I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BECCA MANCARI-“Dirty Dishes” NPR’S SOUTH X LULLABY (March 15, 2018).

Becca Mancari plays a pretty acosutic guitar melody while Blake’s effects-laden pedal steel guitar soars and echoes around her.

I don’t know the original, but according to the blurb, “Mancari removes the clicking pulse of the studio version to underline the song’s lonely atmospherics.”

The song is simple–one that speaks to a relationship: “‘I can’t face myself,’ Mancari repeats the line like a broken admission spoken through a pinhole camera, a whispered truth so potent it can’t be looked right in the eye. “

At 2:41, the guitarist hits a great effect that turns the soaring pedal steel guitar into a buzzy rocking guitar solo while Becca strums on.  It’s a great interlude that really sells this song.

I also love that the final 30 seconds is just the sound of the guitar(s) fading out.

There are moments in this video where the Nashville-based singer-songwriter turns away from the many faces of the Life Underground installation by Hervé Cohen, which is part of the SXSW Art Program and supported by the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States. What’s being projected onto the screens in the room are interviews with subway passengers from around the world who share their stories and dreams. The installation’s notion is that empathy often comes by just asking a few questions, which, maybe for “Dirty Dishes,” is just too damn hard right now.

[READ: April 12, 2016] “The Tiger’s Wife”

Téa Obreht took the literary world by storm with her debut novel The Tiger’s Wife.  I’ve had a copy of it on my bedside I guess now for 8 years.  I’ve been meaning to read it but other things always jump in first.

So finally I got around to reading this excerpt from the novel.

The excerpt is, I assume, the first few sections of the novel since they are numbered and begin with 1.

The first part is called The Tiger and it talks all about the titular tiger.  The tiger was in a zoo (or a circus) in 1941 when the Germans began bombing the city for three straight days.

The tiger should have died in the concussion and rubble, but he managed to escape and wandered to the village.

Section II is “The Village.”

The tiger was first sighted on the Galinica ridge above the narrator’s grandfather’s village  (I rather like that the story is in first person, but the narrator isn’t actually involved in the story so far).

A herdsman went looking for his calf and saw the tiger with the calf in its jaws.  Of course no one believed the herdsman, because that story is insane, But he swore that it was the Devil. Then the narrator’s grandfather showed everybody his copy of The Jungle Book and said it wasn’t the Devil, it was Shere Khan.

Section III is called “The Meat” and it talks about the smokehouse in the village.  The narrator says that if the tiger hadn’t been born in captivity, if had been born a hunter, it probably wouldn’t have hesitated in going into the village.  Bu the smell of the meat in the smoke house was too tempting.

One night he crept all the way to the smokehouse and there was a piece of meat waiting for him.  Each night after that there was another piece.  Until finally the tiger crept into the smokehouse and found a young girl there waiting for him with meat in her hand.

Section IV called “My Grandfather” talks about the girl and her grandfather’s attraction to her.  Her grandfather was only 9 during this story, and the girl was about 16. But she was married to Luka, the town butcher.  Luka was unliked, but did his job and did it well.  He was always covered in blood.

The girl, unnamed, is also a deaf-mute “an a Muhammadan besides.”

One night he was out getting something for his mother when he heard something in the smokehouse.  He went to investigate and was sure the tiger was in the room with him.  He hid but felt a weird kinship with the beast and tried to reach out for it when it walked pat.

But just like that, the tiger was gone and the girl was lifting the tarp off of him.

Section V is all about the town’s reaction to the tiger being in the smokehouse.  Luka and the blacksmith set out to kill the beast. Her grandfather is very upset by this.  But they don’t manage to kill it.

In fact, things go slightly awry for the men.

In section VI, we see that Luka discovered a pork shoulder that the tiger had been eating.  He instantly assumed that his wife gave the meat to the tiger and he hurt her accordingly.

I loved the way Section VII called “The Wife,” opened with the statement that people will tell you different things about Luka’s disappearance.  Most people blame the wife.  And, interestingly, they all started calling her The Tiger’s Wife.  Because the girl was pregnant and everyone knew it wasn’t Luka’s.

Finally the narrator comes into the action.  She explains that it is nearly fifty years later and her grandfather had often told her stories about a girl who loved tigers.  She assumed he meant her because she also loved tigers.  Until on her grandfather’s death, she learned that there was a another girl he was talking about.

And so she has been trying to piece together the story of the tiger’s wife and the people of Galina.

While I felt that this excerpt was rather satisfying in its conclusion, it really makes me want to finish the rest of the book.  (Although I still haven’t).