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Summary
Aurora, 1977-1978, Chapters 1-3
Aurora, 1977-1978
Teddy offers to let Billy and Daisy use his pool house so they can start writing the album together. Daisy and Billy have both written songs, and they both refuse to read each other’s songs at first as they both take issue with the focus of the other’s songwriting. Daisy accuses Billy of only writing songs about his wife, which she says is boring, while Billy accuses Daisy of only writing about drugs. They get into an argument, and both say hurtful things to each other. They leave to go to lunch, and Billy puts on “Tiny Love,” saying it’s a song he loves. When Daisy tells him she wrote the chorus, he’s impressed. He begins to understand why she’s angry and determined to write her own songs as she was never credited for her contribution to “Tiny Love.” At lunch they open up to each other somewhat, and Daisy says a line about chasing nightmares that Billy wants to put into a song. They go back to the pool house and work on the song until midnight. Teddy loves it.
Chapter 1
While Billy and Daisy write songs for their new album, the rest of the band works on the arrangement for “Aurora.” They like what they’ve created, but when they play it for Billy, it’s clear he hates it. Teddy takes Billy out and tells him to trust his band, so he only gives minimal notes on their arrangement when he gets back. When they all get together to record “Aurora,” Daisy says she knows they are creating a hit.
Chapter 2
Daisy finds one of Billy’s songs in his songbook and begins working on it, adding a little darkness to it. She shows it to Billy, and he likes what she’s done, so they begin revising it together. The band is excited about the song as well, though Eddie gets upset when Billy overrides his creative input on the guitar part. Rod sees the tension between Billy and Eddie and thinks about replacing Eddie with a new guitarist. Billy tells Daisy that her changes made the song better, and Daisy begins to feel like she and Billy really understand each other. Karen and Graham sneak away to be together while the rest of the band is occupied. Reflecting back on that period of the band, Karen says she thinks soulmates are people who aren’t suffering from the same thing as the person they are with.
Chapter 3
After Daisy misses a recording session, Billy and Rod search her out at the Marmont, where they find her intoxicated and throwing a big party. Simone watches with concern as Daisy puts on a designer dress and gets into the pool fully clothed, and Billy and Rod see Daisy drop her glass and step on the shards without noticing that her feet are cut and bleeding. Rod cares for Daisy, who later has no memory of the evening.
Billy leaves quickly after Daisy cuts her foot. He later admits that he felt envious of her drug use and freedom rather than feeling worried for her safety. Billy is unable to sleep that night, so he writes a song called “Impossible Woman.” Though Karen is convinced that “Impossible Woman” is about Daisy, Billy insists that it isn’t. The song is so unlike what Daisy usually sings that she struggles to bring it to life. Frustrated, Daisy leaves the practice early, but Billy shows up at her hotel room to encourage her to keep trying. The next day, Daisy returns to practice, and though she struggles to sing the song ugly and raw like Billy pushed her to do, she finally breaks through. Billy says she makes the song a lament. Rod recalls that Daisy ran into Billy’s arms when she finished, and he smelled her hair.
Analysis
Daisy possesses a complex mixture of power and vulnerability, which those who care about her struggle to navigate. In the party at the Marmont, both Simone and Billy are torn between feelings of protection and unease as Daisy’s intoxication verges on dangerous. Daisy goes barefoot into the pool in a beautiful dress, which is both alluring and disturbing. Simone describes the dress as art and is disturbed that Daisy destroys it, a move which illustrates Daisy’s recklessness and obliviousness. But Daisy also takes one of her favorite photos that night, looking beautiful and happy and like herself. Daisy, then, is both out of control and fully herself. When she gets out of the pool, she drops her glass and steps barefoot on a shard without noticing, cutting her feet badly. This action demonstrates Daisy’s increasingly dangerous and self-destructive drug use, as she harms herself without fully realizing the extent of the damage she’s inflicting. It’s a heady mix of pathos and power, as Billy, seeing Daisy in that moment, both recognizes the danger and envies the fun she’s having. He’s inspired to write “Impossible Woman” that night. Though he claims it’s not about Daisy, there’s a line about the woman being “barefoot in the snow,” which evokes Daisy in that moment of abandon and self-destruction.
The theme of love as both a creative and destructive force is explored in this section. Daisy and Billy’s relationship is often marked by conflict as they fight for control over the writing of the album in the studio and over whose songs to use in the pool house. The fight quickly veers into the personal, as both Daisy and Billy quickly articulate some of each other’s worst fears. Daisy points out that Billy has just replaced addiction to substances with addiction to his wife. Billy points out that Daisy may not have anything to say if she wasn’t writing about drugs. These interactions are searing and painful, and yet the two tell each other things they have rarely admitted to anyone, even to themselves. These heated battles create the space for true intimacy and lay the groundwork for the powerful artistic collaboration between the two. At the same time, these conversations are early acts of love between them and, though destabilizing, they also pave the way for Daisy and Billy to write incredible songs together.
The theme of addiction as a means of avoiding both joy and pain is explored in this section through Daisy. After incredibly successful collaborative sessions with Billy, which are intense as they are both painful and fruitful, Daisy gets more intoxicated than she has been in a long time. Partying begins to interfere with her work, causing her to miss a recording session, which is so out of character for her that Rod and Billy go after her to make sure she’s okay. This suggests that, though she’s happy about the work she’s doing with Billy, there’s something about the intensity that feels too much for her to handle, and she responds by getting intoxicated to the point of blackout. Throughout her work with The Six, Daisy often responds to success, as well as personal pain, with a spike in drug use. Thus, she uses substances to manage not only her dark emotions but also the joy of success. For Daisy, getting what she most wants is both exciting and frightening, and she uses substances to numb herself to that fear.
