SOUNDTRACK: BECK-“I Won’t Be Long” (2013).
This was Beck’s second single in 2013. I did not like this at first as you can see here, but as I predicted, it grew I me. Interestingly, listening to it now, after having heard it a few dozen times, my observations about the song are the same, I just find it more appealing. And listening with headphones showed me that there’s more to it than the radio listens showed me.
The verses are actually kind of fun and while I initially found the chorus to be way too slow, it has really grown on me. And there’s a lot more music in the track than I initially realized. It’s quite a full and satisfying song. Including a very noisy guitar solo at the end which makes this song less soporific. In fact, some of the guitar notes hearken back to 80s guitar sounds very nicely.
So, yes I’ve become a fan of this song. And having listened through his catalog I find that it’s not as out of place as I initially thought.
[READ: April 1, 2014] “The Boys on the Block”
The only other thing I’ve read by Gordon Lish was in Harper’s in January 2013 (perhaps this is an annual thing). That story was a tale in which Lish was the narrator and the main character and it was halting and complicated but generally enjoyable.
This story is actually listed as a memoir, so the self-referential nature is to be expected. What is not expected (although maybe that is how Lish writes) is the halting, stumbling narrator. In this piece, Lish looks back at the kids on his block and the games of one-upmanship they would play. And it’s funny that he can spend several paragraphs correcting himself and addenduming himself all to talk about the boys on his block playing paddle ball
the paddle and the ball and the string–are you with me?–the paddle and the ball and the string, which the whole idea of the game was for you to grab the paddle in your hand and see if you could toss the little red ball up a little bit and then smack it with the paddle and then keep on smacking it with the paddle until you missed it altogether or, you know, you just didn’t smack it right and it went all crazy in the wrong direction and then it was the other boy’s turn… [the sentence continues for longer than I have written so far].
Naturally there were boys who were good at it–Gordon was not one of them, but the Stanleys were–they were two boys named Stanley. But Gordon, oh Jesus, did he fear taking his turn, especially after the Stanleys were so good at it. But at least there was Bobby–he was the worst at everything. Gordon couldn’t wait for Bobby to take a turn. But lo, Bobby was amazing at it, almost as good as the Stanley’s and that could not be.
So Gordon invented the game where yo hit a pebble with a stick
but not just hitting the pebble with the stick but hitting it right straight at the face of a boy on the block and–wait, wait–because I mean hitting the pebble with all of your might, that’s right, hitting it with all of it, hitting it with absolutely all of it, like every boy who was ever in his heart, a boy who knows things right down to the soles of his shoes… [again, the rest of the sentence is longer than the preceding].
So Gordon hits the pebble right at the boy–that lousy boy with the stupid E-name: Eliot or Edwin. And, well, that’s when things get really interesting.
Because this is called a memoir we assume it to be true. But if it is true then Lish is a psychopath. Either way, I really enjoyed this convoluted story of unromanticized childhood.
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