SOUNDTRACK: TORRES-“A Proper Polish Welcome” NPR Lullaby SXSW (March 21, 2015).
From March 17-March 21, the SXSW festival raged on. And my friends at NPR Music were there so I didn’t have to be. In past years they have had a nightly recap of their favorite shows of the day. This year they upped the ante by inviting a musician to sing a lullaby. Most of these lullabies occurred in some unexpected outdoor location at 2 or so A.M. after a long day of music.
The final lullaby comes from new to me singer Torres. She has one of my favorite songs from the NPR Austin 100 “Strange Hellos.” It starts slow and builds and builds. This is not that song (which would never work as a lullaby).
This is the only lullaby to feature an electric guitar. And even though it is played quietly you can hear her fingers sliding up and down the strings squealing away. This is a song from her new album Sprinter. And it’s quite lovely. I’m looking forward to hearing the full album when it comes out.
Check it out here.
[READ: March 23, 2015] “Hammer Island”
This issue of Harper’s featured five essays (well, four essays and one short story) about “Growing Up: five coming of age stories.” Since I knew a few of these authors already, it seemed like a good time to devote an entire week to growing up. There are two introductions, one by Christine Smallwood (who talks about Bob Seger) and one by Joshua Cohen who talks about the coming of age narrative.
I’m not sure why Wells Tower submitted fiction rather than an essay (he comfortably does both), but I’m glad he included this story as I think it’s a really interesting one. And yes it does cover growing up–and may even be based on fact, who knows.
This is written from the point of view of a seventeen year old girl, Maxine. She has been invited to Hammer Island (of the coast of Maine) for the summer to watch the (frankly wicked) daughter of famed film producer Morris Walls. Walls terrifies people in Hollywood, but when he comes to Hammer Island he is treated like everyone else. I loved this example:
Morris flicked a cigarette butt over the boardwalk rail. A teenage boy walking behind us retrieved it. He jogged up to Morris, tapped him on the shoulder, and slipped the cigarette butt into his palm. “No littering,” said the boy. “I know you’re new here, but we take it pretty seriously. Technically, there’s a three-hundred-dollar fine. I’m not going to report you, but just so you know, most people would.” In California or New York, threatening Morris Walls and handing him garbage would have been a sure way to get sworn at, slapped, doused with hot coffee. But Morris understood that attacking the boy would be pointless. The boy was of the island, and he spoke with the full authority of the place behind him.
And I loved the general pretension of the island:
Whenever anybody walked by, you had to call, “Hello! Come up, come up! We’re picking crabs!” Or you had to say that if you owned the house and the person passing by owned a house on Hammer, too. If you had been coming to Hammer Island for thirty summers, renting the same house for $4,000 a week, you did not get summoned to a porch for crab picking. You were still looked upon as an interloper and a thug.
Interestingly, this is all just set up for the real story which has little to do with Walls and nothing exactly to do with the island. For this story is about Maxine and a teenaged boy, Todd Greene. When Maxine is able to get a way from Lola (the brief story about Lola is hilarious), she would watch Todd play tennis. He was masterful. And after his matches he would talk with her. And soon enough he invited her onto his boat.
When she arrived at the dock, a short, dwarfish man was polishing the boat and Todd was nowhere to be seen. The man seemed to have nothing but admiration for Todd, talking about what a good sailor he was and making the boat perfect for the young man. When Todd finally arrives, he takes the keys, says nothing to the man and he and Maxine head out to open waters, where “Todd talked me out of some but not all of my clothes.”
Two days later, Maxine was invited to the Greene’s house where she discovered that the “dwarf” was actually Todd’s father. Todd’s mother and brother are, like Todd, gorgeous, and she can’t figure out the father’s place. But it seems that his place is simply to serve everyone. And when he makes a mistake with dinner, the whole family reams him out. But this time, having had enough, the father storms out and is not seen on the island again that summer.
Maxine is surprised that Todd keeps in touch over the year with quarterly updates on his exploits. And they both plan to return to Hammer Island next summer. When they do return Todd’s father is there waiting (and he has a plan). The end of the story is exciting and emotionally complicated. It’s a very satisfying story indeed.
I’m looking forward to more fiction from Tower.
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SOUNDTRACK: BEACH SLANG-Tiny Desk Concert #431 (April 10, 2015)
I had never heard of Beach Slang before watching this Tiny Desk Concert. Evidently they are a new band with only a couple EPs out. The write up says they are a punk band. But in this Tiny Desk show, it’s just lead dude James Snyder and his guitar.
