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Archive for the ‘Field Recordings’ Category

Breyten Breytenbach–Four Fictions (Harper’s, March 2011)

Posted in Aquarium, Breyten Breytenbach, Field Recordings, Fish, Flash Fiction, Harper's, Huh?, National Aquarium in Baltimore, NPR/PRI/PBS, Pee, Short Story, Suicide, Supernatural, Surreal on November 10, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ALISA WEILERSTEIN-“Prelude from Bach’s Suite No. 5” (Field Recordings, February 16, 2012).

One thing I love about the Field Recordings series is the wonderfully unexpected places they have the performers play.  Like this Field Recording [Alisa Weilerstein: Playing Bach With The Fishes] which is set at the National Aquarium in Baltimore.

Strategically positioned above a tank full of stingrays, Weilerstein unpacked her cello to serenade the sea creatures — and dozens of pleasantly surprised aquarium visitors — with music by Johann Sebastian Bach. She chose the Prelude from Bach’s Suite No. 5 for unaccompanied cello. The music’s tranquil power and meandering melodies became an extraordinary soundtrack to the majestic rays as they roamed through the water, rising occasionally to catch a note or two.

The music is sublime–sad and powerful but ever so fluid.  And the setting is just perfect–you can almost see the fish appreciate it.

[READ: February 2, 2018] “Four Fictions”

Breytenbach confounds me with his stories.  This is a collection of four really short pieces and while I enjoyed parts of some of them, overall they were a big huh?

Race
This appears to be a race through the sea?  On foot?  A tractor charges into the waves and a Jeep follows. The route will take them through the sea to Germany and back to Stockholm.  Their friend Sven is running in the race (he’s from Lapland).  When the race is over he still has to run through the house to the balcony.  When they gather for the results , how many drowned, etc, the story ends with another man removing his top hat and his hair looking sunken and dry.

What? (more…)

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Julianne Pachico–“Honey Bunny” (New Yorker, November 9, 2015)

Posted in Colombia, Drugs, Field Recordings, Huh?, Julianne Pachico, Mountain Man, New Yorker, Newport Folk Festival, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story, Sylvan Esso, Violence on November 9, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: MOUNTAIN MAN-“Sewee Sewee” (Field Recordings, February 2, 2012).

Until recently, had I posted this I would have said that Mountain Man features Amelia Meath from Sylvan Esso.  Now I can say that and I can say that Mountain Man, of whom Id never heard, has a new album out.  How about that.

I don’t know much about Mountain Man, but this song is quite pretty.  It opens with someone snarkily commenting “Mountain Man live from the dungeon, take one.”

The song is a beautiful two-minute ballad with wonderful harmonies sand quiet acoustic guitar.  But all focus is on their voices as they intertwine beautifully.

Amelia Meath is the only person I know from this band and I know of her as somewhat goofy, so it’s amazing to see her (looking so young) being very intense while she sings her parts.

The Vermont trio Mountain Man fit an awful lot of moony harmonies into this all-too-brief performance of “Sewee Sewee.” Mountain Man’s three members — Molly Erin Sarle, Alexandra Sauser-Monnig and Amelia Randall Meath — sang and stared sweetly into each other’s faces.

Then as soon as the song is over Amelia gets very silly again.  I assume it’s her who starts rapping Li’l Mama’s “My Lip Gloss” (“my lipgloss is popping, my lipgloss is cool”) as the camera goes dark.

This Field Recording [Mountain Man: A Choir of Angels] was the second one done at the Newport Folk Festival, and it’s clear they are having fun exploring the abandoned grounds.

As a gaggle of videographers, musicians, industry types and hangers-on stepped gingerly through tall brush to enter a dilapidated section of Fort Adams in Newport, R.I., you couldn’t blame us for feeling like unwitting participants in a horror movie. Standing amid hundred-year-old rubble as the 2011 Newport Folk Festival clattered merrily in the distance, we were either going to capture two breathtaking minutes of music or get eviscerated by maniacs as part of The Newport Witch Project. Thankfully, we made it out with the footage you see above.   If the scene above once seemed destined to devolve into a grisly horror movie, at least we had a choir of angels on hand to escort us into the afterlife.

I haven’t heard their new album but I wonder if their voices still sound amazing together after 8 years apart.

[READ: January 7, 2017] “Honey Bunny”

This is a story about a girl who has left (fled?) Colombia and is now doing and possibly selling cocaine in America.

She is apparently buying her supply from a guy named Paco.  Inexplicably, the coke is cut with all kinds of weird things–plant leaves, bug wings, rabbit fur?

All along she keeps eyeing an orange suitcase in her apartment. (more…)

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Mirta Narosky–“Elf-Cio” (Harper’s, February 2008)

Posted in Argentina, Burke Butler, Elves, Excerpt, Fables, Field Recordings, Harper's, Hotels, Mantra, Michael Gordon, Mirta Narosky, NPR/PRI/PBS, Translation, Work on November 8, 2018| Leave a Comment »

(Field Recordings, January 12, 2012). 

This is a lengthy Field Recording [Mantra: Post-Minimalist Percussion In Aisle 12].  It has some interruptions by one of the guys.  Then he talks about how they have set up the board–suspending it on pegs.

There’s something primeval about guys banging on wood. But the New York percussion group Mantra takes such primitive pounding to a surprisingly refined level. For composer Michael Gordon’s mesmerizing new work — Timber, written for six two-by-fours — Mantra set up a public performance of the piece in the lumber department of a big-box hardware store in Alexandria, Va. Who knew 60 inches of processed pine could sound so good?

It’s unclear how long the piece is since there are constant interruptions.   Although it does run for about 2 and a half minutes uninterrupted.

For the most part the six players play a constant rhythm that creates overtones and resonances.  It’s a little monotonous until one of the starts to play a slightly different rhythm.  And by the end, there’s a couple of different rhythms that make it sound even better.

It’s a neat piece and would be fun to walk unto a hardware store and see that.

[READ: January 22, 2018] “Elf-Cio”

This is from a children’s book called Elves for Dignity.  It was published by a worker’s cooperative in Buenos Aires–one of 170 worker-run businesses in Argentina. The piece was translated by Burke Butler.

Once upon a time there was a greedy and merciless King.  One morning he awoke with the idea of converting one of his palaces into a hotel.  He hired a legion of elves whom he considered selfless and docile. They all abandoned their markets and farms to serve the King.

They worked night and day to ensure the splendor of the hotel. (more…)

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T. Coraghessan Boyle–“Are We Not Men?” (New Yorker, November 7, 2016)

Posted in Crowparrots, Dogcats, Dogs, Field Recordings, Gil Shaham, Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Johann Sebastian Bach, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Oddities, Pigs, Sci-fi, Science, Sex, Short Story, T.C. Boyle, Technology, Teenagers on November 7, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: GIL SHAHAM-“Partitat No. 2 “Gavotte en Rondeau” by J.S. Bach” (Field Recordings, January 12, 2012).

This was the very first Field Recording posted on the NPR site back in 2012 [Gil Shaham: A Violinist’s Day At The Museum].

Shaham plays Bach in the Hirshiorn Museum.

As Gil Shaham wandered through the back offices of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, D.C., he said he felt “like Ben Stiller in Night at the Museum.” For this impromptu Bach mini-recital, the violin superstar momentarily became part of the art, bathed in the modish lighting and projections of a multimedia installation during the performance.

He is introduced with the rather amusing:  “A world famous, world renowned violinist who, by the way, starts every morning with a bowlful of Cap’n Crunch.  He told me that.”

I love that this first Field Recording was, like many of NPR’s best things, a spontaneous idea:

A crowd packed the exhibit room to watch as Shaham launched into Bach’s third partita. After the performance, the violinist greeted fans in the museum, many of whom were headed to his concert at the Kennedy Center that night. He seemed surprised and delighted that the guerrilla concert, announced only on local classical station WETA and Twitter that day, drew so many people willing to hear Bach in the afternoon.

[READ: January 22, 2017] “Are We Not Men”

Boyle’s stories aren’t usually as fanciful as this.  But I loved it just as much as many of his other more down to earth stories.  I particularly enjoyed that it was set in the future, although there was no real statement of that until late in the story.  There were hints, which seem obvious in retrospect, but which at first just seemed like hyperbolic or metaphorical.

Like “the dog was the color of a maraschino cherry” or that the lawn incorporated “a gene from a species of algae that allowed it to glow under the porch light at night.”

The story opens with the cherry-colored dog killing an animal in the narrator  Roy’s front yard (on that grass).  He wanted to chase the dog away because it might ruin his grass.  Then he noticed that what the dog had killed was his neighbor Alison’s pig.  She loved that pig and anthropomorphized it.  To try to salvage the pig, he ran up to the dog waving his arms.  It immediately latched onto his forearm instead.

As Roy fights with the dog, the dog’s owner, well, the daughter of the owner, came running across the street.  She looked like a teenager but was actually 11 or 12.  When the girl says, “You hit my dog,” he replies that she bit him.  The girl says Ruby would never do that–she’s just playing.

Amid this horrorshow of blood and violence and death, and a sprinkling of genetic splicing, Boyle throws in a very funny experiment gone wrong.  Crowparrots were a modified bird which blended crows with the invasive parrot population.  It believed that the experiment would turn the parrots into carrion eaters.  But instead it made their calls loud and more frequent.  And they mimicked, so they “were everywhere, cursing fluidly, (“Bad bird! Fuck, fuck, fuck!“).” (more…)

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Anne Enright–“The Hotel” (New Yorker, November 6, 2017)

Posted in Airlines, Airplanes, Anne Enright, David Wax Museum, Field Recordings, Guns, Huh?, Humiliation, Military, New Yorker, Newport Folk Festival, NPR/PRI/PBS, Short Story, Travel on November 6, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: DAVID WAX MUSEUM-“Born With a Broken Heart” (Field Recordings, January 12, 2012).

This was the third Field Recording in the series [David Wax Museum: Folk Among The Ruins] and it seems to have started a trend of recording musicians in the ruins at the Newport Folk Festival

The video opens with the band climbing through a broken down house.  Then the music starts with David playing the charango and Suz Slezak clapping.  It’s a catchy fun song with handclaps, wonderful vocal harmonies and oohs.

Two minutes into the song a tenor horn adds some depth and bass to the music, making it sound much bigger.  Around three minutes the whole horn section is playing along with a kind of mariachi feel..

At the end of the song you can hear cheering–presumably for the festival itself and not them, but it seems apt as well.

[READ: November 15, 2017] “The Hotel”

I feel like this is an excerpt.  If it’s not an excerpt than I don’t know what.

It’s basically about a woman who lands at an airport.  She is discombobulated from all of the flights and transfers (which seems unlikely but whatever).  The story starts with no explanation at all as to why the woman has flown from Dublin to New York to Milan.  She is now at a layover in Germany or Switzerland or Austria (the signs are all in German).

She can’t read the signs.  It’s very late. The airport seems to be closing down.  Her next flight is leaving in 5 hours.  She figures she will need to be back at the airport in four.  So instead of camping out at Gate 19, she decides to go to look for a hotel.  By the time she checked in , she would get max three hours sleep.  It’s just not worth it in my opinion, but whatever. (more…)

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Tony Earley–“Backpack” (New Yorker, November 5, 2018)

Posted in Benjamin Britten', Carson McCullers, Death, Field Recordings, Gypsy Rose Lee, Murder, New Yorker, Nicholas Phan, NPR/PRI/PBS, Paul Bowles, Suicide, Tony Earley, W.H. Auden on November 5, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: NICHOLAS PHAN-3 by Britten (Field Recordings, November 20, 2013).

This was 2013’s last Field Recording [Britten Goes Back To Brooklyn With Nicholas Phan].

In addition to providing some powerful vocals and introducing many (including me) to Benjamin Britten’s more down to earth songs, this Field Recording also provides a lot of historical information.

Composer Benjamin Britten, whose 100th birth anniversary falls on Nov. 22nd [2013], is so deeply associated with his native England that he’s on a new 50-pence coin issued by the Royal Mint. This British cultural icon felt so strongly his music should be of a particular place that he set down roots in the seaside town of Aldeburgh, England and stayed there for nearly 30 years until his death in 1976. But he had a surprising two-year sojourn living far from home — in a boisterous, bohemian group house in Brooklyn.

Coaxed to the borough in 1939 by a friend, poet W.H. Auden, Britten and his longtime partner, tenor Peter Pears, moved into 7 Middaugh Street in Brooklyn Heights (an address long claimed by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway). Their housing situation there could only fairly be described as bohemian. Along with Auden, the house’s revolving cast of residents included novelist Carson McCullers, composer and writer Paul Bowles, and burlesque dancer Gypsy Rose Lee.

So in hopes of evoking something of that 1930s Brooklyn boho vibe, we invited an extremely fine young American tenor Nicholas Phan (pronounced “paan”), who’s become a champion of Britten’s vocal music, to return to Brooklyn on Britten’s behalf, accompanied by harpist Sivan Magen. We shot this Field Recording at 70 Fox House, a communal house in the Fort Greene neighborhood not all that far from where Britten and Pears lived and made their own art.

Amazingly Britten was still writing in the 1970s, and he made arrangements for these in 1976.

Witty and surprising, these songs are full of odd — but beautifully moving — harmonies and textures. It’s a perfect match for Britten and Brooklyn.

The first, “Lord! I married me a wife” is as funny as the title suggests.  Phan sings with great passion and exasperation: “I married a wife, she made me work in the cod rain and snow.”

“She’s like the swallow” is a prettier song with lovely harp playing to accompany it

“Bird Scarer’s Song” is a very different piece, with fast plucked harp that sounds more like piano than a harp and Phan singing aggressively and, yes, frighteningly.  With a big “Ha!” at the end.

[READ: November 5, 2018] “Backpack”

I have enjoyed several of Tony Earley’s stories, but I see that he hasn’t had a piece published in the New Yorker in several years.

Well, this one was great.

It is set up with something specific in mind.  John goes to various stores, buys several slightly questionable items, pays cash, and then heads home.

John is a professor, happily married for decades with a daughter just out of college.  But it is clear he is up to something.

From the items you can kind of imagine what he has planned. It is clear he is going to do harm to someone–either himself or someone else.  And when his wife leaves for the day, John shaves his head and shaves his beard (except for a Fu Manchu mustache), puts on sunglasses and a pirate bandanna and assumes the identity of Jimmy Ray Gallup. (more…)

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Marilynne Robinson-“Jack” (Harper’s, August 2008)

Posted in Anna von Hausswolff, Atheism, Excerpt, Field Recordings, Harper's, NPR/PRI/PBS, Parenting, Religion on November 4, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ANNA VON HAUSSWOLFF-“Funeral for My Children” (Field Recordings, November 4, 2013).

I remember exploring this Field Recording back in 2013 when it came out.  There is something otherworldly and magical about the pipe organ, even if it is played in a rather fast and clearly secular way like in this song.

One of my [Bob Boilen’s] most surprising discoveries of 2013 is an artfully poppy pipe-organ record called Ceremony, by Swedish singer Anna von Hausswolff. Though she doesn’t consider herself an accomplished pipe organist, von Hausswolff quickly learned the instrument’s power, as well as some of its subtleties.

I talked about this song back in 2013 and felt that the percussion was more interesting than the music.  I don’t feel that way now, although perhaps this live version is different.

When we learned that von Hausswolff was coming to New York City this summer, we started scouting for a church with a pipe organ that could accommodate a small video crew and some secular music. We found Christ Church, a United Methodist church on Park Avenue with a gracious staff who helped us make this work. [Anna Von Hausswolff Finds A Pipe Organ In New York City].

The recording opens with church bells and chimes, which Anna is playing gently on the organ (you can see the switches she presses to get sounds–how high tech!).  Then the drum comes in.  It is a simple beat on a floor tom–click click boom–a martial rhythm to offset the lofty pipe organ.

Once we were set for a location, we lit some candles and moved the pipe organ (not the pipes) into a position that allowed us get the best view of von Hausswolff while keeping percussionist Michael Stasiak distant enough so as not to bury the sound of her voice. In the process, we captured a beautiful rendition of “Funeral For My Future Children,” a song on Ceremony originally recorded at another church — this one in Gothenburg.

It almost comes as a surprise when Anna starts singing as you don;t often hear vocals with a pipe organ.  But her voice has the power and inflection to match this illustrious organ and that thumping drum.  I love when the sound of the organ changes about 4 and a half minutes in–the solo just adds a whole new depth to the piece.  And when she hits a high not just before that, it’s amazing.

[READ: January 18, 2018] “Jack”

This is an excerpt from Robinson’s novel Home.  It’s set in Gilead which is the title of a previous book of hers, so I assume it is some kind of continuation of the town, if not the family.  I’ve never read anything else by her.

Since this is an excerpt rather than a short story it takes a long time for much to happen.  But her writing is pretty great and everything that she writes is rather compelling.

The story opens with Glory, the youngest of six children arriving at her childhood home.  She is greeted by her father who is shockingly frail and thin and… old.  She is moving back home to take care of him now that he is by himself.

The story quickly flashes back to her childhood growing up in the house.  A house that seemed somehow too large, too ungainly for the neighborhood it was in.  How had it changed so much since she left? (more…)

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Ariel Dorfman–“The Gospel According to García” (New Yorker, November 2, 2015)

Posted in Ariel Dorfman, Field Recordings, Hanni El Khatib, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, Set at School on November 2, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: HANNI EL KHATIB-“Save Me” (Field Recordings, August 7, 2013).

I love when Field Recordings like this one [Hanni El Khatib Gets Saved In The Desert] are filmed outside.  For this one Hanni El Khatib and his bandmates head to the Mojave Desert where it is getting cold pretty quickly.

I’ve never heard of Hanni before, and his music is generic enough that I don’t imagine I ever will.  The acoustic guitar plays a simple back and forth chord structure to the rhythm of hand jive.  Hanni plays a series of solos on the electric guitar in between simple verses (although the line about boys in the desert seems apt).

After a misfire with the maraca–it is so loud that Hanni can’t hear himself–the other guitarist suggests he should play it more nonchalantly–like business casual.

There’s nothing bad about the song, it’s just , well, bluesy garage rock, a fairly uninteresting style.  But the setting is sure pretty

The Los Angeles singer-songwriter, on a break from touring in support of his latest album In the Dirt, gamely stripped down his loud, bluesy garage-rock sound and let the stunning backdrop of Joshua Tree National Park provide the drama.

[READ: January 9, 2017] “The Gospel According to García”

This story was short and was packed full of so much.  Especially since Garcia wasn’t even present.

The story is told in second person past as a classroom full of kids watch a man come in.  There are 12 students on the verge of failing.  Seven are seniors.  The man seemed to falter a he walked into the room.

The kids knew this was his first mistake–allowing them to size him up.

He sat down where García used to sit, just like that, as if he had the right to do so.

He tried to get them to speak–maybe we should introduce ourselves–but they said nothing.  He tried to make a joke about breaking the ice, but no one responded. (more…)

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William S. Burroughs–“The Only Sane Man in a Nuthouse” (Harper’s, November 2008)

Posted in Architecture, Eli Keszler, Excerpt, Field Recordings, Harper's, Jack Kerouac, LGBTQ, NPR/PRI/PBS, So Percussion, The Saturday Evening Post, William S. Burroughs on November 1, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ELI KESZLER & SO PERCUSSION-“Archway” (Field Recordings, July 12, 2013).

This Field Recording [Eli Keszler & So Percussion: Making The Manhattan Bridge Roar And Sing] takes place under the Manhattan Bridge. Installation artist and drummer Eli Keszler wonders, When does an instrument become a sculpture?  Or can it become something architectural?

I didn’t know Eli, but I know his partners Percussion [Eric Beach, Josh Quillen, Adam Sliwinski and Jason Treuting] from a fantastic Tiny Desk Concert.  But this was my first exposure to them in the real world.  Their combination of crotales and big strings is at once bizarre, otherworldly, interminable and very cool.

There is magic in pure sound. And few know that truth as well as the quartet called So Percussion and the installation artist and drummer Eli Keszler — artists who, before this spring, had never met. We thought that they might find kindred spirits in each other.  So as a matter of artistic matchmaking, we at NPR Music decided to invite them to meet and collaborate on a new work that would have its world premiere at Make Music New York, the annual summer-greeting festival of free outdoor concerts across the city. And along the way to creating a world premiere, they brought a New York landmark in as a sixth instrumental partner: the Manhattan Bridge. They named their piece Archway.

So Percussion says that they wrote this piece just for the installation.  The drummers are present at their drums, but what about the rest?

Using a scissor lift, Keszler and an assistant began the long process of fastening piano wires attached to two large weighted boxes to the tops of lampposts near the DUMBO Archway beneath the bridge. More wires stretched from one of the lampposts up to the Manhattan Bridge itself.

The piece juxtaposes light otherworldly rings and deep resonating, almost mechanical lows.   Complete with occasional drum smacks.

By the time that their performance rolled around at 6:30 PM, Keszler and So Percussion created fascinating layers of sound. The shimmering, nearly melodic lines produced by bowing small cymbals called crotales offset sharply articulated snare drums and the grunting roars, squonks and groans of the piano wire installation. It was urbane and thoroughly urban music for a signature city setting.

And so for about 11 minutes you get a combination of low grunting sounds–the engines or the wires?–and chiming crotales.  Occasional snare hits punctuate the sound.

It starts with the mechanical sounds and the sounds of the crotales reverberating.  About 3 minutes into the piece a snare drum and rhythm is added, but very minimally and only for a instant.   Around 4 minutes the drummers start adding more percussive and less tonal sounds, but that is brief and soon enough everyone is doing his own thing, while Keszler plays a very jazzy style of drum on the drum and crotales.  Others are hitting snares and sides of drums.

But by the 10 minute mark it is a full-on drum solo with the gentlest/flimsiest drum sticks around–making little taping sounds (but a lot of them).

I feel like not enough is made of the piano wires –I would love to hear more from them.  I assume that in a live setting all of the cool sounds (ones that become more audible around the 10 minute mark are just reverberating around and around the arch–something that even the best mic’s can;t pick up adequately.

It’s still neat to watch, though.

[READ: January 28, 2008] “The Only Sane Man in a Nuthouse”

This is an excerpt from And the Hippos Were Boiled in Their Tanks, a novel he wrote with Jack Kerouac.  They alternated chapters.  It was written in 1945 but unpublished until 2008.

On a Wednesday night, he went out with Al, Ryko and Phillips.  Agnes didn’t want to join them–she was broke–some people have some pride.  He joked at Philip that he was an artist so he didn’t believe in decency, honesty or gratitude.

They went to diner and a movie and then went to MacDonald’s Tavern, which is a queer place and it was packed with fags all screaming and swishing around.

The rest of the story is a tale of an older gay men checking out the younger men, straight men howling for women, and men hitting on anyone that moves. (more…)

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Anne Carson–“Back the Way You Went” (New Yorker, October 31, 2016)

Posted in Anne Carson, Bees, Ernst Lubitsch, Field Recordings, Huh?, John Paul White, Joy Williams, Mexico, New Yorker, NPR/PRI/PBS, The Civil Wars on October 31, 2018| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: THE CIVIL WARS-“Kingdom Come” (Field Recordings, November 8, 2012).

I discovered The Civil Wars after they had broken up.  Which is such a shame as they make such beautiful music.

They were Joy Williams and John Paul White and

the two [had] built a gentle, harmony-rich folk-pop sound in which warm chemistry more than counteracts the tension under the music’s surface. Though not a couple themselves — each is married, and Williams just had a baby — they convey many hallmarks of a loving union, particularly in the way she stares at him sweetly as they sing.

That staring is really uncanny–she seems so happy with him.  So it is amazing that at the time of this airing

Williams and White announced that they’ve canceled all of their tour dates in response to “internal discord and irreconcilable differences of ambition.” This, naturally, has fueled talk of a breakup — the assurance that “our sincere hope is to have new music for you in 2013” doesn’t specify whether that music would be made together or separately — which is a pretty crummy development

This Field Recording [The Civil Wars: A Song Of Loyalty, Before It’s Tested] was done in (presumably) happier times — during the Sasquatch! Music Festival in George, Wash.

The pair sing in a field of grapevines.  Just as John Paul arrives, the wind picks up incredibly, almost comically.

Amazingly, given the setting, this song sounds fantastic.  I love that you can hear whistling wind faintly (it might even be cooler if the wind was a bit louder).  But you can see the grapevines (and their hair) blow as the wind picks up.  But their voices and guitar sound perfect.

This song, like every song from The Civil Wars is wonderful.  Their voices are just magical together.  Even if there’s not a lot going on musically (it’s a single guitar although the melody is great), it’s the way they loop their voices together that is just out of this world.

I love them on record, and they sound even better here–White just lets his voice soar at one point and it’s fantastic.

[READ: January 12, 2017] “Back the Way You Went”

I was really puzzled by this story.  I couldn’t tell if it was one story with three parts or three separate stories.  I hoped it was three separate stories because the three pieces don’t seem to go together at all.  But at the same time, the internal parts of each story isn’t entirely coherent either.

Garland
D and F take a woman with them on a weekend getaway.   The woman’s mother recently died.  They go to a honeycomb.  Bees stream through the streets and the night.  D and F are bees too.

But they aren’t, of course.  Because the next day they ride bikes (the woman never learned and is quite bad at it).

Years later she wonders “what it was like for D and F to be thugging her around.”  Thugging?

The next paragraph is a flashback and is a good one.  But each paragraph seems to be separated from each other.  The title appears in the body.

Mexico
In this part “they” go to visit Dad in a home.  He is  in a room with a man whose eyelids don’t close–doctors don’t want to touch them in case they stayed permanently closed.

One Sunday they were coming home from visiting Dad–it was no different from any other visit. but her insides had gone bleak and dangerous. She sat in the back of the taxi thinking about an art work she saw in Mexico

The title of this piece appears in this section as well.  And, again, I enjoyed the part about the art piece and I enjoyed the way her dad tells her this bon mot, but I don’t see how they connect

Trouble in Paradise
Her mother in law Verna is four feet nine.  She feels big and bestial hugging Verna.  Her own mother was also short, but otherwise unalike. She is unlike her own mother except that they both think she needs to shop for clothes because they don’t like the way she dresses.

Vera is telling stories about her best friend Mildred who died.

But the narrator is thinking back to drying dishes with her own mother.

And then the narrator snaps out of it and asks Verna a question about Mildred which she finds quite surprising.  The ending in which she mentions the filmmaker Lubitsch, is just as puzzling as all the rest f the story(ies).

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