Planet Cricket Rice

A song about a book about the human condition.

Last year, I couldn’t stop talking about Beautyland—the sci-fi novel by Marie Helene Bertino that follows an alien girl born to an earth mother in Philadelphia.

Adina has distant memories of her home planet, Cricket Rice, and contacts her extraterrestrial superiors via fax machine. She reports on the mundanity and loneliness of human existence:

“Human beings show their teeth when they are happy, in pain, repulsed, disappointed, surprised,” Adina writes.

Or, “When you’re alone, you are in the right place to watch sadness approach like storm clouds over an open field.”

And, “Hobbies are a way of staying present so humans do not have to think about death.”

Eventually, the fax machine stops working. Adina’s alien counterparts cease to respond. We wonder what is real and what is lost.

In March, I got the band together to record a live session of Planet Cricket Rice—a song I wrote from Adina’s POV. A fun exercise, both entirely not-personal, yet…personal?

Fauvely at Back Room Record Studios. Photo by Drew Miller.

This session was recorded at my buddy Andrew Sovine’s home studio, Back Room in Savannah, Georgia. Andrew engineered and mixed the audio. Drew Miller (Cullen Studios) shot and edited the video.

Watch it, like it, leave a comment. Like Adina, I’m awaiting your response from the other side.