ninety6tears | [all the other kids are sad again] - a lexie madison fanmix (dublin murder squad)

.for round 17 ("Minor Characters") @ waywardmixes.

About

The Likeness is Tana French's second novel in her series of Irish detective stories, the title referring to the impeccable resemblance that's recognized between Detective Cassie Maddox and a recent murder victim only after the body is found in a cottage close to an old mansion straight out of a gothic horror setting. As Cassie's old undercover boss happens upon the scene, a bizarre investigation idea is hatched to put Maddox undercover posing in the life of the victim in order to study her unusual life firsthand for potential suspects. This operation proves to be very emotional for Cassie, who is still carrying some harrowing baggage from an ugly murder case and finds her identity weaving in a bit too closely with a group of strangely intimate university friends who share a quaint life together in the old Whitethorn estate.

Lexie Madison (the victim, consistently referred to as such despite this name only being one of her aliases) never appears alive in the story, but the labyrinthine uncertainties of her history give her a remarkably dynamic presence in the story. After her previous identity (a woman who abruptly took off without so much as a note when she was engaged to a man in America) is discovered to be as false a name as the next, the investigators begin to assume that she lived a life of serial abandonment, taking on entirely new lifestyles and seemingly even new personalities before she decided to take off for reasons that can only be presumed. These revelations become more charged as the story familiarizes us with Lexie's friends living at the estate house and their very familial affection for her, the complicated reality of Lexie's secret pregnancy and whether or not she was planning on destroying these intimate friendships in order to be able to raise a child, and perhaps the biggest mystery of all: whether she was capable of loving them back or of ever having wanted to actually stick around for good.

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"Here I had thought I lived light; all of a sudden that felt like an adolescent game, like some rich kid playing at poor while the trust fund piled up, because this girl had been the real thing. She had held her whole life, everything she was, as lightly as a wildflower tucked in her hair, to be tossed away at any second as she took off burning streaks down the highway. What I hadn't managed to do even once, she had done easily as brushing her teeth...I wanted to feel that fire rip through my bones, I wanted that gale sanding my skin clean, I wanted to know if that kind of freedom smelled like ozone or thunderstorms or gunpowder."

iamundernodisguise.school of seven bells

I am neither breather nor speaker
I am neither walker nor sleeper
I am neither sister brother son nor daughter
Solely in my chest is my heart a drum of water
I am under no disguise

ramblin' woman.cat power

well i love you baby, but you gotta understand
when the lord made me, he made a ramblin' woman
he made me, he made me
some folks, some folks might say that i'm no good
that i wouldn't settle down, but if i only could
but i love to see the towns go rolling by,
something i got to do before i die

new thing now.shawn colvin

Mixing up those latest junkie-isms
With all the pretty terms of religion
And don't you love the leader of the band
Equal parts butthead and Peter Pan
All the other kids are sad again
A legend's not a legend 'til it ends
This is your new thing now
And it makes the whole world spin
It's as least as old as sin

anyone's ghost.silver swans

I had a hole in the middle where the lightning went through it
told my friends not to worry
I had a hole in the middle, someone's sideshow wouldn't do it
I told my friends not to worry
didn't want to be your ghost
didn't want to be anyone's ghost

"This is the one thing I hope: that she never stopped. I hope when her body couldn’t run any farther she left it behind like everything else that tried to hold her down...I hope every second she could have had came flooding through that cottage like speed wind: ribbons and sea spray, a wedding ring and Chad’s mother crying, sun-wrinkles and gallops through wild red brush, a baby’s first tooth and its shoulder blades like tiny wings in Amsterdam Toronto Dubai; hawthorn flowers spinning through summer air, Daniel’s hair turning grey under high ceilings and candle flames and the sweet cadences of Abby’s singing. Time works so hard for us, Daniel told me once. I hope those last few minutes worked like hell for her. I hope in that last half hour she lived all her million lives.”

daniel.bat for lashes

My dreams pulled me from the ground
Forever to search for the flame, for home again
When I run in the dark
Into a place that's lost
Under a sheet of rain in my heart
I dream of home...

horses in my dreams.pj harvey

Horses in my dreams
Like waves, like the sea
On the tracks of a train
Set myself free again
I have pulled myself clear
Silent, I have pulled myself clear

paradise.coldplay

When she was just a girl she expected the world
But it flew away from her reach
So she ran away in her sleep

sawdust & diamonds.joanna newsom

as I crash through the rafters
and the ropes and pulleys trail after
and the holiest belfry burns sky-high
then the slow lip of fire moves across the prairie with precision
while, somewhere, with your pliers and glue you make your first incision
and in a moment of almost-unbearable vision
doubled over with the hunger of lions
"hold me close," cooed the dove
who was stuffed now with sawdust and diamonds

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