SOUNDTRACK: СУБИТО (Subito)-“Du Hast” (2011).
Субито (pronounced Subito) is from the Ukraine. They’re a bunch of miners and they play music. In addition to this cover, which is generating some meme buzz on the internet, they have a few other songs (and videos) of note.
This cover is notable in that the only real difference between this song and the original is the prominence of the button accordion. The vocals are nearly identical (he’s got his German goth down perfectly), and the rest of the band plays quiet heavily (I love the triangle instruments!). But the accordion changes the entire texture and tone of the song. It’s still ominous (I mean, those vocals!) but the accordion adds an air of whimsy that undermines the menace and yet also somehow makes the rest of the song seem even more menacing.
Of course the video is quite silly which leads one to assume that they’re not taking their version too seriously and yet their playing is impeccable and their backing vocals are right on.
So, yes, I rather like this song, and I like being able to include the word Субито in my post.
[READ: November 10, 2011] “The Good Samaritan”
Joyce Carol Oates has a wonderful way of turning her stories into something dark. Even if it starts out in a rather innocent light.
This story is set in 1981 on a train coming from Utica, NY. The narrator, Sonia, finds a woman’s wallet stuffed into the seat of the car. The story begins with Sonia thinking about the woman, wondering what she’s like, looking at the photos of herself and her family and sort of daydreaming what it would be like to be older and married. It’s only after a brief reverie that she, a poor college student, checks the money to see what’s there. (About $25). She hopes that the woman is old enough to give her a reward, but assumes she is not.
Sonia is to be heading home to help her mother with her ailing grandmother, something she’s not looking forward to. So she decides that she will return the wallet to the woman who, after all, lives only a few blocks from the station.
What is wonderful about this story is that this innocent setup masks the real story, which is never fully explored, but is hinted at enough to keep us all guessing. When Sonia arrives at the house, the woman’s husband is home and he seems….surprised that Sonia has brought this wallet home. She feels sympathy for him when he begins to explain that his wife ran off and must have dropped this wallet on this train while she was fleeing. Sonia wants to help the man in some way. He invites her inside and she thinks of all the things she could do for him–stupid things like make dinner or maybe even look at her things to see is she can help figure out where her wife went. She suggests this last idea and he accepts.
But she regrets this immediately when he leads her upstairs to their bedroom. And the tone of the story grows very dark indeed.
Now it’s obvious something bad is going to happen. And given what I know about JCO, I assumed the worst and I got very cross with her that she would do that to her protagonist. But I’m going to give a minor spoiler and say that she is not killed or anything (the narrator is not a ghost). For hers is not the dramatic edge of the story. Rather, the story continues when she gets home safely and beyond.
For the story is really about the man and his wife and what Sonia eventually finds out about them. And I love that JCO told this story from an innocent observer so that we, like her, are left to wonder what all went on there. We get a satisfying conclusion to Sonia’s story, but also have to wonder about the married couple. The story was so intricately woven and so unexpected (and tension filled) that I was totally sucked in. It was great fiction.
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