SOUNDTRACK: BUCK MEEK-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #185 (March 25, 2021).
Buck Meek is the guitarist for Big Thief. I loved the first Big Thief album, but have found the newer ones to be a little too soft for my liking.
Initially I would have thought that Buck Meek would be a harder guitarist. But I don’t really know that much about his contributions to the band, so it should probably come as no surprise that he writes folky songs. Although even Bob Boilen seems a bit surprised.
The back of a van on a sunny day holding an acoustic guitar is a far cry from the usual setting where I’d see Buck Meek. More likely, I’d be in a dark club; Buck’s intense electric guitar and backing vocals are a part of what makes up my favorite rock band these days, Big Thief. But here, home is Buck’s Toyota Land Cruiser in Topanga Canyon, Calif.
Buck plays a pretty acoustic guitar and his voice is soft and gentle. He reminds me a lot of Nick Drake. He plays three songs from his 2021 album, Two Saviors.
“Pareidolia” is, as Buck Meek explains, “this human instinct to put symbol to stimulus.” He says, “I’ve been spending this time of solitude in the canyon here spending a lot of time observing the clouds and things” — in other words, finding shapes and objects in clouds and objects where none intended to exist and perhaps turning them into stories or songs or just letting your mind wander.
He follows that with the title track “Two Saviors” and “Halo Light,” two more songs that continue the soft and gentle style.
The Texas native has a tender voice with a bit of a yodel and a resplendent way with words. After three songs from Two Saviors, Buck treats us to a new song written in quarantine titled “The Undae Dunes,” once again drawing pictures in the sky, this time of rockets and perhaps an astronaut and a love, all from the back of a Cruiser.
He says that “The Undae Dunes,” is dedicated to the woman he loves who may be an astronaut. She’s applying to the space program. That’s pretty fascinating in and of itself.
I enjoyed this chill Tiny Desk/Van set.
[READ: April 10, 2021] Pobby and Dingan
I had never heard of Ben Rice or this story until one of his other stories was in a New Yorker issue from 2001. I enjoyed that story and when I looked him up, I saw that he had written this story. And nothing else!
Which is weird because this story
was joint winner of the 2001 Somerset Maugham Award and shortlisted for the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize. It has been made into the 2006 film Opal Dream, a 2010 play for children by Catherine Wheels Theatre Company and a 2012 play The Mysterious Vanishment Of Pobby & Dingan for Bristol theatre company Travelling Light.
Perhaps he decided to leave on a high note.
The book is a novella (about 90 easy-to-read pages) set in the opal mining community of Lightning Ridge in New South Wales. That’s over 400 miles from the nearest big city (Brisbane). So while I don’t know if it’s in “the bush,” it’s certainly not suburban.
Lightning Ridge is apparently the opal capital of Australia. Much like during the American gold rush, prospectors flocked to Lighting Ridge to try to get rich. This story is about one such family. The dad, Rex, is the prospector, the mom has followed him here from England. She clearly misses her old life (they refer to her as Pom and her mother as Granny Pom).
The narrator is Ashmol Williamson, a ten or so year old boy. But the story is about his sister Kellyanne.
He thinks that his sister is a fruit loop. Because she is old enough to be going to school but she refuses to admit that her imaginary friends Pobby and Dingan are imaginary. She talks to them constantly. It drives Ashmol mental.
The story opens with Kellyanne telling Ashmol that Pobby and Dingan are maybe-dead. Ashmole says good, that maybe this will make her grow up. But she starts crying. He says they aren’t dead because things that never existed can’t be dead.
But Keyllyanne took their existence very seriously. She talked to them all them time (they were very quiet and only she could hear them). She yelled at her father if he stepped on one of them and she got very mad when Ashmol punched the air where one of them was standing.
Lightning Ridge is small (although when the population is announced at the end of the story I was surprised at just how big it was (about 8,000 people)). Many people are familiar with Kellyanne and Pobby and Dingan, Kids make fun of her, but lot of older people treat her kindly and ask how Pobby and Dingan are today.
But when their dad joins in on the comments about Pobby and Dingan not being real, their mother asks him what’s so real about the opal that he never sees and has never found. What’s the difference? Are they both imaginary if no one can? In order to get back at her (he’s an alcoholic after all) he offers to take Pobby and Dingan to the mines the next day. He even makes like he’s holding their hands,
But when he returned home he forgot to bring them back. Ashmol thinks that’s hilarious, but Kellyanne is freaked out. Their dad says the two are in the truck but she says he’s lying–they’re not anywhere. She insists that they all go back to the mine site to look for them.
Their dad agrees and the three of them returns to the mine. They look all over their site, calling Pobby and Dignan’s names. Well, Ashmol goes with them but he refuses to look for them–he just enjoys the spectacle. As their dad is crawling around, he crosses over the line of his claim and onto the property of Old Sid.
Old Sid is a a nasty man who is always looking for trouble. He already doesn’t like the Williamsons since they’re not from here. And when Rex crosses onto his line, he freaks out. He starts accusing Rex of trying to steal his claim–calling him a ratter. They get into a fight and the police take Rex to prison for the night.
Word spreads fast and the next night someone had spray painted “Burn the Ratters” on their house and set their fence on fire. No one would believe that he was looking for imaginary people–they thought he was crazy.
Kellyanne took all of this very badly. She started to get really sick. She said she was tried and worried and she wouldn’t eat. They called the doctor and he said if she kept it up they’d have to take her to the hospital and feed her with a tube.
Things were really going downhill so Ashmol decided to do something about it. He decided that the way to make Kellyanne better was to look for Pobby and Dignan. He thought that if people really understood why Rex was looking on Sid’s property, they might come around. So Ashmol rides his bike through town and talks to everyone about how Kellyanne is doing poorly and maybe people could pretend to look for her imaginary friends. Maybe that would make her feel better.
Some people mock him. but many people are sympathetic. The next day he sees lots of people around the town looking under bushes and and in all manner of places.
Some people even bring their “nothing” to Kellyanne saying that they’ve found Pobby and Dingan. But Kellyanne says that none of them has found them.
So Ashmol decides to take the whole thing seriously as well. He decides to look for them. And it’s amazing why at he finds.
This story is sweet and sad and more than a little funny (Ashmol is an amusing narrator). There’s some uncomfortable Australian racism in here, which I suppose is realistic for someone living there, but it was ugly to read.
Nevertheless, the way the community comes together is very nice. Even if the ending is unexpected.
I’m curious if the film is any good.
Leave a Reply