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Archive for the ‘The Diary of Anne Frank’ Category

David Sedaris–“Possession” (New Yorker, April 19 & 26, 2004)

Posted in Amsterdam Netherlands, Apartments, Black Lives Matter, David Sedaris, Drinking, Essays, Eurovision, Funny (ha ha), Netherlands, New Yorker, Paris, France, Primo Levi, Regrets, Suriname, The Diary of Anne Frank on May 16, 2021| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: JEANU MACROOY-“Birth of a New Age” (Netherlands Eurovision Entry 2021).

Eurovision 2021 is upon us.  It’s hard to really follow Eurovision in the States, but you can see highlights and most official entries online

I tend to think of Eurovision as over the top and campy.  But there are often many entries that are anthemic and inspirational.

This entry from Netherlands is one of these.  It starts quietly with a pulsing synth and Macrooy singing with a clean powerful voice.  After each line, the backing vocalists chany “Your rhythm is rebellion.”

Then like a choir, the voices sing

“Yu no man broko mi” over and over until the song resumes.

The phrase calls to his Surinamese roots and translates as “You can’t break me.”

I found the song and the video quite compelling.

UPDATE: I don’t know exactly what the judges vote on (the live performance only?), but I’m pretty astonished that this song came in 23rd.

[READ: May 10, 2021]  “Possession”

I found a stash of old David Sedaris pieces and since they’re all pretty old, they’re quite funny.

This essay starts in Paris and ends in the Anne Frank house.

Sedaris talks about how he and Hugh were looking for a new apartment in Paris.  They loved their current place, but the landlord promised it to his daughters.  Sure the girls were young and, you know, something could happen to them, but it was unlikely that David and Hugh would ever own their place.

Looking at apartments is like falling in love, but “buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.”  David did not love their new place but High sure did.”  Maybe you’re confusing love with pity,” he told Hugh.

Three months after they moved in, they took a trip to Amsterdam, a place often recommended with the phrase, “You can get so fucked up there.”  They toured around and eventually came to the Anne Frank house. (more…)

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Norman Rush–“On Nudity” & Barbara Ehrenreich–“The Trees Step Out of the Forest” (Harper’s, March 2014)

Posted in A Zed and Two Naughts, Alternate Reality, Barbara Ehrenreich, Carrington, Drowning By Numbers, Essays, Funny (strange), Gattaca, Harper's, Man with a Movie Camera, Memoirs, Michael Nyman, Morality, Norman Rush, Poker, Sunshine and Health, The Claim, The Diary of Anne Frank, The Draughtman's Contract, The End of The, The Piano, Valentina Lisitsa on April 8, 2014| Leave a Comment »

march2014SOUNDTRACK: VALENTINA LISITSA-Chasing Pianos: The Piano Music of Michael Nyman (2014).

Inym,an don’t listen to a lot of classical music, but I do like it. I also enjoy some modern composers, in particular I have a strong fondness for Michael Nyman. Yes, yes, he’s a soundtrack composer, blah blah, but I find his music to be very pretty and often delightfully eccentric.   His music reminds me of Phillip Glass, in its repetitive nature, but he goes beyond the minimalism that Glass was trying to create by implementing inventive melodies and expansive sounds.

 Valentina Lisitsa is a 44 year old Ukrainian pianist and she tackles music from throughout Nymans’ soundtrack career.  Nyman came to prominence with The Piano, which is a beautiful score.  And this is where this album starts out.

I’m not going to talk about each piece.  Rather, the album overall has a consistent feel–piano versions of Nyman’s music.  Nyman isn’t the most difficult composer, but he has his own style and so the entire album has a nice flow (although it does get a little slow by the end).

She plays songs from eleven of his soundtracks (which I’ve listed at the end).  Many of them get only one track, but Wonderland gets two and The Diary of Anne Frank gets 5 cuts.  I actually don’t know either of those two scores.  The bulk of the disc is, unsurprisingly, from The Piano which has ten cuts here.

I actually know his older soundtracks a lot better, so it was interesting to hear these piano versions of many of these familiar tracks.  Like “Time Lapse” from A Zed & Two Naughts and “Chasing Sheep is Best Left to Shepherds” (ne of my favorite pieces by him) from The Draughtman’s Contract.

Stripping down Nyman has an interesting effect because you can really hear how pretty the melodies are.  Although the real pleasure I get from his songs is the weird embellishments he puts on them, like the interesting sounds (horn and didgeridoo?) in “Here to There” from the Piano (which are absent here).

Although it has the feeling of a piano concerto the end (with several songs from The Piano in a row) is a bit samey.  It was smart to end the disc with a reprise of the opening.

There’s also songs from Drowning By Numbers, Carrington, The End of The, Man with a Movie Camera, The Claim and Gattaca

[READ: April 3, 2014] “On Nudity” and “The Trees Step Out of the Forest”

I am linking these two essays because I read them very close to each other and they are almost diametrically opposed in their content. And I thought it would be an interesting contrast.

“On Nudity” is a very simple essay about nudity. When Norman Rush was a kid–9 or 10–his father was really into nudism. He always wanted to go to nude beaches, he was very lax with nudity around the house and he tried to get his wife to join him. She was reluctant. Indeed, she didn’t really seem to like her husband very much and it seems they only got married because she was pregnant (and he may not have thought that was a good enough reason, to be honest).  She tried her best to make him unhappy because of this, and that seemed to involve declining his nudity bug.

So there were copies of Sunshine and Health (the premiere nudist magazine) hidden in the house (although Norman knew where they were), and yet, despite this access, he couldn’t get enough.  Rather than sating his needs, he was more obsessed than ever.  He wanted the real thing, whether it was getting his cousin to play strip poker or trying to spy on women in changing rooms.  He talks about the various hings he did just to get a peek of flesh.  And as the essay comes to close he apologizes to the two women whose privacy he invaded by spying on them.  The guilt about what he did to these women made him stop, although the women likely never knew what had happened to them. (more…)

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