I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: VIC CHESNUTT-Tiny Desk Concert #2 (June 5, 2008).

Vic Chesnutt seems to have come into my life at random times. I bought the charity record/tribute album (Sweet Relief II) only because I liked a lot of the artists on it–I’d never heard of him at the time.  More recently his records were released on Constellation, a label I trust wholeheartedly.  And then just as I was really starting to appreciate him, he died in 2009 from an overdose of muscle relaxants.

He was a fascinating person.  A 1983 car accident left him partially paralyzed; he used a wheelchair and had limited use of his hands (which you can see in the video).   He struggled with drugs and alcohol and depression.  Despite all of this, he released his first album in 1990.

Robin Hilton, music dude at NPR, introduces him here and talks about how much he loves his music.  But even Hilton’s association with Chesnutt is checkered.  He writes that when he was younger and went to see him in concert, “[Chesnutt] was often drunk and sometimes belligerent. I walked out of at least one performance,” and “all of this probably made it easy to dismiss Vic Chesnutt’s music. He was a challenging guy, and his unpolished, idiosyncratic songs weren’t easily digested.”

And yet for all of that Chesnutt seems rather shy and unsettled in this Tiny Desk setting.  He seems unsure about what he wants to play and often asks if he should play this or that song.

He plays 5 songs (for 26 minutes total).  The opener is “When the Bottom Fell Out.”  A lot of Chesnutt’s songs, especially in this setting sound similar.  His voice is incredibly distinctive, as is his playing.  But since most of his songs are just him strumming and singing, they sound quite similar.  The second song, “Very Friendly Lighthouses” sounds a little different because he plays a “horn” solo using his mouth as a trumpet. It is a web request which he says he’ll “try” to do (and that he needs a cheat sheet).  I don’t know the song but it sounds fine to me.  He also emphatically states that the song is not about Kristin Hersh (something she has claimed).

“Panic Pure” also has a Kristin Hersh connection (she recorded it on Sweet Relief).  He says he stole the melody from “Two Sleepy People” by Hoagy Carmichael.  He turned it to a minor key and wrote his song.

For the next track, he asks if he should try a new song that he just wrote–more or less asking permission to do this unreleased track.  “You really want me to try out a new song that might suuuck?” (resounding yes). “We Were Strolling Hand in Hand” proves to be a very good song indeed.

The final track “Glossolalia” comes from North Star Deserter, the album I own.  It’s about being an atheist songwriter in a Christian country.  It’s funny that he says he hasn’t played it in a long time (it’s from his then new album…).

Chesnutt was not for everyone, clearly.  But his music is haunting and beautiful in its own way, and this is a very engaging setting to see him perform.

[READ: November 8, 2013] “Lovely, Dark, Deep”

Karen told me to check out this story and while I was planning to, she got me to move it up higher on my pile.  And I’m really glad she did because there is so much going on in this story that I was glad to be prepared for it.

The story seems simple enough, a young girl goes to interview famed poet Robert Frost at a writer’s workshop.  She is an unknown writer writing for a small college journal (Poetry Parnassus) and really has no business interviewing the Poet Himself.  She is shy and literally virginal.  When she walks up on Frost, he is sound asleep on a porch.  She dares to take a few pictures of the man (which later sold for a lot of money…although presumably not for her).

When Frost wakes up he is surprised and a little disconcerted by the young girl.  And then he gets cocky with her, suggesting she sit on the bench with him.  She demurs and begins trying to be as professional as possible.

Frost proves to be an obnoxious interviewee, full of ego for himself and nothing but disdain for all other poets.  She is intimidated by him, fearing that all of her questions are silly.  Then she tries to ask him some insightful questions but he tends to dismiss them as obvious or simply ignore them.  Eventually she asks one personal question too many and he becomes blatantly offensive.  He asks about her panties and if they are now wet (the cushion she is sitting on is damp from rain).  And he bullies her terribly.  She is offended but remains strong and continues to ask him questions.

And then finally she hits on a line of questions that seems to set the man reeling.  He is clearly uncomfortable with her and you can see in the writing that this young girl has now taken charge of the situation.

And then something really unexpected happens.  The story switches from first person to third person.  From”

“How surprised Mr. Frost was by the passion with which I spoke!”

She had accused him of being “an emissary from dark places…an American poet who sees and defends the very worst in us, without apology”
and then in the next paragraph the shift:

“A fierce light shone in the poet’s faded-blue eyes.  His breath came audibly and harshly.  But the interviewer was suffused with a sort of ferocity, too”

She goes in violently—asking about his disdain for his own children.  He sags under the questions until he comes back to attack her, “You’ve never been called “greatest American poet of the twentieth century.”   She takes her tape and notebook and feels the need to walk away from the scene.  Frost collapses under the strain and we are left with mixed emotions about this great poet.

The note at the end says that this is a work of fiction though based on “limited, selected” historical research.

I know some of Frost’s poems, as many people do.  And I have always thought of him as an avuncular sort–a kindly old man who writes of Americana–and I found this story shocking, not something you get in short stories that much anymore.  I would never defend Frost because I don’t know a thing about the man, so I am left believing that he really was like this.

The story was quite surprising both in its aggressiveness but also in the kind of weird revelations that one never expects from a story that could easily be summarized “girl interviews Robert Frost.”  I’m also inclined to say that I’m used to dark stories from Oates, and this was very dark indeed but in a very different way than I’m used to from her.  This story turns a man from a kindly sage poet into a revolting beast with a revolting past and then reveals him to be just a man once again.  Not bad for an “interview.”