I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: DAN DEACON-“Electronica Hanukkah” (2010).

Dan Deacon is rapidly becoming one of my favorite oddball musicians.  I really don’t know very much about him, but he seems willing to give away music to various projects and put them for free on soundcloud (he has a proper album out as well this year which has been well received).

“Electronica Hannukah” is a paean to consumerism–set to a noisy processed electronic beat.  The superprocessed chorus voice is, well, super processed.  Deacon’s song is snarky and funny and yet the harmonies are actually quite pretty.

I’m not sure that this is what the holiday is about.  But you can determine that for yourself.

[READ: December 19, 2012] “A Voice in the Night”

This is a multipart story told in multiple sections.  We have three story lines labeled I, II, III and each story line is broken so that the next can continue.  That may sound more confusing than it needed to be.  So let’s step back.  In story line I, we see the biblical story of Samuel, whom God called in the middle of the night.  In story line II, we see a young boy staying awake in case God calls him in the middle of the night.  In story line III we see that boy as an old man whom God has not called.

There are four breaks in the story, one for each time Samuel was called.  The first three times, Samuel assumes it is his holy master Eli who has called him.  But Eli is asleep and tells Samuel to go back to bed himself.  On the third visit Eli says that it must be the Lord calling him.  And he should answer correctly.

Unlike Samuel, the boy in the second story line is not a believer   His father does not believe and the boy does not want to stay for the religious part of Sunday school.  And yet the story of Samuel stays with him all the time and he tries desperately to stay awake in case the Lord calls.  Which he may not really want anyhow, as it means a lot of work.

In the final thread, the boy is an older man now, reflecting back on his life and now, interestingly, unable to sleep because of middle-of-the-night insomnia   There are no voices for him either.

I appreciated the structure of the story, but it felt way too long to me.  There just wasn’t enough distinction between the four story samples.  I appreciate that the Bible sets up these stories in sets of three, and that works well for a parable, but I’m not sure for a full story.  I enjoyed the middle section the best–the young boy, struggling with his father’s atheism and yet also fighting back against the Christian who disrespect the Jews.  I appreciated the inclusion of the whole Samuel story, as I didn’t remember it.  But the old man’s story seemed a bit out of place to me.