rebeccakuder

Susan Boyle…finally.

I kept hearing about the phenomenon named Susan Boyle. I read articles about her, but only today watched the video of her singing on “Britain’s Got Talent.”

Caveat: Fantine’s song from “Les Miserables” works on me the way that Judy Garland singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and Tom Waits singing “Somewhere” from “West Side Story” does. That is, just a few notes into the song, nearly every time, I am crying.

So watching Susan Boyle’s rendition was no exception. Something in those songs about the bitterness of still having dreams, despite living in the real-ness of the world. Knowing that dreams are sometimes impossible to achieve, and yet still having hope that some day, some how, somewhere…there’s a place for us.

Watching Simon Cowell watch Susan Boyle sing was almost as interesting as her performance. (I haven’t seen him on TV that I can recall, but I know the snark of reality TV precludes judges from gushing. Still, the look on his face as he watched her sing was sweet.) I have no idea if it was true surprise–I don’t know (and don’t really care) whether he feigned his reaction, and had already seen the contestants perform before broadcast.

Okay, so now I understand all the  frenzy about Susan Boyle. She has a beautiful voice, pouring from an unglamorous body.  I hope she can enjoy her life after all this hoopla.   And I hope that people stop judging others like books, by their clichéd covers.

rebeccakuder

Woody Guthrie was right

“I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good.

I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling.

I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.

And the songs that I sing are made up for the most part by all sorts of folks just about like you.”–Woody Guthrie

rebeccakuder

Is purple the new red?

Maybe I missed the memo, but from where I sat, December 2009 was the holiday season of less red and more purple.  Everywhere I would have expected to see jolly people wearing red sweaters, they wore purple.  Okay, not everywhere, but lots of places, even in Columbus, Ohio.

Purple makes me happy.  I have nothing against red; I like red a lot.  But there’s something intrinsically better about purple.  It’s more moody, more saturated, more winey.  Bacchus would probably agree, and who am I to disagree with Bacchus?

Yes, I am of Prince’s “Purple Rain” generation, so there’s that, too.

rebeccakuder

Burl Ives and Wes Anderson

I saw “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and loved it.  Though many people consider Tennenbaums the holy grail of Wes Anderson-dom, before seeing Fox, I was most fond of “The Life Aquatic.”  (It’s still my favorite.  Too many wonderful moments and quotable lines to be displaced, and Seu Jorge doing David Bowie is unparalleled in the world of adaptations.  And Klaus!  I want to watch it again right now.)

Early in “Fantastic Mr. Fox,” I recognized some music that I hear often these days: Burl Ives singing “Fooba Wooba John.”  What a funny treat!

Although the adults at our house recoil at the sound of most music intended for kids, one beloved album is from my husband’s childhood–Burl Ives Sings Little White Duck and Other Children’s Favorites.  It might seem unlikely, but this morning I was actually craving that album.  Ives’ rendition of “The Little Engine That Could” made me a little misty-eyed over breakfast.  I don’t know why.  Maybe the wonder and hope of the two year old next to me, calling it the “sink I can song” or maybe just that I still believe that positive thinking is important.  (“I knew I could I knew I could I knew I could…”)

As usual, Wes Anderson chose perfect music for his latest movie.  There’s an earnest, post-cynical lens in that I love.  I see it in the Zissou saga, as I did in “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and so now I find myself tapping a foot, humming “Buckeye Jim” around the house, and now, in addition to the warmth of Burl Ives’ voice, that tune delivers me Anderson’s glorious sunset orange hues, and lovable, heroic foxes.  And I smile a silly, true smile.

rebeccakuder

Jim Krusoe’s novel “Erased”

A couple weeks ago, I finished reading Jim Krusoe’s novel, Erased. I wanted to read the whole thing again right after finishing the last line.

Reading this book, or really any of Krusoe’s fiction, is like taking a trip to the inner layer of the mind, which has somehow been turned inside out and exposed to the sun, and then finding some unknown organ that you need to survive but never knew was there. In his novels, dreams and reality at first seem to (but then don’t quite) fit each other…like a box of mismatched lids for old canning jars.

Here’s a bit from later in the novel, which I don’t think will spoil anything.

“Time, that old fooler, expanded and compressed itself, rolled over and played dead, only to spring back to life again when I least expected it. How long I walked, I couldn’t tell. It could have been hours. It might have been minutes. I heard the high squeals of bats and the sharp cries of night birds. I heard my own breath grow heavy as I trudged up a smallish hill, then I heard it ease on the way down. The wild dogs, or a completely different set of wild dogs, were back.”

In Erased, Krusoe’s protagonist is looking for his mother, who is supposedly dead, but keeps sending him postcards. This quest takes him to Cleveland, an idealized Cleveland that is laughable to anyone who has been to the real Cleveland. In Krusoe’s vision, the city is brimming with artists, carrying their work (often classical sculpture busts) with them to cafes like real-life celebrities carry small dogs in handbags. I love how the writer boldly steals the city from “our” reality.

Speaking of theft, I stole this photo from an interview with Jim Krusoe at Bookworm on KCRW.

Jim Krusoe was my mentor in graduate school at Antioch Los Angeles. I still consider him my mentor. Jim is a wonderful teacher. By asking a seemingly a simple question, “What are you interested in writing?” and telling me to write seven pages, Jim fostered my novel The Watery Girl into being. His manner is so good-natured and encouraging that, when he tells you the first few pages of a story need to go, you cut them without pain. I have learned so much from Jim over the years, I can’t imagine where I’d be as a writer without him.

I think Erased is his strongest work yet. And I can’t wait to read more, and read again.