Fic Challenge Question

I'm sure I'm overthinking this. It's a problem I have: why let something be simple and clearcut when it can be convoluted and weirdly awful?

louiselux has set up a wonderful new community, saiyuki_time - Daytripping to the West, for timed fic challenges. The first challenge is up, and the time is 1 hour. I am excited - but I've never done a time writing challenge before.

The time is just the time I spend actually committing words to media, right?

(I feel so stupid.)

The Idan Raichel Project

I don't think any of you on the f-list share my world music habit, but every time I play this one, I fall in love with it all over again.

The Idan Raichel Project (the group's name as well as the album's) is an Israeli group, but the songs and the musicians who sing and perform them are from multiple cultures: Jewish (both European and Middle Eastern), Arabic, Ethiopian. The melodies, to my relatively uneducated ear, echo those of their parent cultures, but they are arranged and sung with more passion and rock/pop sensibility than I've heard in more traditional arrangements of this type of music. Some of them are ravishingly romantic sounding (like the first track, Bo'ee/Come With Me), some angst-filled, some lively and optimistic.

I hope this talented bunch will make some more beautiful music together in the future.