Another Cat Story

Today, while the landlord is fixing the bathroom, the two kittens are shut up with me in my room.

Buttons is a plump, sanguine character with the face of a contented tiger cub, the biggest and strongest of a litter of four, the alpha.

Velvet is the runt, a skinny jet-black animal with a hysterical temperament. As an infant, she would shriek if anyone tried to pick her up, and even now, being shut up in this small space is making her very nervous.

They're doing fine for the moment, although they weren't too happy when they first joined me, because I vetoed all the activities they considered fun: "Hurrah, let's pull everything out of the trash can and see if it's fun to play with!" No. Bad kitties. "Hurrah, let's chew up all the shoes and see which ones taste the best!" No no no. Bad kitties!

Then I went out to the roof for a moment. Buttons sat contentedly in the windowsill and watched me; Velvet could not handle being left in the room without the human. She was quite convinced that she would be trapped in the room forever and would starve to death. I could hear her meowing at the door; then she decided it would be better if she could see me and took Buttons' spot on the windowsill. By "took her spot," I mean she stepped right onto her, trying her best to violate the laws of physics by occupying exactly the same space at the same time, until Buttons got tired of the arrangement, hopped down, and left the windowsill to her nervous sister.

It took some time for Velvet to calm down again after I came in. She plopped herself in my lap for reassurance, and I'm sure that if she could have talked she would have whined, "Don't ever leave me again! Please don't ever leave me again!"

Rather needy, that one. As I write this, she's sitting on my lap, watching the letters appear on the computer screen. I'm not sure whether this creeps her out, or whether she's wondering if they're something she can eat. Either way, she looks intrigued, and a little suspicious.

Who's On Stage?

Fun for your Friday morning, courtesy of the inimitable Animaniacs: here's Slappy Squirrel's Woodstock parody, complete with her version of "Who's on First?" and, as always, Dvorak's Humoresque, which is her theme song.

Decemberists: The Rake's Song

So, my new musical obsession is The Decemberists.

Every once in a while, I hear a song that stops me in my tracks because of some indefinable quality in the music or the lyrics, and I know I have to get better acquainted with the artist. Sometimes, I think you can tell from just one song that a given artist has a deep well of talent and intelligence behind their work. The first song by Shakira that I ever heard was the playful "Whenever, Wherever," which besides being a fun, upbeat dance song with a catchy melody, also had that je ne sais quoi to set it apart: something in the subtle Latin flavor of the music and especially the use of traditional Andean instrumentation (panpipes and charango), as well as the simplicity of the lyrics, which manage to strike a timeless, elemental note that most artists find extremely elusive. I was hooked, and that was the beginning of my long fascination with the princess of Latin pop.

(Geeky side note #1: "Whenever," catchy though it is, is far from Shakira's best work. If you want to get a real feel for her music, go back to her early work in Spanish -- Pies Descalzos and, especially, Dónde Están Los Ladrones, which I think remains her best album to date. Her MTV Unplugged concert is basically an acoustic version of the latter album, with some inspired twists: "Ciega, Sordomuda" gets a mariachi accompaniment, for instance. )

The first Decemberists song that caught my attention was I Was Meant for the Stage, a track I came across when a friend sent it to me late last year, in a mixed playlist of indie rock. What's impressive about the song is that with a single mischosen word, the lyrics would have come across as obnoxious, even egomaniacal. Colin Meloy has such precise control of his storytelling, however, that he manages to bring it off as a simple testimony, all the more striking for its simplicity, of what it feels like to be doing what you're born to do. He takes an authoritative voice reminiscent of an ancient epic poet summoning his muse, and he makes it work.

I was really sold on the band, though, when they released The Rake's Song earlier this year. It's a horrifying tale of murder most foul that plays like an episode of Law & Order SVU:



Here's what's awesome about this song: first of all, it is a narrative, a murder ballad in the folk tradition of songs like "Down in the Willow Garden" (sometimes called "Rose Connelly" or "Rose Conley," depending on the version). "Willow Garden" has been sung for at least a century and probably longer: it's likely it was already with the people who would settle the Appalachians when they came over from England. This is a form with a very long history, and the Decemberists maintain a strong link to that history even while giving it a modern twist.

(Geeky side note #2: Holly Hunter sings a verse of Willow Garden as a lullaby in the Coen brothers' screwball comedy Raising Arizona. The inside joke, of course, is that if you know the rest of the song and not just that one verse, you know that it's all about bloody murder and is a rather gruesome choice for singing to a baby...despite the soothing melody...)

The Rake's Song is written in first person, even though the protagonist is obviously a separate person from the singer: a bold choice given that American audiences are conditioned to assume that whenever they hear "I" and "me," the singer is expressing his own inner thoughts. Colin Meloy, however, hasn't drowned any children lately; the scurrilous "I" of the song is a completely fictional character. That character, we discover, is a scoundrel who deserves to be hanged, and he knows it. Yet there is something oddly fascinating about him: his confidence, his sheer delight in evil. He is the archetype of the charming sociopath. He gets up on the stage; he tells his story in a chillingly straightforward voice; he claims to be utterly remorseless; then he disappears, leaving you hoping that you never meet him in a dark alley somewhere.

Along with the strong voice of the sociopathic narrator, well-chosen details help make this a memorable narrative ballad: the names of the children, for instance. They are specified, even though we never learn the wife's name, or the narrator's for that matter: Isaiah, Charlotte, Dawn, and Ugly Myfanwy. (That last one is just glorious.) They're unique names, so they give a weight of reality to the characters. The children would stand out much less as characters (and as victims) if they had more common names, whether modern (Michael, Hannah, Emily, Madison) or classic (John, Mary, Helen, Margaret). As a group, the names suggest neither a single time nor a single place: Isaiah is biblical; Charlotte suggests a little girl from England a century ago; Dawn is a modern American name; and Myfanwy is about as traditionally Welsh as you can get. All in all, the list of names has that "you couldn't make this shit up" specificity to it that makes the narrator credible.

I could go on, but I'm sure you'd rather just listen to the music than listen to me ramble on about it. In a nutshell: powerful storytelling, ambience, and the creation of memorable characters: that's what the Decemberists are all about, like the wandering-bard storytellers of the past. From the biography at the band's official site:

"There’s an odd bond between the music of the British folk revival and classic metal," says The Decemberists frontman Colin Meloy. "A natural connection between, like, Fairport Convention and Black Sabbath—of course, Sandy Denny from Fairport even sang with Led Zeppelin on ‘The Battle of Evermore.’ I think there’s a shared sense of narrative and ambience, of moving beyond the first person in your writing. And I thought it would be interesting to mess around with that."

Almost all of the Decemberists' material is steeped in this narrative tradition:

"[Hazards of Love] grew into the idea of creating a suite of songs based on old folk songs," says Meloy. "Building a narrative, piecing together disparate motifs, developing actual protagonists." Of course, working with elaborate song forms isn’t new territory for the Decemberists. As far back as 2004, the band released "The Tain," an eighteen-and-a-half minute single based on an Irish myth. The Crane Wife took as its starting point an ancient Japanese folk tale, which was interpreted across three separate songs. The album climaxed with "The Island," a 13-minute, three-section murder ballad.

Go listen.

Quote of the Day

As in our own time the permafrost of modernity has at last begun to melt--and a more determinedly pluralistic world has bounded back into an often troubling life--the world we are seeing is not a strange new world, revealed as the glaciers draw back, but a strange old world: kinship, locality, embodiment, domesticity, affect. All of these things, but I would add that at times we are seeing them in something as actual--and as tangible--as the tomb of two friends buried in an English parish church. We did not see those tombs because they did not signify; but they are beginning to signify again.

--Alan Bray, The Friend

Via Eve Tushnet. I have got to read this book.

'Llectuals

"Stop being pedantic!"
"Whoa, stop being pejorative."
"I will when you cease your pedantry."

This is hilarious. (Via Maud Newton.)

Goodbye

Postscript

I do want to clarify that my last post was intended solely as an in memoriam, on a very personal level, not as any form of argument on behalf of increased US meddling in the Iranian situation. It does not follow, from the fact that such deaths are unjust and tragic in the extreme, that we should "do something" about it.

After all, what would intervention mean, in practice, except more violent deaths like the ones we have already seen? Even the escalating rhetoric is a dangerous road. Moroccan-American writer Laila Lalami comments:

While the neo-cons’ calls for a muscular reaction are hardly surprising, several people from across the political spectrum seem to have joined them in demanding a louder response from the White House. Andrew Sullivan posted a steady stream of eyewitness accounts, videos, and tweets (much of which unconfirmed) over the weekend following the election. He switched the color of his blog banner to green, in solidarity with Mousavi supporters. He urged Western governments not to recognize Ahmadinejad as the victor in this election. In the Nation, John Nichols found Obama’s response to be “tepid” and “disappointing” and wished that the president would take a clue from Nicolas Sarkozy, who boldly declared that the events in Iran are “a tragedy.” (By the way, one little detail that seems to have escaped the attention of those who loved Sarkozy’s comment: he was speaking from Libreville, where he was attending the funeral of his good friend Omar Bongo, the dictator who has ruled Gabon with an iron fist for 41 years.) In the New York Times, Roger Cohen wrote that, although he had in the past argued for engagement with Iran, he felt that “in the name of the millions defrauded, President Obama’s outreach must now await a decent interval.”

This echo chamber worries me, because it seems to me it could easily pave the way for further escalation and eventual military action. Which is why Obama’s cautious stance so far on Iran is the right move.

That stance became ever so slightly less cautious today, with the use of words like "appalled," "outraged," "I strongly condemn." Escalation, military action. After what we have witnessed in Iraq over the last decade, these words should freeze us where we stand.

The Iran protests are an eerie echo of what happened in Tiananmen Square twenty years ago this month. The struggle for freedom, a heartbreakingly elusive goal for so many millions of our brothers and sisters, continues around the world. That's not a call for the American military to rush in like cowboys and set things right. Action -- which will probably always be frustratingly slow and subtle action -- should be taken if and only if there is the ghost of a chance it will do more good than harm. Until then, once more: it is good that we are watching. Never underestimate the power of human solidarity.