Playlists
by Justin Torres, October 11, 2023 9:35 AM
At first, I thought I might go conceptual with this playlist — songs about blackouts, or losses in time and memory, or death, or erasure. (This got me thinking about the band Erasure, a band I hadn't thought about in quite some time, and I lost an hour or so dancing my way down that wormhole.) I decided against something too conceptual and considered taking a more atmospheric route: a playlist that could serve as a companion as one read the novel — that is, songs without lyrics — though ultimately decided against that as well. I briefly considered listing the kinds of songs and artists I actually listen to while writing, but I think I may be too private for that. In the end, I went for a pretty literal approach. Every song here is either directly or indirectly referenced in my new novel, Blackouts, and listed in the order such reference appears in the text, accompanied by the corresponding line (or image). The one exception to this rule is the very first track. More on that below.
“Insane Asylum” by Koko Taylor & Willie Dixon
I love Koko Taylor, and have been loving this song in particular for many, many years. I have this fantasy of performing the duet at a karaoke bar. (In the fantasy, I can actually sing.) The song is a duet about an insane asylum, which is fitting for a novel that largely takes the form of a dialogue between two characters (the narrator and a much older man named Juan Gay) who meet on the psych ward of a state hospital, where both are committed.
“Put on a Happy Face” by Blossom Dearie
The psychiatric unit sat deep in the building’s interior; a male orderly had wheeled me there, in a chair, up one elevator, down the hall, up another. I never turned to look, never saw any more of the man than his two square hands. He smelled familiar—thick with smoke and tar—the way one smells just after a cigarette break. The orderly had hummed the whole way, 'Put on a Happy Face,' at times breaking into a soft whistle, and the tune did not feel like a taunt, but a kindness."
“Orpheus - Ballet in 3 Scenes / 2nd scene: Pas de deux” by Stravinsky
*One page of the book is simply this photograph of the ballet dancer Francisco Moncion, taken by Carl Van Vechten. Moncion famously danced the part of the Dark Angel in Balanchine's production of Orpheus.
“Qué Te Pedí” by La Lupe & “The Spring” by Lena Horne
You know, nene, in my time, we all prayed to our private idols, some famous woman, usually an actress; we memorized her lines, her looks, practiced throwing ourselves down onto the divan,
overcome—all of us old-school sissies, we carried these women inside, or alongside, our consciousness, private icons, whose mannerisms and wit we’d call forth...mimesis, Dionysian imitation...though I suppose that kind of thing has gone out of style.”
“What, like Greta Garbo?”
“Like La Lupe. Like Lena Horne...
“Ground Hog Blues” by Gladys Bentley
The Sex Variants study, for instance, begins in New York in 1935, right at the end of what later came to be called the Pansy Craze of the late twenties and early thirties—a craze for figures like Gladys Bentley, Gene Malin, drag performances, cross-dressing, underground Harlem scenes...
“Gymnopedie No. 1” by Eric Satie
“What is the music?”
“I don’t really know classical music. You tell me.”
“Satie.”
“Okay, then.”
“But really, nene, a flashback at the moment of climax?”
“What, too cheesy? They’re important. These girls.”
“I should think so. Arriving as they do.”
“You’re right, I should leave them out of this.”
“No, no. Now they’re here, they’re very welcome. Go on.”
“The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” by Roberta Flack
Now it’s “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face,” and Liam pokes his head back into the room, and we sing together: I felt the earth move in my hand / like the trembling heart of a captive bird /
that was there at my command. We love that line, the absurdity of the mixed metaphor, what the hell is it supposed to mean? And we love especially the way Roberta begins on a high shout and then drops to a softer, lower register.
“Canto LXXVI” by Ezra Pound
I’m not sure I ever would have remembered exactly what Juan said to me that day, let alone been able to track down the reference, but in the last days, when there was much delirium and rambling, Juan had chanted to himself (or, I suppose, to me) other lines from that same canto, which did stick firmly in my mind, because of the way he recited them, the repetition, similar to the way one prays on the rosary. “What thou lovest well remains...the rest is dross...What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee...What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage...What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee...” (all of this in a mid-Atlantic accent, so that he sounded like an American movie star doing Shakespeare). And of course, from that same canto come the lines with which he’d tease me: “Pull down thy vanity...I say pull down!”
*The canto referenced in Blackouts is actually LXXXI — but it's not on Spotify so I couldn't include it, but it is on YouTube.
BONUS TRACKS
“Tutto Nero” by Caterina Caselli & “Paint it Black” by Africa
I had considered a playlist comprised entirely of the myriad cover versions of the Rolling Stones' "Paint It Black," but found it too repetitive. These two versions though, are sublime.
“A Little Respect” by Erasure
This song is nowhere in the book, but the book is all about erasure, just the same. And about the giving, and taking, of a little respect.
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Justin Torres is the author of We the Animals, which won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, was translated into fifteen languages, and was adapted into a feature film. He was named one of the National Book Foundation's 5 Under 35, a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a fellow at the New York Public Library's Cullman Center. His short fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Harper's Magazine, Granta, Tin House, and The Washington Post. He lives in Los Angeles and is an associate professor of English at UCLA. Blackouts is his newest novel.
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