I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: IVAN & ALYOSHA-Tiny Desk concert #109 (February 7, 2011).

Ivan & Alyosha are a five piece (no one is named Ivan or Aloysha) consisting of Tim Wilson (lead vocals) Ryan Carbary (guitars) Pete Wilson, (Tim’s brother), Tim Kim (acoustic and electric guitars) and drummer Cole Mauro).  They play bouncy folk (I assume that their non-Tiny Desk sound is bigger than two acoustic guitars and a tambourine).

“Beautiful Lie” is the first song.  The lead singer has a gentle falsetto and the other guys add nice harmonies (especially during the oooooooohs).

As they introduce “Easy to Love” Wilson says they recorded it at 2AM in their last half hour at the studio.  And it wound up being the song people like most.  It’s easy to like, with a fun clap-along and a simple electric guitar solo.  Again, I assume the actual song is bigger than this.

“I Was Born To Love Her” is a good jam (their words).  It completes that folks sound with two guitars and lovely harmonies.  They’d be a great opener for Band of Horses.  I’d see that tour.

Incidentally, the band name comes from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov.

[READ: February 3, 2016] “These Short, Dark Days”

I was planning on saving this story to put it sequentially with the other New Yorker stories that I’ll be posting in the weeks to come.  But this story is set on February 3, so why not post it on that short, dark day, since it is that day, anyhow.

This story begins with a suicide.  A man sees his wife out the door, then covers the windows and door gaps, pulls the gas hose off the stove and brings it with him into the bedroom (who knew the hose would be that long).

The next section of the story jumps to much later as we see a nun, Sister St. Savior, walking down the street.  She is tired and aching from begging all day. But she smells the smell of an extinguished fire and she knows in her heart that she must go there and help.  I love that when she arrives, everyone defers to her.  One of the men even acts as if he has sent for her, when clearly she came of her own design.

And the story gets filled in a little via her eyes.  The man lost his job.  The woman is pregnant.  They’ve been married but two years.  The woman is hysterical that the man will not be buried in their cemetery plot because he killed himself–a mortal sin.

But Sister St. Savior sets to work making things happen.  She is a pious, deeply devout woman, but she also knows when certain things are more right than what the church says.  And she tells God that He can chalk up this desire to get the man buried, with her other sins–like taking money from her collection plate to give directly to women in need, and for being envious of the young nuns who don’t have to go begging and can be nursemaids like she used to be.

One of the younger nuns is a bit angry at the way Sister St. Savior has taken things over, and wonders what she’s trying to do to get that man properly buried.

Sister St. Savior hopes to be fast enough to get him interred before the news gets out.  And she looks in the paper at the many other men who have died on these short dark days.

The final paragraph offers a very brief glimpse of hope in this world of despair.