So while my Hungarian hunters are busily staking vampires in my WiP, I figured I might as well take advantage of this faint smudge of free time to share a new bit o' shiny. It's really weird how one thing -- pretty innocuous and even gorgeous -- can give a darker idea a nudge. Again and again. Then a massive kick in the 'nads for good measure when things not only gel, but actually make a hell of a lot of sense.
Anyway, while re-centering myself with some favorite music on YT (mostly classical since it always calms me down), I realized I haven't listened to Karl Jenkins' Palladio in a dog's age. It's one of my favorite modern compositions, and it occasionally cuddles ye olde plotbunny and feeds it some much-needed noms though I really hadn't been inspired by it completely.
Until now.
The piece itself (this is actually just one movement but is the most famous one*) was written in honor of Andrea Palladio, an Italian architect from the Renaissance who championed an architectural style that was all about symmetry and balance. Jenkins' piece perfectly encapsulates Palladian architecture, but one can also argue that it can stir up some darkly twisted stuff given the right time and environment.
*points at brain*
Dat be my brain, y'all, all of yesterday. I'll be able to rescue a languishing plotbunny that was originally intended for The Twilight Lover, which underwent a bit of surgery and came out of it a wholly different story, and I ended up ditching the original idea yet again (it'd been resurrected, killed off, resurrected, killed off, etc. for quite a few years now).
And this time it'll work -- thanks to the idea of symmetry and balance, which can be turned into something quite creepy and unsettling. So I now have one more solid story to add to my running to-do list, and Doppelgänger will follow The Bells of St. Mark's Eve. We'll be back to my favorite genre of Victorian ghost fiction in this case, so I'm stoked.
* this performance actually drops a very short section of the piece, but it doesn't detract from the final effect; it's also (so far) my favorite interpretation because it's snappier and more emphatic than others, which usually take on a slightly slower and more graceful approach