I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: BILL CALLAHAN-“Small Plane” (Field Recordings, November 11, 2013).

Many episodes in the Field Recordings series travel far and wide to exotic locations.  For this Field Recording [Bill Callahan Sings ‘Small Plane’ In A Serene City] Bill Callahan travel to exotic downtown New York City.

When we first approached Bill Callahan to do a Field Recording in New York City, we asked him if he had any special place in mind. His reply surprised me: “A community garden.” I guess I’d stereotyped him in my head, because after all those years of dark, thoughtful songwriting — first as Smog and then on the pensive records he’s made under his own name — I’d imagined a library, someplace quiet and dark.

The video starts with the hustle and bustle of the city and then slowly moves into a quiet, peaceful garden, complete with a pond (and turtles jumping into it), birds, tomatoes, and a microphone.

As it turned out, the brightly lit 6th & B Community Garden, with its lush greenery and mellow wildlife, provided just the right setting. The noise of cabs, buses, trucks and the occasional siren wound up punctuating Callahan’s calm, deep baritone, but he makes it easy to ignore.

He sings about being a lucky man flying this small plane.  And he setting compliments his contentment.  It’s just him and his quiet electric guitar and all is well.

[READ: October 26, 2018] “Waugh”

Last week’s New Yorker story was called “Flaubert Again.”  This week’s is called “Waugh.”  The last one was tangentially about Flaubert but this one is (as far as I can tell) not about Evelyn Waugh at all.

This was one of those fascinating stories that was very simple but in which all of the details about the story were so vague that I couldn’t figure anything about it for many many pages.

This is a story of five unrelated boys who live together–they all pull tricks to make rent.  Rod was their defacto leader–not their pimp exactly, because he tricked too, but more like an elder watchmen.  He was tough and very strict.  You could be kicked out of the house for many infractions, and at the first sign of Sickness.

I assumed that this story was set in the 1970s in San Francisco.

Then one of the boys is named Google, so clearly it can’t be set in the 70s.

A few pages later, they go to a stadium–Minute Maid Park (which I had never heard of) which is home to the Houston Astros.

So, not San Francisco in the 70s then.

We learn various amounts of details about the five guys in the house. How they met and how much they resent every one else in the house for various reasons.

The story follows Poke as he makes his way through life in the Waugh section of Houston.  He gets by with a series of johns and is always careful.  Rod has taken something of  a shine to him because he’s still pretty decent as a person.  Poke learns some devastating news about Rod, but he also has a possible future in line for himself.

Rod mocks him for even thinking about staying with a man who has paid him for sex.  Poke himself also knows this–once a john says love, Poke never sees him again.  But this one is different.  And when he gets the devastating news, he runs to this man for solace.

But how seriously can he take this man–why would a man want Poke in his house anyhow?

And what should he do about Rod, who is too proud to take any help?

Stories with this context and content never end happily, even if there is a bright side somewhere..