Lighter Than Air, or How to Write Your Own Song

There's a cool scene in An Ordinary Fairy where Noah and Willow dance in the ballroom of the Big House. Noah hums a tune and Willow knows the song and begins to sing while they're dancing.

So what song is it? Originally I wanted to use "Let Me Be Your Wings" by Barry Manilow. He wrote the song for the animated version of Thumbelina, in which Thumbelina falls in love with a fairy prince, who sings the song to her when she's lamenting the fact that she can't fly like he can. I ran across the song quite by accident on a CD that I owned. To use the words to the song in the novel, all I would have to do is obtain permission. Sounds easy enough, but it became an odyssey.

There's a registry for musical artists. Visit the website and you'll find listings by song, writer, performer or whatever. Look up "Let Me Be Your Wings" and you find Barry Manilow listed under four different publishers who have put out various editions of the song. One was tagged as being the original publisher, as I recall, so I contacted them. Turns out they were an entertainment company that booked cruises, also, so it took a number of phone calls to get the name of the right person. Great, except he was never in. I managed to get his email address and after a couple of tries got an answer. He asked to see the pages immediately before and after the scene where the song appears, so I sent him the entire chapter.

Silence. For months, despite inquiries. Finally, he answered - only to tell me his company wasn't in a position to grant permission, I would have to talk to the publisher. "I thought that was you!" He gave me the name of another company. I visited their website and finally found a long complicated set of instructions on how to obtain permission to use words of a song. Somewhere deep in the instructions was a statement that they would have to be sent a copy of the book. How do I do that, it's not published yet! Then I saw that I had to secure permission as well from
all the publishers, not just this one. Which of course led me back to the first place I talked to.

Well, Barry missed his chance. Perhaps I should have tried to contact him - maybe he could have helped. Instead, I wrote my own song, words only, called "Lighter Than Air." Probably not as good, but a lot less angst. Maybe someday I'll find someone to write a melody to go with the words.