I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: JENNIFER CASTLE-Live at Massey Hall (November 23, 2017).

I didn’t think I knew Jennifer Castle, but I see that she has appeared as a guest singer on a whole bunch of records by artists that I know: Eric Chenaux, Bry Webb, Constantines and Fucked Up.

She has an unusual voice–soaring, delicate and whispery with a slight warble and yet you know she could belt out if she wanted to.

She starts the show saying Toronto has incredible beautiful old buildings and its rare these days to go inside one.  Inside Massey Hall it’s lit up to be another member of the band and to be part of the show.

I found the music to be incredibly spare–too spare in fact.  It is primarily piano and her vocals (with backing singers), but the piano (Jonathan Adjemian) is not a primary instrument, it is simply playing chords for her to sing over.  The sparseness was a little disconcerting.  But the backing vocalists (Victoria Cheeong and Isla Craig) are stellar–they really add a lot to the music and their voices soar in their own right.

But I think that sparseness allows her lyrics to really come through.  “Like a Gun” has the lyric “he was lik e gun [hah, from lovely backing vocalists] he was always going off.”

“Nature” has even better lyrics

Despite all my feelings of life parallel
Nature is happening without my goodwill
I called my friend up and she said it still
Happens to you even when you are ill

and ends with this interesting conceit

I lift my skirt for the economy

“Texas” is played on guitar with a very catchy “hoo hoo hoo hoo” clap-along.

I go down to Texas
To kiss my grandmother goodbye
She forgets things
But when I look her in the eye
I see my father
And he’s been gone so very long
In the name of time travel
Help him to hear to my little song

Jennifer plays electric guitar on “Truth is the Freshest Fruit” which changes the whole dynamic of her songs.  She plays guitar with piano accompaniment on “Sailing Away.”

She is the first person to mention the renovations Massey Hall is currently undergoing:

I know that Massey is going to go through a great big change but it feels good to play while the history is still on the paint.

The final song is absolutely wonderful.  She says she wrote “Please Take Me (I’m Broken)” because she knew they were coming to Massey and it celebrates the school of Greek mythology

The backing vocalists sing a verse by themselves and they sound great.  I love the chorus

Please take me cause something don’t seem right; something don’t compute.  I don’t belong here.
Please take me I’m broken;  I’ve woken up and I should be dreaming.
Please take me back to those other realms they seem much kinder on a dreamer like me.
I’ve always looked up to those ancient Greek stories.
I love the thrill of the scale; I like the the roll of the chorus.

A thoughtful and unique performer.

[READ: July 17, 2018] “Now More Than Ever”

I  feel like Zadie Smith’s recent stories have been exploring a new style for her, a more “in the present” kind of vibe.  This story has meta-elements and is very much an of the moment piece.  It seems to address current hot button issues and her own inability to fully wrap her head around them.

It begins: “There is an urge to be good. To be seen to be good. To be seen.  Also to be.”

This is what she told Mary.  She also told Mary that no one is called Marty these days.  “Could you get the hell out of here?”  So Mary left.  Then Scout came by–a great improvement.

Scout is active and alert on all platforms. She;s usually no later than the 300th person to see something.  The narrator was “the ten million two hundred and sixth person to see that thing.”

Scout tells her that the news was that the past is now also the present.

The professor says she knows of a CEO named Natalia Lefkowitz who is a very good person and does things that benefit women here, there, and everywhere. But yesterday she got a message from Ben Trainor, an ex-boyfriend of Natalia who said that in the recent past she did a thing which was not consistent with her present.  Stuff like sodomizing Ben Trainor while pretending to be his mother.  These acts were consensual but the desires seem problematic.

She asks Scout if the woman should be afraid.  Scout seems offended by this question and walks out.

In her apartment building the professor and her neighbors hold giant black arrows out the windows pointing at the neighbors. She points at Eastman because who doesn’t know about Eastman–how he still has a job we don’t really know.

She and a Scout go to the movies to watch A Place in the Sun.  The next chunk of the story covers the movie in which an attractive every man Montgomery Clift likes plain Shelley Winters until he meets hot Elizabeth Taylor.

Shelly gets pregnant but it’s hard to follow in the movie because the movie was made in 1951 and everything is buried under the Hays Code.  No one says pregnant or I want an abortion.  Despite the cutaways and the euphemistic language, you get the picture.  Two unmarried people with no money, who hardly know each other, are about to have a baby that neither of them wants.

Montgomery Clift has to find a way to get rid of Shelly Winters if he wants to be with Elizabeth Taylor.

On the way out of the movie Scout asked if she instinctive sympathizes with the rich and happy.

Then this professor receives a note from a high school student in which the students chastises her for her article in Philosophy Today that asks about omitting his name.

I’m not sure what this refers to but her response makes me think it has something to so with Childish Gambino’s “This is America.”  But it could be anything.

It then shifts to her running into someone who was “beyond the pale” but at least he wasn’t in prison.

Then she messes up and defends the wrong person and frankly it’s all pretty exhausting figuring out what’s happening.

Its all really weird and with a lot of things that seem to be understood, but which I didn’t understand.