I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: SHARON VAN ETTEN-“Radio Cure” (from WILCOvered, UNCUT Magazine November 2019).

The November 2019 issue of UNCUT magazine had a cover story about Wilco.  It included a 17 track CD of bands covering Wilco (called WILcovered or WILCOvered).  I really enjoyed this collection and knew most of the artists on it already, so I’m going through the songs one at a time.

Sharon Van Etten continues down her more ambient and mellow style with this cover of “Radio Cure.”

She plays everything–keys and piano–hushed and echoed while her voice soars around the song.  About a third of the way in, the drums kick in, giving it a but of oomph.

I really like the original of this song and I don’t quite like the direction she went with this cover.

[READ: February 17, 2020] “With the Beatles”

I have realized that I really enjoy reading Murakami’s words.  I don’t always understand what’s happening.  I don’t often understand why one part of a story is put with another part. And often when I’m done I’m not entirely sure what happened.  But I really enjoy the journey.

This was one where some parts seemed mysteriously tucked into the story.  It kind of all works thematically, but it’s still a bit disjointed.  Nevertheless, I enjoyed reading the whole thing.

The narrator starts by saying that he doesn’t mind getting older, it’s seeing other people who have gotten older that is so weird.  Really it forces him to admit that his youthful dreams are gone.

He will never forget a girl (a woman who used to be a girl) whom he didn’t actually know.  It was 1964 and this girl was hurrying down the hallway of their school, skirt aflutter, clutching the LP of With the Beatles–the original British version.  Their black and white faces were facing out as she ran.  He has turned this memory into a beautiful moment–he thinks he remembers the way she smelled even (if that is possible).  The moment was thrilling.

But he never saw her again in two more years at school.

He has met many women over the yeas and always tried to recreate that moment to no avail.

The Beatles were huge in Japan, like everywhere else, and he knew the songs but he wasn’t really a fan–he was more into jazz.  When he finally sat down to listen to the album in his 30’s he wasn’t all that impressed.  Six songs were covers and none of the originals were all that interesting except for Paul’s “All My Loving.”  Nothing on it was as good as the first album, but people’s unquenchable desire for more Beatles music sent it to number 1 right away.

By 1965 he’d acquired a girlfriend, Sayoko.  She wasn’t into The Beatles either–she like mellow music like Percy Faith and Andy Williams.  He recalls her white dress, her shampoo, the feel of her wire bra (a bra back then was more lie a fortress than an item of underwear).

Out of nowhere he tells us that.  Several years later in 1968 their homeroom teacher hanged himself –an ideological impasse was the cause of his suicide.  “It’s true that in 1968 people took their own lives because they had hit a wall ideologically.”

Sayoko had a younger sister who didn’t like him and an older brother whom he didn’t see much.

He met the brother in the autumn.  He was supposed to pick her up at home, but when he rang the bell, no one answered.  He rang the doorbell a couple of times and the brother appeared, sleepy and dopey.  He invited him in, but said that no one else was home.  He offered to make coffee and asked him to wait.

The narrator was a little uncomfortable just siting there, so he grabbed a textbook from his school bag.  The brother asked what he was reading and he said the story “Spinning Gears” by Akutagawa.

Then the brother asked if he would read it aloud to him.  Obviously the narrator was taken back.  But he agreed and read the “Airplane,” section which was about 8 pages long and ended with “Won’t someone be good enough to strangle me as I sleep?”  The author killed himself right after writing this line.

The brother seemed pleased by the reading and told the narrator that he read very well.  The brother said he should stay for 30 more minutes.

That’s when the brother revealed that sometimes his memory would stop.  Stop?  Like at 3PM his memory would cut out and then it was 7PM and he had no memory of the last four hours. Like if you were playing a record and the music jumped form the middle of the second movement to the middle of the third.

The doctor said it was a genetic condition.  He’d pretty much stopped going to school because he was afraid what he might do during the gaps.  Like Jekyll and Hyde?  Yes, although the doctor said that kind of thing was very unlikely to happen.  Nevertheless, he gave up on college and pretty much just stayed in the house.

The narrator left and later that day his girlfriend called and said they were supposed to meet next Sunday.

Eighteen years later he meet the brother again. The brother recognized him in a crowded square.  The narrator didn’t recognize the brother at first but soon they got to talking.

The brother revealed that Sayoko was dead.  She had killed herself.  She had been married with two children and killed herself at age 32.  Nobody knows why she did it.

The narrator had broken up with her near that spot–she just never “rang his bell.”  He knows they would have broken up eventually, but it still felt bizarre knowing that she was no longer alive.

Then the brother mentioned the story and said he was such a good reader that day. When the narrator said he was a writer of sorts, the brother thought that made sense.  The narrator asked him if he ever got over the memory disease.  The brother said yes he did.  It was supposed to get worse over time but for him it just stopped happening.  He felt calmer and was able to get on with his life.  He went to college and got a job and everything.

And that’s more or less how the story ends.  It’s not much of story, but i enjoyed reading it.

This story was translated from the Japanese by Philip Gabriel.