by Amy Jones
“No song should have the word toilet paper in it.” Mags lay back on the bed, letting herself sink into Sam’s clothes. “You can’t sing any old words over the music and have it be good. You might as well just sing gibberish at that point.”
“Lots of hit songs are gibberish. What about, like, ‘MMMBop’?”
“Your standard for musical integrity should not be Hanson.” She breathed in deeply, the smell of Sam’s laundry detergent causing a twisting in her gut that she couldn’t name. It was as if she missed him even though he was sitting right next to her. “Also, you should get more current references. Have you even listened to any music made in this decade?”
“Nope. I am confounded by you kids and your crazy rock and roll.” He stood up. “Are you hungry? I’m hungry. I’ll go get us some food.”
“Don’t change the subject,” Mags called after him, but he had disappeared up the stairs. As she watched him go, she felt panic rising up in her chest again. Being with Sam, she had felt like a normal kid, and this was just a normal night, hanging out in her boyfriend’s basement. Instead of, well, what it really was.
To keep the terrible thoughts out of her head, she picked up Sam’s iPod and pressed play on one of Nietzsche’s Watering Can’s unfinished tracks. Immediately the music washed over her, and she began to relax, the panic breaking up and drifting away like lake ice in spring. She listened to the first track all the way through, then started it again. “My love is with you wherever you go,” she sang softly under her breath. “But my weakened voice can’t tell you so.” She frowned, restarting the song. “My love is with you wherever you go, but my broken voice can’t tell you so.” She pulled a notepad out of her backpack and began to write.
By the time Sam came back downstairs, arms laden with ham and cheese sandwiches and blueberry yogurts, Mags had filled three pages. She tucked the notebook back into her bag as he spread the food out on the floor. “You really need to get some furniture in here,” she said, sliding off the bed to sit next to him.
“That would ruin the ambiance.” He handed her a sandwich. “Don’t worry, when we get our own place I promise there will be chairs.”
“When we get our own place?” Mags felt that twisting in her gut again. “Like an apartment?”
“Yes, like an apartment. Unless you thought we were going to live in my parents’ basement forever.”
“No, I guess not forever.” They chewed their sandwiches in silence, the word hanging in the air between them.
One foot in front of the other, Mags thought. Keep focus. Don’t look forward.
But it was too late. She was already looking ahead.
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SONGWRITING ADVICE
by MagsK Mon Jan 17, 2009 4:15 pm
I’m just starting out with my songwriting and I was wondering if anyone had any tips?
user: MagsK
posts: 1
joined: 01/17/09 4:11 pm
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Re: SONGWRITING ADVICE
by Phildaddy Mon Jan 17, 2009, 4:17 pm
I’ve got a tip for you, honey. It’s in my pants. ***
This life is like a swimming pool. You dive in the water, but you can’t see how deep it is.
— Dennis Rodman
user: Phildaddy
posts: 117
joined: 03/30/07 6:30 am
location: Philadelphia, PA
Re: Re: SONGWRITING ADVICE
by guitarmike112 Mon Jan 17, 2009 4:19 pm
“Phildaddy wrote:
I’ve got a tip for you. It’s in my pants.”
user: guitarmike112
posts: 967
joined: 08/18/07 1:14 pm
location: San Diego, CA
Dude. Come on. She’s just starting out. You don’t want to give her the wrong impression. Most tips are way bigger than yours.
Halston Market Research Group
Focus Group Discussion Transcript and Analysis – Home Is Where the Hart Is Pilot
LifeStyle Network, 2009
Total participant time required: 43 minutes + 20 minutes
Total number of participants: 6
Moderator: Jensen Lee
SECTION FOUR: CHARACTERS
Moderator: Okay, let’s talk about some of the characters on the show. Which one of the Harts did you find most relatable?
A: I liked the little one…
C: Oh, me too…what’s her name…
Moderator: Eden.
A: Right. What’s with those names, anyway? You should change them.
D: Those are their real names, they can’t change them. These are real people we’re talking about.
A: Do you live under a rock? Everyone knows there’s nothing real about reality TV.
Moderator: Does anyone else want to add any thoughts on how they felt about the Harts as characters?
B: I liked the Chinese kid. Val. He’s cute.
C: Ava seemed a bit standoffish. Kind of cold. It was almost like she was bored by everything.
D: Yeah, I agree. Like in the scene where they’re leaving their apartment for the last time. They’re saying goodbye to everything they’ve ever known, and Ava looks like she wants to get it over with.
C: Yeah, like she just doesn’t care about anything. No emotion at all. I mean, come on, even the dad was crying.
D: She’s spoiled, that’s what it is. A prissy little princess.
A: Thinks she’s too good for TV. They should recast her. Find someone else to play her part.
D: Oh my god, seriously? What is it about reality you don’t understand?
Ava
June 2009
HIWTHI S01E02:
Follow Your Hart
The town of Gin Harbour rose out of the fog like the backdrop of a horror movie, the peaked roofs of the tall wooden houses floating on a hazy cushion of white. Ava had never seen anything like it. In her world, the real, actual world, the houses were all below the clouds.
“I don’t like it here,” Eden whispered, leaning forward from the third-row seat in the van as they rolled slowly through the town in eerie silence.
“I don’t like it either, Edie,” Ava whispered back. “It feels like a ghost town.”
“There’s people all over the place,” Antonio said, catching Ava’s eye in the rear-view mirror. Since Bryce had stayed behind in New York for a few days and David was already at the B&B, Antonio and Javier had been the ones to pick the Hart kids up at the airport. And even though Ava had known about this plan in advance, she still couldn’t hide her disappointment at seeing their faces when she stepped off the plane.
“See?” he said, pointing at an elderly couple walking arm in arm up a hill that was so steep it had steps built into the sidewalk. It was the third elderly couple they had seen, hair as white and wispy as the fog they were driving through. Ava was beginning to think there wasn’t a single person in Gin Harbour under the age of ninety-four.
Ava pulled her feet up under her on the seat and glared at Antonio. “I mean, like, a literal ghost town. Like the town is a literal ghost.”
“Whoa, a literal ghost?” Antonio said. “Like a ghost that doesn’t understand figures of speech?”
“You’re not even funny in any way,” she said.
“A town can’t be a ghost, can it?” Eden asked, her voice trembling. “How can a town be a ghost if a town doesn’t have a soul?”
“Oh my god you guys, it’s just fog,” Val said dully, still facing out the window, his dark hair falling over his forehead and into his eyes, hiding what Ava knew was an incredibly well-practised eye roll. “Don’t act like you’ve never seen fog before.”
“This isn’t fog,” Ava said, kicking him. “It’s the cold, creeping breath of all the people who have died here from compl
ete boredom.”
Antonio had agreed to no filming during the drive, but a few minutes before they arrived at the house, Javier switched on his camera. Ava sighed. She had been practising her reaction the entire way in from the airport, vacillating between wanting to give an over-the-top, obviously fake performance of excitement and enthusiasm, and giving nothing at all. She had decided on nothing at all.
Hart’s Desire, or Mariner’s Inn, as it had previously been known, sat on top of a steep hill at the end of a road called Cherry Tree Lane. As the van chugged up the incline, Ava gazed at the trees and wondered if any of them were actual cherry trees—not that she knew what a cherry tree looked like. When she glanced back down the road, she realized the fog, which had settled low into the harbour, was now below them, and she could see the roofs of the houses peeking out of the mist all the way down to what she imagined must be the edge of the ocean, although she had yet to lay eyes on it. She wondered if it was like this all the time, if the locals went on faith that the water was really there.
When the house finally revealed itself through the trees, Ava shuddered with revulsion. It was even more disgustingly quaint than in the photos she’d seen, with its ghost-story dormer windows, the wrought-iron gate with ornate points in the shape of tridents, the sagging porch with peeling pink and cream paint, the scalloped entranceway with the words Hart’s Desire etched in gold on the fanlight window above the transom. The inside was probably one giant doily. To most people, the house was surely a dream, gorgeous and historical and full of charm and mystery. But to Ava it was grotesque, the perfect setting for the future true-crime documentary that her life was surely about to become.
As the van pulled in front of the house, David appeared on the porch. He had already become more country—his beard a little scruffier, his hair unkempt, his cheeks rounder. He was even wearing a fisherman’s sweater. He spread his arms wide. “Welcome home!” he called as they peered out the windows, the van crawling to a halt.
“Home,” Ava said, sliding back in her seat. “What do you know, it is where the Hart is.”
She had meant it to sound sarcastic, but Antonio grinned, and she immediately wished she could take it back.
“Hey,” he said. “That’s really good. With some music and editing, we could use that for the promo. I’m going to back down the driveway so we can get it again.”
Ava bit her lip so hard she could taste blood. She thought about Javier, standing with the camera in the hallway outside of their apartment as they left it forever, telling them to just go back in and come out one more time—and then one more time, and one more time, every take like a finger in the wound. “We can’t have one moment to ourselves, can we? Not one moment.”
“It won’t take long,” Antonio said.
“I’m not saying it again,” she said. “Use what you have or don’t. I don’t care.”
Antonio threw the van into reverse, unfazed. “Fine, we’ll get Eden to say it,” he said as they backed down the driveway. “Our focus group really responded to her in the pilot.”
“What’s a focus group?” Eden whispered, the words bumping out of her mouth around the knotted hill of her thumb.
“It’s a group of people who think they actually know what they’re talking about.” Ava stared out the window, trying to ignore the low hum crescendoing in her brain. “Don’t say it, Edie.”
“Eden,” Antonio said, parking the van at the bottom of the driveway before turning around in his seat. “This is really important, okay? Remember what your dads said about saying your lines?”
“They’re not lines!” Ava yanked Eden’s thumb out of her mouth. “Edie, stop it!”
“Why am I in trouble? I didn’t even do anything.”
“Tell her to say the line, Ava,” Val said. “I just want to get out of this goddamn van.”
“Then get out!” Ava said. “You know what? I’ll get out too.” She turned to Antonio. “Make her say whatever you want. I don’t care.” She opened the van door and grabbed her backpack. She stopped before closing the door, glaring at Val.
“Ugh, fine,” said Val, climbing over the seat.
As she closed the door, she heard Antonio call “Rolling.” Their backpacks slung over their shoulders, Ava and Val trudged up the driveway, past the cherry trees that were maybe not cherry trees, up to the big ugly gingerbread house that was apparently their new home.
* * *
The first thing Ava learned about the house was that they weren’t allowed to leave it. “At least not for the first few days, until the pilot airs,” Antonio said as they sat around the kitchen table that first night, rain pounding against the windows. They had apparently arrived in Gin Harbour on the cusp of tourist season, when the souvenir stores were still shuttered and the local diner was the only restaurant open during the week. Soon, Antonio told them, the harbour would start to fill with superyachts owned by reclusive American millionaires, and the waterfront would be overrun with retirees with fold-out maps and sensible shoes hunting for cheap lobster dinners. Once the tourist season hit, they would be a drop in the ocean. But for now, the town was closed up tight, its solitude a curtain around it, and anyone new would stand out—especially the Harts. “We want to keep people from getting too curious. We don’t want people leaking spoilers.”
“As long as this roof doesn’t leak, we’ll be fine,” David said, pulling Eden up on his lap.
“Are these the kinds of jokes we all have to make now?” Ava asked. “Like, now that we’re all small-town we can’t even be funny?”
“If you think you’re going to get a rise out of me today, you are dead wrong, child.” He rested his chin on Eden’s head. “I mean, look at this place. It’s beautiful. It’s just what we needed. Some space, some breathing room. I feel more relaxed already.” He took in a deep breath. “Smell that salt air.”
“All I can smell is hundreds of strangers’ BO all mixed together,” Val said.
“That’s not BO. That is the stench of desperation.”
David tipped his head back, gazing skyward with a mock pleading expression. “Lord, how did I, your devoted and compassionate son, raise such nasty, smart-mouthed children?” Eden made a sound of protest, and he cupped his hand over her mouth. “Smart. Mouthed. Children.”
“Those smart-mouthed children are going to make this show a hit,” Antonio said.
For the next few days, while they were trapped in the house, Ava passed the time reading old waterlogged paperbacks she found in the attic, and playing board games with Val and Eden—Battleship, Clue, Chinese checkers, old games that the previous owners had set out for the guests. But mostly she sat in the window seat in the front room, staring down Cherry Tree Lane toward the harbour, wondering what was out there. What were Gin Harbour girls like? What did they wear, what did they do for fun? Did they just spend all their time on boats? Surely there was at least one girl in town who liked art, or music. One girl who had always felt out of place, who wished she could run off to the big city. One girl who had dreams of escaping the fog.
One afternoon, Ava lay on her stomach on Val’s bed, reading about Gin Harbour on her laptop while he unpacked all his Star Wars Lego. She had Wikipedia open in one tab, and the Barnes and Noble website open in another—she had seen pictures of the Gin Harbour library and she was pretty sure they didn’t even have a poetry section, that it was all books about knitting or nautical terms. There wasn’t even a café.
“It says here there are two thousand people in Gin Harbour. That’s barely more than our old school.”
“How does a town even function with only two thousand people?” Val asked. “Is that even enough people to do every job?”
“Well, considering at least half of those people are probably fishermen, I’m guessing not.”
Val took an X-Acto knife to the top of a new box, holding his hair out of his face with the back of his hand so he could see. “Maybe everyone does double duty,” he said, pulling the flaps back. “Like the vet cl
inic is also the hospital. Or the garbage collector is also the police chief.”
“Great,” said Ava, scrolling past picture after picture of boats in the harbour. “We’ll figure out when garbage day is and go rob a bank. Oh my god.” She rolled over onto her back and threw her arm over her face. “Their gallery is full of folk art.”
“What’s folk art?” asked Eden, appearing in the doorway.
“Beat it,” Val said. He tossed a wad of rolled-up packing tape at her, but it landed just short.
Eden kicked it back. “No,” she said. “I want to know what you guys are talking about.”
With one arm still across her eyes, Ava motioned to Eden. “Come here, Eedle-Beetle,” she said. “I’ll tell you a harrowing story about art made by peasants.”
“Like the bird?” Eden climbed onto the bed and curled up next to Ava, sticking her thumb in her mouth.
“No, not like the bird. Like a poor person.”
Val shook his head. “You’re such an elitist.”
“And you’re a hypocrite.” Ava propped herself up, bringing Eden with her. “Edie, take that out of your mouth. You know what Dr. Rosen said.” Eden popped it out sheepishly and tucked her hand under her arm, wiping off her saliva.
Val heaved the box onto its side and an avalanche of Lego tumbled to the floor. “You know, I can’t wait for the world to find out what a snob you are,” he said as the last brick landed on the pile.
“You’re just jealous because you know that television viewers are going to like me better.”
Eden lifted her head. “Do you think television viewers are going to like me?” she asked.
“Keep saying things like that and they will for sure. You’ll be the star of the show and Val will be stuck sitting in his room all day brushing his hair and writing sad songs about fishermen’s daughters while you travel the world visiting with your adoring public.”