SOUNDTRACK: LEDISI-“Pieces of Me” (Field Recordings, August 27, 2017).
I only ever heard of Ledisi from a Tiny Desk Concert. And here she is again.
I still haven’t heard of her anywhere else, but she still sounds amazing.
I absolutely love that she is singing from a balcony and that people start lining the streets to see and hear her. How cool would that be? Too bad she doesn’t sing a few more for them. But heck, it’s New Orleans, things like that probably happen all the time. Right?
There’s too much happening in New Orleans’ French Quarter — especially on a holiday weekend, and especially when hundreds of thousands of people are in town for the annual Essence Music Festival. There are living statues and five-piece bands and drinks a foot-and-a-half tall and people from all over the world ambling in the middle of the street.
But Ledisi, singing on a balcony in her hometown, stopped the whole thing dead. For a few minutes, with a song about the complications of being a woman, she held an unsuspecting, audibly appreciative crowd in the palm of her hand.
In this Field Recording [Ledisi Steals The Show] she sings a song I don;t know, “Pieces of Me.” But the crowd seems to. They even start interacting with her. So she shouts down to them, “I don’t hear you singing.” So they do, they sing with her.
As the song ends, she says, “Y’all sound good down there.” And then as they start trying to talk to her she says, “I didn’t know I was gonna be out here…. I was trying to get something to drink.”
If that was someone I liked I would be totally psyched if that happened to me.
[READ: January 6, 2017] “My Curls Have Blown All the Way to China”
This story looks deep into the psyche of a woman who has just been informed that her husband is leaving her.
The story is full of lists: like a list of clothes to buy for him and for her–she is preparing to find out what clothes they should bring on their trip to Spain.
That’s when he tells her.
During the factory outing to Netanya , a month ago–you remember–when you didn’t feel like going with me, I met this woman there, and afterward it turned out that we kept seeing each other and now, well, I’ve decided to leave you, even though I’m very sorry about it. Honestly. But what can I do Bracha? I just have no choice.
Okay, so that’s pretty fucked up.
Rather than going to Netanya, Bracha was getting her hair cut short–and her long curls blew away.
She tries to talk to him about it but he keeps getting angry at her. And she doesn’t blame him, because he does have a hard time at work. And when she demands that he tell her why, he gets annoyed and says “you’ll never learn to figure out for yourself when I’m busy and when I’m not in the mood and when not to bother me and to leave me alone in peace.”
Okay, so that’s pretty fucked up, too.
She says she will continue to do things for him around the house until he is gone.
She goes shopping, where the lists continue:
Challah.
Eggs.
Instant coffee.
Garbage bags.
Soap for the dishwasher.
A man before sex and a man right after are entirely different creatures.
The way to keep him from wandering is to be an entire harem for him. Sexual variety: every woman has it.
Sex and candor: opposites?
But then she thinks about the things she won’t have to do anymore. Like wear that stiff brassiere with the two hole in the cups,. Or when he says “Today I want you to do the Chalice to me” (what on earth?). “And I don’t have to pretend to come anymore.”
As she goes about her day she thinks of all the things she hated about him (his smell) and also wonders who the woman is–is she standing right in front of her?
She also knows–from the smell of his clothes that the new woman wears Poison, just like she used to. She stops noticing the men on the streets, seeing only the women and wondering about them–what they are wearing underneath their clothes.
I really enjoyed this story. Sadly, the ending is unsatisfying, but since nothing really happens, I guess any ending would be,
This was translated from the Hebrew by Maggie Goldberg Bar-Tura.
I Just Read About That... 
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