SOUNDTRACK: THE FUN YEARS-“Breech on the Bowstring” (2010).
This album (with the awesome title), God Was Like, No came in at number 5 on Viking’s Top Ten. It is a kind of ambient music, except that the notes are a fast staccato instead of long-held notes. According to the radio show, the band consists of just guitar effects and turntables (another duo!). In the beginning of the song, it’s impossible to tell which is which with these noises.
The music is quite pretty if slightly unsettling. Over the 7 minutes of the track, you can feel it building and building, getting louder and louder, without really changing the dynamic all that much (except you can hear more and more details in the music). Although by the 6 minute mark, the noise tends to overpower the nicer earlier music and the wall of sound become more and more ominous.
It takes a couple of listens, but it gets better and better with each one.
[READ: December 30, 2010] “Hissing of Summer Lawns”
Just when I think I’m done with Franzen, he drags me back in.
This one page anecdote in the Something Borrowed category is actually the shortest of all of them. It continues with my favorite aspect of Franzen’s writing: his young adulthood.
In this case, he talks about his struggling years, when he would borrow people’s houses. He house sat for a professor who was on vacation and wanted someone to make sure their son didn’t party while they were away. The son, who showed up after a couple of days, put Franzen in his place with a blistering stare.
But the main part of the story comes when he agrees to house sit for friends. His only real duty was to mow their lawn which he immediately neglects to do. Soon the lawn is out of control. And worse, when he finally goes to cut the jungle, the lawn had been infected by earth-burrowing hornets. (more…)
I Just Read About That... 