I am gonna miss them like hell.
music
vacation : the return trip
The sunrise on our last morning in Acadia.
Since we were already getting up insanely early for our thirteen-hour drive home from Maine, we thought we’d get up even earlier and watch the last sunrise from the top of Cadillac Mountain. However, it became apparent that we weren’t going to make it, due to my misunderestimation of both how long it takes us to get it together at 5am and how long it takes to get from where we were staying to the top of Cadillac Mountain. So, we pulled over at Canoe Point and watched the sun rise over Frenchman’s Bay instead. It was beautiful, and we consoled ourselves with the belief that we probably wouldn’t have gotten to see the blazing-ball-of-fire-over-the-ocean type of sunrise anyway, since there was a thick blanket of storm clouds obscuring the view. One more thing for us to do next time we’re up there.
Once we got on the road the trip went smoothly. Bangor’s morning rush hour was nothing like the rush hour of major cities, so the timing worked out perfectly all the way down the coast. The only excitement was car-related: we had the sidewall of our front tire develop a bubble, which made a huge amount of noise on the road and then burst in the parking lot of the gas station where we were seeking directions to an auto repair shop. Thankfully, there was a shop just up the road; once we drove the car there, they pronounced the other front tire ‘crap’ and proceeded to replace them both. We were so tired—and grateful that the tire hadn’t blown while we were driving up the mountains or just a few seconds earlier when my hands and face were in range—that we didn’t mind just hanging out reading in the waiting area. In the end, the delay was only an hour and we had beautiful traffic the rest of the way; apparently everyone in New York decided to actually stay at work until 5pm that day.
The only negative of the rest of the trip was the way we were chased down the coast by Kings of Leon. Yes, we could have put on CDs, but there are a decent number of radio stations in the stretch between NYC and DC that we were enjoying listening to. Except the Kings of Leon part, which was worse than usual because apparently they are on tour. So there was that. Having to constantly surf past bad music did spark several long conversations about alternative rock, grunge, and which bands that sing about heroin I like (Velvet Underground, Nirvana) and which I don’t (Alice in Chains). The upshot: I barely tolerate Pearl Jam out of respect for their timeliness, and all other bands that sound like them make me want to ralph exasperate me.
Now that we’re home I’m working on getting the photos off my camera so that I can retro-post about our experiences of getting up at 6am and hiking around for hours in a haze of stink and Deep Woods Off ™ before collapsing into bed and doing it all over again the next day. It was far more awesome than it sounds.
Sonic Youth at the 9:30 Club
So, we saw Sonic Youth last night at the 9:30 Club. They were good; we were at the second of two sold-out shows and I’d guess a lot of the audience was repeaters. Except for the times when we were all focused on the woman in the opposite balcony who was first leaning over the railing in her bra, then getting in a fight with her (pretty obnoxious) boyfriend who was trying to control her, and then getting physically dragged out, we were all glued to the stage and happily nodding our heads in time. (We were old, tired, and in the balcony; plus, the band played some pretty mellow stuff.) The performance was solid; I suppose after sixteen albums and tours and thirty years of playing together you get to be pretty comfortable with each other. And, it was actually quite cool to see them produce all the funky sounds they’re known for, using their actual instruments rather than a Macbook.
Before this show, I hadn’t listened to Sonic Youth in fifteen years, and I’d definitely skipped all that 90s stuff (the phase when they became what someone called ‘more experimental’). Everything they played sounded vaguely familiar but I didn’t know any single song well enough to sing along; I don’t actually own any of their CDs despite recognizing their musical greatness. (If I hadn’t already lost my hipster card by not liking The White Stripes and finding The Mountain Goats to be atrocious, now would be the time for it to be recalled.) Which is to say, I can’t tell you what the set list was or how their live performance diverged from their studio recordings or whether the time that Kim had to swap out her instrument because she either broke a string or the tech brought the wrong one was a point when she was actually supposed to be playing.
You can, however, listen to the concert on NPR and answer all those questions for yourselves.
MJ, you were our Elvis
Like most people my age, Thriller was my first album. My dad got it for me for Christmas that year and claimed it came from Santa. Before then, I only knew Michael as one of the voices of Motown on the holiday album we played every year on Christmas morning, whom I was just old enough not to believe in anymore but not able to fully interrogate on account of a younger brother who was still a true believer. That year, we played Thriller. I fell in love with the entire thing, from the first addictive beat of track one all the way to the crooning fadeout of track nine. I became expert at putting the needle on the record in just the right places to listen to The Girl Is Mine over and over, far more careful of scratching this record than I’d been with my parents’ Led Zeppelin or Helen Reddy, favorites that were quickly displaced. When we traveled to my grandparents’ house later that day, I brought the album with me, just the first of many days that Michael Jackson and I were inseparable. In one of my all-time favorite photos of me as a child I am standing in my grandparents’ living room, wearing the enormous padded headphones my grandmother made my grandfather use when he watched soccer. The headphones are plugged into the stereo-hidden-in-a-console, already by that point my favorite piece of furniture, which I was actually being allowed to use for the first time because I had a record of my own to play. I am wearing a raglan-sleeved baseball-shirt-type nightshirt, and my grandfather is looking over my shoulder as I intently sing along by reading the liner notes (the side where Michael and Paul are pulling the girl apart, in the drawing Michael did himself, which is perhaps the most impressive thing about the whole experience for me).
For most of that year, and much of the years to follow if we’re honest, I listened to Thriller as much as I could. I played it on the stereo that I wasn’t really supposed to use when my parents were at work, turning it up louder than we were really supposed to in the duplex so that I could hear it out the windows on the front lawn. I learned the Beat It steps from the girl next door, who had cable and therefore the ability to see the Beat It steps, and when she moved away I practiced them by myself in the living room. When kids in my class had birthday parties at the skating rink, we all skated our most suave to Billy Jean. Most of all, during those years, we coveted the inimitable red jackets covered in zippers of the rich kids.
It was an embarrassment to us when Michael’s hair caught on fire, because what was he doing pimping Pepsi when everyone knew Pepsi sucked, New Coke or no New Coke. By the time he put out Bad, we were old enough that our younger brothers and sisters were more into Weird Al’s satire (about which we were actually pretty proud, since it just proved what awesome songwriting abilities MJ still had). Eventually, though, it got to be too much: the hair and the nose and all the ugly stuff around kids. We ceded him to the Japanese teens (about whom we were actually pretty happy because it proved that MJ still had it going on even if it was painfully clear that he was way too uncool for us to be associated with anymore, especially now that we had discovered punk, wave, and hardcore). Of course, there were diehards, and we lived vicariously through their devotion, mocking them even as we suffered willingly through yet another playing of Dangerous in the car.
And then we were grown, and MJ became the stuff of tabloid stories involving Elvis’s daughter (about which we were actually pretty accepting, because it proved that someone could still see the spirit we’d loved inside the man about whom we’d come to feel so awkward). We still paid homage to his musical greatness at parties when it was just late enough and we were just drunk enough to be able to rock out to Thriller like we were eight again, or at karaoke where it was a matter of pride to be the one best able to belt out The Way You Make Me Feel. Or maybe my friends just indulged me; it’s true that they were remarkably okay with me claiming their Thriller CD as my own, when I was so obviously ecstatic to be reunited after years without a turntable on which to play my first love.
So, Michael, thank you. Thank you for being the hip highlight of my childhood. Thank you for setting the bar so high as the King of Pop that 90s top 40 never stood a chance. Thank you for hanging in and not dying on a toilet seat.
Tonight I got an extension cord out of the basement and played that nicked Thriller CD on the boombox on the porch while I deadheaded the front flowerbeds. When I was done after side one, I sat on the porch and watched the fireflies come out, thinking about Indiana and the eighties and way music gets inside you and becomes intertwined with the small moments of your own family. One of the college kids across the street came home and sat on his stoop talking on the phone until the end of the album. As he went inside and The Lady In My Life came to a crooning end, I poured out a shot of my best Scotch (Inchgower, 22 year old single malt, cask strength) and had a moment of silence for the man. May you finally have some peace, Michael. Really, that’s all we ever wanted for you.
And who knows: maybe I’ll visit Neverland Ranch one day; maybe I’ll even buy a velvet painting.
A December sampling of arts in DC
December is always busy for us, and this year is no exception. If anything, our choice to celebrate the season by attending performances of various kinds has heightened the schedule-juggling.
Our first event of the month was The Trumpet of the Swan, a reading of the book set to music that debuted at the Kennedy Center. The Trumpet of the Swan is one of my favorite books, and the actors and musicians did an excellent job of portraying it. I was excited to be able to see Kathy Bates and Fred Willard, and Washington local Edward Gero was perfect as Louis’s father. Attending this performance was my (early) birthday present, and I was glad to be able to share it with my partner, who had never read the book as a child.
The following Tuesday, we returned to the Kennedy Center to see the Martha Graham Dance Company perform Clytemnestra. Although I’ve seen many of the great modern dance companies perform at the Kennedy Center in recent years, I had yet to see a Martha Graham production. While I began to suspect that her version of Clytemnestra is something like the Ring Cycle of modern dance—by which I mean to say that we may not have risen to the level of knowledge or appreciation of other members of the audience—we were both fascinated. I found it particularly interesting given that it was first produced in 1958; I commented to my partner that you would have had to be terribly fashionable to attend this performance in its first run, as it was somewhat avant garde even for contemporary productions. The costumes and choreography were wonderful, and of course the dancing was superb. And now we can say that we’ve seen a show created by the mother of modern dance!
Following close on the heels of this performance, we went traditional on Friday and attended a reception at the Swedish embassy celebrating Santa Lucia Day. A highlight of the evening was Mats Carlsson, a ‘rather well-known up-and-coming Swedish opera singer’ as we were told by one of our fellow guests, joining the girls for a lovely solo. Our hosts were very gracious, the hors d’ouevres were excellent, and the Glögg was wonderfully potent. Maybe next year we’ll get invited to the gala and I’ll have a chance to wear my wedding necklace! (A girl can dream.)
The next night we headed back down to Foggy Bottom to see the Christmas Revels at GWU. We don’t go every year, but this year’s program had a French-Canadian theme that I just couldn’t pass up. We had a wonderful time; there’s something about being knee to knee and elbow to elbow with strangers while belting out holiday tunes that creates an incredibly festive atmosphere. The evening had the added bonus of exposing my partner, who never studied French in school, to the joys of Alouette, complete with popping out of our seats to point at the various body parts as they became relevant (et le bec!). We particularly enjoyed the operatic flourish with which the young child a few rows in front of us bowed at the completion of the last round of the song.
We wrapped up all of this celebrating by hosting our now-annual holiday cookie party on Sunday night. It’s always fun to sample the variety of confections, and this year was no exception. We had quite a mix of styles and cultural origins this year, with a nice representation of classics in the form of chocolate chip, oatmeal, and sugar as well. Word of a party with nearly unlimited access to sweets appears to have gotten out among the under-8 crowd, and the children-to-adult ratio tilted quite dramatically this year. We are pleased to report that our friends, colleagues and neighbors are doing exceptionally well at instilling manners in their (many) young offspring; our household fabrics thank you, and you and yours are welcome back any time! In addition to being just a general good time, the party spurred us to finally deal with all of the furniture and household goods displaced through various acquisitions and basement trouble this year. After a whirlwind of preparation, it’s wonderful to look around and see shelves, tables, and sideboards in their proper places, and to have boxes of our family treasures stored in tidy piles in the (clean!) attic rather than in the center of our offices. It certainly doesn’t hurt to have tins of cookies on those tables, either.
Our plans for the coming week are quite tame compared to all of this. We’ll be celebrating the solstice with our gift exchange on Sunday, and I have a couple of surprises planned as part of our weekend festivities. (They’re surprises; you will have to wait to learn of them.) In the meantime, I will enjoy quiet evenings that involve neither dressing up nor rearranging furniture.