I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK:  MT. WOLF-“Hex” NPR’S SOUTH X LULLABY (March 19, 2016).

Mt Wolf breaks with the tradition of the Lullaby by playing their song in a hotel room!  This is the band’s single.

It’s a 6-minute beautiful song notable for singer Sebastian’s Fox’s soaring falsetto.  His voice is really quite amazing.

The second guitarist plays the quiet melody and then Fox plays a kind of solo over the top of it. After the initial falsetto of the first verse, the second verse shows the range of his voice, as he starts a little lower before soaring the heights once again.  The band has a female backing singer who actually sings high notes that are lower than his.

By four and a half minutes the songs starts to rocks out (and no doubt the room next door starts to wonder WTF)

The feel reminds me a bit of Sigur Rós, with that kind of soaring intensity.  This is definitely a love it or hate it song, but I think it’s quite beautiful.

[READ: February 10, 2016] “The Grand Shattering”

The August 2015 Harper’s had a “forum” called How to Be a Parent.  Sometimes these forums are dialogues between unlikely participants and sometimes, like in this case, each author contributes an essay on the topic.  There are ten contributors to this Forum: A. Balkan, Emma Donoghue, Pamela Druckerman, Rivka Galchen, Karl Taro Greenfeld, Ben Lerner, Sarah Manguso, Claire Messud, Ellen Rosenbush and Michelle Tea.  Since I have read pieces from most of these authors I’ll write about each person’s contribution.

Anyone who reads this blog knows I don’t know poets very well. A. Balkan is a poet whom I had never heard of.

Imagine my surprise to find out that his essay was the most dramatic and exciting and went in directions that I never would have guessed.

He says that when his twin daughters were born, he and his wife were exhausted from all the work.  So his family and friends invited them t0 a cabin where they could relax and have other take care of the kids for a couple of days.

Sounds ideal.  Except that on their second day there, a tornado came through and destroyed the cabin they were staying in (for real!)  Fortunately they were not in it.

His wife took the kids to her parents house (not too far away) and he stayed at the lake waiting for power to come back.  He tried to relax by reading in a hammock and then in a canoe.  One day, he was out on the canoe resting when it was struck by a speedboat (for real).  And once he realized what was happening he saw that the propeller had nearly removed his leg from below the knee (for real!).

He describes the doctor’s words about his accident and then his wife’s words.  Then he shows the words of the officer on the scene (the other guy didn’t even realize he had hit a canoe).

He had several operations and then had to have hid leg amputated–a “baloney amputation.”  (He clarified that to mean below-knee operation).

During the ordeal, his daughters would visit but he was in so much pain and so medicated that he doesn’t remember much.  He does remember spending time with his father, quoting The Big Lebowski.

The end of the essay talks about trying to explain to his girls what happened.