Yesterday I was gifted a copy of the new Norah Jones cd, Not Too Late (danke Michael). I'd read a few reviews of this new disc and they struck me as borderline smarmy at her getting "political" on this new recording. They also cut her a bit for "writing all the music on the disc." THE NERVE!
This is all to say that I'm very much enjoying the disc. It is much darker than her previous two albums. But to be honest, her sophomore release was a bit of a non-starter for me and I applaud her trying to move in a new direction and be contemporary and write about the world we're living in now.
The opening track is a great piece about a woman who loses her lover at war. When I first heard those tracks I thought to myself, "that's happening right now and I don't hear about it in popular music." It reminded me of the number of protesters two weeks ago that were holding signs about their husbands, wives, sons, loved ones serving their 3rd and even 4th rotations in Iraq or the one's who had died or had been wounded. There were many of these signs at the large anti-war rally. I was actually astounded by the presence of so many veterans and active-duty folks that Saturday.
On her Election Day song she displays a nice bit of Kurt Weill inspired phrasing and song just plain great lines. It's also funny in a bittersweet way. As one of the reviewers wrote, "It's an almost stunning statement of opposition and despair coming from the top-selling female artist of the 21st century."
Well, bully for her. Good to use her access to write what she's feeling. I know this doesn't always work but sometimes it does and I think this is one of those cases. The whole project is helped by the fact that Jones has a very pleasing voice -- one of those voices that would sound lyrical reading the "Plumbing Supplies" section of the yellow pages. So, if you haven't done so, check it out -- and if you can't receive it from a friend as a gift (danke again Michael) than try buying it at your local music shop.
In reading news I've been diving into Muriel Rukeyser's collected poems and was astounded to come across a poem she wrote that was very close to a small poem I wrote to my friend Sarah a few weeks ago. Just a lovely bit of coincidence. With Rukeyser and my recent dive-in with Martin Espada's work I seem to feel that tension between work that is alive with a conscious engagement with the present and the merely pretense of artfulness that is disengaged with the world around. This has been very much a part of conversations I've been having with friends and loved ones of late. I find myself saying in various situations that "it matters." The "it" has been poetry, art, the story, the background. I'm feeling an impatience with work that is merely pretty and I know this might be my own response to the current world we live in. I do think there is a background we are all living in and the background is illusory -- or actually the background is more foreground, or more than we're willing to admit. I am, of course talking about the war and the whole shifting current of ecological calamity we live through. It hunkers down in the back of my mind in everything I write whether I acknowledge or it or not.
I now realize this posting is morphing into something completely different than what I intended when I began. Things bleed into each other in a way and what I find refreshing in the Norah Jones work was at least an acknowledgement of the world we're living in. I was going to earlier recall that Bertolt Brecht quote that has spoken to me many times in the last few years. "Will there be singing in the dark times?
Yes, there will be singing about the dark times.
Inside Note: I went searching online to make sure I'd recalled that short poem correctly -- I had it turned out. But then it turned out today was/is Bertolt Brecht's poems and I wonder if there's a Brechtian vibe in the air that I'm somehow tapping into. Sort of crazy and inspiring all at once. Sort of like discovering a few weeks back that Sarah, the friend I previously mentioned shared a birthday with Muriel Rukeyser. I found this out after I'd written the Rukeyser-inspired poem for Sarah. We were sitting at the monthly coffee klatsch that Sarah hosts and I was looking at my massive poet's birthday calendar I put together and was just asking folks for their birthdates. Sarah mentions hers and I look through the list and just get BOWLED over when I discover she shares the day with Rukeyser. She was equally shocked. Now if it wasn't so damned cool it'd be Twilight Zoney weirdness but it is what it is.
In the time it's taken to complete this posting (a few hours as "other things" came up) I've posted a birthday posting on Brecht for the VRZHU blog that includes one of his long moving poems that should end this on an appropriate poetic note. So go there and read Brecht's word for the future.
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Posted by: | Nov 12, 2009 at 01:20 PM