I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: ALISA WEILERSTEIN-“Prelude from Bach’s Suite No. 5” (Field Recordings, February 16, 2012).

One thing I love about the Field Recordings series is the wonderfully unexpected places they have the performers play.  Like this Field Recording [Alisa Weilerstein: Playing Bach With The Fishes] which is set at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

Strategically positioned above a tank full of stingrays, Weilerstein unpacked her cello to serenade the sea creatures — and dozens of pleasantly surprised aquarium visitors — with music by Johann Sebastian Bach. She chose the Prelude from Bach’s Suite No. 5 for unaccompanied cello. The music’s tranquil power and meandering melodies became an extraordinary soundtrack to the majestic rays as they roamed through the water, rising occasionally to catch a note or two.

The music is sublime–sad and powerful but ever so fluid.  And the setting is just perfect–you can almost see the fish appreciate it.

[READ: February 2, 2018] “Four Fictions”

Breytenbach confounds me with his stories.  This is a collection of four really short pieces and while I enjoyed parts of some of them, overall they were a big huh?

Race
This appears to be a race through the sea?  On foot?  A tractor charges into the waves and a Jeep follows. The route will take them through the sea to Germany and back to Stockholm.  Their friend Sven is running in the race (he’s from Lapland).  When the race is over he still has to run through the house to the balcony.  When they gather for the results , how many drowned, etc, the story ends with another man removing his top hat and his hair looking sunken and dry.

What?

Suicide I (For Jim)
In this story a man is with his friends.  He has just told them that the earth was hostile, when he fell through the earth to a ledge.  The narrator goes to rescue him but it is too deep so they set up a mountaineers rope. But after being pulled up by t he rope for a few feet, the rescued man let go and plunged into the river below.  Was it a suicide?  Again the last line of the story is really puzzling.

Sense of Values Ho! Mannequins!
I have no idea what this was about.  The opening and closing lines are basically the same.  Mr Heythere refuses to water his lawn because of what the narrator did.  At the fish market, the narrator bought a black swimmer.  He put it in a fishbowl until a few days later, he realized the bowl was yellow with urine.  He started changing the water frequently, but the fish kept getting bigger and bigger (and talking–saying the title of this piece, of course–and wearing glasses?).  Now its in the bath tub and he has taken to pissing through the hedge onto the neighbors’ lawns.   Mr Heythere’s lawn is brittle stubble.  At least he doesn’t eat solids.

Broken Ascension
Here’s another big wtf story.  A man goes to the market to buy a piece of meat.  When he gets home the old man grabs it from him and straps it to the stump of his leg with thongs and buckles.  He jumps out the window and floats up.  But then the guy who bought the meat stops him and the old man plunges back to earth.

I like absurdist stuff, but maybe not as much as I used to.