Tag: Music
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How Pop Culture and Music Inform the Garratyverse
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in A Bridge Too Far (1977 film), Alex Diaz-Granados, All the Things You Are, All the Things You Are (Kern and Hammerstein), Amazon, Billy Joel, Classical music, Comings and Goings: The Art of Being Seen, Creative Writing, John Williams (Composer), Kindle, Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP), Ludwig van Beethoven, Melodies and Memories: Music, Songs, and Singers, Movies, Music, Music & Concert Specials, Pop Music, Reunion Duology, Reunion: A Story, Reunion: Coda, Star Wars, Superman: The Movie, The Summer of Two Movies, West Side Story – Original Broadway Cast (1957)How Pop Culture and Music Inform the Garratyverse If you spend enough time inside the Garratyverse, you eventually notice something: Jim Garraty’s world doesn’t just contain pop culture and music—it breathes through them. Songs, films, TV shows, and the cultural noise of their eras aren’t background decoration. They’re emotional weather systems. They shape memory, mood,…
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Florida Summer Has Entered the Chat
Here we are, 12 days into Summer 2026—at least if you subscribe to “meteorological summer,” which starts on June 1. The traditionalists will point out that summer doesn’t officially begin until 4:24 AM Eastern Time on Sunday, June 21, but Central Florida clearly did not get that memo. Outside, it already feels less like early…
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Music Album Review: ‘West Side Story – Original Broadway Cast Recording’
West Side Story – Original Broadway Cast Recording (1957, 1990 CD Reissue) Label: Columbia – CK 32603 Format: CD, Album, Reissue Released: 1990 Genre: Classical, Stage & Screen Style: Soundtrack, Musical West Side Story has generated several indispensable recordings, but the 1957 original Broadway cast album remains the most historically revealing of them. Released shortly…
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The Duet That Never Was: Revisiting Jim and Marty’s Unfinished Song
Wednesday, June 10, 2026, Orlando, Florida When I wrote Reunion: A Story in the fall of 1998, I wanted to give my protagonist, Jim Garraty, a connection with Martina Elizabeth “Marty” Reynaud that reached beyond the unspoken love he feels for her in the novella. It could not, of course, be openly romantic; otherwise, Jim’s…
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Say It With Music: A Sunday Musicale
If music be the food of love, play on; Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting, The appetite may sicken, and so die. – William Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
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Ending the Merry Month of May with a Sunday Musicale
Hi, everyone. Well, it’s the last day of May and, if you go by the meteorological calendar, it’s also the last day of spring. It’s also Sunday, and as much as I love writing – it’s what I do, after all – I do need to take an occasional day of rest. So, I’m waving…
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Sunday Spring Musicale…May 24, 2026 Edition
Hi, everyone. I started writing a post for this blog a few hours ago, but I couldn’t organize my thoughts well enough to get my ideas across on the page, so I gave up. I suppose I could have kept trying until I produced something worth reading, but I had already been writing for an…
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Excerpt from ‘Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen’: An Unexpected (and Fateful) Escape from a Bad Party
An Excerpt from Comings and Goings – The Art of Being Seen Boston, 1984. A party Jim Garraty never wanted to attend. A girl who didn’t look away. A night stitched together by mixtapes, quiet courage, and the ache of choosing to stay. Jim isn’t chasing romance—he’s just trying to outrun the noise. But when…
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Songs from All My Yesterdays (A Thursday Musicale)
Thursday, May 21, 2026, Orlando, Florida Hi there, Dear Reader. It is midafternoon on a hot, humid, and potentially rainy late spring afternoon in Central Florida. As I write this, it’s just past three, and the temperature outside is 88°F (31°C) under partly sunny skies. With humidity at a sticky 59% and the wind blowing…
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A Musicale for a Torrid Tuesday in May 2026
Tuesday, May 19, 2026, Orlando, Florida Hi, there, Dear Reader, and welcome to another edition of Alex’s Writer’s Block Musicales! I don’t have any interesting topics to write about on this extremely hot late spring day in Central Florida, and I’m sure that I’ll bore you if I share another post about editing subheadings in…
A Certain Point of View, Too 