I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PUNCH BROTHERS-Tiny Desk Concert #427 (March 16, 2015).

It is Chris Thile’s birthday and Bob and the gang brought him a cake, and Chris seems so genuinely touched, it is adorable.

Bob explains that they usually don’t invite artists back more than once but Chris has been on Tiny Desk four times by having five different “groups.” (Chris Thile And Michael Daves; Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer, Chris Thile And Stuart Duncan; Nickel Creek and now Punch Brothers).

I had heard of Punch Brothers, but didn’t know them.  I instantly became a fan after watching Chris’ great mandolin playing and his familiar but always interesting voice. The rest of the brothers provide great harmonies and lots and lots of strings (violin, bass, banjo and guitar).  They play four songs, “My Oh My,” a great, fun original and a traditional song “Boll Weevil” which is a rollicking fast fun bluegrass song.  “Magnet” is a “fairly debauched song,” which is even more rollick and more fun.  And Chris’ visuals during the song are very funny.

The final song is longer and much slower.  “Julep” is a mellow song with nice harmonies and delicate playing.  This Tiny Desk Concert really showcases how diverse this band is and I’m really interested to hear more.

[READ: April 5, 2015] Five Dials 33 Part II

Five Dials Number 33 Part 1 was dedicated to women and part II, the more substantial of the two, continues that theme.  And it features illustrations by Melanie Amaral.

The issue opens with a Centenary Appreciation of Marguerite Duras, the ultimate writer of euphoria and despair.  I don’t know much about her although I am familiar with her titles The Lover and Hiroshima mon Amour.

There are brief accolades from SUSANA MEDINA; OLIVIA LAING; DEOBRAH LEVY; AGATA PYZIK; JOANNA WALSH; CARI LUNA; ZOE PILGER; SUZANNE JOINSON; MARINA WARNER and EMMA WILSON all of which makes me think I should stop reading Five Dials and read Duras.

ZOE PILGER-“Ox Heart” an excerpt from Eat My Heart Out
This is a visceral scene with a woman finding ecstatic connection to a heart in the grocery store.   Out of context the story is bizarre, but it is so bizarre that I genuinely want to read the novel.

DEBORAH LEVY-“Diary of a Steak” excerpt.
This is a weird excerpt which seems to be a vegetarian manifesto but also with some really weird lines “We won the war” that without context are impossible to understand.

SUSAN SONTAG-“Sontag’s Choice” lists selected by Joanna Walsh
Sontag loved to create lists, and here are several that come from her diary As Consciousness is Harnessed to Flesh.

The page ten illustration is of 11 items in a grid.  a drum, a baby, a pocketwatch, cherries. a microscope, a ship on a bottle, a smoking cigarette, boots, a dog, a candy on a wrapper and glass of water.

CHRISTIANA SPENS-Portfolio: “The Drone Age”
3 drawings/collages of scenes from Abu Ghraib and planes flying.

MOLLY McCLOSKEY-“This Didn’t Happen to You”
This is a story of two people who give all of themselves and wind up having nothing left for each other.   Matt and Anna had met in Sri Lanka three years ago.  They were working for the causes of good–she was a protection officer working with Tamils and he was an engineer managing water and sanitation.  Even though his job was rough, she had seen things he could never imagine.  They hit it off quickly but she was leaving in two days, so nothing really happened.  Then three years later they ran into each other at another conference.

But this is Matt’s story mostly and we see that he is now spending Christmas alone at home in Dublin.  We learn that he and Anna dated for a while and then a tragedy befell someone close to Anna–her closest friend and a horrible tragedy at that–and it impacted Anna (and Matt) dramatically.  I enjoyed this story even if it was quite sad.

JULIET JACQUES-The Woman in the Portrait
Self Portrait with Model is the best known work by artist Christian Schad.  It is believed the “woman” is a transvestite known as Heike.  There are some excerpts from diaries in which Schad talks about Heike’s attempts to transition from male to female in pre-Hitler Germany.

AGATA PYZIK-“Does it Matter?  It Doesn’t Matter! An invitation to destruction”: on Věra Chytilová’s Daisies and female anarchy in socialism.
Pyzik writes about Věra Chytilová’s Daisies (1966).  She says that the two main characters (women) in the film do nothing,  The film is a slap in the face of socialism as the women primarily go about throwing and wasting enormous amounts of food–an obvious dismissal of Czechoslovakian and socialist values.  It was filmed in hippy tie-dyed colors suggesting anarchy.  The two main characters (both named Maria) are on a mission to unmake the socialist stereotype of womanhood.  Are the two Marias bored or empty or just stupid?  The Marias never eat the food, they get no pleasure from it.  Czech surrealist art and film made food a fetish.  Like in Jan Švankmajer’s works Meat Love and Lunacy.  Food became existential and stands in for hopelessness.  This was an interesting look at films I had never heard of.

ELIZA GRANVILLE-“Little Red”
This is a rewriting of the Little Red Riding Hood fable.  In this, red is a skinny girl, a model.  Her granny is a man eater.  The wolf is a guy hoping to prey on them.  It’s a cool twist that I like a lot.

ANJUM HASAN-“For Love of Water”
In this story, set in Bhoopasandra, India, the narrator and her roommate Mini are renting a flat from Bhaktal.  The flat is fine for two students (the narrator is studying pharmacology).  But the big problem is that they keep running out of water.  The narrator is unsure how the landlord knows they will run out “Madam, there’s enough for today, tomorrow no water,” but he was always right.  And then the truck carrying (and spilling) water would drive up and fill up the tank on the roof.  Mini loved long baths (she recently started dating someone and took even longer ones).  And then she eventually moved out, leaving the narrator by herself .  Mini stated that money wasn’t important, love was.  And soon after Mini moved out, the narrator also met a man (under very unusual circumstances, also dealing with water),   Baram was an Iraqi fro Qom, not far from Tehran–his grandfather helped build the dams of the river there.  But water which brought them together also seems to drive them apart.  It’s a sad story but it’s told in a flashback from a point of wisdom.

EMMA RAMADAN-translating Anne Garréta’s Sphinx, on the complications of a genderless love story
Ramadan explains that Garréta’s Sphinx was written about two people: je and A***.  Neither one is given a gender and Garréta in true Oulipo fashion, used no clues in the story (pronouns or words that would have a specific gendered ending) to indicate the gender of the characters.  Ramadan talks about how hard that is to translate into English and also how interesting it is to read as you vacillate back and fort between what genders you think they are.

MASHA TUPITSYN-“Reel Men”
This was an odd story about two people, the female narrator and a man named Fred running into each other over and over again years and years apart.  On this last instance, he walked into her house while she was reading.  She was staying at her friend Izzy’s house, in Provincetown, where no one locked their doors and “things slipped in.”  Fred barged in to see Izzy, but finding her not there began to write her a note until he saw the narrator and said “Oh it’s you.”  She says that Fred had been watching her for years–they kept running into each other but she was usually with another guy.  It was clear that he liked her “You are above and beyond bullshit.”  She was always aware of him.  “Fred wouldn’t go in the water.  Instead he sat on a fence with a towel around his neck like some cowboy watching me from above. It was the cockiest thing he’d ever done.”  She reflects on his random appearances and thinks about how if this were a film it would be a sign that they were meant to be.  I found this story hard to read the first time, but a second reading brought more clarity.