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June 14, 2019
David Carlin and Nicole Walker's Playlist for Their Book "The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
David Carlin and Nicole Walker's book The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet is an inventive and profound dialogue in essays.
Publishers Weekly wrote of the book:
"In this winning collection of essays cued to letters in the alphabet, writers Carlin and Walker exchange personal reflections on the state of the planet today. [...] Carlin and Walker's enjoyable literary exchange will charm readers and leave them wondering which topic will pop up next."
In their own words, here is David Carlin and Nicole Walker's Book Notes music playlist for their book The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet:
Our book is an A to Z of diverse topics and subjects—from Flying to Hesitation, from Bitumen to Vulture, Grief to Resist—that one or other of the two of us felt it was important to dwell with and consider, in these times of planetary change and challenge. If we had a song for every essay that would be 60 tracks—what’s that, a quadruple album? So we’ve chosen a ‘Greatest Hits’ approach, plucking out a few essays where soundtracks particularly strike us. Cue the stylus.
Atmosphere "Space Oddity-2015 Remastered Version" – David Bowie
DC: The original ‘man floating in space’ song from the year Neil Armstrong bounced on the moon. I was watching the event on the black and white TV in first grade at our primary school in Perth, Western Australia. Planet earth is blue and there’s nothing I can do… captures that feeling of disembodied detachment, as if we are watching the catastrophes unfolding on our planet from some distant space-station, tethered in a space suit on the end of an oxygen cable, with Hal the computer from 2001 slowly going crazy in our earpiece…
Albatross "Save It for Later" - The (English) Beat
NW: Ska bands don’t usually decry Global Warming but The English Beat, which, I learned at David’s beach house, is known as The Beat everywhere but in the U.S., is prescient. Who knew a song we played before we even knew we would write the book would give us the lyrics to the book:
Black air and seven seas are rotten through
But what can you do?
I don't know how I'm meant to act with all of you lot
Embroidery "Anthem, Live in London" – Leonard Cohen
DC: I say Leonard Cohen perform live once, in the days when he was old and would get down on one knee. This is the scene I fantasise in this essay as wanting to live in forever. He was so full of grace, having such a great time with the band and the glorious backing singers. There’s a crack in the world…that’s where the light gets in…is this the most beautiful lyric ever written?
Flying "At the Bottom of Everything" – Bright Eyes
NW: It is wrong to sing while the planet is dying, as it is wrong, to hold up traffic looking at a car crash. But you can’t help but look. You can’t help but sing. I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m watering my plants.
Kindness "Treaty" – Yothu Yindi
DC: This is such a great dance-floor track, at the same time as it feels like it should be the national anthem of Australia, since the number one thing in our country that non/Indigenous people are coming to terms with, as being so very far from what should be ‘normal,’ is the way we have behaved, over the past two hundred years, towards the Indigenous people whose land we inhabit. Negotiating genuine treaty arrangements has never, ever happened in Australia—there was always the sly myth of ‘terra nullius,’ which lingers even today—and this song is providing the call to arms and the soundtrack to celebrate when it happens.
Jerms "The Only Living Boy in New York" - Simon and Garfunkel
The news is on the TV. It’s on the radio. The news is on my Facebook. On my Twitter. The news is also on my phone. But also on my phone is the weather. I check Flagstaff, Salt Lake City, Portland, Seattle, Sedona, Tucson, Minneapolis, New York City, Reykjavik, Melbourne. It is expensive, both money-wise and fuel-wise, to fly but it is free to see the weather everywhere you ever wanted to be.
Voice "Wiyathul" - Dr G Yunupingu
DC: Dr G Yunupingu was an artist I wish I had seen in concert, before his untimely early passing. He sings in the languages of his Yolgnu people. He comes from Galliwinku, on Elcho Island, in Arnhem Land in the far north of Australia. Up there is strong Aboriginal country where outsiders need a permit to enter. I was lucky enough to visit Galliwinku in the 1990s on tour with Circus Oz. We flew in on an old DC3 and the circus played an outdoor gig on the footy field, before the whole community joined in and had a party late into the night. I don’t know Yolgnu languages, of which there are many, as rich and varied as those of Europe. Apparently Dr G sings here of the scrub fowl, calls like women crying, looking for Murrurnawu. I hope I’m not being disrespectful by quoting the song lyrics. When we went to Arnhem Land it felt like going to another country, but in fact it was our country as it had been and always will be. The ‘Normal’ that we are ‘after’ was such a brief moment in time compared to this fifty thousand years of culture.
Whistle "Son Volt" – Drown
I didn’t want it to turn out this way but that’s what you get when you drive fast down the highway in the summertime with the windows down. You wanted to stop driving but how else can you feel the wind on your face?
You "Utopia" – Bjork
DC: From Bjork’s 2017 album, and with the lushness of an ensemble of female flautists. It reminds me of Iceland, from whence this essay came, its big skies and volcanic plains, but also the song is like being immersed in the middle of a fragrant jungle, enlivened with countless creatures. It is like a grounded, all-tangled-up-in-the world response from a woman, calling out to the floating spaceman to return to earth.
You, too "Us Fish Must Swim Together" – The SubHumAnz
It’s lonely recycling plastic you know will still end up in the Pacific garbage patch. It’s lonely when you watch the bagger at Fry’s place a pound of butter into a plastic bag and then move on to the next bag. It’s lonely when you walk through the parking lot while someone idles his car while you pop into the store and he still idles his car as you pop out. But you can’t yell at the people all the time. You can’t even yell at yourself all the time. When sink or swim is the choice you get, you cannot swim forever. You need support to keep you alive. Us fish must swim together.
David Carlin and Nicole Walker and The After-Normal: Brief, Alphabetical Essays on a Changing Planet links:
David Carlin's website
Nicole Walker's website
excerpt from the book
Arizona Daily Sun profile of the authors
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