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Lit Review: BUNNY

In which I depart from my usual genres

*WARNING: SPOILERS*

“Bunny, I love you.“

“I love YOU, Bunny.“

There’s something about rabbits. Looks-wise, they are among the more innocent of woodland creatures, and that innocence contains a quality which can easily be framed in a frightening context. It has also been sexualized in at least one very famous industry; just ask Gloria Steinem.

Even their alternative name, “bunnies.” Sweet. A little eerily so, no?

Mona Awad’s latest novel Bunny satirizes both these depictions—but, amazingly, only en route to its main objective, which is to absolutely skewer MFA workshop culture. For those who may not be familiar, American creative writing programs especially at the graduate level are notorious for their small-cohort workshop sessions, rife with jargon and sometimes judgment. Of all the genres traditionally workshopped, fiction takes the brunt of this reputation; and Awad, who earned a Master of Fine Arts in Fiction from Brown University, has insider experience with which to take down the “system.”

Make no mistake, she does take it down. As a Creative Writing BA myself, I recognized some artifice in the attitudes of some of the students and professors, the way they conduct themselves in and out of class, the way they approach “the Work.” I could, to an extent, match them up with my MFA-matriculating friends’ tales and laments. But while aspects of Awad’s workshop world can resonate with readers, very little of it is true to life. (Okay, maybe the crippling self-doubt and alienation are true to life.) The renowned fiction workshop at Warren University (warren = a group of rabbits) blows protocol masterfully out of proportion, as our heroine Samantha keeps tabs on the number of times her professor or classmates drop terms like “perform,” “the Body,” or “Tapping the Wound.”

Those classmates are none other than the Bunnies, a clique of four “unbelievably twee” young women who dress in pastel colors, eat miniature foods, and address each other lovingly as “Bunny.” Samantha is clearly the outsider in this cohort, set apart by her worldview (she regularly describes herself as living beneath a thundercloud in opposition to the Bunnies’ sunshine) and her socioeconomic status (she lives in the “bad” part of the unnamed-but-probably-Providence town, where crime runs rampant and random decapitations occur, in opposition to the Bunnies’ manicured lawns). And she’s content that way. Well, actually miserable, undermining her own abilities, contemplating her mother’s accidental death and her father’s absence as he bounces from one get-rich-quick scheme to the next; but content to survey the world in sullen irony alongside her best friend Ava, a sometime student at the neighboring art school (RISD, anyone?). She also contends with the attentions of Jonah, a kindhearted recovering-alcoholic-turned-poet whom she needs more than she realizes. And she clashes with the Lion, as she refers to him—a professor with whom she may or may not have had relations, which she repeatedly insists were non-sexual. Even so, she lacerates herself with her own amazement at being admitted into the program, a spot for which thousands of students across the country would kill.

So it’s an off-kilter world Awad welcomes us into, a classic, perfect-looking university where ugliness lurks just below the surface. As Ava observes early on, even the natural light on campus is unnatural somehow. Something is off.

The novel takes place over Samantha’s second and final year of the program; we see her entrenched in her antisocial ways, not expecting her mutual antipathy with the Bunnies—or anything else in her life, for that matter—to change. But then the Bunnies invite her to their next “Smut Salon,” and she surprises herself by accepting. This salon consists of a round of erotic storytelling, representing a deeper—and darker—side to the Bunnies which takes Samantha by surprise.

Little does she know that’s only the beginning. Soon she is drawn into the Bunnies’ own “workshop” in an attic, a ritual where they take a real bunny (from the thriving campus population) and attempt to turn it into a man. They call these attempts “Drafts” or “Darlings,” as they are physical works in progress, nowhere near perfection. Each one usually bears some grotesque deformity, like a mangled mouth or inhuman hands—as one of the Bunnies complains at the end of Samantha’s first attendance, “his cock better work this time.”

It seems the girls originally conceived of the experiment in search of sexual satisfaction but have produced largely platonic results. Many Drafts live in the Bunnies’ houses as playthings or adoring fans: putting their heads in their creators’ laps, fetching them drinks, generally pampering them. However, should a Draft be malformed beyond use, the Bunnies have to kill him. Which they do, in the bathroom, with an axe. Never was the writer’s adage ‘kill your darlings’ taken so gruesomely far.

This is a pivotal scene in which Awad’s genius for magical realism comes into its glory. Dating back to H.P. Lovecraft (whom Awad indirectly references) and even before, magical realism has fascinated readers for its funhouse-mirror effects. And it has fascinated writers for the freedom it allows them: to create strange events, characters, and procedures without creating logical structures to accompany them. Things can be implausible or left unexplained.

Through these horrifying alternative workshops, Awad also demonstrates her great love for—and frustration with—“the Process” of writing fiction. The Bunnies’ Drafts usually fail, as do the pieces they bring to class, because they are fighting to manipulate the work. Their desire to fashion a just-so man reflects their desire to exercise control over what happens on the page and the message it sends.

Meanwhile Samantha, as our protagonist, is discovering her own capacities, to quite the opposite effect. As if she weren’t enough of a Carrie White, her powers are new, and different, and vengeful. At the novel’s midpoint, she leads one of the Bunnies’ workshops and appears to botch the bunny’s transformation, only to subsequently encounter a mysterious man at the bus stop outside and realize he is her Draft—conjured from a stag she saw on her way to the Bunnies’ house earlier that evening.

As a product of Samantha’s mind, Max—as she calls him—finishes her thoughts mid-sentence, knows her most shameful secrets, and pops up in her closest spaces when she least expects it. But he also has a will of his own, and more besides—he takes up with Ava and is able to have sex with her, to possess her in ways the Bunnies only wish their Drafts could possess them. Samantha cannot control him; she has created something beyond herself. Her human work is in keeping with the dark, violent nature of her written work, material which her classmates and even her professor routinely dismiss as distant and unrelatable. All the more ironic, then, that Max should seduce each of the Bunnies in turn (each of whom knows him by a different name) and flip their saccharine personalities upside-down. Suddenly, the culmination of Samantha’s most humiliating artistic moment—the moment which severed her from the Bunnies—is a creature with such an irresistible pull that they are reduced to desperation for him.

In my opinion, that is exactly the atmosphere at work in the prose itself. I found myself suckered in, unable to stop reading even though at times I wanted to, unable to keep myself from shedding a tear of anxiety at the moments of pure innocence (the miniature cupcakes, the plastic pony the girls all admire) thrown into relief against the sinister activity. The things they do in the daylight against the things they do in the dead of night. Samantha’s narrative voice and thought patterns are so strong that they seeped into my head. It felt like a game of Jumanji: I was trapped until I read the last word.

One of Samantha’s most compelling qualities is her unreliability, which is revealed incrementally—that is, her inability to tell the difference between what is real and what is not. Who is real and who is not. Her alternate names for nearly every character serve to blur the line at the outset, and the line only gets harder to find. (Example: she refers to the Bunnies by their given names at choice times but typically calls them, respectively, Cupcake, Creepy Doll, Vignette, and the Duchess.) I won’t give it all away, but we get a glimpse into a specially damaged mind.

I suspect Bunny will be scariest for writers, or for current or former students of a writing course. There is an insularity, a singularity, to that environment which leaves no one untouched. Legends circulate about the inner demons of famous writers, but Awad has crafted an everyman’s nightmare, an unnerving allegory for anyone who has even tried their hand at the daunting process of fiction. You’ll lose sleep, or your sleep will be disturbed; but then, if you yourself were writing, that would happen anyway.

Image: cover of the Viking edition, published 11 June 2019

The Beatles Play Ed Sullivan

In which I look back to possibly the biggest Sunday 9 February in history

On Friday 7 February 1964, everyone’s favorite quartet landed at JFK to famously deafening support. Two days later, they made their live American television debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. Equally deafening, but not because of the music.

This was all four Beatles’ first time on American soil, and they seized the day. They raided record shops and threw traffic into confusion—not by doing anything, just by being there. Now-iconic stills captured them absorbing the city, particularly frolicking through Central Park (minus poor George, who spent most of the Saturday bedridden).

But there would be plenty more where that came from. 9 February was the first of three consecutive weekends on Sullivan for the group, with 16 February being a broadcast from Miami and 23 February a farewell from back in New York. After that it would be all of three months until Sullivan visited them in London as they prepared for the release of their first film, A Hard Day’s Night.

They would maintain a longstanding relationship with the popular host, thanks in large part to this momentous first performance. It was not their first appearance on American television, but it was their first live appearance on American television, and it couldn’t have been better timed. England had been in the grip of Beatlemania for several months already. CBS decided to get in on the ground floor and capitalize on it by airing a short prerecorded special—on the morning of 22 November 1963. By that evening, whatever visual impression the group had left on their overseas audience had been eclipsed by the tragic news of President Kennedy’s assassination, followed by a period of despair and deep uncertainty for the country. (The concurrent season was pretty symbolic as well.) So, as winter began to show hope of thawing out, who better to “rescue” America from its downward spiral than a quartet of cute, cheerful boys who played lighthearted songs?

The rescue was record-breaking. 73 million people, or forty percent of the population, tuned in that night. Not to mention the studio audience, which consisted of at least 700 and wreaked havoc for the band in terms of acoustics, chiefly that there…weren’t any.

Still, they played a great set across two segments. It went as follows:

“All My Loving”

“Till There Was You,” from Meredith Willson’s The Music Man (a song they recorded for the Live at the BBC sessions that same year and for which Paul seemed to have a fondness—probably the music-hall upbringing talking)

“She Loves You”

“I Saw Her Standing There”

and, perhaps best-remembered,

“I Want to Hold Your Hand”

The images of the Beatles from this and the other Sullivan shows have defined and immortalized them in the public consciousness for decades. To the untrained eye they look indistinguishable, all mop-topped and suited; but, upon this latest revisit, I would argue that the most striking aspect of their “symmetrical” stage presence is Paul’s left-handedness. With the neck of his bass and the necks of John and George’s guitars pointing in opposite directions, there is a harmony to their spatial arrangement which is almost as pleasing as the harmony of their vocal arrangements. (Boy, am I proud of that conceit!)

Anyone who experienced it will tell you—and has told me—that this viewing was all anyone was talking about on Monday. It did a lot for Americans’ relationship with television; it did wonders for Sullivan’s status in the industry, just as the man had planned; and it was a milestone for the group on the fast track to world domination.

One of my favorite “legends” surrounding the event goes that the first thing John said to Sullivan when they arrived at CBS and stepped onstage was “Is this the stage Buddy Holly played on?” It warms my heart to know that, for a guy on the way to accumulating a worldwide fanbase, he was just a fanboy too.

And speaking of apocryphal stories: I read recently that Ringo, positioned in back atop his drum kit as he traditionally was, couldn’t hear a thing his bandmates were playing due to the crowd’s screaming, and so had to watch them and physically time his drumming in accordance with their motions. Tell me again how he wasn’t the best drummer in the Beatles!!

Image: The Beatles via Live for Live Music

Film Review: LITTLE WOMEN

In which I assess a new take on an old favorite

*WARNING: SPOILERS (PLOT-WISE AND PRODUCTION-WISE)*

Yesterday, a rainy Sunday afternoon, I had the long-awaited privilege to see Greta Gerwig’s Little Women. And it warmed my heart in all kinds of ways. (Not least of which was thanks to a rich, coppery color scheme against the backdrop of fiery Massachusetts foliage. Commencing homesick-for-New-England mode.)

Suffice it to say I went in with high expectations, due both to my knowledge of Gerwig and my protective feelings toward Louisa May Alcott’s 1868-69 masterpiece. Like generations before us, I and my bookishly minded contemporaries spent our adolescences aspiring to be Jo March, a seemingly fearless wordsmith undeterred by hard times or an antipathetic publishing world. Despite not growing up during a war—or at least not on the home front of one—I was a would-be writer, and one half of a close sisterhood; so I identified strongly with Jo and sought to emulate her. For me, this latest iteration reaffirmed all those feelings of kinship while managing to cast these familiar characters in a new and revelatory light.

Writer-director Gerwig brought her star Saoirse Ronan along from 2017’s Lady Bird, and in some ways I think it is this connection which forms this Little Women’s emotional foundation. The headstrong heroine of that film lacks the familial support around which Jo’s life revolves, but Gerwig informs her adaptation with a similar sense of chaos. The first and prime example of this is her choice not to tell the story in order. There are flashbacks and cutaways, time-jumps and vignettes, and we are not always sure whether we are inside Jo’s “novel” or outside of it. It feels pleasantly scrambled, not unlike the nonlinear way in which memories come back to us. It’s a deconstruction of sorts, and I found myself absolutely on board.

The chemistry between the central quartet is palpable. Each sister gets her own timeline in miniature. In the aforementioned ‘scrambled’ fashion, we watch Meg make her debutante entrance, fall in love with John Brooke, and battle financial difficulties; we watch Beth gravitate toward the piano at the neighboring household, under the grandfatherly guidance and benediction of Mr. Laurence, while increasingly succumbing to her own illnesses; we watch Amy grow from acting the petulant baby of the family to flourishing as an artist in Paris and courting aristocrats; and of course we watch Jo chase her dreams, try to learn to take criticism, and throw all her personal relationships into constant flux. These individual threads only serve to further illuminate their time occupying the same space, helping one another and turning on one another, insulting one another and building one another up. And their time together gives us a frame of reference for their feelings as they grow and physically part ways—for example, Amy’s perception of being perpetually overshadowed by Jo, which she acts upon by burning Jo’s first manuscript. The depiction of a tumultuous life among siblings is impassioned and real.

We also watch Marmee (played sympathetically by Laura Dern) as she attends selflessly to the needs of the local less fortunate and yet simultaneously displays striking humanity; in one of my favorite moments, when Jo remarks that her mother is never angry, Marmee says, “I’m angry every day of my life.” Women’s rage struggles to be given a platform now, let alone in the psychological crunch of the Civil War, and a line such as this felt like a breath of fresh air. It speaks to how far we still have to go in this respect.

Stunningly, though, at the end of the day this version of Little Women may truly belong to Laurie (a downright vulnerable Timothée Chalamet). It is his search to discover precisely where and how he fits into the March family, arguably the people among whom he was always meant to be. He is the tie that binds the sisters’ individual threads, appearing at Meg’s ball, ultimately proposing to Amy. His relationship with Jo is the most complicated and compelling. Gerwig’s interpretation cemented in my mind how right Jo is that the two of them could never be a married couple. But Jo is wrong about the reason. It isn’t because they would aggravate each other to no end; it’s because they are already closer than a traditional romance or even friendship could allow for. He is a part of her family and he is a part of her. They are almost each other’s twin, their bond intertwining them to a point of inseparability. The bonds of marriage pale in comparison.

I have seen other sources use the ‘twin’ image to paint Jo and Laurie as androgynous, genderqueer halves of one whole: her nickname conventionally masculine, his conventionally feminine, their love for each other bound up in their sense of self-identity. This lens, and the queer status it confers on them both, completely alters our view of Jo’s later romantic partner, Friedrich Bhaer. The original novel was published in two volumes over two years, allowing readers to develop predictions and attachments before the ending was revealed. Alcott famously matched up Jo and Fritz because 1) her publisher pressured her, against her wishes, to marry Jo off, and 2) she wanted to be a thorn in the side of the legions of Jo-and-Laurie stans. Jo and Fritz’s relationship does not figure nearly as prominently in Gerwig’s adaptation as I recall in other versions (including the 2005 Broadway musical, which I would also recommend to anyone); but we do see him attempt to give her his opinion on her stories, which she does not take kindly to and which she lets color her opinion of him. The fact that he shows up abruptly at the March homestead in Concord after the upheaval of Beth’s passing and Amy’s marriage seems like a literal translation of Alcott’s attempt to shoehorn Jo into a romance. This is reinforced by Jo’s own stubbornness in the face of the publisher Mr. Dashwood’s request that she marry off her heroine. Is it a matter of convenience? Does Jo’s commonality with Laurie mean she could literally be cast as a lesbian, with Fritz as her beard? Alcott herself never married, and the question will likely be batted around forever by fans and scholars. That said, I never saw the argument so clearly and legitimately as in this film.

The fact that I experienced the film alongside two friends, one Spanish and one Canadian, in a cinema near-packed with Germans (who I’m sure all supported Fritz), attests to the universality of this story. The characters are beloved, and the scrapes they get into and the challenges they face continue to resonate with audiences despite our ever-farther removal from their time. Gerwig’s adaptation allowed me to experience the sisters’ losses and victories, highs and lows, with renewed vigor. It reminded me how many reasons there are to love this tale, and gave me new reasons to love it too. And I might be biased, but if you didn’t want to be a writer before, just let it try to change your mind.

*One more great line, contender for Sickest Burn: “What a disappointment [Laurie] turned out to be. Must be the Italian in him.” : Aunt March (a faultless Meryl Streep)

Image: a shot from the film as used in Vogue

Liverpool, Remembered

In which I reminisce on one of the places I’ll remember all my life (though some have changed)

A year ago I made a pilgrimage up from London, where I was living at the time, to the holy musical mecca that is Liverpool.

This was a pilgrimage in the truest sense. Spiritual fulfillment for a believer of ten years. I experienced all the staples of quintessential northwest-English weather, including a torrential downpour which lasted a solid few hours (“if the sun don’t come you get a tan / from standing in the English rain”) and a bout of frigid Merseyside wind (make no mistake, walking beside the river in late January is like asking to have your hat blown clean off your head). I boarded a bus for a Magical Mystery Tour, where I visited each Beatle’s childhood home, befriended someone whom I still talk to regularly even though he lives halfway across the world, and sang a lot. I drank (with the aforementioned friend) in the original Cavern Club, which exhibits memorabilia, guitars, etc. from the many bands it has hosted over the years, and which was especially packed and lively on a wet Saturday night. I walked down Penny Lane, all the way to the storied barbershop.

I also observed the “Double Fantasy” collection at the Museum of Liverpool, curated by Yoko Ono herself, a retrospective of objects defining her and John’s time together mostly (but not exclusively) in New York. Ironic, I thought, that a fan who found herself in New York often enough during her stateside life to pay occasional visits to the Dakota and Strawberry Fields should get a glimpse of these objects by crossing an ocean. Such objects included John’s NEW YORK CITY T-shirt, his hard-won and much-disputed green card, several of his handwritten poems and sketches, and the ladder which featured in Yoko’s installation at London’s Indica Gallery in 1966—the ladder which brought them together after he climbed it and picked up a magnifying glass to read the word “yes” on a card on the ceiling. That’s the story, anyway. There was also a canvas outside the exhibit where museumgoers could write their wishes for peace. I used a green felt-tip marker. I count myself lucky to have been there during the collection’s brief stint on display.

So, what did forty-eight hours in Liverpool teach me, among other things? One: never underestimate the circuitousness of a bus route. Two: it’s only by growing up in a city which nearly drowns every other day that you’re armed with ideas for a song like “Here Comes the Sun.” Three: there are two types of Liverpudlians—those who care about the Beatles and those who care about the FC. And four: the cold is not a joke. Bundle up. It’s worth it.

Images: a highlight from the weekend of 26-27 January 2019

And Then There Was None

In which I defend (what I perceive to be) a misused contraction

Contemporary English is known for its contractions and portmanteaux (oh, and theft). As the language has developed and spread, these shortenings—much like the shortening in a recipe—have been transformed to serve many different purposes. One is so commonly abused, however, that it’s hardly considered a contraction anymore: none.

But it is a contraction. It’s short for “not one.” And that changes the context in which it’s often used. If more people recognized it for the phrase it shortens, fewer people would use it incorrectly. That said, the incorrectness has reached a point of sounding correct to most speakers, and most speakers aren’t inclined to fix what they think isn’t broken. (To quote a contraction-laden adage, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”)

While I, filled with the vim and vigor of the young year, am going to insist that it is broken. And defend it accordingly.

The question came up recently among some coworkers, a couple of whom pointed out the error of the phrase “none of them [the plans] have worked out” in a story, the other couple of whom persevered in the idea that it was not an error. To be clear, pluralization in the case of “none” is now widely accepted. Countless people hear, read, and say “none of them have” without batting an eye.

Others, myself included, are discomfited. Here’s why: the verb following “none of them” refers not to the “them” (the collective) directly preceding it, but to the “none”—that is, the “not one.” And you wouldn’t say “not one have worked out,” but instead “not one has worked out.” Ergo, the full phrase would read “not one of them has worked out.” The appearance of the singular verb conjugation “has” right next to the plural pronoun “them” is what many English speakers find jarring and what leads them to believe the verb should reflect the collective.

As with just about any linguistic bastardization to enter the vernacular, this one stems from a misunderstanding of traditional grammar. Or perhaps just from being out of touch. In the above phrase, the “none” appears far enough back that a reader is led to think whatever verb they use (in this case “to have”) cannot possibly apply to it. It must apply to “them,” they reason, because “them” appears immediately before the verb. To me, this assumption indicates a lack of familiarity with complex sentence structure; Americans especially tend to prefer simple sentences. Sentences used to wind on for ages in the days of yore—and all the verbs had to agree. Nowadays, we reply “k—Sent from my iPhone.”

At the end of the day, is all this truly a bad thing? As much as I sound like an old fogey with rigid ideas of how to speak and write, I genuinely am trying to embrace these quirks as they emerge. Language must evolve, otherwise it dies. We live in an age of myriad vehicles for linguistic transformation, some of which don’t involve words at all. There’s no telling where we’ll go from here. *insert dizzy-face emoji* If English, a notoriously difficult language to learn, is going to survive the transitions, it’s too much to hope for it to remain intact as I learned it.

“But you’ve just droned on about how ‘none’ is broken!” you say, wielding your torches as you advance on my house. And that I have. A few grammatical standards are too near and dear to my heart for me to remain silent in the face of their erosion. So you can find me arguing for this one until my dying breath. Hey, a gal’s got to have principles.

When Was Alexander Hamilton Born?

In which I offer a conjecture

Alexander Hamilton is the mysterious Founding Father. Even after the smash hit musical made him a national celebrity (again), there is still much we have yet to confirm about the details of his life. By “we” I mean historians, scholars, and curious people like me who are evidently without something better to do.

Take his birth. Today is his birthday; this is essentially certain. As to the year, biographer Ron Chernow detects a discrepancy in the record—sources from his native Nevis state 1755, but sources more closely associated with the man’s own writings state 1757.

What’s up with that?

Two events jump out at me in my exploration of this mystery. The first is a hurricane which devastated Nevis and the surrounding islands, commonly dated 1772. The second is the young Hamilton’s arrival in New York City after his essay about said hurricane raised enough money to pay his way, commonly dated 1776.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, creator of Hamilton—who got the germ of the show from Chernow’s 2004 book—depicts this introduction to New York across the first few numbers: in his defining musical statement, “My Shot,” the character declares himself “only nineteen but [his] mind is older.” The idea that he is nineteen in 1776 suggests that Miranda subscribes to the 1757 theory, reflecting the real-life Hamilton’s account of his birth year.

Chernow, meanwhile, I do not recall endorsing one year or the other. Like the good historian he is, he approaches the question with a healthy skepticism. I do recall that his report of the 1772 hurricane is pretty categorical. In the musical, Hamilton mentions the hurricane only in passing until a soliloquy halfway through Act II: “When I was seventeen a hurricane destroyed my town.” So, if he was seventeen at the time of the hurricane, he could not possibly have been nineteen at the time of his voyage to New York four years later, but twenty-one.

Now, how can we be sure that 1776 was the year he moved to the colonies? Some of it has to do with just how many sources agree on this date.* And it checks out when cross-referenced with the timeline of his joining then-General Washington’s staff and fighting on the front lines of the Revolution. (Most people would have gladly avoided the bitter scene at Valley Forge, but our hero was positively stir-crazy, sending futile supply requests to the Continental Congress and pestering Washington to give him command of a battalion.) We’ll go with it, if nothing else for lack of a sound alternative.

And how can we be sure that 1772 was the year of the hurricane? Official records from Nevis list it as such. As the island was rather disenfranchised and governmentally unstable at the time, its credibility might be dubious; but then doesn’t it make sense that its birth records would also be spotty? And, taking this into account, wouldn’t it be reasonable to think that the record of a natural disaster which wreaked havoc on the entire Caribbean would be more widely disseminated and accurate than the record of a single person’s birth?

This train of thought places the hurricane at 1772, with Hamilton aged seventeen, and the landing in New York at 1776, with Hamilton aged twenty-one. Which leads me to fall into the 1755 camp. (It also places his death in July 1804 at age forty-nine, which is not great, but at least it isn’t forty-seven.)

Regarding Hamilton’s claims to 1757, contemporary and subsequent documentation gives us to understand that he was not the most reliable narrator of his own history. In life he was rather proud and self-aggrandizing—perhaps understandably, since his status as an immigrant with illegitimate parentage forced him to work twice as hard as the likes of Thomas Jefferson or John Adams to attain equal standing. Chernow, then, does not put it past him to have falsified his birth year to make himself appear younger and more like a prodigy. Frankly, twenty-one is still fresh-faced, especially for the fray he was joining. I mean, we’re talking forming a nation. He needn’t have worried.

Granted, “only twenty-one but my mind is older” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. But one more syllable could be worth it in the pursuit of authenticity.

Of course, who among us is an unbiased autobiographer? And who’s to say that this man does not remember his own birth better than a small island administration with thousands of births to keep track of? Either party is liable to have erred.

In summary, I doubt we will ever be one hundred percent sure about any of these factors. The past is full of myths to be debunked and questions to be answered, and half the fun lies in the process. It’s ironic that, for a guy who died such a famous death, we may never figure out when it all began.

*I’m not supporting ‘herd mentality’ or the assumption that something must be the case merely because multiple sources stand by it. But here, as we’ve seen, there is a strong case undercutting Hamilton’s portrait of his birth. History is always being rewritten and revised. Consider this no more than the poor man’s (or woman’s) attempt to contribute.

Happy 265^th (or 263^rd) birthday, “A-dot-Ham”!

Image: PBS American Experience

Foresight is 20-20

In which I check the New Year mindset

Folks, we made it. Happy New Year to all! (And to all a good night—we could probably use some rest and recuperation from our dusk-’til-dawn festivities.)

While the Gregorian calendar puts me at odds with these ‘decade’ reviews—the timeline propagated by much of the West dictates that each decade begin on the ‘1’ year, not the ‘0,’ but who’s counting—I do believe there is every reason to assess the attitudes we’ve carried with us up to now and consider altering them as needed for a more fulfilling future.

A talented writer/teacher friend of mine recently gave me an exercise to kickstart this assessment. Compose a list of advice or wisdom for your one-year-in-the-future self: the number of items on the list amounts to your age plus one. The idea is to develop an appreciation for the life experience you’ve gained thus far and to pick and choose how it will benefit you in the next year. It’s a twist on the old write-a-letter-to-your-past-self routine in that it equips you with a positive frame of mind for what’s to come.

To that end, I present my list. In fairness, my 2019 saw some tremendous existential changes, from the place where I live down to the minutiae of my daily routine. Others’ lives may not have been so upended. Still, I like to think some of these have universal application. And I invite you to create your own—a year from now, you might thank yourself!

Ask for what you need. What use are you to anyone, yourself included, if you don’t have the goods (physical/emotional/spiritual/whatever) to be your best self?
Ask for what you want. Let someone else say no—it won’t be the end of the world, and it’s depressing to deny yourself prematurely. You’d be surprised how willing people are to help you if you (kindly) volunteer your desire.
That thing you did last year when you loved someone and told them? Do it again! I recommend everyone do this at least once in their lives; it puts things in perspective.
Don’t worry about everything being neat and in order. Nothing is. There are two types of people in the world: those who acknowledge that life is chaos and that they don’t have things under control the way they’d like, and those who pretend otherwise to everyone’s detriment.
You have no reason to be jealous of anyone, but it’s okay if you are sometimes. Just do everything in your power not to let it hinder you. When it prevents you from becoming what you want to become or from allowing people into your heart, that’s when it’s a problem.
If you keep dancing, you’ll probably never have to stop. I mean in a bodily sense. I love to dance, especially ballet, and staying consistent in my practice now increases my chances of being able to do it for a good chunk of my life. The same goes for running. (Although I have flirted with the dangers of overextension, so I would also say know your limits.)
Get more sleep. You’ve earned it, and you’ll need it. As someone whose brain is constantly stimulated, I’m trying to go to bed a little earlier these nights. It feels so good when I do, both in the moment and in the morning.
It is almost impossible to truly accept a compliment. Keyword: almost. Don’t stop trying. Recognize yourself for your strengths, and be grateful (not self-deprecating) when others recognize you.
One of the best words (in English) is ‘fuck.’ I’m serious. What other word is so versatile? It’s a verb, a noun, an interjection; it’s got an adjective form; it can be inserted into any adverb; it’s still surrounded by enough taboo that it wields power; it’s a lot of fun. Like most things, though, it loses its potency if you overindulge, so don’t be gratuitous.
Amazing things have been achieved by people who believed they had nothing left to lose. Companies founded, books published, songs written…if you feel you’re reaching the bottom of your proverbial barrel, that’s precisely when greatness is poised to strike.
Don’t look down on someone for their job. That retail worker is likely just as smart as you, or smarter, and simply has yet to hit their big break.
You will do things that your parents didn’t, or that they wouldn’t approve of. It’s your life. This isn’t to say that it won’t blow up in your face. And if you ask advice only to disregard it, that’s at your own risk. But some things you’ve got to learn yourself.
It’s okay to like things and to be impressed by them.
It’s okay not to like things and not to be impressed by them.
Some of life’s troubles you have to put up with, and some you don’t. Work on telling them apart.
Your “best” will vary from day to day, and you will not always “do” it. In fact, you will not even try your best all the time; some days you just can’t be bothered. Take stock of yourself, but forgive yourself.
They’re too anxious about being judged to spend time judging you. After all, haven’t you felt the same way on occasions when you might have had the opportunity to judge them?
Just because something bad happened last time doesn’t mean something good won’t happen this time.
You may feel even more empowered if you learn to cook. This isn’t a feminist thing for me, it’s a fear thing. But the only way to lessen the fear is to give it a go.
You can tell someone when they’ve hurt you.
You can tell someone when you are afraid.
No one is ever “enough” for themselves, including—perhaps especially—those who are widely called successful. How many luminaries of history were at war with inner demons, either in or out of the public eye? How many people have been driven to “succeed” wildly if only to drown out a nagging sense of inadequacy? You’re not alone.
People—that means you too—will not always put the required effort into friendships. Some of them will last anyway, and some will not. Try to be understanding.
You are only improving.

May 2020 bring us health, happiness, and hope, and may it be just as good in hindsight. (And this from someone who can barely see as it is!)

The Holiday Armadillo: An Origin Story

In which a hero of diversity is born

As the year’s end draws nigh and leaves me with little energy but for thinking, I find myself reflecting on my favorite seasonal stories. One of which, of course, is that of the Holiday Armadillo.

It is common knowledge that the Armadillo was conceived by paleontologist Ross Geller in 2000 as part of a campaign to get his young son, Ben, interested in their Jewish heritage. When questioned about the absence of his more popular Christmastime counterpart, the Armadillo reportedly remarked, “Santa was unavailable.” Still, despite the touch-and-go welcome which awaited him, the part-Jewish animal resolutely traveled to New York (“all the way from Texas,” as Ross’s sister Monica added) for the express purpose of relaying the story of the Maccabees and the Festival of Lights.

In a feat of astounding patience, the Armadillo realized his plan of cultural consciousness despite being derailed first by the abrupt arrival of Santa Claus himself (an impressive commitment from Chandler Bing) and then by the arrival of…Superman (an absolutely on-par commitment from Joey Tribbiani). On top of all this, he managed to incorporate his friends into the narrative; Santa was later heard to comment, “My favorite part was when Superman flew all the Jews out of Egypt.”

Two subsequent arrivals, Rachel Green and Phoebe Buffay, mistook the gathering for “the Easter Bunny’s funeral.” The Armadillo deftly dispelled this theory and proved the undeniable happiness of the occasion by inviting them to participate in lighting the menorah.

Against the backdrop of a world at war with itself, the Holiday Armadillo has remained a bastion of inclusivity for nearly a score of years. If you’re looking to broadcast tolerance and legitimize all your loved ones’ festive traditions, look no further.

And whatever you celebrate, Così faccio io wishes you a peaceful and joyous one!

Image: from the official Twitter of F•R•I•E•N•D•S

Anti-Show-Ponying

In which I ponder the virtues of not playing to the room

Lately I’ve stumbled upon a wealth of bootlegs (audio and video) of early R.E.M. shows. As the kids say, it’s giving me life. This owes partly to the sheer volume of the catalogue: there are so many songs, some popping up years before appearing on any album, and if you compare them to what’s on record you will find most of them musically (and sometimes lyrically) intact. Precious few groups have sustained such a consistent sound over their careers. If they’ve been a fixture in your life for as long as you can remember, like in my case, this half-buried stuff makes for an impressive listen.

But the video footage is a joy all its own. Two performances stick out: the first from 9 June 1984 at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, NJ, a venue which boasts a great deal of concert footage (my personal favorite is from Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ 1978 tour, but that’s another post); the second from 2 October 1985 at a small venue in Germany (I think near Munich)—as Michael Stipe tells the crowd, “We’ve never been here before and we’re not quite sure where we are.”

This is one of perhaps five full sentences he says, outside the context of a song, in an hour-and-a-half set with two encores. Only after ten minutes does he say “hi.” And it got me thinking.

What makes a successful performer? What does an audience want from them? Are they meant to play to the room, ultra-aware of being watched and listened to, or to retreat into their own expressive space as if no one is watching or listening?

My experience suggests that it is up to the performer. But R.E.M. seem to defy categorization here—among other categories—due to their duality. These performances exude energy and effort while maintaining a decidedly antisocial air. Once the quartet establish a vibe, they lose themselves in it; and yet there’s a pervasive sense of concentration, of heads firmly on shoulders. These are not guys who are about to go crazy for crazy’s sake. Everything is intentional. It’s strange, and thrilling, to observe.

Their onstage arrangement has essentially never varied from show to show. None of them spends a tremendous amount of time looking at the audience. Bill Berry probably does this the most, positioned as he is behind his drum kit, although even he seems to mostly focus on his three bandmates lined up in front of him. Mike Mills and Peter Buck, stationed at opposite ends of the stage, are constantly exchanging glances; and Buck’s tendency to travel from one side to the other affords the pair regular opportunities to check their synchronization. Buck is the most obviously energetic, jumping and bounding to and fro in a manner closest to that of a conventional rock star (you can tell he was educated in the school of the Kinks’ Dave Davies). Even so, he is usually looking down at his guitar or around the stage at whomever he is taking his next cue from.

Similarly, Mills divides the majority of his attention between his bass and his microphone. And here it bears pointing out that Mike Mills is perhaps the hardest-working backing vocalist in rock & roll history. His vocal lines, like his basslines, are wide-ranging and complex, providing a harmonic counterpoint to Stipe’s vocal lines—and often (at least in this period of their creative work) featuring different lyrics, which creates a disorienting but undeniably pleasing effect. The parts he sings are clearly composed sensitively, the perfect vehicles for his voice; and it’s a great voice, with a quality and timbre which manage to complement Stipe’s wonderfully. (I learned recently that his father, Frank Mills, was an operatic tenor, so there’s some perspective.) And for all the coordinating he has to do onstage, as these shows tell us, he presents a relatively mellow front.

(Mills, I will note, is also a diplomat. At the finish of the Capitol Theatre show, where Stipe says “bye” and walks off, Mills acknowledges the crowd and gets a fresh wave of enthusiasm in response…and after having just been jamming down in the front row to round out their final number, which I’ll mention in a bit. The crowd goes wild. Well, when your heroes up onstage are not the pandering type, you’ll take what you can get.)

Stipe, meanwhile, unsurprisingly demonstrates the least interest of all in putting on an easily-interpreted persona. He sways on his feet, he rocks back and forth, he hangs on his mic stand like he needs it to live. (At the Capitol Theatre show, he also has a lot of very curly hair, which helps to accomplish his goal for him; by the end of the next year he’s cut it short, so he finds other ways of distancing himself.) When he does look out, it’s frequently accompanied by some idiosyncratic dancing (see “Harborcoat” early in the Germany show; by the Green tour there would be more where that came from). During one encore in Germany, he actually descends into the crowd, although he spends most of that time leaning on the barricades staring over their heads, all while being close enough for them to touch him. The pinnacle of detachment.

But oftentimes he faces the wings or even upstage. This can’t be without purpose: as the editor of the German footage astutely explains, his costume for that show consists of a jacket with a photo of “Ronald McDonald” (Reagan) taped to its back, “most likely in protest of U.S. deployment of Intermediate Nuclear Force systems in West Germany, Italy, and the UK in 1984.” It makes sense that he would want the German crowd to get a good look at it, which would require him to turn away. (I don’t understand most of his wardrobe choices, but then have I ever understood anything about him? The man is an enigma.) And this was in the years before the band’s material became overtly political, so it speaks volumes.

What really strikes me about Stipe here are these unique ways of communicating the urgency of his messages, because they are in fact urgent. That said, it’s probably little wonder that his best and most reliable means of this communication is his voice. Despite his unassuming demeanor and his stumbling around, despite the fact that his lyrics are still largely unintelligible in addition to being inscrutable—or maybe because of all these components—he sounds like a particularly gifted town crier, with a power and a persistence and an ability to reach his listeners which have rendered him peerless. It’s funny, honestly, to see this voice encapsulated in this personality.

One indication of the group’s self-containment is their willingness to get in each other’s spaces. Aside from the itinerant Buck—who, during the Germany show, runs over to split his rare backing vocal with Mills–Stipe visits Mills’s corner and Berry’s domain in back, almost always dragging his mic stand along. They are continuously checking in with one another, continuously engaging one another. At any given moment, someone is moving; just one of the ways that it’s difficult to pin any of them down.

From a musical standpoint, for as many of their own songs as they play, they don’t shy away from covers; but even these seem bizarre. Staples of their mid-’80s shows include two Velvet Underground songs, “Femme Fatale” and “Pale Blue Eyes.” While it’s been famously said that not many people bought the Velvets’ seminal album but everyone who did went and formed a band, I found it odd to take material I associated with Lou Reed—known for his dry, minimum-effort vocal style—and hear it through Stipe, whose vocal style can never sound any less than wholly invested. A late-1984 show in Yokohama, Japan, ends with “Femme Fatale,” and it’s positively disarming to hear him: high, hollow, vulnerable. (It may be the only time I believed him when he sang about a woman, but I digress.) Meanwhile, the Capitol Theatre show’s encore features guest appearances from Roger McGuinn (playing “So You Want to Be a Rock & Roll Star”) and John Sebastian (playing “Do You Believe in Magic?”) before they all top it off with Them’s “Gloria.” And the Germany show ends with a version of “Paint It, Black,” which—notwithstanding the irony of this appropriation by a band whose stage presence is everything the Stones’ isn’t—lyrically comprises about a third of the original.

It’s eclectic, to say the least. It goes to show the vast number of influences R.E.M. drew from. No wonder they sound so intelligent; they really did their homework.

As human beings, we’re predisposed to desire the unavailable. Which makes these methods catnip to onlookers whose interest is already piqued. But I was amazed, as I watched, by the balance they maintain. They walk a fine line between accessible and inaccessible. They’re here to put on a good show, but they’re not here for you. You just happen to be a witness to said good show. You’re incidental.

In a year we’ve spent celebrating entertainers like Elton John and Freddie Mercury—true showmen and masters of their craft—it’s worth meditating on the legitimacy of the polar-opposite approach. It’s okay not to be a show pony. In fact it’s clearly possible to succeed while, if not ignoring your audience, being so absorbed in the act of collective performance that it becomes almost exhibitionist.

My start in dance classes and school choir taught me that performing was synonymous with…well, facing the people who were there to see me. By the time I got into theatre at age nine, the principles of enunciating and cheating out were second nature. The idea that anyone could turn their back on these principles (pun intended) and be equally, if not more, compelling was anathema to me for a long time. Since then, it’s safe to say, my horizons have been wildly expanded. Depending on the image you aim to present, sometimes disengaging from the crowd is for their (and your) own good.

So next time you find yourself itching to explore a new corner of the Internet, consider the vintage R.E.M. rabbit-hole. (On second thought, it’s more like a well: it hits you really hard and there’s a lot of echo.) It will remind you that some things are still beautiful.

Happy 61st birthday to Mike Mills (and 63rd to Peter Buck, which was 6 December)!

Image: cover of the LP released by the Bad Joker label

Album Review: FINE LINE

In which a former boy-band darling goes in yet another direction

Harry Styles has become a god.

This was clear enough on his solo debut back in the spring of 2017; now, on the eve of his sophomore release, it’s only getting progressively clearer, what with the imaginative glimpses we’ve been treated to. And yet this release seems to be his way of telling us (and himself) not to lose sight of his aching humanity.

In the run-up to the big day, each single outshone the last. The videos, too. First was “Lights Up,” which hit YouTube on 11 October (National Coming Out Day in the US); next “Watermelon Sugar,” which proved to have the greatest sticking power in my head; and finally “Adore You,” which, as the SNL performance suggested, gives the background vocals as much glory as the foreground. Only the first and last of those singles have videos attached, but you can tell the artist is increasingly preoccupied with narrative, telling cohesive stories. “Adore You,”* for example, constructs a fable around a boy growing up in a superstitious seaside community, whose unusual smile isolates him until he learns to harness it in such a way that it actually powers the whole village like an energy source. And as for “Lights Up” on Coming Out Day, featuring a lot of different bodies onscreen in any given shot…well, fans have gone crazy speculating on what that might mean.

But the narrative pull carries over onto the album itself. Songs like “She” examine a character from a third-person perspective: in this case it is a man attempting to navigate his day while haunted by the image of a strange woman—though with each chorus we are projected into the character’s head and hear his voice in first-person. Just as much is said by the long jam at the end, the guitar solo like an agonizingly circular thought process. The cumulative effect of the first four tracks, “Golden” and the three spirited singles, is one of irresistible movement—but the direct lead-in to the comparatively sparse, mournful ballads “Cherry” and “Falling” signals a narrative thread to the work as a whole. Our hero tries to lose himself in dancing before finally having to confront the emptiness and ugliness that come with the dissolution of a romance. Those ballads have their roots in “Sweet Creature” and “From the Dining Table” on Harry Styles; but that album focused much more on smaller vignettes, whereas this one provides us with a broader arc.

Outside of traditional storytelling, there’s a lot of musical painting to boot. On “Lights Up,” the lull created by the mix of instruments on each verse is disturbed at the chorus: a single arpeggiated piano chord at a time accompanies the voices as they sing “All the lights couldn’t put out the dark / running through my heart”—indeed, like a single spotlight in a darkened room. “Sunflower, Vol. 6,” meanwhile, establishes a bright Caribbean-influenced mood, with syncopation and studio magic, supporting the theory that the song represents the acceptance stage of grief. It’s particularly accessible material.

The album sweeps an array of influences. “To Be So Lonely” is similar in theme to the two self-aware meditations preceding it, but feels different: it sounds like it could have been an outtake from Bridge Over Troubled Water (or maybe the plucky guitar just reminds me of “El Condor Pasa”). I was delighted to hear strong strains of Joni Mitchell in the open tuning of “Canyon Moon”—maybe the title should have tipped me off—not to mention that the repeated lyric “I’m going home” recalls her “I’m coming home” on Blue’s “California.” The album’s closer, “Fine Line,” hearkens back to the artist’s admiration of Bowie with properly involved orchestration (its run time exceeds six minutes). And the choir supporting him on “Treat People with Kindness” has a “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” quality to it.

Speaking of harmonies, there’s three-part voicing to spare here. In “Sunflower, Vol. 6,” the layering on “tonight” (heavy on leading tones) reminded me of the Association. Almost every song is inevitably punctuated with choral chimes, echoing, shimmering. And it seems like the artist usually doesn’t do them himself. One of the great effects of these is that he uses all the contributors he’s congregated over the course of the album’s gestation, infusing his efforts with a sense of togetherness and commonality. They’re all putting their all into it.

Arguably they’re following his lead. As a matter of fact, one of my favorite things about Harry Styles’s technique is that he always sounds like he is trying—his voice stretches with the exertion of conveying the emotion he has written about. It feels personal to the listener. It’s a feeling that drew me to the debut, got me excited for this release, and makes me look forward to wherever he chooses to go in the future. Because he isn’t going on his own—he’s taking us along for the ride. Suffice it to say this is no sophomore slump.

*The video whose storyline differs from its song is a concept he explored on the first album; from the “Kiwi” video, in which a group of schoolchildren have a (tremendously fun-looking) cake fight, one would hardly guess that the song’s conflict centers around the narrator’s actress girlfriend’s pregnancy.

Image: from Olivia Petter’s review in the 6 December issue of Vogue