SOUNDTRACK: JAZMINE SULLIVAN-“Stupid Girls” (Field Recordings, August 12, 2014).
NPR and Jazmine Sullivan were in New Orleans’for the Essence Music Festival.
I’m intrigued that this Field Recording [Jazmine Sullivan Fades A New Orleans Barber Shop] is the second one set in a barbershop (technically, this is the first one as I have been watching them in backwards order).
This barbershop, Claer-Vue, is just a few blocks from the Superdome, just off Canal Street. It has been in business since 1948. It is a men’s barbership and I know that a barbershop is part of the culture but nearly every man waiting to get their hair cut has really short hair already–like closely buzzed. Are they hanging out or do they get it cut daily?
I had never heard of Jazmine, but she was apparently known to at least some of the patrons
When she walked in, patrons and barbers alike were wary. But they knew who she was, from hit songs like “Bust Your Windows” and “Holding You Down (Goin’ in Circles).” And when she began to sing, wearing her powerhouse instrument lightly, everyone ceded her a floor that had been previously occupied by a heated debate about college football.
With just an acoustic guitar accompanying her, she sings her beautiful song. Her voice is clear and pretty and devoid of all the trills and filigree of pop singers.
To a roomful of captivated men, she sang a brand new song, “Stupid Girls,” that warns women to be careful with their hearts.
You can see most of the men nodding along. Most are deferential, with side-eyed glances. There’s polite applause at the end, but Jazmine is pretty pleased with herself–as she should be.
[READ: September 14, 2018] “Cecilia Awakened”
Tessa Hadley continues to make wonderful stories where nothing seems to happen, but there is a lot going on internally.
Like the way this one starts:
Cecilia awakened from her childhood while she was on holiday in Italy, the summer she turned fifteen. It was not a sexual awakening, or not exactly–rather, an intellectual or imaginative one.
Cecilia is described as an odd child, but one who fit in perfectly with the oddity of her parents. Her father worked at a university library and her mother, Angela, wrote historical novels. Most of all they both loved the past. When they had Cecilia–late in their lives–they did not feel any need to conform to society any more than they already did.
Cecilia soon enough began to hate children’s parties–preferring a museum or a castle. She collected stamps and by the time she was nine had read Middlemarch and most of Dickens. “Her teachers encouraged her and showed her off but didn’t like her, with her curious mixture of assurance and shy clumsiness.”
We learn some wonderfully awkward details about Angela as a child and her resistance to her parents’ modernity, but this story is about Cecilia.
They were in Florence and Cecilia woke up one morning feeling as if she were in the wrong skin. She felt trapped. Trapped in the sheets, trapped in the hotel room (she was on a pullout bed). She also felt awkward about the hotel. It was her parents’ favorite hotel, and they believed they were fondly remembered guests. But Cecilia thought she has detected a flash of distaste on the proprietress’ face Or maybe it was just indifference.
Cecilia looked at her sleeping parents and tried to find comfort in their familiarity but she realized that her mother just looked shabby. Her clothes, even her sleeping clothes were old and frayed. Nothing like the glamorous signorella. Even breakfast didn’t dispel these thoughts. The Italian girls at the next table were younger and looked right, they looked worldly. She felt that she and her parents were out of the world. When she dripped hot chocolate onto her shirt she cried and said everything was ruined.
And it was ruined. Everywhere she looked she felt hostile glances directed at her, as if she and her parents weren’t welcome. She’d always felt her family was discriminating but “didn’t a discriminating tourist look much like an undiscriminating one?”
They finally gained access to the Uffizi Gallery. But the paintings that Cecilia longed to see were suddenly exposed. There was so much nakedness–bodies stripped for torture or crucifixion. She looked to see if her parents were as humiliated as she was but they were enraptured by the paintings.
On their last day, the cloud lifted somewhat. They went to a church and she was almost able to enjoy it. Partially because the holiday was nearly over. She seemed to loosen up, to become less tense. And her parents noticed. They were grateful for the reprieve. They toured the church as they had always done with her father reading the guidebook as Angela pointed out oddities and characters in the margins.
And then the music of plainsong emerged from the crypt below. They had wanted do go downstairs, but Angela was concerned that since the music had begun they weren’t welcome. Indeed as they headed down the stairs, looking deferential of course, a monk tried to block their way. (The description of him is excellent). And Cecilia was sure that he was focusing his glare at her.
All the awkwardness came flooding back at her. She made any excuse–period pains?–to leave. But would her parents let her be by herself in Florence?
Another masterful story from Hadley.
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