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When Aimee and I found out A Mighty Wind was open on Wednesday
night already, our choice was clear. Christopher Guest and company, the
same maniacs who spawned Waiting for Guffman and Best in
Show, do it again in A Mighty Wind by lovingly mocking the
folk music movement of the '60s. Three folk supergroups reunite in the
present day for a tribute concert to be broadcast live on public
television. Eugene Levy and Catherine O'Hara were particularly brilliant
as Mitch and Mickey, a duo who used to seal their signature song with a
kiss but who haven't seen each other in decades after a troubled
breakup. Rather than going for cheap gags, the laughter in A Mighty
Wind builds from how deeply the characters are developed, making the
film touching in addition to being hysterically funny. I would have
happily sat through another couple hours of O'Hara soulfully strumming
her autoharp.
Luck was just with me this week. Friday night I went to go hear the
triple bill of Americana at 848 Community Space featuring Jolie Holland,
A.J. Roach, and Laura Veirs. Each act completely knocked my socks off,
and I barely had time to catch my breath in between sets before the next
one was up and doing it to me all over again. Jolie Holland has one of
the most mesmerizing voices you ever will hear, and she strummed
gorgeous waltzes on her guitar undeterred through sound glitches and
flickering lights. Up next was A.J. Roach, joined by Mia Thompson on
vocals, and together they made me shiver from head to toe. Finally Laura
Veirs topped off the evening with the music she made with her Tortured
Souls, mixing a little organ, trombone, xylophone, and bleepbleepbloop into her
country. Ashley McNamara and Bert Bergen had pictures hanging on the
walls that helped to make things just that much more perfect. I walked
out of there completely blissed out.
I confess that I was barely aware of Amanda Davis's writing before her
recent death in a plane crash, and yet something drew me to her tribute
reading at A Clean Well-Lighted Place for Books Saturday evening. She
had just put out her first full-length novel Wonder When You'll Miss
Me on the strength of the short stories she had published in
McSweeney's and elsewhere, and she was touring to promote the
book. She wrote this in her novel:
And I knew it was true, that my words were made of stones, that they
would last and I would climb them.
The reading shook me to the core. Daniel Handler, Michael Chabon, Dave
Eggers, and others spoke about this young woman's passion for
life and her immense talent and how she made them laugh and how much they loved
her. No platitudes, just genuine grief and anger
at how fucked it was that she was gone. Afterward
I took a long walk through the city and did a bit of thinking on some
topics that have been chasing around inside of my brain in recent
months. When I first started doing Astrarium, it seemed like a huge deal
to get my words out there for other people to read, but lately it hasn't
felt like nearly enough. I want to challenge myself further, and create
something meaningful at the same time. I've got a few ideas, though it
might be a while before you see the result. Bear with me, stay
tuned. Wish me luck. Forgive the narcissism.
Non sequitur, post script, rhetorical query: Is it wrong that parts of
The Rocky Horror Picture Show kinda turn me on?
A Mighty
Wind
Laura Veirs
A.J. Roach
Jolie Holland
Ashley McNamara
848
Amanda Davis
A Clean Well-Lighted Place for
Books
The Rocky Horror Picture Show
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Heidi J. De Vries
