I remember being in Chicago back in the day, listening to an FM rock station. After a bevy of alternative rock, the DJ suddenly put on the Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. At the art store where I worked, one of the young hipsters immediately yelled, "Tchaikovsky!" and began conducting with her hands. I'll never forget that moment. We had gone from, say, Throwing Muses to Tchaikovsky, and I remember thinking: How cool was that? Here was music making its own case. It didn't plead. It didn't demand. In its own way, it rocked. And then, after that glorious interlude, it was back to alternative rock. The funny thing was that the classical piece had not seemed out of place. It held its own. It brought to the table its own heft, its own weight. It wasn't preachy. It wasn't better than. It was simply another fiber in the fabric of the day. And maybe that's the way great music should be heard. Not fenced off by genre. Not placed behind glass. Not approa...
TERRA FIRMA LOVE INTERRUPTED: QUIET NIGHTS OF QUIET STARS
A Gentle Night in Los Feliz: L to R Sergio Rivera, Sgt. Estella Vasquez, Jose Vasquez, Araceli Rivera
We always remember the delicate moments, those with pregnant, hidden memories, lying like ocean mountains beneath deep seas where, on the surface, only the tops of islands peek out. For LASD Sergeant Estella “Stell” Vasquez, caught up in a darkness so vile she’d never even imagined it could exist, these were the moments that surged upward when she thought of what she stood to lose—the massive mountain beneath the calm surface, rising until what once looked like simple idyll or peaceful normalcy loomed large as a defining element of her life.
A quiet night on the porch with her husband, Jose, and another couple, the Riveras, playing dominoes at their tidy Los Feliz home. The kids are asleep, and on the radio the Dodgers and Padres are battling into the sixth inning. The Modelos are cold, the L.A. night gentle, and all is right with the world.
But all is NOT right with the world.
And though Jobim’s hushed bossa nova gives this post its title, it’s Natalia Lafourcade’s “Cancionera” that actually plays on the box after the Dodgers game ends. The dominoes are put away, and good friends settle into each other’s company. The song is about a woman who carries her stories in her voice, and it is fitting for a night Stell will carry with her long after it’s gone. The sky, for now, offers itself only as a friend and a canopy of open arms.
This night, a pure joy. Simple, elegiac, routine joy.
But there are nights coming that will not be so welcoming. There is horror ahead: the hideous specter of alien enhancements and the shock of battling otherworldly elements that Sarge must get her team through as they help Gunz, Lucky, Dr. Priss, and other members of their “family” fight for the very existence of life as we know it on Earth.
There are only 72 hours to determine whether such memories will endure and enrich the future—or 72 hours to reduce all such memories to cinders.
Comments
Post a Comment