I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: FRAGILE ROCK-“Smile More” Tiny Desk Family Hour (March 12, 2019).

These next two shows were recorded at NPR’s SXSW Showcase.

The SXSW Music Festival is pleased to announce the first-ever Tiny Desk Family Hour showcase, an evening of music by artists who have played NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert, at Central Presbyterian Church on Tuesday, March 12 from 8-11pm.

It’s hard to talk seriously about Fragile Rock since they are a band of puppets.  Literally.

To say that Fragile Rock sent the evening hurtling sideways would be an understatement, as the band unleashed a torrent of faux-grim hilarity and chaos when it wasn’t urging the audience to shout out its prescribed antidepressants or berating fans for grinning along. (“We don’t appreciate your smiles,” seethed Brently Heilbron, in the persona of wounded frontpuppet Milo S. “You wouldn’t do that to Conor Oberst.”

And yet they are a good punk band and their lyrics have become even more pointed.  Especially this one.  They explain:

This is a song that Nick and I wrote reflecting on the #metoo and #timesup movements (that’s right lady in the back snapping your fingers you are correct).

This is a great punk blast and frankly it’s nice to hear a song sung by the female vocalists instead of the Fred Schneider-sounding male lead singer.

For “Smile More,” the spotlight shifted to Emily Cawood (performing as Briex Cocteau) and Megan Thornton (aka Nic Hole), who spent two minutes savaging the patriarchy. “Don’t tell me to smile more, don’t tell me what my mouth is for, from a man who started every war,” Thornton and her puppet shouted in unison. And, see, here’s the secret to Fragile Rock’s raucous, ridiculous charm: Subtract the puppets, the stage antics and the silliness of all, and you’re still left with some pretty damned good songs.

And nice succinct lyrics:

You could have had it all
You blew it didn’t you
I’m gonna watch you fall and
Never ever pity you
You’re purposeless
Your license is expired
Your services are no longer required

Your time has come and gone….time’s up!

All in two minutes.

[READ: March 14, 2019] Florida

When I started reading this book, I instantly remembered reading “Ghosts and Empties” in the New Yorker.  I assumed and was pleased that this was a full novel built out of that story.  Why?  Because nowhere on this book does it say that these are short stories.   Not on the cover, not on the front page, nor the back page.  It’s somewhere on the fly leaf, but since Groff also writes novels, it’s a bit of an oddity to not say “stories” somewhere on it.  I looked at the Table of Contents, obviously, but just assumed those where chapter headings.

I was exited to read the fuller story of the woman who walks at night.  And then I found out that the next “chapter” was a new story.  It turned out to be a fantastic story.  So that’s all good.  I don’t mind reading short stories at all, it was just a surprise.

It also turned out that I have read five of these short stores before (she is often printed in the New Yorker–the other stories were in different journals which I put in brackets after each title).

“Ghosts and Empties” (New Yorker, July 20, 2015)
I see now that I didn’t really enjoy this story the first time I read it (and yet it stayed with me all these years).  But I did enjoy it more this time (I still find it unsatisfying that the opening parental freakout part is never really addressed).  But basically this is a story in which woman walks around her neighborhood every night and observes things changing–for better or worse.  Old nuns dying, new houses being built, neighbors changing.  All in the heat of Florida.

“At the Round Earth’s Imagined Corners” [Five Points]
I enjoyed this story immensely.  It is the story of Jude, a boy who was raised by a timid mother and a herpetologist father.  There were always snakes in the house (which freaks the boy’s mother out).  His father was a tough man, a racist, and someone who clearly enjoyed reptiles more than humans.  When he went to World War II, the boy’s mother bundled up Jude and they fled for another part of Florida.  She opened a book store and her personality.  They were both happy.  Until his father returned and brought them both home.  Eventually his mother could take no more and she left.  The boy and his father tolerated one other.  Until the father died. The story follows the boy as he grows up, gets married and has a child off his own.  There’s so much detail for such a short story.  He is standoffish like his father was, but he is tender.  And then one day he goes deaf.  What a life she has constructed for this man.

“Dogs Go Wolf” (New Yorker, August 28, 2017)
This is a really weird and wild story.  I enjoyed the way the story worked its way backwards.  Two sisters are on an island.  They are young (four and seven) and they are alone.  Even the dog that was with them has been strangely quiet lately.  The dog was mean and although they missed its companionship they weren’t sad to see it go.  Exactly one day earlier, their mother and her boyfriend Ernesto went out in his boat.  She said they’d be gone an hour or two, but they hadn’t come back at all.  Two days before that the girls were in Fort Lauderdale where their mother excitedly told them they were going on a boat ride.  Before that they lived in Traverse City (Michigan).  Before Traverse City was San Jose.  Before that, Brookline.

“The Midnight Zone” (New Yorker, May 23, 2016)
I’m intrigued that nearly every story that I posted about I felt a little unsatisfied with.  This one was well.  “I found this story to be mostly good but there was something that didn’t resonate with me.”  The story opens with a family staying in an old hunting camp.  They are told that a Florida panther was seen in the camp a few days earlier, but things were pretty quiet for them.  The father/husband gets a call that he has to return home for an emergency.  He said he’d be back in two days.  And so it was just the wife and her two (very) young sons.  Things go pretty smoothly until she tries to change a light bulb and climbs on a spinning stool (duh) and falls off and blacks out.  She is the only adult and the kids are obviously panicked.  What can she/they do?

“Eyewall” [Subtropics]
This is the story of a woman who decides to stay in her old house during a hurricane.  She sits in her house, drinking wine, watching things out her window.  Her neighbor calls to her “but the wind was so loud that his voice was lost, and I felt quite a surge of affection for him.”  She felt rather than saw the power go out.  Then she sees her husband in the doorway (he has been dead for many years).  As the storm goes on, she sees more and more old friends as three-hundred-year-old trees crashed around her.

“For the God of Love, for the Love of God” [American Short Fiction]
Most of these stories are set in Florida, but a couple are set in France.  Amanda and her husband Grant are in France visiting an old friend.  The friend used to be Jenny but was now Genevieve.  Genevieve was married to Manfred and had a son, Leo.  Leo was, in Grant’s words, a “poor kid…everyone always forgets about Leo.”  Leo is four and seems unnaturally focused on things, but he is so quiet that people talk around him without realizing what they say.  He stared at Amanda and asked, “Are you a kid or a mom?”  The answer: “Jesus, Leo.  Neither.  Yet.”  Amanda loves Jenny like a sister, but they are not related–much to Leo’s confusion.   Much to the reader’s confusion, it appears that Grant and Genevieve have something going on as well.  But the excitement for everyone is the arrival of Amanda’s niece, Mina.  She is a gorgeous college student.  Men stare at her and she could easily own the world.  But she is also still sweet enough to play with Leo.  How will Mina react to the older couples that she is clearly, presently, objectively superior to.

“Salvador” [Tin House]
Although most of the stories are set in Florida, this one is set in Salvador.   Helena is her mother’s caregiver.  She has an arrangement with her married sisters. She will look after their mother for 48 weeks a year and then they will give her a month to go on a far-flung vacation (and then report back on all of her dalliances).  This year she has rented an apartment in Salvador.  On a sunny morning she went outside in her nightgown and saw a shopkeeper leering at her.  When she went back inside she believed that the shopkeeper could see everything–she felt like a whore.  Which was mildly ironic, because mostly what she liked to do on thee trips was to pick up young men and have wild experiences with them.  But she felt that every time she went outside she had to contend with this leering man.  Then one day while she was out, a hurricane came across the island and she was buffeted to the ground.  The only one there to save her was the shopkeeper.  Should she go with him?  Does she have any choice?

“Flower Hunters” (New Yorker, November 21, 2016)
This story is set on Halloween.  But the protagonist, a mom, has forgotten about the day entirely.  The last two days she was absorbed in a book by naturalist William Bartram, who traveled through Florida in 1774 (he’s a real person).  And so, although her boys wanted to be ninjas, she had made one a costume that was a long-sleeved shirt tied in the back and a slotted mask.  The boy is calling himself Cannibal Lecture.  In addition to failing Halloween, the woman is also failing at friendship.  Her best friend, Meg, told her she doesn’t want to be her best friend anymore.  I really loved the writing in this story.

Above and Below (New Yorker, June 13 & 20, 2011)
This was the first story by Groff that I had read.  And I really didn’t like it: “This story was surprisingly long.  It just seemed to keep going and going….the story was basically about a girl who seemed to fall hard on her luck and then find some kind of circumstance that picked her back up again. And then up and down and then up and down.  Dumb luck seemed to keep her from hitting rock bottom.”  But I found the story a lot more engaging this time.  I’m still fascinated by the very premise of the story–she just up and gives up on everything.  The writing is really solid and enjoyable though, even if the story is pretty unhappy.  I think the first time I was waiting for something to “happen” and that’s not really something that Groff does.

Snake Stories [Esquire]
This is indeed a series of stories about snakes: “Walk outside in Florida and a snake will be watching you.”  It seems like Florida boys can’t get enough of them–even her kindergartener.  But this story is not all literal snakes because one day the narrator finds a woman in the bushes–she had been raped and left–a staggeringly common occurrence.  But the woman would not accept help of any kind.  So much so that when she returned later with a police officer, the house turned out to be abandoned.   There is hope at the end of the story, but just a little bit.

Yport [Granta]
This was one more story not set in Florida.  It is set in Yport, France.  A woman has brought her two young kids to Yport so she can do research on Guy de Maupassant.  She drags her kids all over to various sites–they are too young to be impressed–but they do get a lot of ice cream.  Over the weeks the mother feels that she is losing any connection to the country and to de Maupassant. And possibly to her boys.  It’s the intrusion form an older couple that offends her but gets her to see that maybe she is not doing them a service bringing them here.

As the story nears the end she relates that she’s not sure why she thought following de Maupassant would be a good idea and she tells a story from her research about how Guy and his friends picked on a student they called Moule à b (essentially Cunt Face).  They physically assaulted him and when he died three days later (unclear if the wounds were from what they did), they celebrated.

When one of her boys says he hates Guy de Maupassant she can’t help but agree with him.

There are many similarities between the mother in this story and many of the others–the mothers wish to be only truthful with their children–damn the consequences.  As well as their ability to up and leave from what is a regular life.

These stories are mostly slow and meandering and if you ‘re willing to give them time, they are often very rewarding.

~~~~~~

This was also a moment when I was having strange coincidences between what I read and the world.

It was in the story that she talks about a cover band playing Led Zeppelin.  I thought it was really funny because I was reading in a Jersey Mike’s and they were playing Led Zeppelin over the PA.  Crazy coincidence.  It was even more so because the song on the radio was Kashmir and she says.

The band on the boardwalk has slid into Kashmir:  “the singer’s accent makes the words go rubbery and bouncy.”

I am a traveler of both time and space : I yam at raveler of boat I’m and spice  

Another weird coincidence:

It was St. Patrick’s Day, so perhaps it’s not unreasonable that the radio was playing Thin Lizzy.  While “Whiskey in the Jar” was on I checked Instagram and my friend from Pennsylvania had just posted a picture of himself standing in Dublin next to the statue of Thin Lizzy front Phil Lynott.  Woah.

And third

I was reading an article in The Walrus about a man who was a big fan of The Barr Brothers (whim I’d not heard of).  And moments later, WXPN announced that the Barr Brothers would be playing the following week in Philadelphia.

Crazy stuff, man, crazy stuff.