Backstage for "The Lake" (Patreon)

Backstage for "The Lake", number 20 of the 52 Project.

In 1986, I wrote a songfic for Kate Bush's "Under Ice", and got it published in a local literary magazine. It was my first publication and I was very happy about it. Years later, though, I found it kind of trite and overliteral.

In the meantime, I'd written a poem, "entropy reversed", about how depression attacks at night (or metaphorical night, anyway.) Obviously, in real life, ice melts in the heat. In my analogy, the ice the speaker skates on is stronger in the light, a seemingly firm surface that is actually a thin and breakable layer over an endless fall into drowning darkness. When night comes, the surface cracks.

I combined this idea with the original "Under Ice" songfic to reinterpret the song in the light of the poem I'd written.