Dog's Heaven

If you ever glanced at this blog, you might know that I have two aquariums - first it was just one, than I decided my fishes deserve much bigger space so I got them bigger tank and kept the smaller one for babies and Pleco (affectionately called Babalou) who is too territorial and needs his own kingdom. I live in a comfortable but relatively small apartment so there is not too much space and the conversations about the possibility of more animals (a cat? dog? parrot?) was usually left in the air because pets need attention and it would make life complicated during vacation (a friend visits twice per week to feed fishes and it worked just fine). And than, this Spring, my house turned into a dog's heaven.

First it was the couple next door who rescued a little black dog and she stayed in my place a few times - apparently she came from Bosnia, her name is Zoe and because of her traumatic past, she can't stand other dogs - small as she is, she really gets upset when other dogs come close to her humans (competition?) but is very, very affectionate towards people and loves to snuggle her nose under my armpit and sleep under my blanket. She is so adorable that I even considered adopting a dog of the similar size. 

Not long after that, a friend was going on vacation and asked for a favour to take care of his dog for a week - Yip was not a small puppy like Zoe, but a real, proper dog and it worked out just fine. He is adorable and very handsome boy, walking him was actually a pleasure - I always thought that I would dislike dog walks but in fact it gave me a certain serenity and I would even take him out after I returned from work, late at night, when the streets were quiet and empty. Sure, I had to let him sniff every corner and he would occasionally jump into water but it was all part of experience. I was constantly stopped on the street by people telling me how beautiful he was. Yip stayed with me on two occasions, both times for a week. 

Just when I packed Yip away (with a sigh of relief), I got a call from a old friend who discovered that he has a cancer and is going trough a chemotherapy. This makes it too difficult to take care of his beloved dog Balder who is a fully grown goldendoodle and I immediately agreed to take Balder in, as long as its needed. Now, Balder is really big boy but this is favour I cold not refuse. There was even option to put him into a dog's hotel for a time, but he would have to be sterilised for this and all of us thought this sounds too drastic, I was more than happy to help. Balder is (so far) the biggest of my dog guests but he turned out to be a gentle giant. He is 5 years old with a personality of the lovable puppy and its really impossible to ignore his playfulness, affectionate nature and sweetness. He likes nothing more than attention all the time and is following me everywhere with a ball in his mouth, asking to be played with. Yes he is pulling very strongly from time to time (when he sees other dogs or recognises the path) but listens very well and is such a joy in the house that I don't mind his size. 

"The Night She Disappeared" by Lisa Jewell (2021)

 

Honestly, this book just read itself, it was such a good, old-fashioned psychological thriller that I got completely lost in it and savoured every chapter with the greatest pleasure - even had to control myself not to peek at the end. Funny enough, I never encountered Lisa Jewell before and discovered her only because according to Goodreads it was one of the best thrillers of 2021 - I liked the title and decided to give it a chance. Perfect choice, kept me busy for a week and at the end I even dedicated Sunday afternoon just to finish it.

The story is about a young couple (a teenage mother Tallulah and her boyfriend Zach) who disappeared after a party in a grand house in the woods, called the Dark Place. Now its up to Tallulah's mother Kim to take care of their baby and to push forward with investigation, but neither police nor the owners of the Dark Place are very helpful. Apparently Tallulah was friend with the villa's owner daughter, charismatic Scarlett Jacques but all the traces disappear here as Scarlett and her snotty friends all claim they had no idea about the couple or what happened to them. Later, in 2018 perspective switches to detective writer Sophie Beck who arrives in town as a girlfriend of a local teacher and somehow gets swept into the story - she bonds with Kim, digs out the hidden engagement ring and thanks to her, police re-opens the case again. 

I am not completely sure is it because of Lisa Jewell or simply that it was the right book at the right time - it fitted me like a glove and I enjoyed it a lot, as its very possible that I just needed something like this to occupy me and transport me elsewhere. The reality and the news are so bad and alarming currently that I needed something for a pure escapism and this was perfect. It's not the best thriller ever but its very, very solid and I might even check out more of this author.

Exhibition: Josephine Baker - A Life of Resistance

 

Amsterdam's Verzetsmuseum (Resistance museum), dedicated to history of Amsterdam in WW2 has long been one of the most interesting museums around - in addition to its permanent exhibition, it also brings amazing temporary displays like currently the one about Josephine Baker. While its true that in public consciousness she is forever associated with her 1920s notoriety as the half naked black showgirl who danced in banana dress, her life story is much more than that and deserves proper, serious look and understanding of what it was like to be black entertainer in her time.

I was vaguely familiar with Baker's life story, since I have read her 1989 biography by Phyllis Rose ("Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in Her Time") but that was decades ago and at this point I remember only few general informations, namely that she was just another girl in black revues who discovered that audiences liked her clowning and used attention grabbing choreography to be noticed - its interesting that she never achieved success in her own homeland where competition was much stronger, but flourished in Europe where lack of black entertainers means that she was perceived as special. She was embraced in France and made France her homeland - so much that she even got involved in espionage in WW2, which gave her life a certain purpose and validation that would have never been possible back home. After the war there were international tours, tons of adopted children and basically basking in adulation & celebration until her death in early 1970s. That would be her life story in a nutshell, so I was familiar with this but wanted to see the exhibition anyway.

It was very interesting because I forgot a lot - chilling reminders of lynching in her birthplace St.Louis that young Baker must have witnessed. That was the reality of life when she was growing up. We are talking about mob burning the whole neighbourhoods and 100 people burned and clubbed to death. Than we have her first Broadway success that lead to engagements in Europe where she spread her wings and achieved notoriety as "banana girl" but even here there were problems - she was thrown out of Germany where both police and church were against her. Still, she persisted and became one of the biggest names of Showbiz on the continent between two wars, again I must note that her charisma and stagecraft overshadowed what was basically a fairly limited singing voice - as another US transplant in Europe, P. P. Arnold noted much later in her own autobiography, the fact that we did not have blacks in Europe (or the tradition of gospel singing) every black singer was immediately embraced as authentic and she mentioned that even singers who would be considered mediocre back home, flourished in Europe simply because there was no competition. I was never bowled over by Baker's recordings, to my ears she always sounded almost comical until much later when in 1950s her mature voice became actually genuinely interesting and sophisticated. 

Yes, there is a fair amount of space on the exhibition about her post WW2-attempts to establish herself again in US but that was simply not possible, because of the racism. She might have been a huge star and a phenomenon in Europe but 1950s US would treat her abominably, like all the other black entertainers. While some, like Louis Armstrong were willing to close their eyes and simply accept the reality, Baker was too much of a diva to accept this and because back in France she was treated with respect and dignity, she fought publicly with bigwigs in US, with results that she was basically blacklisted and never accepted there. Just in case if you wondered what exactly was her connection to Amsterdam, she was regularly bringing her adopted children here and even published a children's book here, in collaboration with Dutch illustrator. 

"Let's Do It: The Birth of Pop" by Bob Stanley (2022)

 

A rare and beautiful thing, this voluminous book was captivating from the first to the last page - even though I was busy with it for a month, not once I wanted to skip the page; it kept me engaged to the very end and than I went back once more to re-read about Jake Thackray. I have read in the past books focused on specific genres, however this is the very first time that I have encountered book that covers almost the whole century of recorded popular music - in all its disguises, be it vaudeville, blackface, blues, crooners, swing, rock, Broadway, you name it. It sounds very ambitious and it is - it is also brimming with interesting perception, conclusions, sardonic wit and opinions. "Let's Do It" works as a kind of prequel to author's "Yeah Yeah Yeah: The Story of Modern Pop" but while it starts with the very dawn of recorded popular music, it goes much further than the rise of rock - it covers popular music all the way to the early 1970s and explains what were the seismic changes at that point.

   

Stanley is not only a brilliant writer but also a musician - it is because he is musician, that he has this unique perspective of what is the heartbeat of popular music (as accepted by masses, as opposite to critically acclaimed but unloved cult names) and as a listener, he really unearths rare gems that only nerds like me appreciate: he claims that one of Streisand's best recordings was rare 1966 single "Our Corner of the Night"  which is totally fascinating as its anomaly from her better known work (and never released or either album or compilations). He is also very funny, as for example in this particular paragraph: "No singer was more indicative of America's new-found effervescence than the insatiable Sophie Tucker, who emerged in 1912, aged twenty-six, as ˜The Last of the Red Hot Mamas, though no one had previously been aware that red-hot mamas were endangered."

What struck me as the most interesting conclusion after reading such a massive survey of almost a century of popular music is how transitory everything is - recorded music is simply a recorded document of particular moment in time. And just like every moment, it has its value and than it goes away, mostly to be forgotten. No matter how big or popular certain songs or artists are in their time, eventually the new listeners will find new favourites and their own idols: a perfect example is Bing Crosby who was once a massive pop superstar and is almost completely forgotten now. Name every artist you find important and immortal - this book will show you that its all about perspective and as the time passes, new generations will not give a damn about your immortals. A case in point: musician and poet Rod McKuen : "He may be almost forgotten now, but until Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours, McKuen’s album The Sea was the Warner Brothers group’s best-selling LP of all time. That catalogue included every album by Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis on Reprise, not to mention those by Neil Young and Joni Mitchell. McKuen was huge, and now his music is forgotten."  It seems to me this eventually happens to everybody, to metamorphose from current hit to oldies and than slowly to grandparents music. Re-evaluation and clever marketing (like in case of obscure blues artist Robert Johnson who became celebrated posthumously) might bring some names back into the spotlight, but generally speaking everybody has a moment in the sun and than it goes away, we are drops in the ocean, to be forgotten along with our pop stars.