I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: EDMAR CASTANEDA-Tiny Desk Concert #46 (February 8, 2010).

One thing that’s awesome about the Tiny Desk Concerts is that they give me an intimate look at a band I love.  The second awesome thing is when you get to see an artist who is truly amazing, but whom you realistically would never encounter anywhere else.

Edmar Casteneda plays the Colombian harp.  And he plays the harp like no one else I have ever heard.  His genre is Latin jazz He uses the bass strings for rhythm and the high strings like a guitar.  And most interestingly is the way he uses his hands like a percussive addition on the strings.  I’ve never seen anyone else play the harp (usually an ethereal instrument) so aggressively before.  He sounds like several people playing at once.

Between songs he explains traditional Colombian harp playing and improvisation.  He demonstrates the way his version is different from the traditional way of playing.  And then he explains the fretboard on the harp which allows him to create sharps (which is pretty cool).

He only plays two songs, but the set is 15 minutes, so these are long songs.  And they are really gorgeous.  I prefer the first song, “Entre Cuerdas” to the slightly more new agey sounds of “Jesus de Nazareth,” although they are both mesmerizing.  At around 10 minutes, his hands are simply a blur–how does he know what strings he is hitting?

It’s kind of a shame that the dominant camera angle is face on because you really can’t see what he’s doing all that well, and his hands are really marvelous.  But it’s a small quibble with such an enjoyable performance.

Without a doubt check this out.

[READ: April 4, 2015] “Bounty”

This story begins with a flood and a dead body.  And very few other people left alive.

We have been watching The Last Man on Earth on Fox and this idea of the last person on earth is being explored on that show.  Interestingly, in this story, things are different. The owner of the house isn’t the last man on earth.  In fact, while he is safe on his mountain top house (while water levels are rising), people keep coming to his door asking for food or water.  And he is pissed about it.  He slams the door in their faces and yells at them to get lost.

I don’t think I’ve ever read a story about the end times in which someone was so unpleasant.

There’s a house on another hill not far from him.  And that house is absolutely full of refugees.  This is the main character’s neighbor–and they don’t like each other.  This generosity gives the protagonist even more reason not to like his neighbor.

The protagonist has a ton of food and supplies–he was well prepared for the end times–and he has no compassion for those who were not (which actually seems pretty accurate, now that I think about it).  Then one day a man knocks on his door and asks just for whiskey.  The protagonist doesn’t drink whiskey so he has a lot–and he’s intrigued by this request (no food, just booze) so he invites the man in.

The man becomes his servant–for all the whiskey he wants.  His main job is to keep others away from their stash.  And they will lives sated until the inevitable end.

But soon the whiskey man becomes sympathetic to the neighbor and his plight of helping out so many survivors (and running out of food as well).  The protagonist feels betrayed by this outpouring for another.

When the neighbor’s house begins to collapse, the narrator has a choice.

I was surprised by how dark this story was and yet I imagine that it demonstrates the survivalist mentality.  It’s also interesting that the end times come with a flood–which is quite different from TLMoE‘s dry setting in Tucson.