November 2015 – MOIRARTS

Rainy Days and Mondays

Rainy Mondays aren’t so bad with coffee and pie. I always thought this song was by Joni Mitchell. In fact, I knew nothing at all about Karen Carpenter and was completely unable to guess her identity in the very first game of Celebrities I ever played at my very first Thanksgiving with my in-laws. I confess that I have not learned anything more in the intervening 17 years. Except that now I know she sings this song.

Slide

What can I say, I like 90s alternapop. Not so much the bands as a whole in the latter part of the decade, but the catchy hits. We all have our character flaws. Living in Ann Arbor, driving back and forth to Canada, I spent a lot of time with the radio. I loved having the station of the summers of my youth available year-round. Even now when we travel back to visit family the first thing I do when we get into range is turn the dial to 89X.

At some point it will stop raining, my mental radio will run out of 90s tunes, and I will have to actually explore other music. Not today though. Today I want to wake up where you are.

This Woman’s Work

Despite being too vain to ever dye my hair–a position I might rethink now that I’m going gray–some of my best friends over the years have been goth. All maudlin all the time wasn’t my thing; I’ve always been too busy working to claw my way into the light and stay there. Inevitably, though, something slays you. Your friend commits suicide. Someone you love dies around a holiday that will never be the same again.

Or you just realize that no matter what came before and where you’ve already been, life is never going to be a vacation at a unicorn farm. When that happens, there’s Kate Bush. She feels your pain.

Locomotive Breath

When I googled “Charlie stole the handle,” which the sprout has been intoning since hearing it played by a band at the pool four months ago, I expected to find a folk song about riding the rails. Or something else by hippies. Apparently there are serious gaps in my musical education because I did not know this tune. Also I’m the worst spouse ever since I didn’t recognize it as what my son has been singing when my partner did it at karaoke earlier this month. In gratitude that they keep me around anyway, Jethro Tull.

Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee

This country–this continent–has an ugly history of violence and greed that makes me completely ambivalent about today’s holiday. Even as a child the story of partnership and cooperation between Pilgrims and Indians didn’t pass the sniff test and the sense of being fed a load of bunk only grew as I did. The Pilgrims were a violent, petty, mistrustful, greedy, self-righteous and eventually murderous group of people; they seemed like the relatives to be embarrassed about, not celebrated. For years I rejected this holiday in its entirety; now as a parent of a child descended from those same Pilgrims I feel obligated to find a way to tell the historical truth in a way that won’t have to be rewritten in later years.

One of the most pernicious aspects of the Thanksgiving myth is that it makes invisible contemporary Native Americans and obfuscates the violence done to their land and communities, ongoing over the course of hundreds of years. We can’t become something different than our ugly origins if we remain in denial about what those were. We can’t be any kind of ally to Native Americans if we don’t know anything about their lives and reality. People like Buffy Sainte Marie are speaking the truth if we care to listen.

Today in our house we’re focusing on the thanks and the giving. When I explained to my son that when we are grateful for our good fortune we can show that gratitude by helping others he asked me if everyone does that. Everyone who wants to can, I said. They should, he said, then they can get a happy feeling inside. Today we’re grateful for everyone taking the spirit of the myth of friendship and refuge and making it real in actions to help others.

Above You Below Me

About A Boy is one of the rare instances when I love the book, the film, and the soundtrack. Nick Hornby is a good writer but his inability to write a compelling conclusion holds him short of greatness. His sense of maudlin comedy is fantastic, though; whoever invented the dramedy, Hornby definitely perfected it. In the hands of the Weitz brothers, this good book becomes a great film. At one point I rented this movie for my younger cousins, convincing their father that it would be fine for 12-year-olds as it is literally about a boy. Once you get past the mother-attempting-suicide plot point that is. (Oops.) What can I say? Apparently I also have a thing for heartwarming tales of lonely people clawing their way out of misery together. Also, the story is hilarious and full of love if you let it be.

The soundtrack by Badly Drawn Boy plays no small part in the quality of the film. Best experienced as a single piece, it’s nearly impossible to pick one track to represent the work but I like this one.

Rhythm of the Night

I keep trying to get my friends to sing this at karaoke with me. So far no luck. I don’t know why, this is the jam!

Blue In Green

It’s a beautiful day here, one of only a few days so far this year that have been cold enough to feel like a real autumn day to me. Cold, windy, bright and sunny. The last of the leaves are turning and falling and I’m making good use of my wool sock collection. I know I should be making the most of my time while the sprout is in school, especially with the busy holiday season coming up. Some days coffee and the blues are just what’s needed.

Wonderwall

Oasis is another band I would never say I actively like with a couple of tunes that sometimes get stuck in my head for days on end. You can’t have lived in England in 1995 and not lovehate this song. Especially if you also love karaoke. It was the heady days of the mid-90s when alt rock singles were topping the charts. What’s not to like?