WIP Wednesday: Live From Liberty Tree
28 Jul
How about I can’t stop listening to the new Interpol single? Are we surprised? Nope. But it’s just going to be one of those three-month stretches where everyone awesome on the planet releases a new album, so I guess I’d better start saving up.
So I actually worked on writing today! My first– anything solo since Plaguebringer broke my brain. Huge! The story I puked up the other day grew from a few half-formed ideas suddenly colliding, as they so often do, and this freaky little town I guess I invented to be the home of one of my characters. I then decided a bunch of people should be from there, and started writing stories. This one, tentatively titled The Connoisseur, is only the second I’ve actually finished, but that’s all right. Anyhow, the town’s called Liberty Tree, Virginia, and it’s apparently been screwed up since its founding.
Which is why I called it Liberty Tree, after a quote by one of Virginia’s most screwed up, influential, ingenious, and articulate* children. Helps that he inspired that first Liberty Tree character, too:
What country before ever existed a century & a half without a rebellion? & what country can preserve it’s liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms. The remedy is to set them right as to facts, pardon & pacify them. What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots & tyrants. It is its natural manure. -Thomas Jefferson
I wouldn’t like my private letters to be aired 200 years after my death, but something tells me TJ would be pretty pleased. A few months back someone quoted this same piece of crazy (just the bit about the tree of liberty, obviously) to justify bringing a gun to the Capitol building, even. And I’m sure that would please him, too.
It might please him less that the characters and places he inspires in this red-blooded little American are less than noble (if always very well-spoken and charming). But well, he’s dead, and I’m not, so if there’s ever to be a reckoning, it won’t be today.
Anyhow, the story I just finished is totally unrelated to TJ apart from the Liberty Tree connection. Its– er, not-hero** is a young man called Matthew Pelham. Here’s the first paragraph I ever wrote from his point of view, slightly edited from its original form, but nowhere near finished:
Pel followed Mary into Liberty Tree First Presbyterian, half expecting to burst into flames. Christ the Shepherd, resplendent in sun-drenched aquamarine-and-amber glass, corralled them safely into the family pew instead.
But he would, wouldn’t he?
ETA: I should also say here that that first line came from something my brother once said to me when I was visiting home. “Kate, remember when you walk into the church: stop, drop, and roll.”
*Note: For anyone feeling pugnacious, this is not an endorsement or indictment of Thomas Jefferson, his politics, his personal life, or anything else. It’s one of my favorite historical subjects, but the long and short of my opinion is: he was a bastard, and a great politician and writer. Imply causality all you like there, because I know I do.
**Not anti-hero. No.
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Now playing: Interpol – Barricade
via FoxyTunes
LOL at your brothers remark. Like his sense of humour. The Liberty Tree business sounds very interesting.
PS. I’m glad to hear that your brain is no longer broken.
I have a friend who said it was my Arkham, MA. I can only wish it was that cool. My brother, thankfully, is much, much funnier than I am. Bless his wee evil heart.
Thanks!
Huzzah for writing! And your brother is a saucy monkey ; )
Yes, he would. And Thomas Jefferson was/is one interesting cat.
(and your brother is just trying to protect you from fire…sheesh)
MOAR LIBERTY TREE PLX!
No, but seriously. More. I’ve even bought some new Henry James, just to put me in an early twentieth century frame of mind.
Interestingly enough (to me, anyhow), I believe my father’s family emigrated to the islands from Virginia immediately following the Revolutionary War. I bet I have some distant relatives in Libertry Tree!
… hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Nat, the expression he used to describe himself after I told him I’d posted this was less flattering. He’ll be pleased, I’m sure, with yours! Ha!
Aaron, he’s considerate that way. (Nicolas, not TJ!) Very sweet boy. Little brothers are like that, right?
John, fabulous! Maybe we’re related, because– oh wait. My Virginia family didn’t get here until every other Irish person got here: just in time to be shipped off to the Civil War. Right.
But it is SURELY your kind of town. Oh yes.
You had me at ‘freakly little town’.