The Lightning Bottles

 

The Lightning Bottles / Marisa Stapley 
TO: Simon & Schuster Canada, c2024.
294 p.

This has a little bit of mystery/suspense to it but it's really more about relationships, fame, trust and music. It's a Canadian novel but takes place mainly in the US and Germany - and a bit of the rest of Europe as well. 

Jane Pyre grows up stifled in small town Ontario. She wants to be a musician, a star, and finds a 'soulmate' on an online forum. Elijah Hart lives in Seattle and is there at the beginnings of the grunge movement. When Jane finally decides to leave home (still a teenager), she makes her way to Elijah. His bandmates see her as a bit of a Yoko Ono, but she and Elijah are magic together -- their songs (well, Jane's songs, really) shoot them into the stratosphere. But despite their soul connection, Jane can't keep fame from affecting Elijah in all the worst ways. He starts using, he's unreliable, and eventually he disappears. The fan base turns on Jane, blaming her, of course. 

Much later, Jane retreats to a tiny remote town in Germany. But next door lives Hen, a teenager and superfan of the Lightning Bottles, who recognizes Jane. Hen is convinced that Elijah has been leaving coded messages for Jane through street art across Europe, and somehow convinces Jane to check it out with her. And then the two of them go on a road trip across Germany, France and Iceland to find Elijah, if it is indeed him leaving obscure signs. 

This is a really entertaining read. There are some dark themes, and some sadness and exhaustion that permeates the pages, but it kept me reading. The look at 90s music, the cost of fame, misogyny in the music world, the world of street art, and the drive toward musical life especially in Jane -- it's all intriguing and slots together really smoothly. With this tough, hard world, I would have loved to see Jane more powerful and less forgiving overall. But it's a perfect rock n roll story if you're in the mood for something both nostalgic and edgy. There is a lot to think about, including the ending, and it made for a satisfying read. 

Honeybees and Distant Thunder

Honeybees & Distant Thunder / Riku Onda
trans. from the Japanese by Phillip Gabriel
London: Doubleday, 2023, c2016.
423 p.

This was an unusual read, quite different from some of the darker or stranger Japanese books that I've read recently. It's set during a high-level international piano competition in Japan, and focuses on four of the competitors over the course of the two week competition.

Aya was a child prodigy who left performance when her mother died but is now tentatively re-entering the professional milieu once again. Masaru is an American based Japanese pianist who is the upcoming star of the piano world - and unknown to both Masaru and Aya, he's also Mak-un, a childhood friend who will be reunited with Aya at the competition. 

And then there's Jin, a wildly original teenaged pianist who doesn't even own a piano. He travels around France with his beekeeping father, but was spotted by the late Maestro Von Hoffman and became a protegé. 

Added to these three young people struggling to make their mark in an intense competition, we meet Akashi: he's older and married, working in a music store, but driven to try one more time to compete in the piano world. There's an "underdog" documentary being filmed about his journey, by an old friend who's now a filmmaker. 

As each of them throws themselves entirely into the competition we follow their development, both musically and internally. 

This book delves into the personal lives of each of these characters, but it's not about romance or quirky people interacting, it's really about Art and ambition and being true to a gift. There is a great deal of talk about the experience of playing in performance - how each one approaches their recitals, the visuals they imagine for their pieces, the universality of music and so on. There's discussion of particular classical composers and their pieces so if you know those pieces you can form your own opinions! Other characters like the judges also play a role in reflecting on the professional classical music world, its expectations and limitations, and the differences in how music is seen by various people in that world. This is a cerebral book as much as an emotionally driven one. 

Anyone who loves classical music should find this book absorbing. But there's also a lot of great content just about personal fulfillment, the meaning of a life, and art in general to appeal to a wider readership as well. I really liked it and enjoyed following the characters through their hothouse world of a prestige competition. 

Under the Visible Life by Kim Echlin

Under the Visible Life / Kim Echlin
Toronto: Hamish Hamilton, c2015.
348 p.

This is a fantastic read, a story of family, friendship, and the power of music. The strong writing and international focus of Echlin’s earlier novels are also found in this one, creating a captivating read. Her style, which is a rather deliberate and restrained one, works well in this overview of two women's lives, carrying through from the 50s to the 80s.

Two women, Mahsa and Katherine, are both jazz pianists who create a powerful friendship through their commitment to their art, in the face of all sorts of family ordeals.

Both women have had unusual upbringings; Katherine was raised by a single mother in 1950s Hamilton, Mahsa was raised by her strict Uncle & Aunt in Pakistan after her parents were murdered. Both of them are half American and half 'something else' (Afghani in Mahsa's case, Chinese in Katherine's). This element also shapes their experiences in art and society.

Early on, Katherine married another jazz musician and had 3 children in quick succession; Mahsa is forced into marriage with an older man in her 20s, and has 2 children quickly. Despite their differing backgrounds, Katherine and Mahsa have much in common, including their love for piano.

They develop a friendship through jazz when Mahsa moves back to Montreal with her family, and then meets Katherine in New York. Being a jazz pianist is really the expression of their most independent, essential selves, and they maintain their playing despite the vagaries of their difficult lives. They deal with their roles as mothers, as women in the man's world of 20th century jazz, and as independent individuals in relationship with their children, lovers, parents, friends and more.

The writing is so smooth, their stories told in counterpoint, it's like the entire book is jazz. The writing is deep but fast moving and the characters (even the side characters) are all fully drawn and fascinating. Music is the thread that holds together this thoughtful tale of two women’s lives. If you are a music lover or enjoy stories that delve into the deeper issues that shape the arc of
a life, you will find much to appreciate in this book.

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Further Reading

Wayne Grady's Emancipation Day also covers the length of a life across the 20th century, a life based in music and complicated by issues of race and identity. It's also focused partly in Canada and partly in the US (this time Windsor & Detroit).

Ann Ireland's first novel A Certain Mr. Takahashi, and well as her latest novel, The Blue Guitar, both deal with music and/or musicians, family dynamics and dysfunctional relationships. They are both set in Canada, and deal with issues of self-actualization and individuation, whether that's between sisters or a gay couple with a significant age difference.

The Poet Sings

I was treated to a wonderful night out courtesy of my sister-in-law this weekend. We went to see a local trio known as The Poet Sings. The group is made up of a pianist, a soprano and a baritone. This particular concert they were giving had as its theme "Songs of Youth and Love". The program was full of songs which had taken poems as their text, and it was gorgeous.

To begin, Catherine Gardner sang a series of Goethe poems set to music by Schubert. What a combination! It was beautiful. They even included the English words for those of us not so fluent in German.

Then pianist Sandra Mogensen gave us a piano interlude, a suite of waltzes by Ravel that shook you awake! Her specialty is Grieg and she has traced the connections between Ravel and Grieg, and will be performing her special program of the two at the Grieg Museum in Bergen, Norway next month -- what an experience that would be!

Following that we had some English poems sung by baritone Mark Gardner -- some of my favourite poets, like Hardy, Housman, RL Stevenson -- set to music by some marvellous composers, like Butterworth, Vaughn Williams and Finzi. Just gorgeous. I think my favourite, perhaps because I recognized it so quickly, was Housman's When I Was One and Twenty, set by Butterworth.

The second half of the concert was a set of more modern poems set to music by a composer I did not know of at all... Richard Hundley. I enjoyed them immensely - cummings, Dickinson, Joyce and more - on Hundley's website you can hear samples of many of them. I even discovered a new poet, James Purdy.

Overall. a great night out, and one that made me realize how often I went to concerts in university (my roomates were musicians) and how infrequent that habit has become. I'll have to remember how enjoyable it was!

Of course I loved the poetry nearly as much as the music so perhaps that was part of it too. One of my absolute favourite poems set to music ever is Charles Villier Stanford's "The Blue Bird", as sung by Carys Ann Lane and the Oxford Camerata. In fact I like it so much that it was part of our wedding music. Do you have a favourite poem made into a song?

A Musical Interlude

I've been listening to an amazing feature on CBC radio all day today; it's called "Nine in 9", and is featuring Beethoven's 9 Symphonies, one after another, with commentary provided before each one by Vancouver Symphony Orchestra conductor Bramwell Tovey. It's wonderful, and you can go to the CBC site to find it and listen to it yourself if you are a Beethoven fan; you can even download each and listen when you can. The VSO performs them all, and it's a great 9 hours of listening!!!
(**Update: you can download the Commentaries from the CBC site, and the 9th is available in concert. But it is quite easy to find performances of Beethoven's Symphonies if you wish to listen to one after you've heard the commentary.)

The discussion of the emotional elements of Beethoven's music put me in mind of a poem by one of my favourite poets, Wallace Stevens. Dorothy has just mentioned Stevens, spurring me to dig up my old collected works to read through again. Here's one which talks about emotion and music:








Peter Quince at the Clavier

I

Just as my fingers on these keys
Make music, so the self-same sounds
On my spirit make a music, too.
Music is feeling, then, not sound;
And thus it is that what I feel,
Here in this room, desiring you,


Thinking of your blue-shadowed silk,
Is music. It is like the strain
Waked in the elders by Susanna;


Of a green evening, clear and warm,
She bathed in her still garden, while
The red-eyed elders, watching, felt

The basses of their beings throb
In witching chords, and their thin blood
Pulse pizzicati of Hosanna.


II


In the green water, clear and warm,
Susanna lay.
She searched
The touch of springs,
And found
Concealed imaginings.
She sighed,
For so much melody.

Upon the bank, she stood
In the cool
Of spent emotions.
She felt, among the leaves,
The dew
Of old devotions.

She walked upon the grass,
Still quavering.
The winds were like her maids,
On timid feet,
Fetching her woven scarves,
Yet wavering.

A breath upon her hand
Muted the night.
She turned --
A cymbal crashed,
Amid roaring horns.

III


Soon, with a noise like tambourines,
Came her attendant Byzantines.

They wondered why Susanna cried
Against the elders by her side;

And as they whispered, the refrain
Was like a willow swept by rain.

Anon, their lamps' uplifted flame
Revealed Susanna and her shame.


And then, the simpering Byzantines
Fled, with a noise like tambourines.

IV

Beauty is momentary in the mind --
The fitful tracing of a portal;
But in the flesh it is immortal.



The body dies; the body's beauty lives.
So evenings die, in their green going,
A wave, interminably flowing.
So gardens die, their meek breath scenting
The cowl of winter, done repenting.
So maidens die, to the auroral
Celebration of a maiden's choral.


Susanna's music touched the bawdy strings
Of those white elders; but, escaping,
Left only Death's ironic scraping.
Now, in its immortality, it plays
On the clear viol of her memory,
And makes a constant sacrament of praise.



Wallace Stevens