Title TK

On titles, my body, Patsy Cline, grape soda, and a song I've never heard

Back in April, I mentioned that I was struggling to write a short essay. And I wasn’t lying. Struggle I did. But I eventually finished it, and it’ll be published soon-ish. (As the world’s worst self-promoter, I’ll do my best to share a link to it when it does come out. Why am I like this?) At the last minute, I changed the title of the essay to the ridiculous “My Body Is a Wonderland”. In an effort to not self-sabotage, I let the editor know that the title was negotiable. They wrote back to inform me that they’d like to negotiate. Fair enough.

Titles are never easy, except for when they are. Some titles appear before the story itself, and act as a sort of seed for the story. I keep a file with a list of potential titles—titles with no stories—and I’ll sometimes cycle through that list and try out a random title on an otherwise title-less story. Sometimes this works; often it doesn’t. Some stories will go through countless titles before I land on one that feels right. Some stories begin and end with the same title. Last month I wrote that while working in the library in Skagaströnd, I came across the words Baby Your Hair in a book about typography. I did end up writing that story, and the title stuck. That was a case of the story growing out of the title. Around the same time I wrote that one, I found myself thinking about Patsy Cline—I often find myself thinking about Patsy Cline—and so I wrote a story called “Patsy Cline”. Further proof that Patsy Cline is often on my mind: The Quarantine Review published a story of mine a little while back called “Have You Ever Been Lonely? (Have You Ever Been Blue?)”. Further further proof: that is also the working title of the book I’m writing at the moment.

Why Patsy Cline? My grandfather loved Patsy Cline, and I have many memories of sitting in his workshop, drinking grape soda, and listening to Patsy Cline records on an old turntable while my grandfather tinkered with some project or other. There’s something about her voice, her delivery. Her songs make me feel sad and lonely, but in a good way? There’s a song by the band Change of Heart called “Pat’s Decline” that asks: “Was she really lonely or just singing a song?” I don’t know the answer, and I don’t want to know. (I included a reference to both Patsy Cline and that song in the novel I was working on in Iceland last year. I’ll let you know when that comes out, too. Sheesh.)

I didn’t title my first book; my friend and co-author Julie Doiron took care of that. She called it The Longest Winter. My second book, People Leaving, was easy: the title was there right from the beginning. I don’t even remember considering any other title for that one. Same with the third book: Red Bird. I wrote a lot of poems about birds back then. I wanted to use an image of those Red Bird wooden matches on the cover of the book, but that didn’t happen for some reason. Copyright? Budget constraints? My fourth book is called Meticulous, Sad, and Lonely… sigh, titling that one was tough. I wanted to call it Never the Same Twice Twice the Same Never but was talked out of it. (That book was a disaster in other ways. I don’t even like looking at that one.) The title of my last book, The Girl Who Could Fly, was there from the beginning. Actually, it was originally called The Boy Who Could Fly, but that’s another story.

Like the working title of the collection of stories I’m currently working on, a number of the stories in the collection itself borrow their titles from songs: (“Big Yellow Taxi”, “Hold On, Magnolia”; “I’m Gonna Fly”). At one point, the plan was to name all the stories after songs and to have the song appear in the story. But that began to feel laboured, so I cut myself some slack—and now only some of the stories borrow their titles. (Titles can’t be copyrighted. So… they’re basically up for grabs!) In doing this, I wanted to try to capture that feeling of being transported by a song you once loved. There are songs I avoid for this reason; there are songs I love for this reason. I am complicated! We all are.

Back to that essay. The editor asked for some other titles to replace the silly one I submitted. I had exactly one other working title for the essay, but now I’ve become attached to the dumb one I came up with at the last minute. Well, I didn’t exactly come up with it, did I? It turns out that it’s a play on a song title, though I didn’t realize that at the time—at least, not consciously. I don’t know that I’ve ever heard the song; I wouldn’t recognize it if I did, not until those lyrics appeared anyway. I have yet to listen to it since writing the essay. I suspect it’s a sexy song? I suspect it employs the liberal use of a whammy bar? I could be wrong. My essay is about traveling between disappointment and awe in one’s body and one’s relationship to, well, to being alive and knowing that that won’t always be the case; it’s about accepting the inevitable crush brought on by the passage of time. It’s about change and moving forward and having my groin shaved by a stranger. It’s about life. I guess it’s possible that it’s not so different from that song after all.