Rush lyrics play a large part in The Proviso, so much so that the female counterpart of the title-ish character calls it out:¹ “Neil Peart wrote my hymns and Rush is my choir.”

Yet … as much as even the most poverty-stricken among us can get the message of “Subdivisions” thanks to ubiquitous teen TV dramas, kids who grow up in subdivisions aren’t.

Poor, I mean.

Poverty and people who think in Poor also have a large presence in The Proviso. Only one of the six leads grew up with money, and he doesn’t find money interesting or important, which is a manifestation of his privilege. The only other one who didn’t grow up poor grew up in … a subdivision. In San Diego. In the 80s. In the exact misery of the song.

Even though I referenced “Subdivisions” in The Proviso consistent with its intended message (Chapter 22 “Misfit So Alone,” Chapter 87 “Far Unlit Unknown”), I also subverted it because my heroine, the one to whom Rush speaks so deeply, lives in such abject poverty in a falling-down relic of 19th-century gothic revival in such a backwater of a town that the particular flavor of hell of growing up in a subdivision is, for her, a dream come true—or better yet, a dream she never thought to dream at all because her future is

pre-decided

Now, the subdivision she is suddenly dropped in the middle of isn’t a rich one, either. It’s old, mid-1960s, in a sprawling ranch that tries to look French provincial, a house that still has Mamie pink tile and Formica in its kitchen and bathrooms, and sits at the very back of the developed land, waiting for the day it gets razed and replaced with closely set mcmansions. There are newer houses farther away from her upgraded home, and so there’s a clubhouse with a pool.

The house and neighborhood are not glamorous. They’re not even of the caliber of the Toronto subdivisions referenced in the song. She’s savvy enough to know that the house is wildly out of date, even if someone did attempt to modernize it with avocado green shag carpet and a harvest gold refrigerator, and the fact that the trust-fund guy she’s married to is fine with Walmart flat-pack furniture isn’t normal, nor should it be—but to her, the whole setup is magical.

But not overwhelming.

After all, you can take a poor country girl off the farm and plop her in a society matron’s living room, but there’s gonna be an immediate need for a therapist. The mint-ish 1960s ranch is as big a step up the socioeconomic culture scale as any mature person could handle. The mcmansion comes next.

This isn’t just about peer pressure. It’s a law of social survival. The song argues that in these kind of controlled environments, individuality isn’t just discouraged, it’s actually a liability. And that message, it became an anthem for a generation of outsiders. It speaks directly to the deep-seated adolescent fear of being different, of being rejected for not living up to the unspoken standard. —Neil Peart

So the next time “Subdivisions” comes on the radio, we can nod and give the generic middle-class North American teen his angsty due, but then remember that one person’s prison is another person’s paradise.

by Angel & the Mambokats
Genre(s): American Afro Cuban jazz,¹ Afro Cuban soul,² mambo, Latin, dance, ballroom
Mood: vintage/retro, midcentury

★★★

You can take with as many grains of salt with this review as you want because I really, really just love it all. I’m particular about voices. Some elevate my soul. Some make me curl up in a ball in a corner with my hands over my ears and make me rock back and forth crying.³ If your voice sucks, it won’t matter to me how good the tune is.

Angel’s voice is deep, rich, smooth, and smoky, but growly when it needs to be. The orchestration is exquisite and the production values are clean. It’s very sexy, sinuous, but it’s overshadowed by its main purpose, which is to get you to dance, which, in Magdalene, I point out, is just sex on your feet with your clothes on in public.⁴

The whole vibe is a retro midcentury ballroom or urban dance club where people go to dress up and get sweaty, to see and be seen, to drink champagne and nibble on hors d’oeuvres, to act like you don’t have a care in the world for a few hours. If you do have cares, Angel will make you forget them.

In short, the man set himself a task to do something niche⁵ and lovely, and he does his job very, very well.⁶

★★★

I first heard of Angel & the Mambokats watching Benji and Heidi’s dance routine on So You Think You Can Dance in 2006, which, as we all know, was just 2 years ago.

I love this stuff, so of course, I bought a bunch of Angel & the Mambokats stuff.

Now, I don’t know how it happened, but either I posted something on some social media platform and mentioned Angel & the Mambokats, and the titular Angel Ferreira messaged me or I messaged him to praise his work,⁷ but suddenly I got a phone/texting buddy. We don’t chat often, usually only when he wants to try out an online concert “venue” pay-per-view app or drops something new, which I did last night because he dropped something new.

Then I remembered that 3 years ago (I know this because my phone told me so), I told him I’d review Mambopussykat, which I never did.

Something I learned about Angel is that he was Madonna’s backup dancer on the Who’s That Girl tour. He’s my age but doesn’t look it. He’s a far better hustler than I am, for sure, but he’s also a showman and I’m an author who wants to stay in her garret and write⁸ unless an occasional cocktail party is involved.

Look, if you’re not into dancing, Latin ballroom, Latin music,⁹ or fun, this is not for you. Maybe. I think this guy could persuade you to at least try it.

“Tess … ” She stopped cold at the breath of a whisper, her heart slamming into her ribs so hard she thought it would fall out right there on the table and flop around. She turned slowly—so slowly.

She opened her mouth to scream at him for ambushing her, but she realized just in time that he was as stunned as she was.

And he was beautiful. More beautiful than he had been when he was nineteen. More beautiful than he was the night he’d left her. Yet nothing about him had changed.

His hair was still a mass of long mahogany-red waves past his shoulders. Bunches of hair at his temples had been braided into tiny plaits fastened behind his head. His earrings were medium-sized gold hoops. His stark art deco sun tattoo still spread its rays down along his neck, chin, and jaw. His shirt was blousy white linen floating untucked over oxblood leathers, the ties at the neck hanging loose. His wrist tattoos were on full display. Then she looked at his hands.

He was wearing his wedding ring.

She blinked and looked down at her own left hand. There they were: the circuit board wrist tattoo that matched his and the diamond he’d presented to her in an elaborate, public proposal. Because why do it privately when you could put on a show?

She looked back up at him, knowing all her heartbreak and joy and sorrow and love for him were written all over her face—and it was reflected in his.

“This is exactly what I wanted to avoid,” Sebastian drawled with great irritation. “If some people had picked up her phone!”

She should’ve picked up the phone.

Tess didn’t move—couldn’t—but Étienne could and did, skirting his chair and striding toward her with that look, the pirate king, the one who wouldn’t be denied.

She sighed when he slid his big hands around her face, tilted it back, and brought her up to him for a kiss that scorched her soul.

It was magical. He was magical.

She closed her eyes and opened her mouth, feeling his tongue, so familiar, so talented. Tasting him as he had always tasted with an undernote of Dr. Pepper. She whimpered into his mouth when the pressure lightened, but he only tilted his head and went after her at a different angle. Sensation shot downward, and she moaned softly, ready to spend the next few hours feeling his bare chest against her naked breast, his legs twined with hers, his body inside hers, stroking her and assuaging this ache for him she’d never been able to contain.

“GET A FUCKING ROOM!” Sebastian roared, standing and pounding the table. “You two drive me fucking insane!”

They parted. Slowly. So slowly.

“I did not sleep with her,” he whispered, dropping his forehead on hers, his chest heaving.

“I know.” That surprised him, and she was strangely gratified.

“Mon cœur,” he breathed.

“I love you, too,” she whispered back, equally out of breath. Then she gulped. “But love isn’t enough.”

He drew away from her, dropped his head back, gripped the back of her chair so hard it creaked. His chest heaved.

But somebody began to clap. A golf clap. Hushed. Mocking.

Someone else joined in. Then someone else.

Her heart was breaking—again—but she couldn’t hide her smile. Nor, it seemed, could he.

“Étienne!” Sebastian snapped. “Get your ass in this seat right now. Tess, siddown. Somebody has to be the adult in the room. As per usual.”

“We need to talk,” Étienne murmured, looking at her with those heartbreaking—heartbroken—ice blue eyes.

She nodded. “I know.”

“To a therapist! I do have other things to do, you know!”

Étienne tossed Sebastian a bland smile over his shoulder. “Keep it up. You know we like to put on a show.”

Sebastian snarled but sat, and somebody began to chuckle.

He turned back to her. “You drew those for me?”

Tess, as in love as she had been at seventeen, could only nod. “I draw everything for you.”

It was just me and Astrid again this week. Here we go:

Astrid Cruz aka @artistikem “Piano”: You certainly know how to rip a girl’s heart out, don’t you, woman?

And so here’s what it did for me: a portion of Chapter 67, The Proviso, “Dulcissime,” which you will have to buy to read, because it could be considered a spoiler for one plot point (even though I didn’t go out of my way to make that a huge reveal to the reader. If the reader figures it out beforehand, great. If not, great).

Thank you!

It was just me and Astrid this week. Here we go:

Astrid Cruz aka @artistikem “Ghost”: Oh. My. Goodness. That gave me chills. Y’all must read this.

And so here’s what it did for me: Stay, Chapter 34: A Good Crop of Wheat.

Thank you!

You see, this song (to me) is already about as explicit as a story can get. It spins, it’s glittery, it’s Skittle-colored, it tells the story for you. So what I was going for was to see how you would interpret a story already told in speed-shot liquid neon. (And no, I hadn’t seen the video for it until Astrid linked it.)

So here’s the week’s wrapup for Week 2 of the music-prompt group creativity experiment.

Astrid Cruz aka @artistikem “Fairground”: I could feel the man’s thoughts spinning like a carousel in turbocharge, all the colored lights blurring—and then that last line that brings you down with a sweet thump of “Oh yeah. She said that.”

Babette James, a scene from work-in-progress As Clear As Day:  You took the story of the song and appliqued yours over the top of it, leaving little bits of the song peeping out here and there. Very clever! And better! You’re getting your word count in.

So then here’s Lenox Parker aka @LenoxParker formerly known as—shit, she’ll kill me if I say before she’s ready to out herself—with “Like Every Day in Paris, It Was Raining”: OMG you’ve got a theme going with this guy! (This is where I figured it out: “I was totally in love with this man and would have done anything for him at that moment, and in the days, weeks, and months that followed.”)

And so here’s what it did for me: a portion of untitled chapter 11, Magdalene, “Warm*Dark*Sugar*Laugh.”

Excellent! Thank you, all, and the next track will post at 9:00 a.m. Central, and it may really surprise you. Follow on Twitter with #mojogce.

Peach’s haiku: Heartbeat in a tango gave me shivers.

Baby’s Black Balloon “The Collector” [dead link]: OMG the detail! dark-haired gypsy queen who never did understand the difference between herself and real royalty and black-velvet spider lashes and Virginia Slim Menthol Lights and the old Lafitte’s instead of Café Lafitte’s. I am in lurve with this piece.

Danielle Yockman, a scene from work-in-progress Seducing the Assassin: So we’re three pieces in and I’m already seeing a trend: detail, visceral, sensual. Feeling the night and sucking in jasmine air.

Astrid Cruz aka @artistikem “Yerba Buena” [dead link]: The juxtaposition of music that comes from an extraordinarily humid climate and walking into a story that takes place in what seems to be a very arid heat was jolting—in a good way!

Babette James, a scene from work-in-progress As Clear As Day: I’ve been reading snippets of this in Romance Divas chat, so I was unprepared for a long snip and great progress, lady. Looks like you really made some headway. Congratulations.

Galendara, artist, with a variation on Pieta, The Mother and the Wounded Daughter [dead link]: Genius. Genius.

Jenn Topper, “Jean-Baptiste Foulon is a Brilliant Liar”: A beautiful assistant with her Series 7. The ending? Love! I adore the conversational first person (as opposed to the distanced first person), when the storyteller talks directly to the reader. It may be my favorite point of view. The man’s name even feels significant. I think I’m missing a joke.

Guy LeCharles Gonzales, “Thinking About New Orleans”:  You gave me melancholy. *sniffle*

And so here’s what it did for me: Chapter 15, The Proviso. NSFW (but you probably knew that).

Excellent! Thank you, all, and the next track will post at 9:00 a.m. Central. Follow on Twitter with #mojogce