45: A Shelved Song Cycle
2/19/2013
My usual pattern of laziness during January and February is holding true. Since my birthday, I’ve primarily been focused on finishing my “The Song of Alodia” poster (22”x17”). It’ been about two years since I started it, though I finished the center piece drawing about 17 months ago. It’s the detailed work of the bordering frame that intimidated me into not touching it again until last month. I’ll be done in a couple days now, and it’s looking awesome.
The owl’s not right though, and the hare’s ears are too short, and the lion’s mane is not full enough, and the tree isn’t centered, and a lot of the details in the border are subpar. But it’s still awesome. I think it will serve well as an underpainting someday, if I choose to paint it.
The plan is to do three more of these – one for each book, which will illustrate the segment of the Napatawalata that reflects the main narrative of each of the four books. Which means, I’m doing these posters out of order, and will do “The Song of Mugasha” poster next, but that segment of the Napatawalata is not even written yet. So, there’s the problem.
I really like this idea of the Napatawalata – anthropomorphic animals as culture heroes cast in mythic stories conveying the mores of Batu culture and its mythology while simultaneously reflecting the action of my main narrative with Mogai. The Napatawalata is high fantasy and total creative fun that contrasts nicely with the more literary realism of the main narrative.
In Kanar, the etymology of the word Napatawalata stems from the roots pa – four, wa – joining, and lata – among a group. So, it can be translated as “four joining among a group”, which is obviously a reference to the fact of its being a tetralogy. All four segments of the Napatawalata are interconnected and will be four pieces of a single work, most likely with Tapu taking the lead in each.
Present-Day Reflection
7/9/2026
There hasn’t been much movement with the Napatawalata over the years since I made this entry. I finished the poster for “The Song of Mugasha”, and have written the first 9 pages, which completes Part One of it. And I have the outline for the entire thing formed. The last two pieces of the Napatawalata are tentatively titled “The Song of Jukun” and “The Song of Kamaria”, but with only vague ideas regarding what they may be about.
And that’s where it stands today. Like I said, considering it’s been thirteen and a half years since I wrote this journal entry, not much has changed with the Napatawalata.
A lot has changed with the books of the main narrative though, and I guess it’s appropriate that my focus has been placed more on that than the epic song cycle. Still… I’d really like to see it all finished before moving on with the final edits of Book Two: Tears of Stone next year.
We’ll see.
