ANTHEM is coming, chapter 11

ANTHEM, Book 3 of the Sixties Trilogy, publishes on October 1. Each of the book's 47 chapters begins with a song from the Sixties to set the tone, mood, and scene. Every day between now and October 1, come have a listen and read a snippet from each chapter.

This is Chapter 11 (day 37):

"WITHIN YOU WITHOUT YOU"
Written by George Harrison
Performed by George Harrison and the Asian Music Circle
Recorded at EMI/Abbey Road Studios, London, England, 1967
Tabla/percussion: Natwar Soni 

Beards and bare feet; sandals and suspenders; headbands and felt hats. Bodies -- including theirs - weaved and waved in time to some kind of different rhythm, a rhythm that enveloped them and lifted them into a place not of this world, a rhythm pulsating, undulating, within them and without them, everywhere...

I should hate this, Molly thought. But she didn't. I should be afraid. But she wasn't. She couldn't resist the energy. She felt pulled along, like a thread in a tapestry. And now, suddenly and surprisingly, she was in it. Whatever it was. She was here. Now. There was a great vitality here that propelled her along, on its own dedicated highway.
 


One more from Sgt. Peppers. I knew the song for the moment Molly and Norman experience the Strip in Atlanta -- those hippie-filled blocks between 10th and 14th Streets on Peachtree in the late Sixties. 

I have good friends who spent time on the Strip in 1969, and they were my guides for writing this chapter. So was this song, "Within You Without You" by George Harrison, with its distinctly trippy and Indian flavor. "And the time will come when you see we are all one// and life goes on within you and without you."

How to write this scene, this trip, for middle-grade readers and paint a picture for them of those days of "the smell of sun tinged leaves" and "their heads bobbling and warbling to some invisible scene within them"? -- Like that. 

And the music is a huge help. Story surrounds all our senses. With ANTHEM, I wanted young readers to see it (in the scrapbooks) and hear it (in the soundtrack) in order to feel what it was like.

Chapter 11.