Musical Wednesdays: I Should Have Gone to Bonnaroo Last Year

Last summer, a few of us tossed around the idea of going to Bonnaroo, the four-day music festival held in Manchester, TN. The line-up was incredible, with Bruce Springsteen, Neko Case, Wilco, David Byrne, the Decemberists...so many bands I love, more than enough to make up for the inclusion of acts I don't really care for (Phish, Animal Collective). But last year, we couldn't afford the trip and the tickets, so we decided not to go. I remember thinking, "Well, maybe next year."

Now that it's March, I've started thinking about the summer, and about the festivals that occur during the summer. So today, I went on the the Bonnaroo website and the first thing I saw was "The Dave Matthews Band." And a bit further down that same row, Weezer (not 1997 Weezer, mind you, but current unrecognizable Weezer). And Kings of Leon. And a half-dozen bands that I've heard exactly once, only to change the station. I will not name names.

It seems like the line-up is the exact opposite of last year's. There are some good bands buried in this list, ranging from Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes to Jimmy Cliff to Steve Martin (I'm sorry. Mr. Steve Martin.), but I just don't see how they're enough to overcome some of the other more dubious choices. I am looking at the list, but I am failing to be at all interested. I'd rather see the bands individually, I think. I can't see taking the time or spending the money when I'm less than enthused about most of the acts. I'm sure they'll announce more artists soon, and I'll see if I change my mind.

Until then, I'll say (again) "Maybe next year."

Fiction Mondays: the Lazarus Project

Last week, I finished reading Aleksandar Hemon's "The Lazarus Project," and it was one of those books that took a few days to really assemble my thoughts about. I really liked it, and the ending was much different than I expected. It was different in a good way, though--anything else might have seemed forced, an attempt to get the two storylines to resolve in a way that wouldn't have felt so organic.

The novel is a story of two immigrants who move from Eastern Europe to Chicago, one at the turn of the 20th century and one almost a century later. Lazarus, who came to America after the pogroms in Eastern Europe in the late 1800s, is killed by the chief of the Chicago police, and the event sets off an anti-anarchist wave through the city (and possibly through the country). While there is no evidence that Lazarus was carrying out an assassination attempt on behalf of the anarchist cause, police statements and a newspaper writer named Miller escalate the fear of foreigners, while the later disappearance of Lazarus' body leaves many Christians convinced that the second coming of Christ will soon occur. In the middle of this cultural and religious upheaval, Lazarus' sister Olga tries to navigate her grief and the political factions trying to use Lazarus' death for their own gain.

100 years later, Vladimir Brik, a Bosnian writer, begins to research for a book about Lazarus. He and his friend Rora, a war photographer who escaped Sarajevo during the seige, return to Eastern Europe and begin to follow the trail that they hope will lead to Lazarus' origins. There are odd connections along the way--a corrupt journalist that Rora knew during the war has the same last name as the journalist writing about Lazarus--but more important are the connections between Lazarus and Brik. Although their stories are far different, they have both experienced the disappointment of immigrants who find themselves working miserable jobs to get by. They feel cheated by the promise of America. Even though Brik has married an American woman and settled (somewhat) into his American life, he still feels a deep connection to his roots. This feeling only grows the further he and Rora get into their journey. In a cemetery where several of Lazarus' relatives are buried, Brik has a full panic attack as he realizes his similarities to Lazarus.

In a book with simultaneous plotlines, sometimes you expect that miraculous connection--someone from Lazarus' story in connection to an ancestor of Brik's, or a moment that cannot just be coincidence. But Hemon resists this kind of easy out, and it makes the book even better. The connections are somehow deeper because they resonate thematically rather than literally. Like I said before, it's a book that took me a few days to really puzzle through, to collect my impressions of it and to write this post, and I love when a book does that.

It's kind of amazing that Hemon has only been writing in English for about 15 years, and there's something in the language of the book that suggests it isn't his first language. Some of the sentences seem like he's looking at the words through new eyes, and I guess this is even more thematic connection to Brik and Lazarus. Brik even teaches English as a second language. Here is my favorite sentence of the book: "Whereupon a gigantic Toyota Cherokee, or Toyota Apache, or Toyota Some Other Exterminated People, drove up on the pavement, the tinted windows throbbing with concussive fuck-music." I think I re-read that sentence three times in a row. It just struck me as a great bit of observation that somehow tied to the pogroms and cheap criminals through the book. This book definitely made me want to read more of Hemon's work, and I highly recommend it.

Musical Wednesdays: May 4th

It seems like every year, there's one Tuesday where a ton of albums I really want are released. I think last year, it was early in March. This year, it's May 4th.

The first album coming out that day is the new record by the New Pornographers, "Together." They released the first single, which you can download here. It's a little different from their other stuff--the beginning in particular has a strange staccato feel--but I'm really excited to hear the rest of the album when it comes out.

And the second album? The Hold Steady's new "Heaven is Whenever," an album Craig Finn says is about "embracing suffering and finding reward in our everyday lives." The title of the album reminds me of a line in Colum McCann's "Let the Great World Spin," where a character whose brother thinks he's on heroin says, "All respects to heaven, I like it here."

I've only heard one song (in this video), and the sound quality isn't great, but the clip starts with "She said, 'Heaven isn't happening,' she played 'Heaven is a Truck." I'm really looking forward to seeing them tour for this album. They're coming to Pennsylvania twice!



So those are my two big albums that day (although I wouldn't be surprised if the new Arcade Fire album was coming out the same day.) Who wants to drive to Jermyn, PA to see the Hold Steady show in April?

Musical Wednesdays: The Times They Are A-Changin'

On February 9th, the White House held a concert, "A Celebration of Music From the Civil Rights Era," to celebrate Black History Month and the music, across lines of race and genre, that called for social justice and equality in the 1960s. I unfortunately missed the broadcast of the concert on PBS and NPR, but I have tracked down some clips and I wanted to share them. The concert featured a large number of artists singing the songs of the Civil Rights movement, from Smokey Robinson to Joan Baez, The Blind Boys of Alabama to Bob Dylan.

Obama opened the concert with a short speech about the power of song and its importance during the most difficult of times: “It’s hard to sing in times like that, but times like that are precisely when the power of song is most potent. Above the din of hatred; amidst the deafening silence of inaction; the hymns of the civil rights movement helped carry the cause of a people and advance the ideals of a nation.”

So here are a few clips. The first one is Bob Dylan singing "The Times They Are A-Changin'":



And the second is Smokey Robinson singing "People Get Ready" with Jennifer Hudson:



That's all I've got for today. If anyone has a link to a full video of the concert, please let me know.

Also, if you're interested, there's a really great essay over on The Root about why Bob Dylan is so important to the civil rights movement. It's a great read, whether you're a Bob Dylan fan or not.

Fiction Mondays: The Truth in Fiction

When I'm writing, I sometimes think about the kinds of stories people wrote in undergraduate creative writing classes, the kinds that were autobiography so thinly veiled that it was difficult to think of them as "fiction." And I started thinking about what elements from real-life work their way into my stories, and I figured out something important about how I work: I am a thief and an arranger. I imagine that all of the anecdotes, all of the little bits of dialogue I pick up, end up on some shelf in my brain (or, if I'm being very organized about it, in my notebook). And all of these pieces, all of these discrete parts taken from friends, from family, from coworkers, from strangers, are each true in their own way. Even if I forget the details, or intentionally alter them later, each of them has some intentionally true piece in it.

An example: one of my favorite stories I've written featured an arson at a comic book shop. Now, my town has had a lot of arson, but never a comic book shop. So writing about it is a combination of memory and imagination, taking the meaningful images I've actually witnessed and trying to figure out what that street would look like as a comic shop smoldered (the half-burnt comic pages, the broken windows). But the reasons for the arson, the desperation that leads to someone destroying their business for the insurance money, are the truth. The story of the guy who lights the match because he thinks he'll improve his life is essentially true, even if it's made up. Or, for another story, the process may involve taking a story someone told me and changing the facts to fit a narrative shape and structure. The inspiration might be someone else's story, but I'm not interested in transcribing it. I want to find what's essential in that story, what it means and why they're telling it. I want the story underneath the story, even if it's wholly imagined after I've heard their version.

So when I say I'm a thief, I don't mean I literally steal. I'm not that German 17-year-old author who claims she's "mixing" instead of plagiarizing. I grab at things from real life, from newspaper articles, from overheard conversations. This is something all writers do, I think. The arranging, though, that's my favorite part. Finding strange overlaps and seeing if two disparate inspirations are really trying to tell a cohesive story. Working from something that happened years ago and utilizing a more recent real-life find to tie the story together. I love when several different inspirations influence the direction of a story, when a number of truths come together to form a really engaging and narratively cohesive lie. Or the details you pick up from day-to-day life become symbols in an entirely different story.

I'm really just rambling, here, because I'm working on a short story, and it's kind of strange how an idea comes back to life after it's been dormant for a very long time. Sometimes an event isn't clear, or the story you want to pull from the event is murky, until years after you've had that first idea. It can be such a long process, and I'm glad to be back in the middle of it.

Friday Films: Filling in the Blanks

Since I got Netflix, I've been trying to fill in the blanks in my film education by watching classic movies, both foreign and American, that I have somehow managed to miss up until now. So far, there have been some misses ("Le Samourai" in particular), but on the whole, it's been a great project.

Last weekend, I watched Jean-Luc Godard's "Band of Outsiders," a movie that lends its name to a clothing company, Quentin Tarantino's production company, and an album by Nouvelle Vague. It's Godard at (I think) his best, a movie about would-be criminals undone by betrayal, featuring some romantic tension and a little bit of dancing. I really love "Breathless," and the movies seem to share the same DNA. The criminals are not very tough; in fact, they seem to be more inspired by movie gangsters than anything based in reality. It makes sense, considering the French New Wave's fascination with American film noir, that the characters who populate these movies would be similarly inspired.

The film revolves around two small-time crooks, Arthur and Franz, who decide to rob a man who lives in the same house as Odile (Anna Karina), who they meet in their English class. They plan the robbery, but of course everything goes wrong. The best scenes, though, have little to do with the heist itself. There's the run through the Louvre to break a record set by an American tourist, a "minute of silence," where Godard cuts the sound for a half a minute, and my favorite (which I mentioned earlier) the dance scene. I will not lie: I tried to learn the choreography in my living room. This scene was apparently a huge influence on the Travolta-Thurman dance scene in "Pulp Fiction":



One of the strangest things about "Band of Outsiders," for me at least, was the striking similarity between one of the characters, Arthur, and the lead singer of the Magnetic Fields, Stephin Merritt. They look like they could be related. It's kind of eerie.

Well, I will keep posting about my ongoing project to fill in the gaps, but for now, I want to share a really awesome project my friend Darren is trying to get together: over on his blog, he is asking everyone and anyone to send him birthday wishes for his grandmother, turning 80 this Valentine's Day. Send him a message for her!

Musical Wednesdays: A Giant Collection of Decemberists Covers

I really love seeing the Decemberists perform live. Every time they play a show, you just know going into it that you're going to see something memorable, musically exciting, and more than a little weird. They're also a band that features a lot of covers in their live shows. Whether it's a Colin Meloy solo show, where he plays songs from his "Colin Meloy Sings..." albums (Morrisey, Sam Cooke) or the two-hour extravaganza on the "Hazards of Love" tour (when the band, along with their guest singers, did an over-the-top, belting-contest version of Heart's "Crazy on You"), they're incredibly talented at taking unexpected songs and making them their own. And now, you can hear all of them. Music blog You Ain't No Picasso has compiled a complete list, from "Wuthering Heights" to "The Sickbed of Cuchulainn" to "Go Your Own Way." So head over, check them out. You will not be disappointed.

And in non-music news: if you're in downtown Stroudsburg, head over to Starbucks to check out Allison Mosher's art show, which will be up through the end of the month. And if you're not in downtown Stroudsburg, get there. Check out the flier below for details!