Librari[d]an

I can’t stop thinking about fair weather, cycling, applying for jobs, ALA in Anaheim, and moving away from Pittsburgh. Not that I’m down on Pittsburgh–just ready for an adventure. (Or, if need be, a misadventure!) Nick called his desire to constantly move wanderlust. I, on the other hand, have always felt a dialectic need for and need to tear myself away from the familiar, the routine. It’s plagued me these past few years, having always found reasons to come back to or stay in Pittsburgh.

I’ve also realized that I am leading a life without music. (Not really, actually. It just feels like it.) Before the ‘pod broke, during my long walks - and occasionally bicycle rides (I know, unsafe!) - I would immerse myself in tunes nouveau and old. I think it’s time to make a financially unsound decision and get another.

This approximate recipe, which I gleaned from the gray, wet recipe book my Mom (pictured) calls a brain, sums up the amazing summer and early fall I had last year. I am resolved that it will be the last of my staple recipes that I post. From here on out, everything will be neuf.

:: Rene’s Vegan Bruschetta ::

Tomatoes
Onions (white)
Olive oil
Salt and Pepper
Basil
Oregano
Garlic (minced)

Directions are simple: Chop the tomatoes and onions and then throw everything in a bowl using amounts that suit your palate. Serve atop rounds of freshly toasted bread (baguette for a snack/appetizer, or something larger for a main course). You may want to brush the rounds with olive oil or put butter on them (if you’re not concerned about dietary restrictions).

Things to consider:

• If you find that this recipe yields bruschetta that’s too wet, remove and discard some (or all) of the tomatoes’ pulpy interiors.
• The type of tomato used can change how this recipe tastes dramatically.
• If you over-spice or put in too much olive oil, just add more tomato until things even out.
• If you have a few “problem” tomatoes (disappointing in taste or color, only edible in part, not exactly at the peak of ripeness, etc.) you can hide them rather wonderfully in this recipe.

Shut up! No, really. Shut up. In all likelihood you haven’t even seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Marnie (1964), let alone viewed it recently with a critical eye. I was like you once. I thought the film was a joke, the beginning of Hitchcock’s cinematic decline. I have come to realize, over time, that this is far from the truth; Marnie was Hitchcock’s last truly great film.

Marnie falls easy prey to critics for an obvious reason: Like Hitchcock’s Spellbound, the emphasis on psychoanalysis dates the film. (For a bizarre look at the not-so-hidden sexual imagery/dialog embedded in the film, check out this video. I think the creep who made it has to be a total freak, a “sex maniac” if you will.) Marnie lacks the clout that a dream sequence created by Salvador Dalí and star power (Ingrid Bergman, Gregory Peck) provide. Don’t get me wrong, Sean Connery and Tippi Hedren are stars… However they’ve both developed an air of camp.

So what makes Marnie so good, despite the flaws? (It certainly isn’t the sloppy stunt work with the horse!) And let’s not rely on silly auteur prattle about motifs in Hitchcock’s canon of work. (She’s blonde? Amazing. She adopts a variety of identities? You don’t say!) But let’s begin with that blonde. The blonde with the pinched features and shrill voice. The perfectly imperfect Hitchcock blonde, Tippi Hedren. Hedren became the Galatea to Hitchcock’s Pygmalion because she was a natural in front of the camera. Now, the title role in Marnie isn’t exactly an easy part to play: Sexually frigid. Kleptomaniac safe-cracker. Compulsive and convincing liar. Phobic of the color red and thunder/lightning. (No wonder why the French title is Pas de printemps pour Marnie, “No Spring for Marnie”. This woman’s got problems!) Yet somehow Hedren is able to pull it off. Just look at the film’s infamous rape scene, in which Hedren is equal parts desperate, defenseless child and resistant woman (resistant in terms of her passivity, her utter disconnect from the physical violation she suffers). And what about the scene at the racetrack, where Hedren has to convey the schism between her false persona (socially adept businesswoman) and true one (nervous, saturnine anomic). Of course, there are many scenes in which Hedren simply can’t hold her character together. (”The colors! Stop the colors!”) But who could?

The second redeeming quality of the film is Bernard Herrmann’s lavish, misunderstood score. (Listen to the Prelude in this theatrical trailer for the film. Also, note Hitchock’s hilarious one-liners: “She does seem a rather excitable type” reduced me to tears!) It is mostly considered a melodramatic, Romantic mess of a composition. This may or may not be true. What his music does reflect, however, is an externalization of the emotional, child-like tumult Hedren’s character experiences thrroughout the film. Of course, I would be remiss in not crediting the director, Hitch, for making a contribution or two. Remember the scene in which Marnie robs an employer after hours? The audience is on tenterhooks as she cracks and empties the safe, removes her shoes, and soberly attempts her escape without being noticed by a cleaning woman–only to drop one of her high-heels! This suspenseful sequence alone is worth forgiving Hitchcock the sillier fare in the final reel.

I plan on posting more about the formal achievments of Marnie in the future. Keep an eye peeled.

A large portion of my search engine traffic comes from people looking up the lyrics to “The Nun’s Litany”, a song from The Magnetic Fields’ new album, Distortion. (When I first posted about Distortion I was undecided about the album, despite really enjoying “The Nun’s Litany”. However, I followed Rich’s music mantra: listen to it until you like it. It worked!) So I figured, why not put an end to their fruitless search? Here are the lyrics as best I can make out. Please leave a comment with corrections (if you can understand them any better over all that shimmering music).

The Nun’s Litany

I want to be a Playboy’s bunny
I’d do whatever they asked me to
I’d meet people with lots of money
And they would love me like I loved you

I want to be a topless waitress
I want my mother to shed one tear
I’d throw away this old, sedate dress
Slip into something a tad more sheer

I want to be an artist’s model
An odalisque au naturel
I should be good at spin the bottle
While I’ve still got something left to sell

I want to be a cobra dancer
With little Willie between my thighs
I may not find a cure for cancer
But I’ll meet plenty of single guys

I want to be a brothel worker
I’ve always been treated like one
If I could be a back-street lurker
I’d make more money and have more fun

I want to be a dominatrix
Which isn’t like me, but I can dream
Learn S&M and all those gay tricks
And men will pay me to make them scream

I want to be a porno starlet
For that I’ll wait ’til Mama’s dead
I’ll see my name in lights of scarlet
And get to spend every day in bed

I want to be a tattooed lady
Dedicated as I am to art
Characters bold, complex and shady
Will write my memoirs across my heart

:: Bibliography ::

The Magnetic Fields. “The Nun’s Litany”. Distortion. Nonesuch Records: January 15, 2008.
(I know, the shame! I promise to buy the album when it comes out.)

                                        Looking for the lyrics to “The Nun’s Litany”? Click here.

I have never come across a Magnetic Fields album that did not immediately speak to me. The first of their songs I ever heard, “Long-Forgotten Fairytale”, hit me like a punch in the gut. I was in pain, I was smitten. It was like Merritt and co. had found a pop grimoire containing an enchantment to make me theirs forever. This new album is challenging our innate entente cordiale. I have only listened to Distortion once all the way through, and am afraid to do so again. Should I have to first think critically about a Fields album in order to appreciate it? I’ve never had to before.

I am trying to be receptive to this sound. It’s a fact of playing and recording music that not everything can be as crisp and perfect as an interested party might wish. But as I am no stranger to intentional distortion - fuzz was practically my middle name for a while there - it’s sort of weird that I’m finding the vast majority of the tracks relatively inaccessible. So far, the only one I honestly have no reservations about loving - in terms of music, lyrics, and performance - is “The Nun’s Litany”. (It helps a bit that I prefer Shirley’s vocals to Stephin’s.)

Of the reviews I’ve read, critics have been linking Distortion in tone to Charm of the Highway Strip (one of my faves) and in execution to any number of past songs. However, nothing could be further from the truth. Charm did deal extensively with isolation and loneliness, but the mien is very different: Charm had a warmth and fortitude that you don’t see in Distortion. As for stylistic choices, the use of distortion itself is nothing new for the Magnetic Fields. It just hasn’t permeated an entire album this way.

I cannot even think about this anymore. I need to listen to the album again, on a better sound system, stat.