I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SHARON VAN ETTEN-“Silent Night” (2009).

There’s been quite a lot of songs coming out for Amazon Soundtracks lately.  This Christmas song comes from Eric Paschal Johnson’s short film The Letter.

There have been probably hundreds of recordings of “Silent Night,” one of the few Christmas songs that I feel should not be tampered with. It’s a beautiful song and if done right can be incredibly moving.

Sharon’s version is really fascinating to me.  It’s not especially traditional.  Indeed, it feels very contemporary.  The music is a kind of throbbing bass note, almost like a slow, dance song.  It pulses and changes pitch, but all quite slowly.

And yet, the song doesn’t feel like a dance song.  Sharon doesn’t sing it like a pop song at all.  Rather, she sings gently in a deep register–very earnestly.  After a verse, a second vocalist comes in and adds some dreamy backing vocals.

For the third verse, a simple drum rhythm is added.  The song is now much fuller than when it started and yet it’s not all that different.

It’s really quite a lovely update to the song and an all around excellent version.

[READ: December 14, 2019] “Natural Light”

This year, S. ordered me The Short Story Advent Calendar.  This is my fourth time reading the Calendar.  I didn’t know about the first one until it was long out of print (sigh), but each year since has been very enjoyable.  Here’s what they say this year

The Short Story Advent Calendar is back! And to celebrate its fifth anniversary, we’ve decided to make the festivities even more festive, with five different coloured editions to help you ring in the holiday season.

No matter which colour you choose, the insides are the same: it’s another collection of expertly curated, individually bound short stories from some of the best writers in North America and beyond.

(This is a collection of literary, non-religious short stories for adults. For more information, visit our Frequently Asked Questions page.)

As always, each story is a surprise, so you won’t know what you’re getting until you crack the seal every morning starting December 1. Once you’ve read that day’s story, check back here to read an exclusive interview with the author.

Want a copy?  Order one here.

I’m pairing music this year with some Christmas songs that I have come across this year.

This story played around with linear reality in a number of ways.

It opens with the narrator telling us her mother is dead, but that she keeps getting emails from her.

She wanted me to know that a small penis size was not an indictment against my future happiness….  She needed some money for an emergency that had unfolded, totally beyond her control, somewhere at an airport in Nigeria.

The narrator could not bring herself to flag the spam.

She also continued to wear her wedding ring even though they had been divorced for a year.  Her husband had said more than once “I can’t imagine t he man who would have an easy time living with you.”  There are a few instances where the ex-husband comes up in the story which really flesh out what’s happening.  The ring wasn’t a hope for reconciliation.  Rather, it was a reminder that her unhappiness was not only a chemical dysfunction.

Although this is darkly comic, her mother’s recurrence after death comes to her in a very different, more serious, way.

She was walking through a museum.  She was not there for the exhibit which catered to “a nostalgia for certain era in New York … shows like these area dime a dozen here.”   But she had time to spare on her way through the museum so she decided to stop and look.

In one of the pictures, she saw a room full of women.  The scene was unmistakable–a bare mattress, fire escape, litter, and the tell-tale rubber tubing.  Then she realized that one of the women in the photo was her mother.

Her mother had lived in New York City fro six unfortunate months.  When the narrator asked her father about that time, he used a dismissive gesture and said nothing.  Her father was fond of cliches as conversation starters, enders and continuers–“after you pulled up your bootstraps, you reaped what you sowed.”  Her father is also a surprisingly compelling character despite his limited vocabulary.

After recovering from the shock of seeing her mother in this photo, she called her father.  He said that she was sure a looker and it must be a pretty picture.  But when the narrator describes the photo, he assures her she was mistaken.

She decided to reach out to the photographer.  She was told that the photographer was unlikely to respond, but she wrote back almost immediately and invited her to her studio.

The photographer told her that when this exhibit was first shown many years ago her mother came to it and dressed up: “Irony was not valid for her.”

The narrator is obviously stunned to  find out her mother knew of the picture.  The photographer says that her mother was a delight to shoot.  Indeed, she’d like t shoot he narrator as well.

The narrator has so many thoughts swirling around her head.  I really enjoyed the whole conceit of family members coming back from the dead like this.

The calendar says, It’s December 14. Kathleen Alcott, author of America Was Hard to Find, splurged on the annual membership.