SOUNDTRACK: JOHN PRINE TRIBUTE-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #8 (April 11, 2019).
I feel like I have been aware of John Prine forever. Although I also feel like I only really became aware of who he was and what he had done in the last year or so. Or at the very least since he had surgery and his voice changed dramatically.
I knew that he was a legend in folk circles, but I had no idea how many of his songs I knew–although likely from other artists.
I was not devastated when he died because I didn’t know him enough to be devastated. But I did feel that it was unbelievably unjust of the world to have him survive cancer only to be beaten by this virus that could have been avoided. While there are people out there actively doing harm to others, why would a person as thoughtful as him be the victim.
Every time I saw John Prine perform, he invited friends to join him. The outpouring of love and respect has always been so profound. And so when John Prine died on April 7 from complications related to COVID-19, I knew his friends and those he touched would want to pay tribute to him. Here are five artists performing their favorite John Prine tune in their home (or bathtub) in honor of one of the greatest songwriters of any generation.
Here are the five performances:
- Margo Price and Jeremy Ivey, “That’s the Way That the World Goes Round”
Recorded in their bathroom, with their baby entering the scene for the final verse.
- Courtney Marie Andrews, “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness”
She says that Prine was the best at putting humor and sadness in one song let alone one line. Her version of this song (that I know very well) is too slow for my taste.
- John Paul White, “Sam Stone”
He says he is taking this harder than he thought. This song makes him cry every time. I knew this song from someone else singing it, although I’m not sure who.
- Nathaniel Rateliff, “All The Best”
I didn’t know this one, but I do like it.
- Brandy Clark, “Speed of the Sound of Loneliness”
It’s a shame that two people did the same song since he has 19 albums out, but this song is quite lovely. I like Clark’s version better than Andrews’ even if they aren’t that different.
[READ: April 1, 2020] The Spirit of Science Fiction
I have read pretty much everything that has Roberto Bolaño has written which has been translated into English (many, like this book, by Natasha Wimmer). This is one of the first novels he ever wrote and it was finally published posthumously in 2016.
It’s a very strange book with a very strange construction (a precursor to the construction of his later, larger books, for sure).
The book is told in three parts and it concerns three major characters. The narrator, Remo, his best friend Jan Schrella and a third poet, Jóse Arco.
The book opens with Remo being interviewed by a journalist. He has just won a literary prize. This interview is spread out over many chapters, but it is sort of summed up by his reply:
you actually predict a bright future for art? You don’t realize that this is a trap. Who the hell do you think I am, Sid Vicious?
Remo lives with Jan, another serious poet, but one who has more or less taken to his bed–barely ever leaving the house at all.
Jan is seventeen and spends nearly all of his time reading, especially science fiction books. He seems to want to single handedly get recognition for his country men and women.
He spends most of his time writing letters to famous science fiction authors: Alice Sheldon, James Hauer, Forrest J. Ackerman, Robert Silverberg, Fritz Leiber, Ursula K. Le Guin, (twice, first one unsent), and Dr James Tiptree, Jr.
Some of the letters are stories about his dreams, some are general notes of good will, but the overall tones is one asking them to support science fiction written by authors in Latin America.
Remo does go out though, He goes to writing workshops. At one of them Jóse Arco enters late. Remo’s is instantly taken with him. As the first scene with Arco ends, Arco lays back in his chair and recites his new poem Eros and Thantaos from memory. Arco was a daring fellow riding his (often broken down) motorcycle at 3AM. Arco is based on Mario Santiago Papasquiaro.
Although Jan is not active, his imagination certainly is. He feels compelled to tell Remo about “Silhouette,” a science fiction short story by Gene Wolfe. (Yes, part of the book is someone describing another book ).
Meanwhile, Remo and Arco decide to investigate a publication called My Enchanted Garden which comments on the torrent of poetry magazines in Latin America. There were 32 then it jumped to 661 and by the end of the year it was predicted there would be one thousand.
Through Arco, Remo meets young poets Angélica and Lola Torrente and their friend Laura, as well as the queen of local poets, Estrellita. Remo invites them back to his apartment. Although Lola is the more experienced of the two, it’s Angélica who falls for Jan. The scene where they first meet is crazy. Jan was in bed (of course) when they came in
Jan jumped up, his skinny ass exposed and his balls dangling golden, and in two or three swift movements his back to the group, he jammed his papers under the mattress and got back into bed.
What a lovely young man, said Estrellita And his darling balls are the color of gold.
Jan laughed
It’s true, I said
That means he’s destined for greatness. Golden balls are the mark of a young man capable of … great deeds.
They’re not exactly golden, said Jan.
Shut up. She thinks they look golden, and so do I. That’s all that matters
And I do too, said Angélica.
It was at this party that Remo fell for Laura. She was with Cèsar at the time, but that didn;t stop them from kissing. But when she says they could fuck right there, he says I don’t think I could.
What do you mean, you don’t think you could? You mean you couldn’t fuck?
Yeah, I couldn’t get it up. I couldn’t get an erection. It’s the way I am.
You don’t get erection?
No I mean, I do, but it wouldn’t work right how. This is a special moment for me, if that makes sense, and its erotic too, bu there’s no erection. Look, feel. I took her hand and put it on my crotch.
You’re right. it’s not erect, said Laura with a barely audible laugh.
He falls for her immediately though and gives her a nickname–Aztec Princess.
Later in part 2 an actual Aztec Princess–a motorcycle with that phrase stenciled on it, comes into Remo’s life. How can he refuse to get it? Even if he has no money, cannot drive a motorcycle and has no licence?
This barely touches half of the ideas that float through this book. There’s a lot of information about a potato farmer; a lieutenant (Boris Lejeune) watching a recruit shoot a colonel in the chest; Father Gutierrez visiting Pierre LeClerc; and a lengthy story about a village becoming obsessed with woodwork, to the detriment of everything else. There’s also Jan’s dream of a Russian cosmonaut, and the final chapter called “Mexican Manifesto.”
This last section is all about Remo and Laura going to baths and the strange sexual things that happen in steam. This section was excerpted in The New Yorker in 2013(!). That version was translated by Laura Healy.
About it I wrote:
The narrator is the man and the woman, Laura, is the more adventurous of the two. She is the one who encourages them to go to the baths in the first place and, while he also thinks it is wonderful, it is she who wants them to explore as many different baths in the city as possible.
The first bath that they go to is a nice one, an upscale bath where the man in charge (who is pointedly referred to as an orphan) is very nice and as a result people treat him with courtesy. There’s never any trouble at this bath. It’s very nice, but Laura wants to explore other houses. So they ask him for a list. And they set out on their voyage of discovery.
It is at these less reputable baths that most of the action takes place (both in the story and out of the story). People mingle more freely (with sexual contact common), they also share drugs and other entertainments. The story focuses on one instance in which the entertainment was two young boys and an older man. The man instructs the boys to begin masturbating each other. But the boys are tired (as is the old man). They say they haven’t slept in days. The old man falls asleep. And with the steam, the boys begin to fall asleep as well. The steam gets thicker and thicker and soon Laura is squatting nearer to the boys. The narrator can’t really see what’s happening but it all seems like such a dream that he’s not even sure what to think.
I’m not really sure what this section has to do with the rest. I’m not really sure what happens in the book at all. The revelation of Jan’s alias is pretty fascinating though.
This is strange book to be sure and I didn’t really enjoy it that much–I just couldn’t get into it. But it seems to forecast the kind of (much better) writing that Bolaño would eventually become known for,
I wondered how different the 2013 Healy translation was from this one. The content is of of course, the same, but they are notably different.
Here is the last sentence first from Healy
The color of the pool’s rocks, doubtless the saddest color I saw in the course of our expeditions, comparable only to the color of some faces, workers in the hallways, whom I no longer remember, but who were certainly there.
Now from Wimmer
The color of the stones around the pool, surely the saddest color I saw in the course of our expeditions, comparable only to the color of some gazes, workers in the hallways, whom I no longer remember, but who were surely there.
If Wikipedia is to be believed, here are the remaining untranslated works
- 1976 [Reinventing Love] 20-page booklet in México (first publication)
- 1983[Advice from a Morrison Disciple to a Joyce Fanatic] Novel written in 1983 in collaboration with A. G. Porta
- 2011 [Bolaño By Himself] Collection of interviews with Bolaño (1998–2003)
- ? [Diorama] not yet published
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SOUNDTRACK: BUCK CURRAN-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #17 (May 1, 2020).
I’ve never heard of Buck Curran, an American guitarist living in Bergamo, Italy, “the epicenter of the pandemic in Europe.”
I Just Read About That... 