I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: KALBELLS-Tiny Desk Concert #783 (September 5, 2018).

The opening of the first song “Craving Art Droplets” was kind of promising, with the backing singers (Angelica Bess on keys, Sarah Pettinotti on bass) all “yeahing” at the same time and their rather strange chord progressions (and synth bass).  But once the song started, I realized it wasn’t going to get any better.  Just layer upon layer of cheesey synths.  The only thing that saved it was the live drums (Zoey Brasher), even though they don’t add a lot.

Just before the break, the song builds in an interesting way with everyone chanting louder and louder. And just when I thought there was hope, it devolved into the worst thing ever–lead singer Kalmia Travera’s long cheesey sax solo.  Oh dear.

She introduces the next piece: “The next song we’re gonna play is a medley.”  That’s a strange intro for songs no one knows.  Wordless chanting starts “123456/Bodyriders” (along with a cowbell).  The lyrics… are puzzling at best “Six was the rest, six was everything” (?)  When it segues into “Bodyriders,” the Travera singing high notes over the chanted background is promising, but those synth sounds again…. (even when she bends the notes, it’s still cheesey). .

“Droolerz” is a new song and has an amusing lyric: “We could play drums and eat lobster at the opera.”  And the way the delivery comes across is enjoyable.  The chorus also wants to be fun

Dance in the back yard, lets party
Let out all our demons, in the heat
Hang out on the lawn, in the dark
Naked in the shower, till dawn

But the way it’s sung is such a downer I can’t stand it.  Maybe its the synths–but I feel like the song is struggling and failing to be bigger than it is.  It all feels really sad to me.

[READ: April 15, 2016] “Distant Relations”

Sometimes it’s easy to tell that a piece in the New Yorker is an excerpt.  And sometimes you just hope it is.  And in this case, my hope was founded.  “Distant Relations” is a chapter from Pamuk’s book The Museum of Innocence, (like this excerpt, it was translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely).

The main reason I assumed it was an excerpt was because of one or two lines in the early section of this story.  The ending, while ambiguous, could have been a (relatively unsatisfying) ending, but those hints that there was more really made me want there to be more.

The story begins with the narrator talking about his fiancée Sibel.  It was 1975 and she had just noticed a purse in a shop window (by Jenny Colon).  He made a note to go back and get the purse.  Although they are in Turkey, both protagonists have been abroad,  He studied in America, while Sibel studied in Paris.

The next day he decided to go to the shop and buy the purse.  It was owned by a distant relative.  She wasn’t there when he went in, but instead there was a beautiful young woman there.  Before the transaction was finished, he recognized who it was.  It was his “cousin” Füsun.  I put cousin in quotes because it turns out that she is very very distantly related.

They catch up a bit–she explains that she is studying for university entrance exams.  She comes to the shop to meet new people and to help out.  He buys the purse and that’s that.

Until that night when he tells his mother about seeing her.  She explains that Füsun’s family are more like in-laws, but that they have always been very poor.  “Aunt Nesibe” Füsun’s mother, had always liked the narrator’s mother , and so his mother tried to help out as often as possible–giving her sewing work and the like.

But that all ended when the narrator’s mother learned that Nesibe had encouraged her daughter to enter a beauty pageant.  Thereby branding Füsun with the label of whore and making Nesibe look disgraceful in the eyes of her family.

The narrator returns to Sibel.  He explains that they are indeed engaged.  They are so engaged, that Sibel has agreed to sleep with him–making her somewhat daring but also showing that she really trusts him.  When they meet for dinner that night he gives her the Jenny Colon bag, very proud of himself.  And that’s when she reveals that the bag is a fake.  And she hopes he didn’t pay a lot for it..

The next day he returned the bag.  Füsun was there again.  She is dismayed by the fraud, but agrees to refund his money.  Until she begins crying, explaining how she really isn’t an employee there.  She says that he can’t talk to his relative about what happened, or she’ll just get mad at him.  So Füsun agrees to get him the money.  And she asks where she should deliver it.  And that’s when he gives an answer that could cause everything to come tumbling down.

As I say, it could end there, but there’s a few things he says that made me think it was a much longer story. And I may just have to track it down.  Incidentally Pamuk was the first Turk to win the Nobel Prize in 2006, so, there’s another reason to check him out, right?