Some borrowed words

music

I started writing again this week. For more than a month prior, I'd not been able to think leisure. Then I started writing a short City Girl diary about a night on the town in Cairo. It's only slightly fictional. Later I'll write the Paris one, and one recent afternoon date in Lagos.

But this blog post is not about current writing, but about my first published book. I want to confess that I didn't write every single line myself. In some cases, I borrowed from some admired masters.

You already know that I dubbed Shakespeare in Indecision, and that the poem Rufus Wainwright ends with an amazing line from Rufus Wainwright's 'The Consort': together we'll wreak havoc - you and me. With this my current low-Rufus diet, sometime I'll come back to Rufus BIG-TIME. I can't wait.

There's more of course
"ninety-nine lovers" (in French Cat) is an exaggeration of Carla Bruni's thirty lovers, and
The First Lady's Oath adapts the popular oath of office, while
the entire music chapter borrows tunes from popular songs - Sinatra, rock, musicals - Annie and The Sound of Music.

In Festen (The Celebration), a poem named for the Scandinavian film about family secrets, "the seeming result of confusion" is from Natalie Cole's song "I'm glad there is you"
"How does it feel to be a problem?" the opening line of Prophecy II: Blame Game, is from W.E.B. DuBois's "The Souls of Black Folk."

And there are certainly more dubs in Yalla!, my upcoming collection to be published next month.