Zadie Smith - Big Week

So there's a new Zadie story in the Paris Review this summer, and available online (for now), here.

At first I wasn't sure what to make of it.  The dialogue seemed a bit stilted for Zadie (particularly the bartender), the main character wasn't terribly interesting - until quite quickly he was.  And then there's an abrupt POV switch at the end and a final monologue that is simply incredible, ending the whole thing somewhere deeper and richer than I thought possible at the beginning.

Breaking it down in my head, there's really only four scenes:  (1) the bar, (2) the drive from the airport, (3) the library, (4) the move-out.  And the information you need along the way, to hook them all together, is nicely doled out in bits and pieces.  He lays out his schedule (for the "big week") in scene 1 (setting up 2-4), gives out key information in scene 2, which puts scenes 3 and 4 in context.  But the twist at the end is the killer.  Each piece seems so simple, but is so hard to do in practice..  

FNAC in the Afternoon

So I finally decided to head over to the FNAC on Avenue Ternes and check out their music selection..  And this is what I came away with (click for full picture).  For far less than I expected. 

 So much good stuff is out of copyright here and the re-issues are _cheap_.  

Elvis Presley Blues (Gillian Welch)

I've been listening to a fair amount of Gillian Welch lately.  And swear there used to be an amazing official video of her and David performing Elvis Presley Blues in B&W in a studio.  But maybe it was another song.  Or something else entirely.. 

Anyway, there's a sweet simplicity to the song.  But a complexity as well.  And it's fascinating how Elvis has become a myth.  Like John Henry.  Unknowable, but standing in for so many strands of being.  A defiance tied to midnight ramblers and holy rollers - shaking it with his soul at stake.

Uptown A to 207

Dusting off some old fiction.  This is from, oh, 2005-ish.  It could use some polishing and perhaps another ending. 

Paris Playlist

Back in Paris.  Making a playlist for afternoon background music while type-type-typing.  Starting to feel a bit of jetlag (as Mike would say, feeling like someone shoved a croissant in my face at 3am), but happy.  Renewed my Velib membership and discovered Paris, Texas is playing at the Champo (which I've never seen, but Ry Cooder used perhaps the greatest song of all time for the soundtrack - Blind Willie Johnson's Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground).   

Just found out about this record store / coffee shop called Walrus by Gare du Nord which will warrant a visit (hopefully soon)... 

Now playing: Paris in August.

Beck - Merriweather Post - 7/24/2014

I picked up Trevor in Silver Spring, at the Exxon station at 410 and Colesville, and we hit the road north.  Easy traffic, easy parking, a welcome change from my Merriweather norm.  Ready to celebrate my new job offer.. 

Plenty early, we stayed on the lawn for Sean Lennon's Ghost of the Sabretooth Tiger.  An interesting mix of downtown feedback (Sonic Youth, Blonde Redhead) and Sean's voice which uncannily sounds like his dad's - sometimes jarringly so.  He had a presence - hat, curls, suit - which was charming, but it was too early.  The sun was still up.  People were filtering in. And any energy built quickly dissipated.  His partner, Charlotte Kemp, was stunning though and her voice cut through the noise quite nicely.. 

Then down to the floor in front of the stage..  meeting up with J.S. and her friend, a pre-K teacher in NoVa.  Middle, front-ish.  The crowd swelling.  As the sun starts to go down Beck slides out and launches into Devil's Haircut.  He's electric and propulsive.  Present.  Alive.  And it's exhilarating.  From there the depth is astounding.  He swerves from K Records era material (One Foot in the Grave) to the pure funk-sex-magic of Midnight Vultures (Sexxlaws, Debra) to a slow set of Sea Change / Morning Phase songs.  New Pollution.  Loser.  Que Onda Guero.  Short Circuit jokes and an uncanny awareness of his audience and band.  James Brown imitations, flourishes, and smiles.  So close, so real, so exciting. 

In fine form.  But he's always been incredible live.  I first saw him in Detroit in 1998 as part of the 89x Christmas show (hosted by the then-not-famous Kid Rock, also starring Garbage and Everlast), then the Midnight Vultures tour in Ann Arbor (pure funk sweat deliciousness) in February 2000.  A Lincoln Theater show previewing Sea Change (which I remember mostly for a piano cover of Hank Williams' Long Gone Lonesome Blues and the Velvet's Sunday Morning and a stunning Guess I'm Doing Fine) in 2002.  And this show had pieces of all of those.. 

I walked out to the parking lot smiling.  Energized.  Rejuvenated.  Alive.  Ready to celebrate a transition. 

Fragments

I. 

Will's new neighborhood entranced him.  He woke up with new light streaming unexpected, pooled to his left.  The furniture placement unfamiliar.  As he rose, he bumped the end table, spun, hit play on the CD player and backed into the bathroom - doing a moonwalk as Frank Black and the Pixies filled the room.  Where is my mind, indeed.

He stood for a moment and remembered.  The prairie wilds of Adventist fundamentalism.  The haystacks - (lentils on fritos with cheese) and homemade applesauce and grape jelly and every thirteen weeks grape juice in little plastic cups with thick wheat-y wafters.  There was a mystery alright, but it was tied up in vague ideas of right and wrong and desire and lost pictures.

Will could navigate in the woods without a compass, use a j-stroke to guide a canoe through rippling water.  He could parse Old Testament narratives.  Explain how Daniel foretold the end of the world, the ages of iron and clay - our modern age barely pressed together.  But here he stood, alone in a shower in a Brooklyn.  Warm water flowing.  Images from last night still flowing around him.  His co-workers, Brian and Weixuan and drinks and dancing in that little bar on University Place once nominally full of writers and poets and painters but now only occupied by NYU undergrads with fake ids and tights as pants.

II.

He was never sure if his first memory - of late afternoon sun streaming through a window, a Reds game crackling on a small portable radio - was real, or just something he'd always used when asked what his first memory was.  He could certainly remember telling the story as a boy, at birthday parties and whenever the subject came up.  He liked to think it was real.  Something neatly encased and carried intact from year 3 to the present.

He'd remained a Reds fan, and a fan of sunshine and late lazy summer afternoons.  These thoughts swirled as he twisted the knob on his stereo looking for the Mets game.  A stack of dirty dishes stood sentry in the kitchen.  A half-finished novel on the arm of his reading chair.  He was perched between them, suspended.  Twirling.  Honing in on the signal.  The game was just starting.  He turned it up and went in the kitchen to tackle the dishes.  Work before pleasure.  Or something like that.