Desert Island Discs with Damianista

source: dailybeast.com
source: dailybeast.com

I identify a lot of things in my life with music. Almost every piece of music I love reminds me of some sweet moment, and sometimes a bittersweet one from a particular time in my life. I associate my memories with music so much so that I, in fact, believe we all should have a life soundtrack 🙂

Thus, it has been pretty easy for me to identify the pieces of music that reminds me of Damian Lewis or some characters that he brings to life. The only challenge has been to limit the list to eight. I have tried my best to choose the eight that I feel most strongly about.

  1. Adele – Love Song

Ah, the long, hot summer of 2013. Or… the summer of anticipation… This was the summer  between Season 2 and Season 3 of Homeland… I was missing Brody so much and looking forward to the new season that I was google-ing Homeland every single day to see if there is some piece of news from the set. And, I was totally psyched when the first trailer came out. It was only a minute long, and pretty vague… I watched it again, and again, and again… tried to read between the lines… The music, combined with Brody with a hood on and with a gun, just haunted me… And, ever since, whenever I hear Adele’s Love Song anywhere, I just think about Brody and “That was love… you and me…”

  1. Elvis Presley – Burning Love

Is it even possible to do a DID about Damian Lewis and skip Elvis? Ha ha our guy openly says ““Up until I was about the age of 18, I thought, I was Elvis, returned, and spent a lot of my time putting shaving foam, oddly, through my hair and relentlessly coiffing my quiff, and any opportunity getting into my skinny pair of black jeans and my winklepickers and my paisley shirt from Kensington market, and this is Elvis.” This essentially means… I hear any song by Elvis… and I remember Damian Lewis. It is like my friends seeing Damian Lewis on TV and remember me 🙂

Why Burning Love in particular? Well, Damian loves to sing Burning Love, and he did a killer Karaoke last year at the ICAP Charity Day! So, why not Burning Love, and not the Elvis version, but Damian’s Karaoke version? ENJOY!

  1. Gypsy Kings – Volare

Now, that’s a funny one… I am a runner… And, my iPhone is always on shuffle when I run, so that the next song is always a surprise! And… I finished my first half-marathon last October like this 🙂

source: Damianista
source: Damianista

With my cellphone in my left hand, notice the cover (it’s Brody!) if you can, smiling BIG, and Volare — remember the Baker — in my ears! Maybe I was smiling that BIG thinking about all those chocolate cake orders 🙂 But if I didn’t then, I think about them now when my iPhone plays Volare and it puts a BIG smile on my face!

  1. Taylor Swift – Red

Ah, it made me giggle when I heard Damian Lewis saying on his own DID as he explained why he chose Mad Song by Baggy Trousers: “”Just to combat the onslaught of Taylor Swift in the car when I am with the kids… is, you know, what every self-respecting dad should do which is to force the music of his youth onto his own children.”

Hahaha… I am so sorry, Damian, but there is this Taylor Swift song that just reminds me of YOU. It’s called RED. Enough said 🙂

  1. Artie Shaw – Begin the Beguine

I obviously didn’t grow up in jazz tradition. I found about and loved jazz after I moved to the US in my early 20s through an amazing Ken Burns’ PBS documentary titled Jazz. I LOVE jazz and believe it is one of the very best things America has contributed to world culture. My husband and I spend a lot of time at jazz clubs and we love everything from traditional jazz to bebop to modern jazz. That’s why it put a BIG smile on my face when I read Damian saying in an interview with the Evening Standard  “in a perfect world I would always be bicycling through Bloomsbury just as my iPod shuffled to Artie Shaw.” I LOVE Artie Shaw. Artie Shaw was one of the jazz musicians that frequently appeared on the Jazz documentary, and in fact, one of the first jazz tunes I fell in love with is his version of Cole Porter’s  ‘Begin the Beguine.’

  1. Katy Perry – Dark Horse

Another funny one! When Damian Lewis was at Times Talks last May, he told the audience: ‘When I’m fortunate enough to have ladies come up to me and say “Oh, I love you as…” and there is always the ones that came up to say ‘Oh, I loved you as Soames Forsyte’… And you just think to yourself… oh, I wouldn’t go out with you. You shouldn’t really like Soames Forsyte… I think you’re a dark horse.”

What you don’t know Damian, is that you have a DARK HORSE writing on Fan Fun with Damian Lewis 🙂 I HEART Soames… Oh, yes, maybe he is not able to express his love in a healthy way… but that Irene… she never understood him… Not just that… she did not even try a bit to understand him… So… Katy Perry’s pretty popular Dark Horse just makes me think of Soames and his impossible and everlasting love for Irene… and, feel for him all over again, accompanied with Damian’s voice  “I wouldn’t go out with you… You’re a dark horse” in my ears 🙂

  1. k.d. lang – Close Your Eyes

Ah, I dreaded that day coming for months. Because, I knew it… I didn’t really know it, but I saw it coming, and I told everybody but nobody believed me! My friends said: “Oh, no, they will never kill Brody!” And, in particular, my husband said: “They will never kill the chicken that lays the golden egg. It would be very stupid.” And my lovely friend promised me: “If they kill Brody, we will make a video clip as a tribute.” And, as the critics rolled the drums louder and louder saying Brody should have been dead long ago, we just repeated the conversations above!

And when it was all over, my friend kept my promise… He and I made this fan video as a tribute to our most favorite cross-starred lovers, Carrie and Brody, to k.d. lang’s incredibly sensual tune “Close Your Eyes.” If you watch the video, please pay attention to the detail that we always have Carrie on “I will never leave” and we always have Brody on “I’m a dream that answers to you… “ That was deliberate 🙂 And this music we used in the video naturally reminds me of, in Damian’s words, “the two broken-winged birds” and their impossible love story.

8. Trombone Shorty – Buckjump

I told you some music reminds me of sweet moments, and some of bittersweet ones. This last song reminds me of Brody’s death.

On the day before the season 3 finale, me, being me, I was on the internet surfing desperately to find some clue that would tell me that, no, Brody would make it alive out of Iran. And, I found out that the season finale was leaked. Oh My God! I looked at some Reddit forums, and there I saw it… people openly talking about that horrific scene that I have still NOT seen to this day… My heart was BROKEN a day before it was supposed to be. And, I had to go to a concert, too… It wasn’t like I had to  but I could not wait to go because he was one of my most favorite musicians ever — Trombone Shorty. And off we went to the concert… And, all I could think about was the following day, and how I would stomach Brody’s death. No, I am not that crazy, after the first couple of songs, I was totally in my Shorty mood jumping and dancing and all, but the opening song of that concert, to this day, still makes me think of Brody’s tragic end.

Damianista’s Favorite Book: Wolf Hall and I would try to smuggle in A Tale of Two Cities as well. Sydney Carton was my first big fictional LOVE 🙂

Damianista’s Luxury item: I love my sleep so I’d take a real good pillow with me.

Damianista’s Favorite track: I will definitely need to have some fun on that island, so I’ll go with Volare 🙂

Damianista’s Damian Character: Ha, I know that you think I’d take Brody. I admit it’s the first name that came to my mind, too… But then I started thinking about island life…Well, I love Brody and he’s a Marine so he should be good at surviving on an island with limited resources. However, I think I’d take fun life over long life. Brody is quite a reserved character. The character I’d take with me to the island should be FUN company — someone that talks a lot and makes me laugh. Rings a bell?

personalpineapple

Oh ,yes, I’m taking Charlie Crews with me. And, him knowing his exotic fruits well will definitely come handy on the island 🙂 I’m looking forward to eating our “personal pineapples” as we talk about the meaning of universe.

 

 

Author: Damianista

Academic, Traveler, Blogger, Runner, Theatre Lover, Wine Snob, Part-time New Yorker, and Walking Damian Lewis Encyclopedia :D Procrastinated about a fan's diary on Damian Lewis for a while and the rest is history!

6 thoughts on “Desert Island Discs with Damianista”

    1. So sorry for your loss, Judy; and how true, songs remind us sweet as well as sad memories. I love Fleetwood Mac by the way!

  1. Very enjoyable read.

    Charlie would be lots of fun. I’m thinking of badge bunnies in particular as an example of how fun he is willing to be.

    1. Thank you! I am so looking forward to your DID next week! Haha I have chosen Charlie for FUN in the first place, so he’d better behave 😀

  2. I read Damians list and I had to read yours of course! I totally loved your selection. Volare made me laugh a lot, it’s the kind of song that makes you smile even if it’s the end of world. You look so happy crossing the finish line. It’s quite a moment and the music indeed is fuel for your heart. Maybe some time we can run together the famous NYC full marathon!
    Adele song is beautiful I did not know it was a part of the trailer.
    I agree with the pillow as luxury item. A good night sleep turns a zombie into human again 😉
    Finally the Black Horse has a special memory for me as a couple of years ago in the yearend party my team and I would participate in the talent contest (imagine the accountants dancing) well and we started our number dressed up in black coats and hats with Kate Perry’s dark horse only to take them off and actually show our colorful customs and actually rock the dance floor with Foot Loose! Hahahah what a memory!

    1. Thank you! OMG it would be a dream to run NYC marathon and it would be a sweeter dream to run it with you. But I want someone to support us with a “Run as if Damian Lewis is waiting at the finish line” banner!!!! 😀 In the last half marathon I ran this past May, I saw a guy holding that slogan for his girlfriend or wife with Ryan Gosling’s name on it and I loved it!

      Can you believe that I cannot hear that Adele song anymore? It hurts. This is my relationship with music. I identify music pieces with events and so I hear some of them all the time whereas I come to a point where I cannot hear them anymore… I LOVE your story about Dark Horse 😀

      I have not shared it with my partners yet, but I am thinking of a little game that we can all play in 2018… We did our own DIDs almost three years ago. Maybe we can do it again and then open it to fans! I don’t know if we could get as much participation as we had in fan stories but it could be FUN!

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