Novel - "Forever Yours (ft Teedra Moses)".

Katniss Everdeen first hears the song on Octavia's comm. It is a bright morning: it's as if District 13's fluorescent generators are working at double capacity, sending extra sunlight down in slats. Katniss's hair is being pinned up in curls, her nails filed and polished. Octavia is at her ear, mouthing the words to the song. She wears a glossy lipstick, dusty blue, and Katniss guesses that it must have been bartered from another refugee. Octavia looks happy for once, as if the music has carried her away to another place, away from District 13's grey walls and hissing ventilation. As if they are not underground but back at the Capitol, at a party for young stylists, drinking champagne from slender cups.

Still, Katniss hates the song. The voices sound synthetic, the instruments unreal. It's like gazing at a pretty microchip. Katniss is used to real music, played by fiddlers and banjo players in the Seam. Kitchen parties with murder ballads, where everyone has tears in their eyes. By contrast, Octavia's song seems like a confection - frosted, sugar sweet. The only thing that catches Katniss's ear is this one crying guitar riff, once every minute or so. It reminds her of Buttercup's whine. Something wanting.

Yet in the days that follow, Katniss finds her humming the song. She will be walking down a hall between propo shoots, zipping in an elevator to Special Defense, and as her mind wanders, the melody finds her. What felt so sugary at the time seems darker in retrospect - earnest, earned. I'll always be forever your girl, she murmurs. Boggs flashes her a quick glance. Katniss blushes and looks at her feet. The lyrics make her think of Peeta, trapped far away, calling to her through his interview with Caesar Flickerman. They make her think of Gale, gray-eyed Gale, kneeling in the woods with a snare. Katniss swallows. She doesn't like to think of such things, Gale versus Peeta. It's different. She smooths her hands on her uniform. Only after the war is over will she have the luxury of songs like this, kind and warm, consummated, like a long embrace.

[download Red Wine & Ambien]

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With some of your help, my friend Richard Parks made a short film called Music Man Murray, concerning 88-year-old Murray Gershenz and his hundreds of thousands of records. It's a lovely portrait, tender and funny, with music by Van Dyke Parks. And the whole thing is streaming now at NPR's All Songs Considered. As Richard puts it, "This is ostensibly a movie about a huge record collection, but that is just the setting. It is about 1) death 2) leaving a legacy 3) faith 4) fathers and sons..." Can't wait for Richard's (and Murray's) next thing.

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