yo la tengo @ museo de carnaval

There’s a healthy crowd in at the Museo de Carneval which is keen, buzzy, eager to breathe the rarified air of the Yankee muses. It feels like the kind of occasion that might have been banned under Cromwell and might not be encouraged by other authoritarian regimes. Fittingly, perhaps, when I get home I learn that Mudami has won the NY mayoral race. Yo La Tengo seem to represent the good profile of North America. Free thinking musos who don’t look like they’d ever wear designer clothes.

I saw Yo La Tengo at Somerset House about 25 years ago, when I was another person living another life. Ira Kaplan makes much play of the fact that many of their songs were written before much of the audience was born. It suggests a deserved pride in their longevity. Perhaps I have been reborn in the interim. I don’t know what got me into them. Their Hispanic name is a red herring: they’re from New Jersey and as evidenced by the brief comments, they’re not Spanish speakers. (Wikipedia offers the origin story of the band’s name.) They look pretty much the same now as they did back then. They also seem to take the same enjoyment out of playing. Their set is subtly constructed, ranging from feedback heavy rocking out to delicate ballads. The range is as impressive as the way the audience’s sensory journey is curated. They restore the faith on many levels, not least when they invite Eduardo, a young local guitarist on stage to play a song with them.

The set ends with a cover of I Do Believe by the Velvets. The song, sung a cappella, is moving. It offers a flavour of what it might have been like to watch the Velvets, veering from the melodic to the deranged. Fellow emissaries of the right kind of North American freedom.

persuasion (austen)

I turned to Austen’s late novel in a bid to go back to a classic after wading through too many contemporary novels that seemed to be saying less than they pretended to. Austen has a sanctified status in the UK. A pioneer of the female novel, a subtle investigator of the human heart. Not to mention a fertile source of eminently commercial period drama.

The novel sets out a clear and predictable obstacle for Anne, its protagonist. Eight years after declining the proposal of her suitor, Wentworth, on the advice of friends and family, she finds herself still in love with him. When he returns to her circle after years abroad with the navy, Anne is convinced Wentworth has moved on, as well as harbouring resentment against her for having refused him. At the age of 27, she feels her best days are behind her, and has to come to terms with disappointment in love and life. Part of the problem with the novel is that Anne is so damned nice, whist the rest of her family are monsters. Austen mines this for both humour and moral judgement. Her father and two sisters are vain and selfish. Next to them, any normal individual would look good, but Anne is positively saintly. Beyond her lack of confidence, she never does anything wrong. There comes a point in the novel when we long for Anne to screw up in some way, but this never happens.

Which reflects the fact that, from the moment the novel moves with Anne to Bath, not a lot seems to occur at all. There’s a long chapter of exposition on the part of Anne’s friend to tie up a subplot regarding her cousin who seems intent on marrying her; a few set-piece moments where Anne and Wentworth cross before the final resolution of their story. But it all feels disarmingly pedestrian. The penultimate chapter contains Anne’s meditation on the difference between the sexes, which one imagines marries to Austen’s view, along with her wry observation that you can’t trust novels on the subject as the medium has been dominated by men. A delightfully arch observation, but this alone is insufficient to lend the novel any real sense of depth. It’s a strange experience to read a novel that has been so lauded, adapted and fetishised within British culture, only to find oneself reaching out for a branch of significance as one drifts away on its mellifluous tide. 

pasolini (w&d abel ferrara, w. nicola tranquillino, maurizio braucci)

Ferrara’s biopic offers Dafoe one of his finest roles. This is clutch material for the director, and the film feels assured, confident, but surprisingly safe. It opens by presenting scenes from 120 Days, suggesting it will investigate the darkness or hell that Pasolini will speak of in an intriguing interview. But the film is almost too well shot and acted. Everything feels pitch perfect. Ferrara’s rough edges have been smoothed out, there are no moments that either shock or disgust. Having said which, the film, set over the course of the day of Pasolini’s death, is educative, an effective introduction to the life of the Italian poet-cineaste.