Midmod Musings

O, Canada

On Sunday, I drove down to Red Wing to check on my case at Third Floor Antiques, where I am trying to sell off items that I no longer want, need, or can justify keeping in my cluttered cupboards. The weather was crisp and clear -- a charming autumn day in Minnesota. It's about a 45-minute drive from my loft to Pottery Place in Red Wing, so I brought a stack of CDs that I haven't listened to in a while, ones which I deemed appropriate for fall. In my mind, this means acoustic, yearning, and lyrical.

k. d. lang's "Hymns of the 49th Parallel" went into the CD player and never came out. The album covers songs by Canadian songwriters, like Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, and Jane Siberry. The Minnesota landscape -- bereft of corn, leaving silos and windmills exposed in their fields -- approximated what I imagine Alberta to look like in my mind's eye, and the music washed over me like the prairie wind.

I have an impression about Canadians after 90 minutes of listening and relistening to these songs. Between playing hockey, drinking beer, and not shooting people with their guns, Canadians are desperately sad people with a knack for chords that inspire profound melancholy. Mitchell's "A Case of You" has always been my go-to sob song, and lang's rendition butches it up just enough to make the heartbreak of its conclusion more moving ("go with it, and stay with it/but be prepared to bleed...").

Siberry's "Love is Everything" is a tune I never knew before lang's recording. It ends the album with bang. The tragedy of romantic failure emerges from the chorus: "Love was everything you said it would be/Love makes sweet and sad the same/But Love forgot to make me too blind to see/You're chickening out, aren't you?" And yet the final verse -- especially as interpreted with lang's full-bodied voice -- finds strength and pride in the attempt:

So take a lesson from the strangeness you feel

And know you'll never be the same.

Find it in your heart to kneel down and say,

"I gave my love, didn't I?

I gave it big sometimes.

I gave in my own sweet time.

I'm just leaving."

Garbo Laughed, I Cried

I'm embarrassed to say I had forgotten about Garbo.

Not entirely, mind you. It's not like I couldn't rattle off a list of her credits if asked, or quote her oft-misquoted signature line, "I want to be let alone," when the mood struck me. But I had allowed her to fade into the recesses of my memory. It had been about 15 years since I last watched a Garbo movie.

I recorded "Ninotchka" when it played a few weeks ago on TCM and just watched it this morning. I had quite forgotten the pleasures of this film, first introduced to me by professor Annette Insdorf on the syllabus for Masterpieces of American Cinema.

Garbo plays a dour and frumpy Soviet agent sent to Paris to reign in three comrades. The bumbling trio was sent to France to sell royal jewels for the Soviet government, but they were seduced by the glamour and hedonism of capitalism. Initially, Ninotchka is more interested in the engineering behind the Eiffel Tower and learning from a cab driver where the workers go to eat. But she too succumbs to the City of Light when she meets a count, played by Melvyn Douglas, who cracks her stern exterior and -- famously -- gets her to laugh. Complications arise when the count's former lover, an exiled Russian duchess, seeks to block the sale of the jewels, which belonged to her before the Soviet takeover, and reclaim her beau.

Garbo's performance is extraordinary. Her mannish monotone, her slouch, her oppressive hairdo -- they all give way to a raw and deep sensuality once her legendary laugh escapes. Her smile is radiant, and yet she remains awkward in her femininity, like a gangly foal striving to walk gracefully. When she discovers champagne, her reaction is priceless. When she faces off against the duchess, played by the magnificent Ina Claire, it's more than a catfight. It's the clash of two acting styles -- Garbo's European, silent-movie expressiveness against Claire's arch American stage manner. I believe it was critic Pauline Kael who said of their encounter, "The fur flies exquisitely." And when it looks like Ninotchka has lost to her rival, director Ernst Lubistch manages to draw real tears from her and from the audience. Victory snatched from our heroine, her entire body seems to convulse in one yearning, hollow ache, making the ultimate romantic pay-off deeply satisfying.

The Soviet jokes play differently today than they might have in 1939, but nevertheless, this is a romantic comedy for the ages. See it now, and see why Garbo was a star.

Note to reader: Whatever you do, avoid the plodding musical remake "Silk Stockings" with Cyd Charisse, at least until after you've seen the original that, er, inspired it. Charisse's gams are no match for Garbo's face.

Off

This Sunday, I'm picking up a visiting artist from the airport. I admire his work as both an actor and writer, and I really would like to make a decent impression on the man. Unfortunately, I feel like one of the characters in his first play, afraid of finding myself with stage fright and stammering, unable to carry on intelligible (let alone intelligent) conversation. I find myself "practicing" conversational skills, imagining topics we might cover.

Ordinarily, I have no fear of talking to people, famous or not. I generally have faith that I am charming and witty and reasonably smart. (I don't think bourbon has yet killed all the brain cells that were educated at Yale.) But last week, I started noticing that I was, well... off. Whether it was timing or tone or volume, I couldn't say, but I was socially inept.

At the opening of the Frida Kahlo exhibition at the Walker Art Center, for instance, I thought I was riding the energy and vibe of the Gallery 8 lounge. Given the artist being celebrated, and the large bottles of tequila prominently displayed on the bar, I assumed that there might be some special drink for the night. After a long wait in line, I asked the bartender playfully, "What do you recommend with tequila?" He replied, "I don't recommend anything with tequila," and turned away. He suggested no alternatives. He made no sly wink to show he was toying with me. He simply declined to serve me.

He had been smiling and shaking complicated cocktails for the half dozen people in line before me; somehow, my innocuous question managed to piss him off. To the point where he wouldn't even do his job.

I won't even go into the altercation I had in the movie theater the night before, but I will say that I almost got beaten up by a guy when I bought a small popcorn, no butter.

So, I continue to rehearse. Angus seems to smile when I practice in front of him, but he's deaf and 3/4 blind. He's easy.