The Sparrow

First things first, in case you missed it: Sisyphus is now available for preorder on Bandcamp! You can get it as a digital download, or as a paired digital/CD bundle, with CDs either shipping worldwide in early November 2024 or being delivered in person at OVFF or Windycon. For a lot of different reasons, I didn’t run a Kickstarter for the album release costs this time around, so all of that has come out of my pocket. Preordering puts money in my pocket right away to help pay those bills when they come due, so if you’re as excited to hear this record as I am to get it out into the world, please consider preordering because it really helps my personal finances out.

Now, on to our regularly scheduled blog post!

I read Mary Doria Russell's The Sparrow very close to the date of its publication in 1996, probably based on a glowing review in F&SF magazine or a similar outlet. I was a teenager then and several years into my obsession with science fiction literature, compulsively reading SF novels as quickly as my local library would let me get my hands on them. Because I read so voraciously back then, the particulars of a lot of the books I picked up have faded with time, such that my reaction to most '90s SF is "oh yeah, I'm pretty sure I read that, but I don't remember anything about it now." That was never the case with The Sparrow.

In the opening pages of The Sparrow we are introduced to Emilio Sandoz, a Jesuit priest who has just been rescued out of appalling conditions on an alien planet. Emilio is the sole survivor of an unauthorized space mission funded by the Jesuits and undertaken with the intention of making first contact with the alien species living there. It's clear from the outset that something has gone dreadfully wrong with this well-intentioned yet fundamentally flawed plan, and over the course of the novel the whole tragedy is exposed in excruciating detail. It's an exquisitely crafted but very difficult read, populated by likable and doomed characters, and not a book that easily leaves you once you've read it.

The Sparrow is best approached without knowing too much about the outcome of the plot, so I'll try to refrain from sharing any spoilers (except to offer a content note that the story deals extensively with rape and sexual violence). For the sake of contextualizing this song, I'll say that a lot of the tragedy arises from miscommunication and misunderstanding between parties - from the impossibility of true cross-cultural understanding between the humans and the aliens, of course, but also from Emilio's struggle to derive meaning from the experiences he once believed to be part of a divinely ordained plan.

Every year the Ohio Valley Filk Festival runs two songwriting contests for its attendees. I always try to participate in both of them, because I figure that if I do I'm at least guaranteed of having written two songs that year. When I learned that the topic for the 2019 contest was "Music is the Universal Language," I found myself thinking about The Sparrow for the first time in a long time. In the novel, the first evidence of intelligent life on another planet comes in the form of hauntingly beautiful music transmitted from a nearby star. Wondering if there might be a song in there somewhere, I dug out my old copy of The Sparrow and reread it for the first time in a long time, and was pleased to find that it held up.

Though I ultimately took a different direction with the song I wrote for the main contest in 2019, The Sparrow was still on my mind when I heard that year's topic for Iron Filker: "Lost in Translation." The prompt for Iron Filker is given on Friday early evening of OVFF, and the resulting songs are performed around noon the following Sunday, so you have less than 48 hours to complete your entry. Under these circumstances I usually find that I have to pursue and stick with the first idea that seems even remotely promising, so it quickly became clear that it was going to be The Sparrow for me that year even if I wasn't sure that would be on topic (it wasn't). As is my usual process for Iron Filker entries, I settled on the song idea on Friday night, jotted down lyrics in between concerts on Saturday, and finalized the melody and chords in a panicked underslept rush on Sunday morning just before taking the stage. The 2019 Iron Filker field was one of the strongest I can ever remember encountering at OVFF, and ultimately "The Sparrow" didn't place. But I was happy with what I'd written, and a few kind and complimentary comments from audience members after the show encouraged me to keep going with it, so I did.

Finally, I would be remiss if I failed to mention Elizabeth Greenberg's incredible contributions to the album version of "The Sparrow," which not only make the entire song but are in my opinion a highlight of the whole Sisyphus album. The Sparrow is also one of Elizabeth's favorite books, and I definitely had her in mind as my ideal audience for the song as I wrote it. The intricate harmony vocals and overlapping layers of violin parts she added perfectly evoke the haunting, mystifying Jana'ata compositions that incite the novel's plot - music so beautiful and magnetic, it's worth defying the Vatican and going to another planet for. Thank you, Elizabeth, for everything you brought to this record, and to "The Sparrow" in particular.