ObscuraJournal 11/20/25

One of the coolest things is when a band includes a callback to older music in new music. Sometimes it's a just a few notes, enough for the subtle recognition, especially for fans that can appreciate such nods. Occasionally, bands will retool older tunes into new music, covering the same themes, but perhaps shading the phrasing a little differently. There are multitudes of examples, but off the top of my head I'm thinking The Mars Volta--especially like how "Rapid Fire Tollbooth" from early tracks became "Goliath", or how a jam session became the song "Old Money".

Another band notorious for repurposing songs is Pink Floyd. "You've Got To Be Crazy" and "Raving and Drooling" became songs on the Animals album. Those two songs started off as live cuts, and remained that way through several tour dates, and could have remained live cuts, but there was something about those themes that caught Roger Waters' fancy. It tapped into the things he was preoccupied with--obsessed with, really--at the time, and he couldn't shake them loose. Strains of "See Emily Play" run through Richard Wrights' keyboard musings at the end of "Shine on Your Crazy Diamond". The "Intro" heartbeat track became "Speak to Me". And on, and on.

This stuff is considered cool, or at least I think it's cool. Several thousand people on reddit agree it's cool. It's really cool when it's in film too. Benson & Moorhead did this with Resolution and The Endless. I'm convinced this is how David Lynch viewed his entire filmography, as one endless continuation of the theater of the absurd.

Writers of fiction revisit and repurpose as well. Of course, when Stephen King writes yet another U.F.O. story, or another _______ story, or a whatever story, then he's called every bad name in the book. Lazy. Burned out. Tapped out. It doesn't matter how different the stories are, it doesn't matter if they're even good. All that matters is he didn't write something different and people are mad. (Well, they're mad until they actually read the book, then YMMV, but usually ... they're not mad anymore.)

Our preoccupations, our fears, our obsessions ... that's what we write about. Writers continuously recycle and repurpose ideas/themes/tropes/characters/what-the-fuck-ever-they-want because that's what lives rent-free in the heads 24/7.

What the fuck else are we supposed to write about?

I just published a splatterpunk vampire novel The Small Hours (get it here: https://ghoulish.rip/product/the-small-hours/) and I have two other vampire novels, one of which would probably qualify again as splatterpunk, on deck. Why? Because I like vampires. I don't think we've tapped the well on vampires. I'm obsessed with vampires. One thing I'm particularly obsessed with is when a character realizes they've become a vampire. Another is how to kill vampires, because that also reveals how to bring them back to life. These are specific things I plan on exploring in those other vampire stories. I'm going to keep on exploring those two themes until I've exhausted all the different ways they could work in my fiction. I may not ever actually get to them all (I'm not getting any younger and I'm a notoriously slow writer), but I'm going to try.

John D. MacDonald, creator of Travis McGee, repurposed his famous character twenty-one times. Ian Fleming also repurposed his famous character, as did John le Carré, Ursula K. Le Guin, and the list goes on and on.

But Bob, those are characters ... it's not the same?

James Ellroy basically rewrote White Jazz with every novel after it until he got it the way he wanted. Peter Straub's Blue Rose Trilogy resulted from a lifelong obsession. Of course it's the same. It's just a variation of a theme (see what I did there?). If it works for musicians and filmmakers, then perhaps we should give authors a little bit of a break for putting their obsessions on the page.

Again, I ask ... exactly what are supposed to write about?

Personally, I love it when writers repurpose things. Call back a character from an unrelated book? That shit's cool. Create a personal universe where all of your stories take place? I'm down with that idea. Everything's related. Separation exists in small degrees, sometimes barely noticeable.

Preoccupations, fears, obsessions.

Repurpose, retool, reinvent.

Rewrite. And keep rewriting it until you get it right, or can finally lay it to rest.

Like Led Zeppelin said, The Song Remains The Same.

peace&love