Novels to Music: Is it Possible?
By: Kevin Patel
"Noggin" by John Corey Whaley
What's the Connection?
In Noggin, a boy named Travis died, and his head was removed from his body and preserved in a cryogenic freezer in Denver, Colorado. Suddenly, Travis awakes in a time five years after he had died. He finds that the body his head is on in not actually his own, and that the people around him are not who they once were. The confusion his situation entails pairs well with the feeling associated with Taylor Swift's "A Place in This World". The song's tune and lyrics elicits feelings of of being lost and confused, just as Travis feels when he attempts to uncover what has happened to his life since his transplant. Feelings of confusion and being lost are evoked in "A Place in This World" by the lyrics:
"don't know
what's down
this road, I'm
just walking
trying to see".
These feelings can also be found in the excerpt from Noggin which goes as such:
"I'm thinking about how long it's gonna take me to remember that everything's so different. I can't quite understand it yet, I guess."
Taylor's lyrics are trying to tell us that she doesn't know what the future holds, but she is willing to travel down her life's path to find out what's in store for her. The excerpt from Noggin tells us that Travis isn't able to grasp what is going on in his life, but he is going to make the effort to understand. Both texts suggest that they are lost, yet there is still hope in the future for them to find out who they truly are.