I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: FIRST AID KIT-Stay Gold (2014).

This album was also produced by Mike Mogis, who did The Lion’s Roar.  And with each new album, the “duo” of Klara and Johanna Söderberg grows bigger and bigger.  This album adds a full string section as well as a mellotron, vibraphone and lap dulcimer (these last three all thanks to Mogis.

“My Silver Lining” is an incredibly catchy, swinging song.  In addition to the cool strings and the lovely oooh melody, it’s that big bold “Woah oh” that really sells the song.  I also love the whispered vocals at the end the “try to keep on keeping on” is really cool and a very different sound for them.

“Master Pretender” has some interesting instrumentation–a bass clarinet in the first verse, fiddles and pedal steel in the second verse and striking lap dulcimer in the chorus.  It’s also the first instance of them cursing I think, “I always thought that you’d be here / But shit gets fucked up and people just disappear.”

“Stay Gold” a beautiful chorus sets this song apart, the melody is really great.  “Cedar Lane” is a slower song that focuses on the sisters’ harmonies in the beginning but the chorus inspires with those soaring falsetto notes.  But the biggest and best surprise of this song comes nearly 4 minutes in when the song shifts to an intense refrain of “how could I break away from you?”

“Shattered & Hollow” is a slower, more mellow song with an interesting percussion.  “The Bell” has some unexpected melody lines but soaring vocals, but it all coalesces wonderfully in the last minute “Can you hear the bell?” in great harmony.

“Waitress Song” is so wonderfully down to earth (if not depressing):

I could move to a small town / And become a waitress / Say my name was Stacy / And I was figuring things out / See, my baby, he left me / And I don’t feel like staying here tonight

I also love the way they sing this line in the folky style of the song despite referencing a very different type of song:

I remember the music / From the down stair’s bar: Girls, they just want to have fun

The way the ending of this song redeems itself with the cool lap steel and their ooohs as well as an uplifting ending makes this a surprisingly powerful track:

I could drive out to the ocean / And just stare in awe / I could walk across the beaches / And sleep under the stars / Our love would seem trivial and obscure / Now and never feel lost anymore

“Fleeting One” This song moves along really nicely with some amazing high notes in harmony.  “Heaven Knows” is their by-now familiar autoharp song.  Except that it also combines the rocking elements of the previous albums’ “King of the World” a shuffling guitar, stomping drums and great good fun. And while the last album had them shout FIRE! in the middle of Conor Oberst’s verse, this time they up the ante further by slowing things down and sing

Tell me what’s your story / do you think it’ll ever sell / and what’ll you do if it comes down to it / and it all goes…. STRAIGHT TO HELL!

“A Long Time Ago” ends the album as a dramatic piano ballad.  It sounds really quite different for them.

So this album builds on everything they’ve been working on, adding more and more sounds and getting their voices to sound somehow even better.

[READ: January 30, 2018] “The Boundary”

This story is from the point of view of a young girl whose family looks after a small cottage.  The cottage is in the Italian countryside.  Her family is not Italian (they are from very far away), and when they moved to Italy they first lived in the city.  The countryside is about as alien to them as they can imagine  And they don’t especially like it.

Every Saturday a new family comes to stay in the cottage.  And those people love the countryside, can’t stop talking about how great it is.

The girl who looks after the cottage is familiar with the routine.

There’s usually four of them–two parents two kids. The girl shows them around, shows them the mouse poison and tells them to kill the flies at night because their buzzing will wake them up in the morning.

As the guests settle in, she pretends to ignore them, but she always watches–especially when they leave the screen doors open.  Since the cottage is so close, she can hear everything the family says.

The father wants to tour the area, the mother just want to sit back and relax in the sun, although the narrator notices that the mother does some writing as well.

Dinner time for the narrator is usually filled with her mother talking. Her mother complains about everything, especially where they currently live. Sometimes her father is so annoyed by her mother that he sleeps in the car.

The narrator keeps watching the family, watches them be happy, settle in to a routine–collecting crickets, going to town for groceries, going to the beach.

The family loves it there.  They are charmed by the fox who steals the father’s flip-lops.  The mother is even charmed when the girls clothes are stained because they were picking berries.  And even more charmed that she can hang her clothes out to dry–something she can’t do in the city,

The narrator keeps to herself about the unchanging landscape, the dilapidated cottage, the bitter cold winters, how even the owner of the cottage hardly ever comes to the place–he rides his horses once every couple of months and then leaves.

On the final night more people arrive for a party. She marvels at the fun they have while she and her father eat in silence.  Then the girls bring two pieces of cake to them.  She and her father eat the cake in silence until they overhear where the cake came from.

That’s when the story pulls back to reveal why the family lives in this area that they hate so much.  And why the father doesn’t speak anymore.

The family promises to come back again.  She says that some do, some don’t.  But one seems to be there for good.

~~~

This story was written by Jhumpa Lahiri in Italian.  She then later translated it into English herself.  I thought that was pretty cool, so here’s a bit of an interview with her about the process and about her writing in Italian

You wrote “The Boundary” in Italian, and then translated it yourself. In 2016, you published “In Other Words” (an excerpt of which ran in the magazine), which explored your relationship with the Italian language and traced your growing fluency in it. Have you been writing predominantly in Italian since then? Does it change the act of writing for you? Would “The Boundary” have been a different story if you’d written it in English?

I have continued writing in Italian. I have published a number of other stories and essays in Italian journals, and have recently completed a novel that will be published in Italy later this year. I think, see, and feel differently in Italian. I say things more simply but also more directly. And I tend to take more chances. “The Boundary” would surely have been a different story, composed in a different register, had I conceived it in English.

Ann Goldstein (who translates Elena Ferrante, among several other Italian writers) translated “In Other Words.” In this case, you translated the story yourself. What’s it like to return to your own work as a translator? Are you tempted to rewrite as you translate, or do you remain loyal to the original Italian?

I translated a very short story about a year and a half ago from Italian to English. And the process was less traumatic than when I first tried to translate myself almost five years ago, when the experiment of writing in Italian had barely gotten under way. As my written Italian takes root and solidifies, it becomes easier to assess objectively and, as a result, to step in and out of it. Translating myself no longer feels like a step backward, like undoing the great labor of the original or erasing it away. I aim to translate my Italian as accurately as possible. I don’t rewrite, in that I don’t want to revise, or to smooth out the rough edges, or to give the new version the overwhelming advantage of my English. But all translation involves rewriting. To translate is, by definition, to rewrite something in another language.

You have also been translating the work of the Italian novelist Domenico Starnone. Your translation of “Ties” was published last year, and “Trick” is coming out later this year. What drew you to Starnone’s fiction? Do you find the work of translation similar to writing fiction yourself, or quite different?

Translating Starnone has been fundamental to my recent creative journey. His Italian, with its prodigious lexicon and exceptional precision, sheds light from above as I venture to express myself, as a writer in Italian, on a far more modest linguistic plane. I would liken it to a shaft of sunlight perceived underwater; I am conscious of it, but I am proceeding in a different element, in a decidedly murkier dimension. Needless to say, translating Starnone enriches my Italian vocabulary and deepens my understanding of the syntax. It reveals new cadences. But, beyond that, I have the great privilege of scrutinizing the very mechanism of his novels, of probing the structure and supporting tissue. There is no better lesson for a writer. Translation goes beyond reading; the act is visceral as opposed to merely intimate, and it impacts you, it teaches you in a different way. I was drawn to Starnone’s fiction because I met him and we became friends, and so I was curious. As soon as I read “Ties” in Italian, I wanted to translate it, if only to be able to reread it an infinite number of times. It was the first time I wanted to work again in English after barricading myself behind Italian, and this has restored a sense of equilibrium. Translation is more pleasurable to me than writing fiction, given that I am in an intense relationship with a text I profoundly admire, greedy to absorb all that it has to offer. I question what I am producing, but that dialogue with the original text stimulates me, keeps me company, keeps me afloat. Writing is a sustained monologue, a profoundly solitary act. A place where there is no escape from myself and, paradoxically, a place of total freedom.