When considering euphiction, it’s important to note that the stories themselves don’t have to be about music, nor do they have to work like a song. The emphasis here is that the song has inspired you to create a story, whether the song works as a kind of soundtrack or you’re playing off of the song’s theme. And while this kind of writing is hardly new, the term euphiction is. Stephen King has talked about how the Ramones influenced his writing (and vice-versa), and it can be argued that specific passages where the Ramone’s have a direct influence in King’s writing are euphonious.

The key word here is influence. Borrowing an idea from Thomas C. Foster’s How to Read Literature Like a Professor, we can look at euphiction this way.

Let’s take the myth of Icarus. Needing to escape from Crete, his father creates a set of wings from feathers and wax for him, with specific instructions not to fly too close to the sun. However, once Icarus is flying, he’s overcome with excitement. Enjoying his flight, Icarus ignores his father’s warning and naturally flies too high, until the sun melts the wax holding his wings together. Icarus eventually falls to his death.

Now let’s flash forward nearly 2000 years later. Renaissance painter Pieter Bruegel, inspired by the myth, creates Landscape with the Fall of Icarus.

We then flash forward to the early 20th century when the American poet William Carlos Williams sees Brueghel’s painting and is inspired to write a poem with the same title:

According to Brueghel
when Icarus fell
it was spring

a farmer was ploughing
his field
the whole pageantry

of the year was
awake tingling
near

the edge of the sea
concerned
with itself

sweating in the sun
that melted
the wings’ wax

unsignificantly
off the coast
there was

a splash quite unnoticed
this was
Icarus drowning

I love how direct Williams’ poem is, which is basically a textual representation of the painting that inspires it. Your eyes practically mimic the movement it would make if they were looking at the painting itself.

Now, the story of Icarus is well known, but it’s neat to think that musicians like Ani DiFranco, Phish and Nine Inch Nails discovered the myth through Williams’ poem, and then they went on to make music about Icarus. Or maybe that’s where Seinfeld writer Dan O’Keefe picked up the myth when he decided to have George Constanza hilariously say, ”I flew too close to the sun on wings of pastrami.”

The point is that art isn’t created in a vacuum. Pop culture is full of these allusions, some of which have points of origin that go back thousands of years. It’s one of the things that makes art so wonderful (and simultaneously frustrating, especially for students).

Euphictional stories, like the ones in Cover Stories, are directly inspired by songs. It’s conscious, completely aware of itself.

We are the painters listening to the myths. We are the poets staring at the paintings. We are the musicians experiencing the poetry.

We are the writers listening to the songs.

You are the readers reading the stories.

And Cover Stories offers you 100 possibilities to continue the tradition. What can you create?