Odds are pretty overwhelming that you have never heard of Queen of My Song by Stephen Foster. There is no reason for you to know about it. When I was first starting to write again, beginning with What'll I Do? I would play my Robert Shaw Chorale CD of the Stephen Foster Song Book. I think the songs worked as a form of hypnosis. The music blocked out all the other sounds and interruptions and I could just tap away at the keyboard, word after word. The switch from song to song told me where I was in my time. When I got to Steal Away I knew I was close to the end. I needed to start wrapping up whatever storyline I was working on. The hypnotic state would start to fade. I would type a series of capital X's across the screen. Below that, a few notes about what I wanted to say the next day. The following morning, I would be at the keyboard again. I deleted the X's and my notes and waited for the first few notes of Ring, ring de Banjo. With that, I was back somewhere in Detroit with Hofmann and Garvin and the endless shambolic lives they intersected with. I so liked Queen of My Song, that it's first two lines are the epigraph of Heroes. I think the words perfectly capture the sorrow of so many of the characters.
"I long for thee, must I long and long in vain?
I sigh for thee, whilst thou not come back again?"
If there was ever a movie version of Heroes, I would want that melody to be the Rachel Deming/Eddie Grimes love theme.
If you are curious, you can hear Queen of My Song here. https://youtu.be/BDyzt6Zc4vI
See if you don't agree about how haunting and elegiac it is.
You can buy the CD on Amazon.
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