thunder and lightning won't change what i'm feeling
"daffodil lament" by the cranberries & sophie scholl
I care a lot about dates. I don’t know why; I’ve just always marked lots of dates in my head and kept track of them. I’m the creep who can run into someone I haven’t seen since high school and be like, “Oh, and your sister’s birthday was yesterday! Hope she had a great one!” which doesn’t come across like I’m Single White Female-ing them at ALL I’m sure.
On this date, February 22, I always think about Sophie Scholl — a German woman who was executed by the Nazis 80 years ago today for her acts of resistance. I learned about Sophie when I was around 10 or 11, and she’s been an important figure to me ever since. That was about the same time I started spending a lot of time in my room listening to The Cranberries over and over, and since I’ve been deeply immersed in their music for the last few days I figured what better frame to tell you about Sophie Scholl than “Daffodil Lament,” which has nothing at all to do with her except there’s a vibe. You’ll see what I mean.
The opening music in this song is so haunting, right off the bat. And then there’s Dolores’ vocals, which start off so ethereal — that flutter on “would you notice!” — before crystallizing into this strong, piercing declaration. “You’re not the one!”
I have the public library to thank for giving me Sophie Scholl. Every time I’d go, I’d browse the 940 section, because I was deeply obsessed with Anne Frank’s diary and read everything I could about the Holocaust. (If this plus my Cranberries listening doesn’t give you a sense of what a weird, somber little kid I must’ve been . . . ).
One day, this book literally fell off the shelf, right at my feet — The Short Life of Sophie Scholl by Hermann Vinke. The picture of Sophie on the cover shot through me with an instant jolt of recognition. I can’t even explain it. The way she seemed to be looking directly at me. That concerned furrow in her brow, the set seriousness of her mouth, that hard side part in her hair (yes, I’ve tried to replicate it), the flower pinned to her chest, almost incongruous with the rest of the image. I checked the book out, and pretty much continuously checked it out until I left for college.
(The copy actually pictured here is my own! My mom tracked it down on eBay or something and bought it for me as a Christmas present many years ago. It’s one of my most treasured possessions.)
Sophie was a pretty typical German girl in a lot of ways. She was born May 9, 1921, to a large and loving family. She enjoyed being out in nature, and she was very creative — she journaled and wrote letters and little stories, and loved to draw. When Hitler came into power and youth groups started cropping up under his name, she initially joined, as did her siblings. It was the expected thing to do, after all, and there were all these positive aspects to recommend the experience — camping, singing songs, being part of a community bigger than yourself.
But Sophie and her older brother Hans eventually became disillusioned with the group. Their intellectual parents had always taught them to think for themselves — her father, Robert Scholl, was a liberal politician who would eventually be arrested for speaking out against Hitler. They saw the direction their beloved homeland was going in, and they didn’t like it.
Once at the University of Munich, Hans found a group of like-minded people and together they formed the resistance group the White Rose. When Sophie joined him at university, she joined the small, secretive group of approximately five other students and a professor. Together, they wrote, published, and distributed leaflets, speaking out against Hitler and the Nazi regime. (This is so compressed, I’m sorry, which is why I linked to the Wikipedia article if you want to know more! I’m just trying not to write an entire fucking book in this newsletter although believe me I could lol)
One famous quote from one of their leaflets goes: “We will not be silent. We are your bad conscience. The White Rose will not leave you in peace!”
It was one of the things I most admired about the White Rose — and Sophie in particular. That conviction. It inspires me still, and the parallels between what happened in Nazi Germany and the kinds of stuff going on today are clearer than ever.
There’s this story about Sophie, for example, from her boyfriend at the time who was also a German soldier (as were Hans and several other of the members of the White Rose, it should be noted, since military service was mandatory). He says:
During the winter of 1941-42 a major propaganda action asked the German population to donate warm clothes and other woolen things to the army. The German soldiers, in their drive on Leningrad and Moscow, were mired in a winter campaign for which they were not prepared. The people were asked to donate coats, blankets, and skis. But Sophie stated her position: “We won’t give.” At the time I had just come from the Russian front to Weimar to put together a new company. When I heard of Sophie’s harsh stand, I tried to draw her a picture of what that attitude would mean to soldiers out there: they had no gloves, no sweaters, no warm socks. But she was adamant and gave me her reason: “Whether at this moment it’s German soldiers who freeze to death or Russian makes no difference; it’s all equally bad. We have to lose the war. If we donate woolens now, we help prolong it.”
I don’t know. I’ve thought about that a lot, since I was 12. How humanity requires seeing things in shades of gray, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, allowing for some ambiguity and nuance. But also how there are times when you do have to just take a stand, be for something or against it, commit yourself to not upholding a single part of a corrupt or evil system. Even if it makes you uncomfortable. Even if it could come at great personal cost.
On February 18, 1943, Sophie and her brother Hans went to the University of Munich to distribute the White Rose’s latest leaflet. The students were all in a big Nazi propaganda seminar, and the campus was empty. Sophie and Hans carried a suitcase filled with leaflets they’d printed up, and left them all over the campus for people to find. They dumped a whole bunch of them down from a mezzanine, letting them float to the bottom atrium floor like confetti. (I know we’re in a Very Serious part of the story right now, but I always imagine it something like the invitations to Bogey Lowenstein’s party in 10 Things I Hate About You).
Unfortunately, a janitor spotted them, and detained the siblings. They were arrested, imprisoned, and — only four days later — given a show trial before being executed by guillotine on February 22, 1943. Sophie was only 21 years old.
Some of Sophie’s final words, reported from her trial, were: “Somebody, after all, had to make a start. What we wrote and said is also believed by many others. They just don’t dare express themselves as we did.”
And I think about that a lot, too. How even the smallest act of speaking out or resistance is powerful, because you never know what it might spark. Who might need to hear it. What ripple effects it could cause in the future. Those words still feel pretty fucking relevant to me today, in America, in Florida specifically, 80 years later.
There’s this part in “Daffodil Lament” that I always listen for. It starts about 2 minutes in, with the way she sings “I can’t sleep here!” and then the music slips down into this somber, recursive little section, a sound in the background almost like a funereal toll of a church bell.
And then! At about 3:13 or so, this joyful, jangling little guitar line comes in, and Dolores starts to sing: “I have decided to leave you forever/I have decided to start things from here!/Thunder and lightning won’t change what I’m feeling/and the daffodils look lovely today . . .”
I found the above picture of Sophie in another library book, years and years after I’d first discovered the Hermann Vinke book that started it all. When I saw it, it literally took my breath away. Because I’d seen the other images from this same day — the serious ones, the ones where it looked like the saddest goodbye.
But I’d never seen this. The joy — the way Sophie stands with her arms outstretched, that smile on her face. It felt like that part in “Daffodil Lament,” when the happier guitar comes in and suddenly you feel hopeful and empowered and full of life. Listen, I’m not PROUD of it, but I ripped the page right out of that other book and kept it. I keep it still, tucked away in my beloved copy of The Short Life of Sophie Scholl.
I care very deeply about dates, and I care very deeply about astrology (half in a joke-y, just-here-for-the-memes way, and half in a no-but-seriously-that-is-TEXTBOOK-Virgo way), so when I tell you that it’s Pisces season and I’m listening to the Cranberries and thinking about women who died years ago but feel very alive to me still and so I’m almost painfully, debilitatingly emo . . . well, now you know what I mean.
If you feel like buying the book a woman recently told me to my face she just “couldn’t get into,” here’s a link to buy Love in the Time of Serial Killers!
If you’re in the mood to preorder my next book after I sold you so hard on the first one just now, here’s a link to buy With Love, from Cold World!
I am currently staring at some seriously STUNNING preorder art I commissioned for With Love, from Cold World, which I hope to reveal to you in the next month! The best way to preorder the book where it’s signed/personalized AND includes all the preorder swag is from my local indie, Tombolo Books. Just put any notes for personalization in the comment section of your order! If you’re local and think you might be able to come to my launch event on 8/1, the link to buy the book and register for that is here.
I recorded an episode with the Florida Book Club podcast, which you can find here! Host Christopher Nank was a lot of fun to talk to, because he came into the interview without a ton of knowledge about the romance genre but with a generous and open spirit to hear all about it.
Currently reading . . . I am in my SECOND CHANCE ROMANCE ERA, which is pairing beautifully (/dangerously) with my current music choice and astrological season, I can tell you that much. I just finished Will They or Won’t They by Ava Wilder, which, god. The TENSION. The ANGST. I wanted them to eat each other alive (sexually speaking) and was afraid of what would happen when they did. I’m about 50 pages into Before I Let Go by Kennedy Ryan and can tell this one is going to wreck my face (I’ve also been warned). Finally, I just finished reading the manuscript for Jessica Joyce’s second romance, which isn’t out till next year, but I know that’s obnoxious for me to tease that way so I’ll just link to her brilliant debut, You, with a View, which is out in July. None of these are affiliate links btw because I’m currently too lazy/stupid to monetize the things I shout out for free.
watching . . . The other night I watched an IG live from Greg Jehanian (bassist from mewithoutYou) and it was just what I needed. He does these periodically, and has since the start of the pandemic — just him and his guitar and some prerecorded backing music tracks, it’s very chill, he talks and tells stories and it’s pretty much the same 20 people in the chat and they all know each other so it’s a lot of just exclaiming people’s names when a new person arrives. These IG lives have meant so much to me that I even thanked them in my Cold World acknowledgments. This time, I was listening while reading Jessica Joyce’s manuscript, so I actually sent the link to Jessica and she joined me in listening to him cover “Where Is My Mind” and “1979” and a bunch of other great, nostalgic songs, and it was the best possible way I could’ve spent my night.
listening to . . . It’s been the Cranberries’ first three albums, in order, on repeat, for the last three days. No need for an intervention just yet; I’m enjoying feeling my feelings. The blame (/credit) for this jaunt definitely goes to Anita Kelly, whose post about “Free to Decide” being on their Something Wild & Wonderful playlist is what kicked it off. SPEAKING OF — next week’s newsletter will be an interview with Anita about another song from that same playlist and their book, which I loved loved loved in such an expansive way it’s hard for me to describe, even in this State of Feeling Things. Looking forward to it!!!