Soundtrack to Life & Death

University student Christian Routledge has just killed his long-time friend Isobel Goudie. She had asked him on several occasions to end her life and now he has complied. There is no trace of the body. He has reported the death using the pseudonym Floyd Ramon.

It’s 1975 and Christian, in his final year of uni, wants to see bands, writes songs for any interested artist, and experience the kaleidoscope of colour float around him. He sees almost all music in colour. Some songs even come dressed in clothing. Both music and song lyrics influence much of what he thinks and says.

He is sometimes Christian, sometimes Floyd. Christian wants to please his parents, pass his exams and get a job. Floyd wants to write songs and disappear in the music. It is music that is the problem and the reason he called for the ambulance to take his dead girlfriend, according to Sally the psychologist and the quite obnoxious Dr Jack Coruscate. What disturbs them more are the voices in Christian’s head. Dead people had spoken to him from a young age including his cousin who died of leukaemia. The killer of the Beaumont children speaks to him, or so he thinks. Labelled as a schizophrenic he is coerced into an Adelaide psychiatric hospital.

Sally the psychologist tries to determine who is real and who is not by delving into his past. After hearing how Floyd’s fascination with music was instrumental in the killing of his friend, Sally and Dr Coruscate devise a therapy, a therapy that leads Christian through a music quiz show, three cities, more death and the road to freedom. He has three women who care about them. Two are real. One is imagined. They all help him avoid Dr Coruscate and find his release, a beautiful haemorrhage as he puts it.

The story of Christian and Floyd is a story of music, madness, love and murder. It is also a story about releasing the artist within.