SOUNDTRACK: THAO NGUYEN-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #56 (July 28, 2020).
I have enjoyed a lot of music from Thao Nguyen and her band Thao and the Get Down Stay Down. She plays an idiosyncratic type of indie rock that’s catchy but also quirky. Although I haven’t heard much from her lately.
She plays three songs here and she talks a lot between songs. What she has to says is both powerful and meaningful.
For her Tiny Desk (home) concert, Thao Nguyen opens with a somber version of “Temple,” the dance-oriented title track from Thao & The Get Down Stay Down’s new album. The song is an homage to her parents, who were refugees of the Vietnam War. Thao sings from the perspective of her mother, honoring their hard-fought freedom and their hopes that their daughter is blessed with the ability to pursue her own happiness. She recorded it as a trio with cellists (and neighbors) Elisabeth Reed and Andy Luchansky. It’s a powerful rendition that celebrates, in Thao’s words, “being queer and being out in my career, something that being out publicly has caused a lot of turmoil and unrest in my own life.”
I hadn’t heard the original of “Temple” before this, but after, I had to give it a listen. The recorded version is faster and a lot more dancey. This spare version is quite striking and really brings the lyrics to the fore. Thao plays the guitar and the addition of Reed and Luchansky makes the song far more somber. She said they created this version just for Tiny Desk “because you deserve nice things.”
She says she’s been reading about addressing anti-black racism in Asian and Vietnamese culture. She has become more educated about what has allowed Southeast Asian refugees to settle in America. Black civil rights leaders, the Black Power movement for directly and informed change in immigration law and made it less racist.
We also hear “Pure Cinema” from Temple which has another interesting twisting riff that she plays quietly as she sings. She also plays a slightly atonal guitar solo which is really interesting, too.
She ends with a mandolin version of “Departure” from her 2016 album, A Man Alive. Once again there’s a cool riff and she does some really cool slides up the fretboard as she plays. I’ve not heard mandolin playing like this before. I’d love for her and Chris Thile to do a mandolin show together.
[READ: July 31, 2020] “Heirlooms”
This story felt a lot like an excerpt. I often wonder if pieces in the New Yorker are excerpts–usually when a story doesn’t feel like it ends properly. This one actually ended pretty satisfyingly, but it just felt like there could be a lot more.
So this is an excerpt from Washington’s forthcoming novel Memorial.
I had read a story from Washington back in January that I really liked. I’m not sure if that story is also from the novel, but it features a main character who is similar to the one in this excerpt.
The narrator is a man named Ben. His boyfriend Mike has just left for Japan to be with his dying father. Although the same day that Mike left, Mike’s mother Mitsuko came to visit. This is not, apparently, a coincidence.
So this excerpt shows Ben trying to cohabitate with his boyfriend’s mother whom he has never met before.
Ben is angry at Mike. Both because he has left his mother here, but also because Mike’s father left him for Japan when Mike was a teenager. Mike hadn’t heard from him in over a decade, but he rushed off to him.
The night before he left, they had a fight. It’s possible they might have even been on the verge of breaking up. That, of course,made Mitsuko’s presence even more awkward.
Ben and Mitsuko have an amusingly polite yet contentious time together. Mitsuko is no fool and she suffers no fools.
When he asks how her day was she replies
How was my day, Mitsuko says.
My son leaves the country the morning after I arrive, she says.
He leaves me with I don’t know who for I don’t know how long, she says.
I haven’t seen him in years, she says, and he’s off looking for my ex-husband, who is rotting from cancer as we speak.
My day was fucking phenomenal, Mitsuko says.
Mike texts him from Japan and asks how things are. Ben replies: “How the fuck do you expect?”
Later she asks how he met Mike. She guesses Grindr but he says no, it was at a get together of mutual friends.
Living with Mitsuko is, in other words, entirely unlike living with her son, whose gayness she is comfortable with, or at least not entirely uncomfortable with, or at least less disagreeable about than my own parents, probably.
He doesn’t spend a lot of time with her but he learns thing about her (and Mike). She has nice clothes while Mike wears the same three things every day.
Mostly Mitsuko cooks. Mike is also a cook–in a diner. But Mitzuko is far more traditional. Ben doesn’t know anything about cooking–he usually stays out of the kitchen. But she is happy to show him how to cook. He gasps as he watches her slice a chicken in half with one swing of the cleaver.
When Mike texts later that night Ben says he dismembered a chicken with his mother
Mike writes ??? But doesn’t ask about his mother. Nor does he say when he’s coming bacl. As the excerpt comes to a close, Mitsuko has been living with Ben for two months.
It’s a real set up for the rest of the novel.
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