Desert Island Discs with Damianista

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 believe we all should have a life soundtrack. And I know my husband would tell you mine should be the soundtrack of the movie Amelie! 😀

It has been pretty easy to identify the pieces of music that reminds me of Damian, who is a very musical man, or several characters that he brings to life. The only challenge has been to limit the list to eight. I have done my best to choose the eight I feel most strongly about and I hope you enjoy them!

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…”

2. Elvis Presley – Burning Love

Is it even possible to do a DID about Damian Lewis and skip Elvis? No way given that we have Damian’s confessions in hand:

“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 winkle pickers and my paisley shirt from Kensington market, and this is Elvis.”

This essentially means… I hear any song by Elvis… and I remember Damian, exactly like my friends seeing him on the screen and remembering me 🙂

And why Burning Love in particular? Well, Damian loves to sing Burning Love, and he did a killer Karaoke in 2015 at the ICAP Charity Day! So, why not Burning Love, and not the Elvis version, but Damian’s Karaoke version? ENJOY!

3. 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 almost three years ago like this 🙂

With my cellphone in my left hand (notice the cover on my old iPhone 4 if you can — it’s Brody!) smiling BIG, and Volare (The Baker, anyone?) 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!

4. 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 is called RED. Enough said 🙂

5. 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. Lewisto 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. He 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.’

6. Katy Perry – Dark Horse

Another funny one! When Damian did Times Talks in London, 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 certainly have at least one DARK HORSE writing on Fan Fun 🙂 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 very 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 😀

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F9S-88WxPdE

7. 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 his 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 that I loved so much.

8. Pete Townsend / The Who – Behind Blue Eyes

Next to being an amazing song, it feels as if it was written for Bobby Axelrod.

No one knows what it’s like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes
And no one knows what it’s like
To be hated
To be faded to telling only lies

But my dreams they aren’t as empty
As my conscience seems to be
I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That’s never free

Could there be a better song to introduce the scene in which Axe is seemingly having a romantic evening with Rebecca but is actually getting ready to put his plan to destroy her business into action.

Ah the bad man behind those blue eyes!

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 would take a good quality pillow with me.

Damianista’s Favorite track: I am determined to have fun on that island, so I’ll go with Volare 🙂

Damianista’s Damian Character: I know, I know, you think I would take Brody and I admit it is the first name that has come to my mind… 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 scarce resources. That said, I think I would take fun life over long life. And given that Brody is such a reserved man, the character I would take with me should be someone that talks a lot and makes me laugh. Rings a bell?

Oh,yes, I’m taking Charlie Crews with me and Charlie knowing his exotic fruits will definitely come handy on the island 🙂 I am so looking forward to eating our “personal pineapples” and dance to “Volare” 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! View all posts by Damianista