I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: MIKE SCHIFLET-“00:00:00:00” (2018).

At the end of every year publications and sites post year end lists.  I like to look at them to see if I missed any albums of significance.  But my favorite year end list comes from Lars Gottrich at NPR.  For the past ten years, Viking’s Choice has posted a list of obscure and often overlooked bands.  Gottrich also has one of the broadest tastes of anyone I know (myself included–he likes a lot of genres I don’t).  

Since I’m behind on my posts at the beginning of this year, I’m taking this opportunity to highlight the bands that he mentions on this year’s list.  I’m only listening to the one song unless I’m inspired to listen to more.

Mike Schiflet released a 24 hour drone composition this year called Tetracosa.  This is the opening movement from it.  It is fifteen and a half minutes of slightly disconcerting drone composed of “effervescent guitar, blasted noise and electro-acoustic detritus.”

The drone is surprisingly “fast-paced” if that can be said of something without a beat.  The sounds and textures change and undulate at a pretty good clip.  At times it feels soothing, but then it throws in a note that pushes things a little off-kilter.  At times it is soothing but then comes zapping electronics which would certainly make for restless sleep.

I cannot imagine listening to this for 24 hours, although it would be a fascinating day if you did.

[READ: January 4, 2019] “Philosophy of the Foot”

This is the first story of the year and Soomro’s first published story.

It is set in Karachi and there is a boatload of subtext in this story.  As well, of course, as a lot of cultural information that I don’t understand.

Amer is an adult male (the younger boy calls him “uncle”) who stops to talk to the shoe repair boy. The boy has a cart and equipment and he takes great care of the shoes he has.   He is very knowledgeable.

Amer goes into his apartment and talks to his mother asking if they have anything for the shoe boy.  The ayah (a native maid or nursemaid employed by Europeans in India) suggests that Amer’s father had a trunk full of shoes which they could have sold.  Instead, Amer takes an old pair of his father’s shoes to be repaired. 

The boy is impressed with the shoes–they are expensive, leather, not made locally.  He is also impressed with Amer’s father–from what he can read by the shoes.  He calls him a precise man who wore his soles out in the center–he knew what he wanted.  The boy look at Amer and says he wears out his shoe s on the side because he is indecisive and worried too much about others.

When Amer goes back to his apartment, his mother is disgusted that offices are being put in across the street from them.  This is terrible, but it is especially terrible because of how far they have fallen.  She says they are tearing their old house down soon.  Amer is concerned and asks about the trunk in the old house.

His mother says the trunk is in the house.  This in when things get rather confusing.  The mother may be confused herself or she is in denial or maybe Amer is in denial.  She says things like your father promised me the house.  He would give it to a stranger sooner than his brother.  She says she has something that shows that the house is theirs.   It is in that same trunk?.

His mother bemoans the way they left “What did we take?  The clothes on our backs.  And then they wouldn’t let us in.  To Our own house!  Of course it’s there.”

Amer repeats that they took everything that wasn’t nailed down.  Why wouldn’t they have taken the trunk.  But Amer gives up: It was decided long ago.

And why did they leave exactly?  It’s unclear, although Amer recalls pictures of his father with such people as Yasir Arafat, Ida Amin, Princess Diana.  Was this a political coup?

His mother also criticizes a friend of Amer’s who was picking up boys from the street and pimping them to others.  Amer balks that the guy wasn’t doing that and that he hardly knew the guy anyhow.

Amer returns to the boy who reveals that he could sell Amer’s father’s shoes.  Amer initially says he can’t sell his father’s possessions, but after rethinking, he decides that if the boy scan sell the shoes, he will take the boy out for dinner.

During the second half of the story Amer and the boy go to dinner and then stop by the old house.  They hop the fence and look around.  But everything is rubble and dust (how long could this have been?)  The first floor has crumbled away to the walls.

As Amer shows the boy around they get closer.  Amer says he must listen to his feet which tell him to stay right where he is.  It’s a nice call back to the boys own words about listening to your feet.

There is so much left unspoken, unstated and unresolved.