On Tuesday night, I went with my friend June, a photographer and fabulous chef, to see Mindy Smith play the City Winery. I'd never seen her live, though I've had her latest record, Stupid Love, in constant rotation since it came out. She's a kind of folky-country artist that has an incredible, textured and girlish voice that writes incredible, potent, simple and beautiful songs. Alison Krauss put a song of hers on her last record. Okay!
The show was wonderful--except that Mindy's in-between banter was, to put it mildly, sometimes a bit awkward. It was as if she wasn't used to being in her body, or being in front of people, or being applauded for her incredible talent. At times I kept thinking, please get back to the songs. But when she did, they were ethereal, floating things, which held everyone's attention and made everything feel more beautiful.
The venue is very nice, with a huge selection of wine, glasses and bottles, and a lovely menu, though I didn't have anything to eat. And the best thing about the place is that when you buy tickets, you can pick your exact seat from their seat map online. YES!
I have a feeling that the new Tegan & Sara, called Sainthood, out Oct 27, will overtake Mindy. Just a hunch.
--
Tonight, I was at the Golden Theater where Bill Pullman and Julia Stiles were in "Oleanna," David Mamet's old play about...sexual harassment? Higher education? Self-aggrandizing political correctness? I liked it, but I think I liked the evening out, in the theater, seeing a stage set, seeing actors act, seeing Times Square and all the theatergoers, more than the play itself.
Oleana is a hard play to like; it is not very fun to watch. It's talky, difficult to listen to, and I often found myself distracted--but that's me in general, so... John, the accused professor, is always answering on the phone, which I found annoying and empty--is that the point? I've always wondered whether Mamet wants more equilibrium on stage--or, perhaps he doesn't. Every time I see the play, I think Carol comes of as a loose, desperate joiner. We've seen their interaction, so we, I'm going to assume this here, are generally siding with John. Maybe Mamet doesn't care about ambiguity?
Actually, it's all still swirling around in my head and I don't know what I think about it right now. The acting was good, though I often think that actors can never really get their mouths around Mamet, since it's so unnatural, and makes for, if you ask me, very little poetry on stage. Directors always want to give his language a certain speed, which isn't helpful in making theatrical moments. If you ask me.
--
On my walk home, I stopped in the Baskin-Robbins and got a scoop of Mint Chocolate Chip on a sugar cone. Perfection!
Showing posts with label obsessions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label obsessions. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
Sunday, May 04, 2008
Letter from Utah: Part 12 of 12
This post is part 12 in a series of 12. You can download the entire essay by clicking here, or you can read the serial installments as they appear.
Rain. The wind blows the water against the window.
We set out for Temple Square, the center of the Mormon religion, before our flight in the afternoon. The square is walled in on all sides, and is crawling—somewhat benevolently—with young Mormons, who each have a black plastic nametag that includes the flag of…their home country? Country of origin? Nationality?
A young lady hands me a palm-sized postcard, a photograph of the temple, with the most bizarre, surely Photoshop-enhanced, purple cast to the sky behind it. We wander through their museum, through the spiraling-heavenward gallery in the North Visitor’s Center, where the enormous white statue of the Savior stands, surrounded by a gorgeous, if somewhat tacky, mural of the entire universe. Maybe there is some kind of piped-in narration, recounting the history of the heavens and the earth and we missed the beginning of it, or maybe there isn’t any, and we’re just supposed to sit here contemplating ourselves and basking in the wonderment. A few minutes pass, and we awkwardly get up, move through the aisles and back down the ramp.
The Mormons are all friendly and genuine. They are extremely happy to tell you about this building or that building, or to point out a piece of scripture that speaks of triumph through adversity or to the importance of family—one of them opens her Book of Mormon and points to a verse she’s highlighted in pink.
Outside, with the water sprinkling down on us, we stand in front of the Handcart Pioneer Monument, which stands in tribute to the thousands of Mormons who walked to Salt Lake City from Iowa in the 1850s. In the sixth grade, my friends and I were obsessed with the computer game Oregon Trail. Your quest begins in Independence, Missouri, when you purchase extra sets of clothing for your family, as much food and spare parts as your wagon can carry, and a team of 6-10 oxen, who will pull you across the land. This is not, I suddenly realized, the way many of the pioneers did it. Most of them walked. How many of them could afford oxen? Even less could afford extra clothes. It’s inspiring, this massive migration of people from one place to another. They made the difficult—the frightening, the only—choice, to set out for whatever challenges and hardships and frozen dirt awaited them. Because they had had enough.
We are too comfortable. We need more of that motion, that desperate, creative energy to make a new and better life each other.
In the end, we drove more than 1600 miles—265 more and it would equal the one-way distance from New York to Salt Lake. But that’s another trip, isn’t it? As the plane begins its descent, curving across the sparkling surface of nighttime Brooklyn, I mistake the wing’s navigation light for the moon.
Rain. The wind blows the water against the window.
We set out for Temple Square, the center of the Mormon religion, before our flight in the afternoon. The square is walled in on all sides, and is crawling—somewhat benevolently—with young Mormons, who each have a black plastic nametag that includes the flag of…their home country? Country of origin? Nationality?
A young lady hands me a palm-sized postcard, a photograph of the temple, with the most bizarre, surely Photoshop-enhanced, purple cast to the sky behind it. We wander through their museum, through the spiraling-heavenward gallery in the North Visitor’s Center, where the enormous white statue of the Savior stands, surrounded by a gorgeous, if somewhat tacky, mural of the entire universe. Maybe there is some kind of piped-in narration, recounting the history of the heavens and the earth and we missed the beginning of it, or maybe there isn’t any, and we’re just supposed to sit here contemplating ourselves and basking in the wonderment. A few minutes pass, and we awkwardly get up, move through the aisles and back down the ramp.
The Mormons are all friendly and genuine. They are extremely happy to tell you about this building or that building, or to point out a piece of scripture that speaks of triumph through adversity or to the importance of family—one of them opens her Book of Mormon and points to a verse she’s highlighted in pink.
Outside, with the water sprinkling down on us, we stand in front of the Handcart Pioneer Monument, which stands in tribute to the thousands of Mormons who walked to Salt Lake City from Iowa in the 1850s. In the sixth grade, my friends and I were obsessed with the computer game Oregon Trail. Your quest begins in Independence, Missouri, when you purchase extra sets of clothing for your family, as much food and spare parts as your wagon can carry, and a team of 6-10 oxen, who will pull you across the land. This is not, I suddenly realized, the way many of the pioneers did it. Most of them walked. How many of them could afford oxen? Even less could afford extra clothes. It’s inspiring, this massive migration of people from one place to another. They made the difficult—the frightening, the only—choice, to set out for whatever challenges and hardships and frozen dirt awaited them. Because they had had enough.
We are too comfortable. We need more of that motion, that desperate, creative energy to make a new and better life each other.
----
In the end, we drove more than 1600 miles—265 more and it would equal the one-way distance from New York to Salt Lake. But that’s another trip, isn’t it? As the plane begins its descent, curving across the sparkling surface of nighttime Brooklyn, I mistake the wing’s navigation light for the moon.
Monday, January 14, 2008
New Music Ensemble
My current obsession is the new recording of Steve Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" by Grand Valley State University's New Music Ensemble. This version of Reich's masterpiece is the most beautiful piece of music I have heard in some time--and it's the first time the work has been recorded in 5.1 surround sound....so. CRANK. IT. UP.
Tight, full of space, airy, direct. Overtones on overtones, it's simply glorious. Visit the New Music Ensemble at their website, listen to some excerpts of the work or see the trailer for this remarkable album here.
Tight, full of space, airy, direct. Overtones on overtones, it's simply glorious. Visit the New Music Ensemble at their website, listen to some excerpts of the work or see the trailer for this remarkable album here.
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Clark Houck, Sr.
My grandfather, Clark Houck, Sr., passed away last night. Over the weekend he had fallen down, remained confused and generally addled, and once he was admitted to the ICU, became quite belligerent. His heart eventually gave up. My dad said they watched the monitors--he was up to 140 bpm at one point.
My brother and I spent many weekends at his house when we were children, giving my parents a night off, and giving the grandparents a chance to have a house full of kids again--something they loved. Many of my childhood memories take place in his office--the adding machine that spit out miles of white paper. I became obsessed with adding the digits 1 through 100, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4, on and on, over and over: 5,050. I am still that detailed, compulsive kid. And of course, his singular pride, probably 75 meticulously labeled photo albums, in chronological order, the entire record of the Houck Family as told in pictures, records, letters, birthday cards; anything flat would do. I think of those albums as a grand--if somewhat bulky--achievement.
My grandmother Ruth is the only grandparent I have left--other than Lola Buckingham, my surrogate grandparent who was my neighbor for fifteen years growing up in Chattanooga. I wonder about Ruth now, where she will go, what she will do with her days. She lives these days as if her ears are full of cotton. This is true both literally--she is, basically, deaf and you have to yell right at her if you want her to hear--and figuratively, having spent the last 20 years (some would say her entire life) building a kind of cottony space around her, deciding what is true and what isn't, regardless of the facts. I wonder if my perception is correct--if she feels insulated by her invented world, or if it is harsh and bright, like open nerves.
Clark had spent the last years lost, it seems, between this world and the world of his childhood, which he spoke of constantly, cherishingly, and happily. Conversation quickly turned to those stories whenever possible. If I had a wish for him, it would be that he finds himself again there, with muddy dogs galloping all around and sawdust in his eye. This may sound a bit painful--but I think it made him feel alive.
Update: The obituary can be found here.
My brother and I spent many weekends at his house when we were children, giving my parents a night off, and giving the grandparents a chance to have a house full of kids again--something they loved. Many of my childhood memories take place in his office--the adding machine that spit out miles of white paper. I became obsessed with adding the digits 1 through 100, 1 + 2 + 3 + 4, on and on, over and over: 5,050. I am still that detailed, compulsive kid. And of course, his singular pride, probably 75 meticulously labeled photo albums, in chronological order, the entire record of the Houck Family as told in pictures, records, letters, birthday cards; anything flat would do. I think of those albums as a grand--if somewhat bulky--achievement.
My grandmother Ruth is the only grandparent I have left--other than Lola Buckingham, my surrogate grandparent who was my neighbor for fifteen years growing up in Chattanooga. I wonder about Ruth now, where she will go, what she will do with her days. She lives these days as if her ears are full of cotton. This is true both literally--she is, basically, deaf and you have to yell right at her if you want her to hear--and figuratively, having spent the last 20 years (some would say her entire life) building a kind of cottony space around her, deciding what is true and what isn't, regardless of the facts. I wonder if my perception is correct--if she feels insulated by her invented world, or if it is harsh and bright, like open nerves.
Clark had spent the last years lost, it seems, between this world and the world of his childhood, which he spoke of constantly, cherishingly, and happily. Conversation quickly turned to those stories whenever possible. If I had a wish for him, it would be that he finds himself again there, with muddy dogs galloping all around and sawdust in his eye. This may sound a bit painful--but I think it made him feel alive.
Update: The obituary can be found here.
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Monday, February 12, 2007
Labels!
Thanks to the new Blogger, I have added labels to all the previous posts. It's the kind of thing that I'd like to do to my entire life: categorize, divide, make sense of the chaos. For example, if I happen to sit down at someone else's computer and start pouring through their iTunes, and it's not exactly the way it dammed should be, with blank spaces and inconsistent genres, I just about want to kill them. Or spend the next seven hours fixing everything. Track numbers and the correct album names, etc.
Posts can now carry a tag like "fabulousness," "greenmarket," "art-making," "movies," "joan," (as in Ms. Didion,) and a bunch of other stuff. Blogger tells me that I've labeled the majority of the posts with "writing," "NYC," and "fabulousness," which should give you some idea about what I do here most of the time. Strangely, "cats" and "sex" appear quite infrequently.
If you click on any of the tags you will be taken to a new page that shows only posts, and all posts, that relate to that tag. Got it?
Also -- the dentist this afternoon was fine. Success, if you want to call it that. So now this post also carries the labels, "medical adventures" and "ambiguous."
Posts can now carry a tag like "fabulousness," "greenmarket," "art-making," "movies," "joan," (as in Ms. Didion,) and a bunch of other stuff. Blogger tells me that I've labeled the majority of the posts with "writing," "NYC," and "fabulousness," which should give you some idea about what I do here most of the time. Strangely, "cats" and "sex" appear quite infrequently.
If you click on any of the tags you will be taken to a new page that shows only posts, and all posts, that relate to that tag. Got it?
Also -- the dentist this afternoon was fine. Success, if you want to call it that. So now this post also carries the labels, "medical adventures" and "ambiguous."
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Current Obsessions
--Mylo's record, "Destroy Rock and Roll"
--Cormac McCarthy's novel, "The Road."
--Artisinal cabecou feuille:
This tiny, round cheese is made with a raw goats' milk from the plains of the Midi-Pyranées region of France. A classic, it can be eaten fresh, and you'll find its flavor is subtle and milky.
--Cormac McCarthy's novel, "The Road."
--Artisinal cabecou feuille:
This tiny, round cheese is made with a raw goats' milk from the plains of the Midi-Pyranées region of France. A classic, it can be eaten fresh, and you'll find its flavor is subtle and milky.
Wednesday, August 16, 2006
A Meme About Books and Such
1. One book you have read more than once:
I'll have to say Run River by Joan Didion. I read it when things in my life have gone suddenly askew. Despite its plot and subject matter--the novel begins with a murder on the banks of the Sacramento River-- it brings me a sense of calm. The rhythm of her prose, the sentences, the repetition. Sometimes reading it feels like meditation.
2. One book you would want on a desert island:
I never know what this means. A book that I would read, or that I could burn to make smoke signals? How about I'll go way out there, and say the Icelandic Sagas. Not modern printed ones, but the originals. They were all made of hand-bound cow's hide, and therefore could be boiled in soup if there was nothing to eat during the long winter. A book that feeds you mentally and physically, now that's the book for me.
3. One book that made you laugh:
Most recently it was This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes. It's so brilliant the way she sets the most ridiculous plots into motion and you just go right on with it like it's the most normal thing. A horse shows up in a sinkhole and the celebrity neighbor flies his helicopter over to help get it out. The absurdity is ultimately appropriate.
4. One book that made you cry:
There is a moment in Dan Choan's book You Remind Me of Me, where a child has been abducted and his grandmother is wondering where he might be. Choan writes: "She has never been a superstitious person, but she is certain at this moment she can sense the presence of the child. His little soul. It is a small, steadily blinking pulse, like the light of an airplane moving across the sky at night." I lost it right there.
5. One book you wish you had written:
I don't covet other people's work like that. I sometimes say, 'I wish I could write like that,' but I never think it terms of having written a particular book myself. One would always do something differently. So, I'm going to steal Ted's idea (genius!) but I'm going to go with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, only because she's probably richer than she'll ever need to be, but people will still be reading her book in a hundred years after Dan Brown is forgotten about.
6. One book you wish had never been written:
Was this list made by someone who doesn't write? I hate it when, like in personal ads on the internet, people don't really answer the question, but wittily prance around it, but oh well. My feeling is that even a book like The Turner Diaries or some assinine sack of garbage by Ann Coulter would be defended by other writers if it came to whether or not a person could write what they were passionate about. On second thought, maybe not the Coulter shit.
7. One book you are currently reading:
In 1969, Tobias Schneebaum wrote Keep the River On Your Right, which was a series of letters he wrote in his journal during his time spent in Peru, living with the Harakumbut people, (then called the Amarakaire,) where he, among other things, ate human flesh. He was also a painter, a lecturer, a teacher, an AIDS activist, and homosexual. He's sort of my hero.
8. One book you have been meaning to read:
I have this stack of Joyce Carol Oates books that I keep trying to get through. And since she writes like four books a year I'll never catch up. Currently, Wikipedia lists her published book count--including novels, plays, short stories, etc.--at 102.
9. One book that changed your life:
I always tell people that for me this book was Barbara Kingsolver's triumph of a novel, The Poisonwood Bible. It was just so clear to me what she was doing, both with language and voice, but also what she was doing artistically and politically. Other books that also got it right are Janette Turner Hospital's Due Preparations for the Plague, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy.
10. Now Tag 5 bloggers:
Witold, Mario, Michael, Amanda, and Tucker.
I'll have to say Run River by Joan Didion. I read it when things in my life have gone suddenly askew. Despite its plot and subject matter--the novel begins with a murder on the banks of the Sacramento River-- it brings me a sense of calm. The rhythm of her prose, the sentences, the repetition. Sometimes reading it feels like meditation.
2. One book you would want on a desert island:
I never know what this means. A book that I would read, or that I could burn to make smoke signals? How about I'll go way out there, and say the Icelandic Sagas. Not modern printed ones, but the originals. They were all made of hand-bound cow's hide, and therefore could be boiled in soup if there was nothing to eat during the long winter. A book that feeds you mentally and physically, now that's the book for me.
3. One book that made you laugh:
Most recently it was This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes. It's so brilliant the way she sets the most ridiculous plots into motion and you just go right on with it like it's the most normal thing. A horse shows up in a sinkhole and the celebrity neighbor flies his helicopter over to help get it out. The absurdity is ultimately appropriate.
4. One book that made you cry:
There is a moment in Dan Choan's book You Remind Me of Me, where a child has been abducted and his grandmother is wondering where he might be. Choan writes: "She has never been a superstitious person, but she is certain at this moment she can sense the presence of the child. His little soul. It is a small, steadily blinking pulse, like the light of an airplane moving across the sky at night." I lost it right there.
5. One book you wish you had written:
I don't covet other people's work like that. I sometimes say, 'I wish I could write like that,' but I never think it terms of having written a particular book myself. One would always do something differently. So, I'm going to steal Ted's idea (genius!) but I'm going to go with Harper Lee's To Kill a Mockingbird, only because she's probably richer than she'll ever need to be, but people will still be reading her book in a hundred years after Dan Brown is forgotten about.
6. One book you wish had never been written:
Was this list made by someone who doesn't write? I hate it when, like in personal ads on the internet, people don't really answer the question, but wittily prance around it, but oh well. My feeling is that even a book like The Turner Diaries or some assinine sack of garbage by Ann Coulter would be defended by other writers if it came to whether or not a person could write what they were passionate about. On second thought, maybe not the Coulter shit.
7. One book you are currently reading:
In 1969, Tobias Schneebaum wrote Keep the River On Your Right, which was a series of letters he wrote in his journal during his time spent in Peru, living with the Harakumbut people, (then called the Amarakaire,) where he, among other things, ate human flesh. He was also a painter, a lecturer, a teacher, an AIDS activist, and homosexual. He's sort of my hero.
8. One book you have been meaning to read:
I have this stack of Joyce Carol Oates books that I keep trying to get through. And since she writes like four books a year I'll never catch up. Currently, Wikipedia lists her published book count--including novels, plays, short stories, etc.--at 102.
9. One book that changed your life:
I always tell people that for me this book was Barbara Kingsolver's triumph of a novel, The Poisonwood Bible. It was just so clear to me what she was doing, both with language and voice, but also what she was doing artistically and politically. Other books that also got it right are Janette Turner Hospital's Due Preparations for the Plague, Katherine Dunn's Geek Love, and Octavia Butler's Xenogenesis Trilogy.
10. Now Tag 5 bloggers:
Witold, Mario, Michael, Amanda, and Tucker.
Thursday, August 10, 2006
Project Podcast
Anyone who's a fan of Project Runway must immediately go to their iTunes and subscribe to Tim Gunn's podcast. Each Thursday, you can hear Tim talk for about thirty minutes about what really happened on the episode you just watched the evening prior.
For example, who would ever have known that (perhaps) the reason that the judges kept Robert Best over Bradley Baumkirchner was because when Robert designed the modernized outfit for Jackie O. that the judges decided she just wouldn't wear, it was Diane Von Furstenburg who came to the rescue, finishing the dialogue about the garment. Tim explains in the most recent podcast that Diane said "I did know Jackie, I knew her very well. And I think she would wear it."
Tim also puts to rest (well, not really) those questions about Bradley's sexuality. Tim assumed he was queer as the day is long -- but when it surfaced that Bradley didn't really know who Cher was, well Tim noted, what kind of self-respecting gay man doesn't know Cher?
Any self-respecting Project Runway fan must also peruse the Store, where you can buy limited edition t-shirts designed by each of the designers, in addition to bidding on the ACTUAL winning (and losing) looks from each episode.
For example, who would ever have known that (perhaps) the reason that the judges kept Robert Best over Bradley Baumkirchner was because when Robert designed the modernized outfit for Jackie O. that the judges decided she just wouldn't wear, it was Diane Von Furstenburg who came to the rescue, finishing the dialogue about the garment. Tim explains in the most recent podcast that Diane said "I did know Jackie, I knew her very well. And I think she would wear it."
Tim also puts to rest (well, not really) those questions about Bradley's sexuality. Tim assumed he was queer as the day is long -- but when it surfaced that Bradley didn't really know who Cher was, well Tim noted, what kind of self-respecting gay man doesn't know Cher?
Any self-respecting Project Runway fan must also peruse the Store, where you can buy limited edition t-shirts designed by each of the designers, in addition to bidding on the ACTUAL winning (and losing) looks from each episode.
Sunday, July 23, 2006
Righteous Baby
I should have guessed it. She's glowing with happiness, awash in love, writing songs like she never has before, with bright, wistful lyrics: "We can jump around like monkeys/after the paparazzi have gone home/having let go forever/of the phallacy of ever being alone." Ani Difranco announced on July 21, upon receiving the National Organizaion of Women's "Woman of Courage" award, that she and current boyfriend and "Reprieve" producer, Mike Napolitano, are going to have a baby in February 2007.
In 1995, I had a friend who decided she was a lesbian. Because of this temporary shift in her sexuality--she's dated men exclusively since then--she started buying Out Magazine. In the back pages of that summer issue of Out, there was an ad for a record called "Out of Range," by singer/songwriter Ani Difranco. We'd never heard Ani before--who knew what the music would sound like--but she looked, from the picture at least, like she was once of us.
We listened to that album a thousand times, driving oursevles around Chattanooga--surely a place where there were no other Ani fans at that time--our rollerblades in the trunk, drinking strawberry malts. The tape (Ani on cassette!) would turn over, playing one side after another, and we'd listen again and again to the same songs we'd heard not an hour before. There was a song called "Overlap," an acoustic ditty laid right in the middle of the record, so quiet and so powerful that it forced you to listen, and when you did it broke your heart. Ani sang "I build each one of my days out of hope, and I give that hope your name," as we drove to the top of Signal Mountain, where we hiked up and down the trails, off the trails, and swam ourselves silly (and cold and tired) at Rainbow Falls.
Later, after Dilate and Little Plastic Castle, my then-lesbian friend fell off the Ani bandwagon, (and Ani fell off the lesbian bandwagon, a place she never claimed to be anyway) but I've remained there ever since. I have all the records, even the odd one-offs and international releases. I have the stuff: people have given me the coffee mugs, the headshots, I have some clothing. None of it I really have any use for, but it's here. As evidence.
I've got so many bootlegs that I juggle the playlists to include not just my favorite songs, but my favorite performances of those songs: the never-released "One More Night," from that Rochester gig in 1992; "Independence Day" performed on the radio show Acoustic Cafe in 1997--I listened in my dormroom, laying in bed with my then boyfriend, it was my birthday; the 1999 version of "Firedoor" from the Stockholm show; "I Know This Bar" from that year's Falcon Ridge Festival; tons of stuff from the full-band years; and now, after "Evolve" and "Educated Guess," and "Knuckle Down," and more and more live recordings, I'm listening to the unreleased new stuff: "Round a Pole," "Alla This," and the slow, twinkling medley she's been playing in concert so often lately: "Red Letter Year/Star Matter."
Do you speak the same language?
What if I tell you that I've got 19 versions of "Shameless?" 17 versions of "Evolve?" 14 versions of "Gravel?"
Ani is one of those artists that seem so completely transparent in their work, like Tori Amos or Fiona Apple, whose rabid fanbase wants to own the musician like they own the records. I've long wondered when I might tire of seeing Ani in concert--not her performances, but the audience: the ridiculous teenage girls, the long-haired hippie children bouncing and swaying and screaming every word. It comes with the territory.
Already the pregnancy chatter on the message boards is ridiculous: "can you imagine what an amazing mother ani will make?" and "or how cuuute she'll look when she starts showing???!!" Ani speaks to the alienation, to the love, to the otherness, to the angry, invisible line between the personal and the political, and it's impossible sometimes not to see yourself in her.
In some ways, that was me--only without the technology, or the community of people to feel a part of. And I like to think that, for me, it's always been about the music. Back in 1995, in that white Buick Celebrity, tearing down Highway 58, the backseat full of towels wet with lake water, Ani sang "I know I can't be the only/whatever I am in the room/so why am I so lonely/why am i so tired."
We stared our sunburned faces out the window and sang with her.
In 1995, I had a friend who decided she was a lesbian. Because of this temporary shift in her sexuality--she's dated men exclusively since then--she started buying Out Magazine. In the back pages of that summer issue of Out, there was an ad for a record called "Out of Range," by singer/songwriter Ani Difranco. We'd never heard Ani before--who knew what the music would sound like--but she looked, from the picture at least, like she was once of us.
We listened to that album a thousand times, driving oursevles around Chattanooga--surely a place where there were no other Ani fans at that time--our rollerblades in the trunk, drinking strawberry malts. The tape (Ani on cassette!) would turn over, playing one side after another, and we'd listen again and again to the same songs we'd heard not an hour before. There was a song called "Overlap," an acoustic ditty laid right in the middle of the record, so quiet and so powerful that it forced you to listen, and when you did it broke your heart. Ani sang "I build each one of my days out of hope, and I give that hope your name," as we drove to the top of Signal Mountain, where we hiked up and down the trails, off the trails, and swam ourselves silly (and cold and tired) at Rainbow Falls.
Later, after Dilate and Little Plastic Castle, my then-lesbian friend fell off the Ani bandwagon, (and Ani fell off the lesbian bandwagon, a place she never claimed to be anyway) but I've remained there ever since. I have all the records, even the odd one-offs and international releases. I have the stuff: people have given me the coffee mugs, the headshots, I have some clothing. None of it I really have any use for, but it's here. As evidence.
I've got so many bootlegs that I juggle the playlists to include not just my favorite songs, but my favorite performances of those songs: the never-released "One More Night," from that Rochester gig in 1992; "Independence Day" performed on the radio show Acoustic Cafe in 1997--I listened in my dormroom, laying in bed with my then boyfriend, it was my birthday; the 1999 version of "Firedoor" from the Stockholm show; "I Know This Bar" from that year's Falcon Ridge Festival; tons of stuff from the full-band years; and now, after "Evolve" and "Educated Guess," and "Knuckle Down," and more and more live recordings, I'm listening to the unreleased new stuff: "Round a Pole," "Alla This," and the slow, twinkling medley she's been playing in concert so often lately: "Red Letter Year/Star Matter."
Do you speak the same language?
What if I tell you that I've got 19 versions of "Shameless?" 17 versions of "Evolve?" 14 versions of "Gravel?"
Ani is one of those artists that seem so completely transparent in their work, like Tori Amos or Fiona Apple, whose rabid fanbase wants to own the musician like they own the records. I've long wondered when I might tire of seeing Ani in concert--not her performances, but the audience: the ridiculous teenage girls, the long-haired hippie children bouncing and swaying and screaming every word. It comes with the territory.
Already the pregnancy chatter on the message boards is ridiculous: "can you imagine what an amazing mother ani will make?" and "or how cuuute she'll look when she starts showing???!!" Ani speaks to the alienation, to the love, to the otherness, to the angry, invisible line between the personal and the political, and it's impossible sometimes not to see yourself in her.
In some ways, that was me--only without the technology, or the community of people to feel a part of. And I like to think that, for me, it's always been about the music. Back in 1995, in that white Buick Celebrity, tearing down Highway 58, the backseat full of towels wet with lake water, Ani sang "I know I can't be the only/whatever I am in the room/so why am I so lonely/why am i so tired."
We stared our sunburned faces out the window and sang with her.
Friday, July 14, 2006
Play It as It Lays
I'm reading Joan's second novel, Play It as It Lays, for what must be the tenth time, or more. "What makes Iago evil? some people ask. I never ask," is how it begins.
A few paragraphs later, this appears:
Then this:
A few paragraphs later, this appears:
"NOTHING APPLIES, I print with the magnetized IBM pencil. What does apply, they ask later, as if the word "nothing" were ambiguous, open to interpretation, a questionable fragment of an Icelandic rune."
Then this:
"I try not to think of dead things and plumbing. I try not to hear the air conditioner in that bedroom in Encino. I try not to live in Silver Wells or in New York with Carter. I try to live in the now and keep my eye on the hummingbird. I see no one I used to know, but then I'm not just crazy about a lot of people. I mean maybe I was holding all the aces, but what was the game?"
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