Queen of My Song

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.