Yet when he offers his tongue to the tuunbaq, the tuunbaq rejects it and eats him. The important question is: why?

Let me get philosophical for a second: what is a connection? It’s a point of contact between two beings, right? It’s a touch; the place where two parts of the world are joined to one another. For this to happen, there has to first be a dividing line; there has to be a way in which the world is divided up into things to start with. I am separate from you. Man is separate from animals. The sea is separate from the land. There are these boundaries in the world that allot us places; there are rules that govern how we relate to every other kind of thing. It’s not good or bad, any more than chaos is; it’s just order. And fundamentally there has to be an interplay; we always have to be moving towards a synthesis of order and chaos. But when you have just chaos, with no boundaries, then what you have is an everythingness that is also a nothingness, which is: Hickey. Everything is permitted, is his attitude, pretty explicitly; or alternatively: everything can be consumed, an act that literally treats everyone and everything around him as just a potential part of his body. The result of this is that it is impossible for him to connect.

When I was first trying to figure out why the tuunbaq refuses Hickey, I thought to myself: is it because Hickey thinks he’s the shaman, but he’s actually the monster? It’s possible to view him as “a spirit that dresses as an animal,” or as an animal that dresses as a man. But I think it’s that, at this point, Hickey has become so formless that he simply isn’t enough of a thing to be able to touch another thing. I think that’s the birthplace of the urge that drives him to to bind himself to the tuunbaq in the first place, but it’s also the reason why he can’t.

I find Hickey quite tragic, actually, because I can understand his frustration with order— with boundaries that are arbitrary and don’t seem to make sense. But in breaking and breaking and breaking forwards past those boundaries, Hickey fails to understand that the boundaries don’t exist to be boundaries qua boundaries. They create the possibility of relationship. And while touch is perhaps the push of chaos that nudges us to new and more perfect iterations of order, we can’t allow it to become the will to consume.

And on that note... next time, I have much to say about Goodsir.

#tv: terrible people #a comprehensive theory of the terror #the terror #terroramc #very long post #i don't think he's this important just because he's #the two degree murderous cannibal

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songbay · 4 years

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The Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

New Ways Songbay is Supporting Lyricists in 2020

Lyrics turned into songs. Have your lyrics turned into original songs

Since launching Songbay ten tears ago, we’ve been helping songwriters and lyricists meet their goals and grow their careers. We’ve developed innovative ways to support them on this journey.

In this article, we will be discussing the new features just added to Songbay in 2020, such as our ‘Lyric-to-Music’ service and the ‘Lyric-Improvement’ service. We’ll be sharing the results of last year’s Songbay Lyric Writing competition, talking to our winners and revealing everything you need to know about the benefits of these features to Songbay lyricists and songwriters.

The Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

The competition opened in August 2019 with the closing date the 1st October 2019, giving participants six weeks to compose their lyrics. To enter, our lyricists were challenged to write (and upload to Songbay) a lyric based on this image:

Photograph by Ira R (IG: @eklektikum), sourced via Unsplash (IG: @unsplash)

The lyric could be written in any genre but had to use structures based on typical song formats, for example, verse, bridge, chorus, intros, outros, etc.

We were impressed by the standard of all the entries and will be sharing our favourites throughout this article (they can all be purchased on Songbay).

The winners of the competition were awarded the top prize of having their lyrics set to music by our professional songwriting team.

One of the biggest challenges facing aspiring lyricists is finding composers and musicians ready to turn their lyrics into completed songs. Most publishers do not accept ‘lyric-only’ submissions without a high-quality music demo. This makes it tough for lyricists to get into the industry.

Bob Love, Winner of the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

Lyricists Bob Love was our first winner with his lyric ‘The Dark Road Leads To Light’

Verse: Bed sheets loose and crumpled In my dreams I had stumbled To a dark forest, like a tunnel of trees A road ahead, sun bursts through the leaves

Confused for a time I felt fear Startled to find someone else near A silhouette of a man, tired and aged He somehow knew, I’d lost my way

Chorus: He said..The dark road leads to light It’s gonna be such a beautiful sight A whole new world is waiting for you if you push on through

View the full lyric here >>

We were looking for lyrics that conveyed emotion and imagination, that could also work as a song. Our team of judges quickly shortlisted Bob Love’s lyric as a winning contender. We all found his narrative and message of hope quite compelling. Bob Love is a US-based lyricist with an impressive portfolio of lyrics to his name. Bob told us, “I enjoyed the challenge of the lyric contest. The picture was hard to write about. I based it on some of my life experiences. The tunnel of trees that I came up with, I got that from my experience with cancer treatment a few years back. I had 38 radiation treatments. The hallway that led to the office where I got radiation was long and narrow like a tunnel. I called it the tunnel of tears because it was so hard to go down that hallway and face more treatments.”

“Like anyone who’s lived a while, I have faced trouble in my life. I went through alcoholism years ago. Someone told me that to get well, I had to go through it; I could not go around it. That stuck with me, and I put that into the song, ‘the ghostly old man smiled and nodded at me, pointed ahead through the tunnel of trees. It’s just like trouble you see, can’t go around it, it’s your fate, got to go through it, it’s the only way.’”

See all of Bob’s lyrics available for sale at Songbay here >>

Lyrics turned into songs-As the competition winner, we turned Bob’s winning lyric into a completed song, using our new Lyric-to-Music-Service.

The Songbay Lyric-to-Music Service

youtube

We created two different versions, both based on the genre and stylistic elements suggested by the artist when uploading the lyric. For the first version, we used a rough sung chorus that had been provided.

How this worked

When uploading his original lyric at Songbay, Bob made use of our industry-leading audio narration feature. In addition to having lyrics beautifully displayed for sale at Songbay, lyricists can narrate their lyrics or use our supplied backing music to automatically play when a user reads their work.

Our songwriting team used Bob’s rough idea for the melody as the basis of the chorus for the newly created song.

Have a listen here (music by Chris Porter):

Before:

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Bob-Love-Chorus.mp3

After:

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Bob-Love-completed-Chorus.mp3

Full version of the completed song:

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/The-dark-Road-leads-To-Light.mp3

A completely different version using the same lyric:

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Songbay-Bob-Love-TDRLTL-FINAL-2.m4a

Get your lyrics turned into songs with music at Songbay

‘Are you looking to have your lyrics set to music? Our team of songwriters can turn your lyrics into professionally recorded songs. Anything from a pro-quality demo to a fully mixed, radio quality master. It is an opportunity to hear your words brought to life with music and vocals. You can then use the song in whichever way you choose.

As always with all our sales of original lyrics and songs at Songbay, you retain complete control of your lyric and can use the song however you wish, profiting from any royalties the new song may generate. It’s worth pointing out, that unless a lyric is set to music, it cannot generate any music royalties. So this is another reason for lyricists to use our new ‘Lyric-to-Music-Service’.

Bob was the first person to use this feature. He says, “The Songbay team were great working with me on the music for the song. Many thanks to Chris Porter and Gary Cubberley. We communicated by email and they matched it up just right. I was pleased. I would certainly recommend it. It’s exciting to see your song come to life.”

Have your lyrics turned into songs here >>

Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

Dancin’ With Trees by Ric Holland >>

The team behind our new services are: Gary Cubberley, Chris Porter, Valery Proletarski, Simon Graham, Olga Wells, Andrew Adigun, Andrew Hockney, Nandish Sadrani and Justine Perry.

Collectively, they have huge experience in all aspects of the music industry, including composing, songwriting, lyric writing, music production, arranging, recording, mixing, mastering, session singing and vocal coaching. They have written and recorded in session with artists such as:

Kazabian, Keane, Ellie Goulding, Ed Sheeran, Nick Cave & The BadSeeds, Patti Labelle, Jamie Cullum, West One Music, Faye Tozer, Amy Pearson, and Dagny (to name a few.) Members of our team have also been involved with prominent London West End Musicals, including Les Miserables and Billy Elliot. In the Orchestral and Opera world, with The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, BBC Concert Orchestra, Trinity College of Music, Royal Opera House Covent Garden and Wessex Opera. Songbay’s current clients include The BBC, ITV, BBC Radio, Channel 5, BRMB, Endemol Shine, and Tiger Aspect. Corporate clients include McDonald’s, DFDs Seaways and Konica Cameras.

We chatted with one of the Songbay songwriters, Chris Porter, about the new service.

What do you find most interesting when writing music for the lyrics?

The best and most interesting thing about creating music for lyrics is the different ’shapes’ you are made to work in – because of another creative’s artistic vision. Because all lyricists have different influences, approaching other people’s lyrics will always be different from the way you approach this task with your own. This means you nearly always make music differently from the way you normally do. This, in turn, means that you often find yourself slightly outside of your comfort zone – which, as has been regularly observed, is where the magic happens! Ultimately, successful songwriting is all about synergy – the perfect coupling of music, lyrics, and atmosphere – and that’s what I always try my best to achieve. Further, under these circumstances, it is a collaborative process. And I have very often found that two heads are better than one!

What is most challenging? Combining collaboration with subjectivity. Because this process is a collaboration (and because anything creative is subjective) I’m concerned that what I make will meet the expectations of the lyricist. The more information that can be supplied in terms of style and production choice all help to head off these anxieties. As a rule of thumb, I always try to let the lyric dictate musical choices, and then try to create music that is sympathetic to the original lyric. As a writer, I might be tempted to want to edit, adjust or refine a lyric. Here, I don’t have that luxury – the lyric exists, and is to be treated as the finished article.

Any other thoughts?

Lyrics into songs is all about communication, I find that behaviour breeds behaviour. A successful song communicates – that’s its function. And as I’m a natural enthusiast, I will always want to create something that I can get enthusiastic about. And I hope, therefore, that this is communicated in the work – be it heart-breaking ballad or angsty protest rant!

Here’s a couple more recent examples of a Lyric-to-Music service in action:

‘Beautiful Life’ by Piper (Chorus)

What a beautiful life you led What beautiful things you left behind my friend And I know that someday We’ll meet again What a beautiful life you led

What a beautiful world

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Beautiful-life-lyric-demo-with-music-arrangement-with-sung-vocals.mp3

Music by Songbayteam member Simon GRAHAM

The ‘Gigolo’ by J-A-Y

Verse

Another Friday night another night of interaction, beauty’s only skin deep part of attraction, she’s wearing her high heels, a see through skirt, a call designer number with a DKNY shirt. So i smoozy on over with my hat and my cane, Oscar De La Renta’s meeting macho man, they ‘play that funky music’, the DJ boosts the gain, I give her thirty minutes till she’s screaming my name.”

Chorus

“I put my Guccis on, I’m gonna put Armanis on, Gonna put my CKs on, I’m gonna put Moschinos on, She’s gonna put Versace on, She’s gonna put Givenchy on, Vivienne Westwoods’ on, She’s super sexy Ralph Lauren,

https://songbay.co/songbay/blog/wp-content/uploads/2020/01/Friday-cropped-section.mp3

Music by Songbayteam member Gary Cubberley

Have your lyrics turned into songs here >>

Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

All The Things That Matter by Meggy

The Lyric-Improvement-Service

youtube

“Receive professional analyses and evaluation of your lyrics. Receive detailed lyric improvement suggestions. Improve your lyric writing skills and boost your selling chances. We review and analyse your lyrics and show you how to make them stronger. We give you an independent perspective of your writing skills and the tools to become more creative!”

We have also launched another feature for lyricists- Lyric-Improvement

You can submit your lyrics for independent professional review. Receive detailed analysis and evaluation of your new lyrics before making them available for sale at Songbay. We’ll also suggest improvements to existing lyrics from your porfolio.

We can make your lyrics work better with music, before investing time and money in composing and recording. For this reason, the Lyric Improvement Service goes hand-in-hand with our Lyric to Music service and is offered without charge when ordering the latter.

Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

‘Walking Into The Light’ by Linda Tarry

Runners Up

The term ‘Runner up’ is not completely accurate here, since several of our judges had the following lyrics marked as their winners!

Sheree Shaw

Our competition runners-up were Sheree Shaw and Emma Chute. They are both talented lyricists, who have been on Songbay for several years. Their writing skills are often in demand for collaboration projects with other artists. Sheree is based in Scotland, UK, and Emma in Perth, Western Australia.

As part of their prizes, they received exclusive free access to our new lyric-improvement-feature.

They shared their thoughts with us on the task of writing to a given image.

Sheree’s winning lyric was: ‘Out of the Woods, Into The Light‘. She said, “When I was given the task of writing the lyric based on the picture, I looked at the picture and wrote what I thought the picture represented. I felt it showed a feeling of being lost and someone who was trying to hide from the outside but could see that there was light. I would write a lyric based on a picture again as I found it helpful for bringing new ideas.”

Emma’s winning lyric was “Ol Piney Grove“. She told us, “I actually wasn’t going to enter as my writing usually just starts and then goes on, so to write on a subject took a lot of thought. I was driving and saw a place called Piney lakes. So initially the lyric was going to be a lot darker. But then I saw the house in my head and the man and the story just came but it was very challenging. I was very surprised and did a little dance around when I found I had come as a runner up.”

Here’s what they had to say on the Lyric Improvement Service:

Emma: “The lyric appraisal was very helpful. It showed me where I can miss giving the whole story or finish too quickly.”

Sheree: “When I received my appraisal I found it helpful and will be using the advice in my future work.”

If you would like analyses, evaluation, and feedback on your lyrics from our team, you can find the service in your user area at Songbay. Just choose ‘Lyric-Improvement’ after uploading. There are two options to choose from – Standard and Advanced. The latter also includes suggestions for re-wording the structure of the lyric as well as alternative word choices and phrases. It also gives you our complimentary guide ”Revamping Clichés” with expert advice on boosting the quality of your lyrics and many other useful writing tips and tricks.

Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

The Walk of Defiance by Sheena Hope

Chris Porter is involved closely with the new lyric improvement service. These are his thoughts:

“I do my best to bring to bear my English education in tandem with my decades of listening! Whilst there are all manner of rules concerning grammar and form, the poetry of lyric-writing is a wholly more fluid affair, and I tend to apply a perspective of ‘feel’ over the rigour of simple English appreciation. I also consider flow. The simple sounds of the words all feed into a considered appraisal. Whilst I sometimes wish it were as simple as ‘I like this’ or ‘I don’t like that’, I recognise that kind of close-minded thinking as the opposite of what creativity should be about. Ultimately, however, ‘feel’ tends to win. Does it communicate? Does it make you feel things? Does it get your intended message across? These are the kinds of things that appraisals should address. I favour a holistic approach to appraisal, therefore. And certainly not just whether it rhymes or repeats enough – though that can be important, too!”

Commended Entry in the 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

‘Find The Way Through’ by 3 Song Writers From Scotland

So how did we choose our competition winners?

With great difficulty!

As always when auditioning original lyrics for sale at Songbay, we were looking for strong writing techniques – use of metaphor, personification, alliteration, poeticism, and emotion. Additionally, we considered how closely the lyric followed the given brief and whether we could see it working when set to music.

We all had different opinions and favourite entries…

All the judges made shortlists of favourite entries. From this, we were able to create an ‘in common pool’ of the Top 20 entries. The winners and runners-up were finally selected after hours of deliberation.

Commended Entry

‘Break In The Trees’ by Zephyrhillmusic

List of All Prize Winners in 2019 Songbay Lyric Writing Competition

Here is a list of winners, runners up, and commended entries from the competition:

First Place Winners:

Bob Love ‘The Dark Road Leads to Light’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337184/

Maria Teresa Guzman ‘Life Under The Woods’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337263/

Runners Up:

Emma Chute ‘Ol Piney Grove’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337161

Sheree Shaw ‘Out of the Woods, Into the Light’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337223

Highly Commended:

(Not in any order of preference)

Ric Holland ‘Dancin’ With Trees’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337219

Meggy ‘All The Things That Matter’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2336844

Sheena Hope ‘The Walk of Defiance’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2336748

Zephyrhillmusic ‘Break in the Trees’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337224

3 Songwriters From Scotland ‘Find The Way Through’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2337210

Linda Tarry ‘Walking Into The Light’ – https://songbay.co/view-lyric/2336778

We’re delighted at the success of the competition and would once again like to thank everyone who took part. We’ve already started planning the Songbay Lyric Writing Competition 2020!

Do you want your lyrics turned into songs? do you want to use our lyric improvement feature? Do you want your existing song improved, re-arranged with professional musicians and instrumentalists, or re-recorded and mastered? if so, don’t hesitate to get in contact with us for more details at [email protected]

Fact: Songbay is the world’s largest original lyric library. It is a home for composers, songwriters, producers and song and lyric buyers. They are all looking to connect with each other! Songbay offers free copyright registration of all uploads and sellers keep 100% of sale fees.

**Unfortunately, we were unable to contact one of the recipients of the winner award. We’re hoping to update on this soon.

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The Songbay Lyric Writing Competition was originally published on Songbay Music and Lyric Sales

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stephenaltrogge-blog · 5 years

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When I need inspiration to pray, which is often, I regularly turn to quotes about prayer.

See, here’s the thing…

There are few things more powerful than prayer. Through prayer, God does staggering, miraculous, overwhelming things.

And yet so often I forget all that God does through prayer.

Can you relate to me?

To encourage you in your prayers, I compiled 43 of the BEST quotes about prayer. I pray that these quotes about prayer encourage you to pray faith-filled prayers that accomplish great things for God.

43 Profound Quotes About Prayer

1.”Our prayers may be awkward. Our attempts may be feeble. But since the power of prayer is in the one who hears it and not in the one who says it, our prayers do make a difference.” – Max Lucado

2. “To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing.” – Martin Luther

3. “True prayer is neither a mere mental exercise nor a vocal performance. It is far deeper than that – it is a spiritual transaction with the Creator of Heaven and Earth.” – Charles Spurgeon

4. “If you believe in prayer at all, expect God to hear you. If you do not expect, you will not have. God will not hear you unless you believe He will hear you; but if you believe He will, He will be as good as your faith.” – Charles Spurgeon

5. “Prayer makes a godly man, and puts within him the mind of Christ, the mind of humility, of self-surrender, of service, of pity, and of prayer. If we really pray, we will become more like God, or else we will quit praying.” – E.M. Bounds

6. “Prayer should not be regarded as a duty which must be performed, but rather as a privilege to be enjoyed, a rare delight that is always revealing some new beauty.” – E.M. Bounds

7. “God can handle your doubt, anger, fear, grief, confusion, and questions. You can bring everything to him in prayer.” – Rick Warren

8. “Prayers outlive the lives of those who uttered them; outlive a generation, outlive an age, outlive a world.” – E.M Bounds

9. “Prayer delights God’s ear; it melts His heart.” – Thomas Watson

10. “It is possible to move men, through God, by prayer alone.” – Hudson Taylor

11. “To get nations back on their feet, we must first get down on our knees.” – Billy Graham

12. “Prayer is not monologue, but dialogue; God’s voice is its most essential part. Listening to God’s voice is the secret of the assurance that He will listen to mine.” – Andrew Murray

13. “To desire revival… and at the same time to neglect (personal) prayer and devotion is to wish one way and walk another.” – A.W. Tozer

14. “I saw more clearly than ever, that the first great and primary business to which I ought to attend every day was, to have my soul happy in the Lord.” – George Mueller

15. “Our praying, however, needs to be pressed and pursued with an energy that never tires, a persistency which will not be denied, and a courage which never fails.” – E. M. Bounds

16. “God does nothing but by prayer, and everything with it.” – John Wesley

17. “Prayer does not fit us for the greater work; prayer is the greater work.” – Oswald Chambers

18. “Search for a person who claims to have found Christ apart from someone else’s prayer, and your search may go on forever.” – E. Bauman

19. “Have you any days of fasting and prayer? Storm the throne of grace and persevere therein, and mercy will come down.” – John Wesley

20. “God will do great things for you if you will wait for Him. Yield to Him. Cooperate with Him.” – John Smith

21. “A day without prayer is a day without blessing, and a life without prayer is a life without power.” – Edwin Harvey

22. “Quit playing, start praying. Quit feasting, start fasting. Talk less with men, talk more with God. Listen less to men, listen to the words of God. Skip travel, start travail.” – Leonard Ravenhill

23. “None can believe how powerful prayer is, and what it is able to effect, but those who have learned it by experience. It is a great matter when in extreme need to take hold on prayer.” – Martin Luther

24. “You know the value of prayer: it is precious beyond all price. Never, never neglect it.” – Sir Thomas Buxton

25. “Prayer is the first thing, the second thing, the third thing necessary to a minister. Pray, then my dear brother; pray, pray, pray.” – Edward Payson

26. “It is not enough to begin to pray, nor to pray aright; nor is it enough to continue for a time to pray; but we must patiently, believingly, continue in prayer until we obtain an answer; and further we have not only to continue in prayer unto the end, but we have also to believe that God does hear us, and will answer our prayers. Most frequently we fail in not continuing in prayer until the blessing is obtained, and in not expecting the blessing.” – George Müller

27. “Think of what He can do, and how He delights to hear the prayers of His redeemed people. Think of your place and privilege in Christ, and expect great things!” – Andrew Murray

28. “The reason why we obtain no more in prayer is because we expect no more. God usually answers us according to our own hearts.” – Richard Alleine

29. “Satan cannot deny but that great wonders have been wrought by prayer. As the spirit of prayer goes up, so his kingdom goes down.” – William Gurnall

30. “The devil is aware that one hour of close fellowship, hearty converse with God in prayer, is able to pull down what he hath been contriving and building many a year.” – Flavel

31. “Beware in your prayers, above everything else, of limiting God, not only by unbelief, but by fancying that you know what He can do. Expect unexpected things ‘above all that we ask or think.’” – Andrew Murray

32. “If we would pray aright, the first thing we should do is to see to it that we really get an audience with God, that we really get into His very presence. Before a word of petition is offered, we should have the definite consciousness that we are talking to God, and should believe that He is listening and is going to grant the thing that we ask of Him.” – Dr. R. A. Torrey

33. “What is love if it be not fiery? What are prayers if the heart be not ablaze? They are the battles of the soul.” – Samuel Chadwick

34. “Mind how you pray. Make real business of it. Let it never be a dead formality…plead the promise in a truthful, business-like way…Ask for what you want, because the Lord has promised it.” – Charles Spurgeon

35. “Where there is much prayer, there will be much of the Spirit; where there is much of the Spirit, there will be ever-increasing prayer.” – Andrew Murray

36. “A godly man is a praying man. As soon as grace is poured in, prayer is poured out. Prayer is the soul’s traffic with Heaven; God comes down to us by His Spirit, and we go up to Him by prayer.” – Thomas Watson

37. “Every great movement of God can be traced to a kneeling figure.” – D. L. Moody

38. “There is no way that Christians, in a private capacity, can do so much to promote the work of God and advance the kingdom of Christ as by prayer.” – Jonathan Edwards

39. “As it is the business of tailors to make clothes, and the business of cobblers to mend shoes, so it is the business of Christians to pray!” – Martin Luther

40. “Prayer is not overcoming God’s reluctance, but laying hold of His willingness.” – Martin Luther

41. “Intercessory prayer is exceedingly prevalent. What wonders it has wrought! The Word of God teems with its marvelous deeds. Believer, thou hast a mighty engine in thy hand, use it well, use it constantly, use it with faith, and thou shalt surely be a benefactor to thy brethren.” – C. H. Spurgeon

42. “The one concern of the devil is to keep Christians from praying. He fears nothing from prayerless studies, prayerless work, and prayerless religion. He laughs at our toil, mocks at our wisdom, but trembles when we pray.” – Samuel Chadwick

43. “What the church needs today is not more machinery or better, not new organizations or more and novel methods, but men who the Holy Spirit can use—men of prayer, men mighty in prayer. The Holy Spirit does not come on machinery but on men. He does not anoint plans, but men—men of prayer.” – E. M. Bounds

Be Stirred To Pray!

My hope is that these quotes about prayer have stirred your heart to pray big, audacious prayers to God.

To take hold of God by faith and not let go until God answers.

Because when we pray, things happen. God moves. Circumstances change. Our hearts conform more to his will.

Prayer does mighty things.