Music Write-Ups
How do you know Chris Earley?
How many MP3s do you have on your hard drive?
There’s nice. Then there’s Sympathique.
Listeninginstructionsotheday–
DO NOT PRESS PLAY, yet.
Visualize Paris in the 20’s. In the spring. Phonograph crackling faintly in the parlor. A luxurious chaise extending easily for the benefit of a slender, elegant dame lounging side-long across. One carefully painted face propped upon one manicured hand carelessly clutching one unlit cigarette. Small, ivy-lined window panes in the kitchen sway slightly with the breeze, defying the rest of the in-animates in the flat which are pulsating to a different beat.
Now, press Play. And close your eyes. Écoutez bien.
Disclaimer: My high school level French has attempted to translate, guiding the non-Francophiles through the meat of the song (see below). Where I have no idea what was actually said or meant (roughly 40-71% of total wordage), I have shamelessly made it up.
Bon Appetite! (I know that means eat well, but I can’t think of another way to say “enjoy”, ok.)
—————————————————————
My room is like a god damn hamster cage.
The sun passes its anorexic arm by the window.
The hunters at my door, are like little soldiers.
Who want to take me.
I would not like to work!
Hey! I don’t want to eat!
I only want to forget it,
and then, I’ll have a smoke.
I have already known the perfume of love
Of a million roses.
Now, a single flower in the bunch
Makes me want to hurl.
You’re goddamn crazy if you think I’m working!
Oh Hell No, i’m not going to lunch with you.
Hey, Hey! Just leave me the hell alone.
So I can get my smoke on.
Well of course, I’m not proud of it.
This life that’s killing me.
It is pretty great to be likeable though,
But I’d never know it.
I don’t want to work!!!
No, sir, don’t ask me to go to lunch.
Just give me some pills so I can forget it all,
And flood my lungs with tar.
Alternate interpretations and/or translations strongly encouraged!
-Jill Paquette
Despite setting two alarms for 9 a.m., I rose at noon. I blame it on a late night of pouring over the manhunt sections of Native Son and on the complete absence of sun in the Northeast in January. After stumbling down the stairs in a pair of my brother’s fire-engine red, oversized New Bedford High School Lacrosse (he’s 25) sweatpants, I lit the pilot under the tea kettle and rescued the Sunday edition of what I like to call the sub-Standard Times, my hometown’s miserable excuse for a newspaper.
In between double and triple sniffing the half-and-half for early signs of its Feb. 6 expiration, I read about a North Carolina native and long-time New Bedford resident, named Jibreel Khazan. Mr. Khazan was one of the four college students, who on February 1st, 1960, staged a sit-in at the Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, NC. The article was a narrative/interview with Mr. Khazan regarding the selection of the lunch counter as one of 156 of 3 million items included in the Smithsonian’s “America’s Most Singular Sensations” collection.
When questioned about the inclusion of the Lone Ranger’s mask in the exhibit adjacent to the eight-foot-long Woolworth’s counter, Mr. Khazan joked: “He was my superhero. If I’m there with my favorite cowboy then I’m happy. But I am sorry they made him take off his mask.”
Mr. Khazan learned of this honor the day that Deval Patrick, the first black governor in Massachusetts and only second in U.S. history, was inaugurated.
Somewhere between news of the decapitation of Saddam Hussein’s half-brother, potentially disastrous swigs of curdled half-and-half inconspicuously hiding within my Dunkin Donuts hazelnut coffee, and an internet pop-up ad with blue silhouettes disturbingly gyrating in front of the backdrop of low-interest rates, something caught my attention.
“A DAY ON…NOT A DAY OFF”, in its 14-point font, jumped off the webpage of the King Center. I went on to read about a walkout of about 400 factory employees who were not granted a paid day off for the holiday.
My heart painfully filled with anxiety recalling the mid-Patriots game, ideological pissing contest that I got into with my family last night. When talk of steroids turned to sports commentators to talk of the prevalence of reverse racism in today’s society, I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. I listened impatiently as three people, two from the same gene pool and one related by marriage, with little to no real knowledge or experience with the issue, cited rap music as their argument’s main justification. After hurling around a dozen studies, stories, and statistics on deaf ears, and growing to an unnatural reddish hue, we eventually intuitively implemented a cease-fire.
“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere,” wrote Dr. King in 1963 from his Birmingham jail cell. I wondered how he might’ve responded to my families’ discussion.
I wonder how most people would respond.
-Jill Paquette