I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KATE BUSH-Aerial (2005).

This was Kate’s first release in 12 years!  There’s a part of me that would expect unparalleled genius to emerge from a 12 year hiatus, but realistically, what we get is a more mature and confident singer, and songs that sound very much like Kate Bush songs. There’s not a lot of experimentation, although there is a song cycle (two in fact) to hold the disc together.

The first disc (for there are two, totaling about 80 minutes) is listed as “A Sea of Honey”

It opens with “King of the Mountain” a great upbeat single.  Next is “Pi” a fascinating song in which Kate sings out the decimal places of Pi (3.14…).  It’s airy and ethereal, and pretty neat.  “Bertie” is an adorable ode to what I assume is her son. It’s a very sweet love song to a child.

“Mrs Bartolozzi” opens with a piano sequence that sounds very uncomfortably close to a Phil Collins.  And, later in the sings she sings a “sloshy sloshy” part which is pretty odd.  But despite all of this, the song is closest to the Kate of old.

“How to be Invisible” has some really cool choral effects (and is a very neat concept lyrically).  It also features a very nice guitar line that sneaks out of the musical tapestry from time to time.  “Joanni” rocks in Kate’s inimitable way (and it’s about Joan of Arc).  It has also got some fun and funny parts the reflect the Kate of old (screaming vocals way down in the mix and “Mmm Hmms” that are kind of silly).  The disc ends with the gorgeous ballad “A Coral Room.”

The second disc “A Sky of Honey” is more of a complete song cycle (It starts with a Prelude AND a Prologue).  There’s a couple of short songs (90 seconds each) thrown in the middle.  My favorite is the final track, “Aerial” which has a cool dance rhythm (that seems so unlike Kate) which propels the song almost magically.

Overall, this disc doesn’t overwhelm me as much as say Hounds of Love, but it’s a really solid disc and I’ve found myself listening to and enjoying it a lot over the last few weeks.  It’s nice to have Kate back.  I wonder how long it will be for her next disc.

[READ: November 27, 2009] Unspeakable Practices Unnatural Acts

After reading (the incomplete) “The Balloon” (see the post), I decided to give the entire collection a spin.  I didn’t really enjoy the short stories I had read in Harper’s, but I did enjoy “The Balloon,” so I thought it would be worth investigating Barthleme (a little) further.

This collection is a mix of utterly absurdist stories (many of which seem to have multiple vantage points that I found rather difficult to keep track of ).  One of the most noteworthy things about the collection is that it seems to me to be very topical circa 1968.  And I think I’m missing a lot of what is happening in the stories.   I’ll cite examples below, but oftentimes I assume that I’m just not getting something that I should be getting

The opening story “The Indian Uprising” was one of those stories.  The premise seemed pretty enjoyable: a modern city is attacked by Comanche Indians, and I understood that part, but I don’t know where it went from there.  Characters came in, points of view changed, I’m not even sure what happened.  I probably wouldn’t have read the whole collection if I had started with this one.

“The Balloon” I’m going to give its own post to make up for the previous one.

“This Newspaper Here” is another weird one (okay they’re all weird) in which the narrator (a dirty old man) repeats phrases (“The little girl come along come along dancing doggedly…”).  It gets rather dark and is actually amusing in its darkness.

“Robert Kennedy Saved from Drowning” is a series of sections with their own titles (“K. at His Desk,” “K Reading the Newspaper” etc).  I’m not sure if Kennedy was alive when this story was written, so I’m not exactly sure what to make of it.  This 1968-era work is especially tough for me to pin down because there was so much going on culturally but since he’s in the middle of it, I’m not sure if there’s a side point or a specific point or if he’s just reflecting the craziness at hand.

“Report” was one of my favorite pieces.  It was a much more straightforward, wonderfully observant anti-war piece. And it ends with a great punchline (even though it’s not funny).

“The Dolt” was also great.  In it, a man is planning to take (for the third time) the National Writers Examination, which will (apparently) guarantee him a job as a writer (which is funny in and of itself).  His wife is beleaguered by his failures at this test, but when he finally reads what he has written, she gets turned on by his proficiency.  Good stuff.

“The Police Band” was also rather fun. I suspect there is a lot more at work that what a surface reading would propose, but then again, this may be another circa 1968 political story that I’m just not getting the full impact of.  Nevertheless, the premise, that the police have a band, a musical band, that lies in wait ready to be called into action in the event of an emergency was quite delightful.

“Edward and Pia” and “A Few Moments of Sleeping and Waking” both follow Edward and Pia. I found the first one to be a weird jumble of misunderstandings and deliberate confusions.  The second story was a bit more fun as a third character is introduced and dream analysis is proposed.  Pia reveals secrets about herself but then invents things too.  A dysfunctional relationship if ever there was.

“Can We Talk” is one of those stories where I enjoy the language (“he tickled the [door]bell”) but which elude me when I try to see the whole story.

“Game” was wonderful.  Two men in an absurd situation (and how many stories/movies/TV shows have used this premise since then) try to deal with each others’ neuroses.  These two men are placed in charge of a very important job.  But when the short tenure of their job is extended indefinitely, their facades begin to crack.  The way the story is written, it seems that neither man is aware of the other’s secrets but clearly they are, or are they?  An enjoyable descent into madness.

“Alice” is a story with no punctuation  it is a rumination about Alice whom the narrator wants to fornicate   but the lack of punctuation while liberating makes you work extra hard for this story which is ultimately just about a man who wants to sleep with another man’s wife

“A Picture History of the War” I found kind of annoying. Military stories are usually lost on me as I know virtually nothing about the military at all.  This one has amusing repetitions of the same passage as a man relates his story to different people.  Ultimately, I felt the story dragged too much.

“The President” was a weird little story (and the first one I read in the collection).  The narrator is not altogether sympathetic to the new president.  I couldn’t help read this in terms of our new president, which didn’t help matters.  It’s funny, though, how the story about the President ultimately hangs on a woman who sings at a party.

See the Moon?” is a fascinatingly odd story about lunar hostility.  This story also seemed a little too long.

And that is one of the basic things I noted about Barthelme: the shorter the story, the more I enjoyed it.  He seems to edit himself much more efficiently when he writes less than 10 pages.

This collection is definitely not for everyone.  You need an affinity for the absurd to enjoy this work.  Even the most straightforward stories are a bit off-center.  I also found myself being less impressed by his work than I likely would have been if I read it 40 years ago.  His work is described as groundbreaking.  And, I assume that that is true.  But now, 40 years later, a lot of the things he likely invented have been done by others.  And probably by others that I have read.  So, it doesn’t seem that exciting. And that is one of the problems of reading a work so much later than it was written.

Havign said all of that, I think I have gotten my fill of Barthelme, and I doubt I’ll read anything else by him.

 

Table of Contents:

• The Indian uprising
• The balloon
• This newspaper here
• Robert Kennedy saved from drowning
• Report
• The dolt
• The police band
• Edward and Pia
• A few moments of sleeping and waking
• Can we talk
• Game
• Alice
• A picture
• History of the war
• The president
• See the moon?