Monday Mashup #44: Richard Thompson

Hey, did I miss a week? Yes I did, without so much as a word to the wise. I apologize, but I do not promise that it will not happen again. I haven’t produced a mashup I’d really want to run for a month or so and since I’m doing this for myself first and foremost… well.

However, this week I got something going. I think. Our mashup for the day is Richard Thompson. Unlike Madonna, I’m thinking of the man’s songs rather than his person, although I suppose if you want to base a campaign idea around a cheerful middle-aged man who sings songs about angst and love lost and pain and happens to be one of the best guitarists on the face of the planet — who am I to stop you?

Start your word processors.

So this is going to be a little bit weird. Richard Thompson is about as close as I get in these cynical days to the kid I once was, back when I thought Love and Rockets lyrics were a serious statement that would make a good yearbook quote. (“Youth,” for the record.)

Anyway, I’m envisioning something set in a nameless British factory town. It’s economically depressed, a little, but it isn’t falling apart. People care about it. People care about each other. Sometimes too much, sometimes not enough, but isn’t that how it is just about everywhere? Nothing’s perfect.

There is no magic. There are no aliens. There is no conspiracy. There are no spies.

There are five PCs. Five, for the five-pointed star on the relationship map. I think, without having thought about it too hard, that there’s a teenager who’s badly in love (in crush) with the wanderfooted woman who wishes the local businessman would hang it all up. The businessman has a daughter, and she has an affair with the man who owns the motorcycle, and the motorcyclist is the teenager’s father but the teenager doesn’t know yet.

I don’t know, really, where it goes. You want to set this at a cusp point in each of their lives, like a good Neil Jordan movie. Hard to GM properly. I’ll have to think on it more.

Do you close your eyes to see miracles? Do you raise your face to kiss angels? Do you float on air to hear oracles?

Bathsheba smiles.