SOUNDTRACK: PICTUREHOUSE-“Sunburst” (1998).
Picturehouse drummer Johnny Boyle was in the Irish Drummers book. I was unfamiliar with them, but apparently they were pretty huge back in the late 1990s (at least in Ireland). Boyle played on this album (Karmarama) and the follow up.
“Sunburst” was apparently all over Irish radio when it came out. After a fun opening drumfill, this song falls into a gentle indie rock vein. There’s some lovely harmonies, some nice gravelly vocals from singer Dave Brown and a big soaring “what a day” chorus.
The end of the song bops along on series of bah bah bahs and and a tasty fuzzy guitar solo.
It’s a delightful jangly pop song and was understandably a big hit
[READ: March 15, 2021] “Girl with Lizard”
I was sure that I had read this story, or something like it, before. But this is the first story by this author that I have read. This story and the resulting short story collection Flights of Love were translated by John E. Woods.
The story concerns a boy and a painting. It was a painting of a girl looking at a lizard on the beach. His mother and father called it “The Girl with the Lizard” and his mother referred to the girl in the painting as “The Jewish Girl.” The painting played a large role in the boy’s childhood. He napped under the painting every day during nap time. He became very familiar with the details of the painting, which had a pride of place in his father’s office.
He became so familiar with it that when asked to describe a painting in detail for school, he was excited to write about this one. He stared at the painting and took in all the details. He marveled that when he was little he had to look up at the girl and now that he was older the two were at eye level with each other.
His father admired the essay but told him that the painting was very important and it would be much better if people didn’t know they had it. He said it was valuable and din;t want anyone to steal it. He refused to say anything more about it and over the boy’s life, he never learned the provenance of the painting, But his father certainly believed it was valuable.
His father was a well respected lawyer, but when the boy turned14, his father left his job under cloudy circumstances. They moved to a much smaller place and struggled with money. But they never let go of that painting.
The boy moved to a new school and decided to be someone different–more aloof, a little bolder. He won over a popular girl who was experienced. When they finally slept together, he was terrible and that left him embarrassed.
He sought solace in an art museum and saw a painting by René Dalmann called “At the Beach.” Much of the rest of the story is devoted to this (presumably fictional) surrealist artist. For instance, “At the Beach” was surreal with a naked woman on a beach doing a handstand, although one of her legs was made of wood, He couldn’t tell if it was the same girl as in his painting, but he felt a kinship with the artist.
When he returned home he asked his father who painted their painting. His father demurred and said nothing. And when the boy asked why they didn’t sell the painting since they needed money, his father said it was the only thing that they were holding on to, that it was going to be his inheritance.
The narrator bought a book on René Dalmann and flipped through it.
During the boy’s third year at university, his father died. His mother was already planning where she would move–to a small apartment for widows. When he asked her what she was doing with the painting, she said he should just take it.
He hung it up in his flat at school. A girl that he started dating said she liked the painting and wondered who the girl was. She then asked who the painted and he honestly didn’t know. He told her a similar lie that his father told him–he didn’t want to know if it was valuable–that would just stress him out.
But she knew someone who was an art major–he could surely help track down the artist.
The art student believed it was a Dalmann. He continued to read the Dalmann biography. There was a fascinating story about Dalmann and the Nazis. This story coincided with his father who (the boy found out) was removed from his job for giving the death penalty to a solider who was found guilty of helping Jews escape the police.
The accusations were untrue, his mother said. And his father rebutted everything in writing. But everything he said made it sound worse. The connection to Dalmann is tangential but convincing.
I really enjoyed this story and was completely rapt by it, But i found the ending upsetting.
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