I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: PHOEBE BRIDGERS-“Kyoto” (2020).

I’ve heard this song a bunch and I like it more each time.

Phoebe Bridgers’ songs tend to be sad lyrically (and sometimes musically), but this song just overflows with wonder, melody and (apparent) happiness.

The song starts with a gentle keyboard but soon adds a fast bassline as Phoebe sings quietly.  Then pow, a big joyous chorus comes in.  Horns play a gorgeous melody and Phoebe harmonies (with herself?).  The way she sings “tokyp skies” gets me every time.

When the verse returns it feels a bit louder.  But the song is about her complicated feelings for her estranged father:

With my little brother
He said you called on his birthday
You were off by like ten days
But you get a few points for tryin’

The chorus resumes feeling even bigger and happier and yet the outro, featuring those same ebullient horns:

I wanted to see the world
Through your eyes until it happened
Then I changed my mind
Guess I lied
I’m a liar
Who lies
‘Cause I’m a liar

Phoebe said that this song was originally slow but she was tried of singing slow songs so she punched this one up.  It really reflects the mixed feelings you can have for someone.  And if you don’t care so much about the words, it’s a catchy gem.

[READ: June 23, 2020] “Dancing Bear”

This month’s issue of The Walrus is the Summer Reading issue and features two pieces of fiction, one memoir and three poems.

The first piece is the memoir, written by Dimitri Nasrallah.   I had assumed that this would be a First Nations piece with a title like that.  But it is far from that.  It starts in Beirut.

The neighborhood where Dimitri grew up was a battleground between the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Israel military so his family left for Greece when he was four.

He stayed quiet while they tried to acclimate–they felt covered by the stench of war and wanted to keep a low profile. Then one night his father took the family out to the square.  As they walked around marveling at the sights, he saw a crowd gathered a round a man.

He was showing off a giant brown stanigng on its hind legs, muzzled.  The man made the bear “talk” and dance  Everyone laughed.  But that night Dimitri couldn’t get the sight of the bear out of his mind.  He imagined that he was the bear–muzzled, not wanting to dance.

The next day he told his father that he felt bad for the bear.

His father said “When you grow up don’t forget that feeling.”

But that’s not the end.

He studied at the American International school.  He met children of embassy workers and the U.S. military.  There were also Arab kids on the move from conflicts.  In school they played soccer–dark kids verses light kids.  At first he was proud to be on the sark team because they often won. Then one of the white kids told him to go back to his own country and made a derogatory remark about his skin color.

He was ten the first time he was called the n-world. The boy who said it was a close friend (!).  Dimitri danced around the issue by saying the friend had the wrong kind of black person in mind.  But the friend said he was still an n-word.

He was insulted even further in a Cub Scout pack.  A friend’s father was the leader and pulled him aside and told him he was disrespecting the American flag when he said the pledge.  Dimitri quit at the end of the year.

He now lives in Montreal and has an eight-year-old son.  He wants to tell his son not to deflect hate on a technicality.  To tell him that it is very easy to dehumanize a person and that schoolyard insults will link up with other insults until they become enormous.  But paranoia is a cage that we back ourselves into.

For now his son doesn’t see anything wrong.