Searching for Jimmy Page Takes Flight!
Photo by Liz West (copied from Flickr)
Searching for Jimmy Page has officially taken flight!
My, my, my, I'm so happy
I'm gonna join the band
We gonna dance and sing in celebration
We are in the promised land
—Led Zeppelin, “Celebration Day”
I’ve been waiting for this moment since I was a little girl curled up in my bean bag chair in my bedroom scribbling short stories in my journal with a nubby pencil, then later, a teenager hammering mawkish tales on a second-hand typewriter beneath the posters of Led Zeppelin keeping vigil on my walls above my stereo. I am beyond thrilled to have finally realized that pensive girl’s dream. And the timing couldn’t be more perfect. There are several motifs in the book, some taken from the Led Zeppelin song “Four Sticks”—pine trees, rivers, owls—but perhaps the most prominent of all of them is the full moon, namely the Hunter’s Moon. How fortuitous that this book should lift off on the day of the 2021 Hunter’s Moon—fortuitous and not a little uncanny.
The first time the Hunter’s Moon makes a prominent appearance in Searching for Jimmy Page is in Chapter Two, in a scene in which Luna asks her mother, Claudia, to tell her the story of her name, a ritual that Luna finds comforting throughout her childhood, until Claudia’s death when Luna is nine years old. The scene crystallizes the power of myth, storytelling, and art in helping us create our own personal narratives:
Photo by Liz/The Boho Book Blogger
“Once upon a time on a crisp autumn night,” she began in a hammy voice, “a fairy princess flew out her bedroom window and—”
“Where was she going?” I interjected, feigning ignorance.
“To visit the wise old man who lived in a shack in the woods.”
“Howcome she couldn’t wait ‘til morning?”
“It was important. And stop interrupting,” she groused, swatting my leg with her bare foot. “When the fairy princess got to the wise old man’s shack, he was communing with the spirits who’d come calling.”
“He was talking to the fireplace,” I said petulantly.
Claudia groaned. “He was talking to the spirits,” she insisted. “Then the fairy princess gave him a slip of paper with a question on it.”
“What was the question?”
“She wanted to know what to name her soon-to-be-born child.”
“You mean she wanted him to ask the fireplace.”
She gave an enigmatic grin then rolled the sweating bottle of Pepsi across her forehead, unblemished and makeup free, as always. “Anyway,” she continued, “he read the question, then he wrote something on the paper and handed it back to the fairy princess. Then she set off for home. When she got to the edge of the woods, the full moon—the Hunter’s Moon—came out from behind the clouds and lit up the whole yard. It was like the sky had burst into white-hot fire. She could see past the hog pen and barn and the clouds and stars, all the way to the edge of the universe.”
She leaned her head back and stared at the ceiling, as if she were gazing through the wood and shingles into a fulgent fall sky. “Then the child’s name came to her,” she said dreamily. “Luna, Roman goddess of the moon, bright and beautiful and strong.” She winked at me. “And you are.”
Happy birthday to my book baby, Searching for Jimmy Page. May the Hunter’s Moon light your way as you begin your flight into the homes of readers across the country and, I hope, eventually the world. Celebration day indeed.
Rock on, y’all,
Christy
Photo by Rachel Kramer (copied from Flickr)
