I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: LAURA MARLING-“Walk Alone” NPR Lullaby SXSW (March 19, 2015).

From March 17-March 21, the SXSW festival raged on. And my friends at NPR Music were there so I didn’t have to be. In past years they have had a nightly recap of their favorite shows of the day. This year they upped the ante by inviting a musician to sing a lullaby.  Most of these lullabies occurred in some unexpected outdoor location at 2 or so A.M. after a long day of music.

This late night lullaby was actually recorded much earlier than most (around 9:30P.M) because one of the gang had to leave early.

Marling has become one of my favorite new (to me) voices. I love the way she sings. It feels unconventional or unexpected somehow.  The way she doesn’t follow the melodies of her guitar playing is really cool and exiting. And when she drops into a nearly spoken word it’s quite arresting.

This song is from her soon to be released new album Short Movie, and it is as enchanting as anything she’s done.  You can check it out here.

[READ: March 23, 2015] “Nina”

This issue of Harper’s featured five essays (well four essays and one short story) about “Growing Up: five coming of age stories.”  Since I knew a few of these authors already, it seemed like a good time to devote an entire week to growing up.  There are two introductions, one by Christine Smallwood (who talks about Bob Seger) and one by Joshua Cohen who talks about the coming of age narrative.

This is a story of meeting a bad person and getting sucked into her life.  There’s nothing terribly original about this.  However, the characters (her name has been changed) are not your typically teenage angsty college students.  Set in 1981 at NYU, the narrator is Indian and the girl sitting next to him is Latina.  It’s cool to have a familiar story told with slight differences like this one does.

The girl asks him for help with her computer.  He fixes her problem and she asks to get his number so they can keep in touch.  She is very pretty.  He couldn’t resist calling her, so he invited her to a play and she agreed.

His family came from Bombay and he immediately started a Catholic high school when he arrived–his whole sexual education was that he should not masturbate because “it’s sticky and attracts flies” [and actually that he would go to hell, he neglects to point out].  He lived at home during college, so going out was fraught with lies and deception.   When he and Nina started dating for real and she eventually asked if they could go somewhere private, he has an interesting idea of where they should go.  After that, they had sex anywhere they could (that poor library).

He says that in the 80s NYU threw money at foreign students to form clubs, which mostly became private places for parties.  I also enjoyed the way he saved his money to spend on her.

Eventually she started telling him truths about herself.   She had been married before (in the Dominican Republic).  And her former lovers were all rich powerful men.  At one point she tells him that her ex’s bodyguards are following her.  If he finds out she’s seeing someone we’ll both be in danger.

Things slowly get more and more crazy with Nina and eventually she says she has to leave him.  But she started calling him from time to time–a kind of twisted booty call.  He could not stop getting sucked into her trap.

As I said it’s a familiar story, but I enjoyed the way the characters had different backgrounds, which brought new challenges.