A Carter Burwell song no more…

by Jonathan on February 10th, 2010

My dear friend the lovely Christine Joly de Lotbinière tells me that not only is today (a blizzard in New York City) the perfect day to stay home from work, it’s also the perfect day to blog. And I can’t disagree with her.

Because of the weather, I’ve been thinking of the music of the prodigiously talented Carter Burwell, whose scores you’ve doubtless heard many times.

First up, his wonderful “She Began to Lie”, from the otherwise forgettable John Travolta thriller THE GENERAL’S DAUGHTER . It’s an interesting song, most frequently covered as “Sea Lion Woman” (most recently by Feist), but probably most famous for Nina Simone’s racing, passionate cover, “See Line Woman”. The song’s meaning is somewhat obscure; Burwell is probably closest to the true title, the song lyric a litany of lies a woman tells – I think Simone’s version specifically has the woman as a prostitute (as did all Simone songs, haha, I joke). But I’ve also heard it’s a corruption of an underground railway route, “C-Line”, from the days of slavery. (The “Rock Island Line”, subject of a stomping, slapback rockabilly song by the great Johnny Cash, was also an underground railway line.)

Anyway, when Feist sings:

Sea lion woman, sea lion

She drink coffee, sea lion

She drink tea, sea lion

And rooster crows, sea lion

Sea lion woman

Dressed in red

Smile at the man

Stab him in his back

I’m thinking “Yeah, Feist, maybe… But wouldn’t it work better as ‘she lying woman’?” You can hear Christine and Katherine Shipp sing the original on the fantastic Rounder release A Treasury of Library of Congress Field Recordings ; recorded in the late 1930′s, the song was already old, maybe a work song. It sounds like Burwell sampled that recording for the vocal here, and did the arrangement. But it’s a fantastic arrangement, the skipping beat, the way the banjo is processed (the ghostly backwards banjo at the beginning, the eerie reverb), and the mournful harmonica. Burwell also remixed the song, but the straight version is the one you want…

Sorry about the video, btw – it’s got some tiresome British vocal loop underneath it to convey some sort of political/artistic message.

Stop the presses! I just learned that it’s not Burwell who gets credit for the song, but Greg Hale Jones! My apologies to Mr. Jones – since I’ve already gassed on at length, I’m going to post it here anyway. I’m assuming Mr. Burwell had some say in what was included. The good news is that, while the song is album-only on the General’s Daughter soundtrack, you can buy a 2:39 minute version on Mr. Jones’s EP Now There is a Tree of Ghosts. (That title, by the way, probably refers to one of my favourite records of all time, My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by Brian Eno and David Byrne, which also builds arrangements around samples of traditional singers.) Buying the General’s Daughter soundtrack will get you the 5:20 minute original, plus the shorter, more electronic remix. And hopefully a chunk of change for Mr. Jones.

This next one definitely is a Carter Burwell song, “Bella’s Lullaby” from the Twilight films. I don’t think the films are wildly good, but I enjoy pop cultural phenomena – I saw the first one opening weekend, on a long distance date with a girl who watched it in a cinema in Colorado while I watched in Manhattan. I particularly like the intro to the theme; it reminds me a little of Philip Glass’s lovely score for The Secret Agent.

Finally, one of Burwell’s best-known compositions, his theme from Miller’s Crossing, here used as the score to a beautiful trailer for The Last Guardian by visionary game designer Fumito Ueda, whose Ico kept me sane in the difficult months after 9/11. I had the thrill of meeting Mr. Ueda in Tokyo a few years back, and got to play an early build of Shadow of the Colossus , a huge thing for me. Ueda’s games are characterized by lyrical emotionality; they are elegantly sensual games, shot through with an elegiac undercurrent – everything feels a little sad.

I think this was recorded live at the unveiling of Ueda’s latest project at the E3 games convention in the summer of 2009 – turn up the volume, as it’s quiet…

Audio: Interview on Irish Radio

by Jonathan on December 1st, 2009

Last week, I was on Moncrieff! – not literally on Sean Moncrieff, but on his popular afternoon show on Irish talk radio.

Sean Moncrieff: The work of a pathologist is often characterized as somewhat ‘glamorous’, yet this is a person who, on a daily basis, cuts up dead bodies – who would do such a thing? Well, Jonathan Hayes, for one. He’s a novelist and has worked as a forensic pathologist in the U.S. for over twenty years…

Moncrieff/Hayes

Out and Down in Paris

by Jonathan on November 28th, 2009

I’m in Paris now, trying to catch my breath and working on the next Jenner book. I’ll be here for a few days, taking photos and making notes of locations, and having a much needed visit to Alain, my barber, who’ll transform me from a bushy-bearded Charles Darwin clone to something more highly-evolved, almost metrosexual.

Alain, who bills himself as the last Master Barber in Paris, entertains me immensely – he has such a finely drawn sense of himself. The first time I went there, we talked about what I wanted, and then he did exactly what he thought best. When he’d finished, he stepped back, looked at me critically, then pronounced it “Nettement mieux!” – clearly better. And he was right.

His tiny barbershop/barbering museum on rue St. Claude, a narrow, gallery-filled side street in the Third Arrondissement, is worth a visit by anyone in need of a haircut or – his specialty – un rasage à l’ancienne – a traditional shave. You’ll need an appointment.

It’s noon on Saturday, grey skies, soft light, quiet, other than the distant toll of church bells. My apartment here is in the Marais, the part of medieval Paris left standing when Baron Haussman radically reconfigured the city in the 1800′s. It’s a lovely part of the city, narrow streets lined by beautiful old buildings – it’s particularly wonderful at night, when the tourist herds have thinned. The Marais is also the heart of Jewish Paris, with so many temples and delis and black-hatted Orthodox jews that if it weren’t for the macarons and Paris-Brests in neat rows in the patisserie windows, I’d think I was in Brooklyn.

An unexpected advantage of living in the Marais is that the place actually is quiet on the weekends – Jewish businesses here shut down by sunset on Fridays, and remain closed through Saturday. Even though this is also the heart of gay Paris, Friday and Saturday nights are blissfully tranquil. Of course, there’s a flip side to that: the shops are closed, which means a slightly longer trek when I’m feeling lazy and hungry…

And, speaking of lazy, I’m lazy today. I get the worst jetlag, and am doing the worst thing for it: it’s almost 1PM and I’m still in bed. I should be out, finding breakfast and taking photographs, but I’m happy to be warm and cozy, and to look at the grey world outside from the comfort of my bed.

To make up for that, I’m going to post a couple of photos I took on my last visit. Here’s the Place des Vosges, one of the most elegant squares in Paris, built as the Place Royale in 1605. The layout is precise and symmetric, with a bosquet of lindens framing neatly defined lawns that are punctuated with tonsured firs and fountains – Nature well and truly tamed, in the grand Enlightenment tradition. It’s very difficult to capture in a photo, since the square works best as a three-dimensional experience, the shifting perspectives as you walk past the straight lines of lindens articulating an elegant aesthetics of geometry.

Here, even the dullest streets are pretty.

Bed. Bed is good.

My Life in Blood – a gallery

by Jonathan on November 23rd, 2009

I have a long article about blood in the UK newspaper the Independent today. It’s a bit of a curious thing, hopscotching around the place, covering how I became a forensic pathologist, the Cuban white and black magic I saw in Miami, realism in crime fiction, the meaning of blood in different religions, blood spatter forensics and vampire movies.

Since I don’t know how they’ve illustrated it, I thought I’d add a few photos to support the story. I gathered these from around the internet when I first started working on them, and have lost the links – if they’re yours, please let me know so I can credit you.

I’ve tried to do it in sequence to correspond to the story. Obviously, if you’re squeamish, you probably shouldn’t look at this post. Although, really, if you’re squeamish, what are you doing on my blog?

In Israel, a ZAKA operative wipes blood after an attack:

A Durer portrait of Christ suffering:

A Cranach crucifixion – Christ’s blood anointing the faithful…

A devout Filipino being crucified on Good Friday:

Shi’a Muslims marking the Day of Ashura; others sacrifice by donating blood.

An nganga, a cauldron filled with mystically significant metal, wood and leather objects, and blood, and, here, a human skull. For practitioners of palo mayombe, the dark form of the syncretic Caribbean religion of santeria, the nganga is the ritual equivalent of an altar.

Technicians clean up an nganga discovered in New York City, ritual markings on the wall. In Miami, when we encountered santeria or brujeria (palo) artefacts, the cops would scoff at them, but most would refuse to touch them.

Oh, Shiny Metal Beast – I love you so!

by Jonathan on November 20th, 2009

I’ve had the visual elements for this lying in the post hopper for almost a year. It was going to be a post about how easily we anthropomorphize things, how we can feel pity for inanimate objects. Or, at least, how I can.

It was triggered by this rather perverse battle between a tiny robot and a big robot, or rather by how moved I was at the plight of this little manikin made of metal strips and cogs, continuing to fight the good fight while hopelessly outmatched. Click on the image for heart-breaking little-robot-on-big-robot action…

I felt similarly stricken at the loss of the Phoenix Rover, the space explorer probe, when it shut down last year with the approach of  Martian winter; after five months of glorious data collection, it would be encased in carbon dioxide ice for a year – pretty much certain death. The demise of the Rover was all the more painful because I’d been following its blogs on Gizmodo – thank God I’d not become addicted to its Twitter feed! Click on the photo below to link to its farewell message.

Finally, to bring it all home, Spike Jonze’s fantastic Ikea ad:

A Technical Note: Airboats

by Jonathan on November 12th, 2009

British readers may be unfamiliar with airboats, which, as far as I know, don’t exist in the U.K.

The airboat is a shallow draft boat, powered by an aircraft engine and propeller in a mesh safety cage.  Because they use air movement, rather than an underwater propeller,  airboats can travel in very shallow water, and even over more solid terrain (for short distances). They’re very popular in the Everglades, which is essentially a vast, extremely shallow river hidden by marsh grass; the first time I rode in an airboat was to get to the scene of a remote airplane crash in a part of the Glades not easily reached by traditional boats.

I found this photo on a web page from the Airboat Association of Florida, a tribute to a man named John F. Schneider. Mr. Schneider was apparently devoted to airboating in the Glades; these photos make it easy to see why. Airboats skim across the surface of the water – they feel incredibly fast, in part because of the roar of the engine behind your head. If you find yourself in Florida, you owe yourself at least one airboat ride.

An anniversary…

by Jonathan on November 12th, 2009

I’ve been so busy with life and the U.K. release of A HARD DEATH that I hadn’t noticed that the anniversary of the US edition of PRECIOUS BLOOD was upon me.

By way of commemoration, here is a series of relevant images:

Altdorfer, “The Martyrdom of St. Florian” (1515)

Caravaggio, “St. Katherine” (1599) – I’m fascinated by the whole “spoked wheel” thing. In Raphael’s portrait of St. Katherine from the early 1500′s, the spoked wheel has the smooth, mall-ready finish of something from Pottery Barn. We know she was tortured with a “spoked wheel”, but what the hell is a “spoked wheel”? I don’t believe either Raphael or Caravaggio have a clearer sense of it then than we do today. Notice that the wheel is broken…

Caravaggio, “The Martyrdom of St. Andrew” (1610)

Francesco del Cossa, “St. Lucy” (1470)

I love the demure way Lucy holds her eyeballs on that little lorgnette thing…

A Big Deal in Lille

by Jonathan on November 1st, 2009

One of the fun things I did this spring/early summer was lecture at the 46th International Meeting of Francophone Legal Medicine. I was invited over by Professor Didier Gosset, the Chief Medical Examiner in Lille, in Northern France.

Didier and his team, including Professor Valéry Hedouin, and Dr. Anne Bécart, forensic odontologist, took great care of me. They put me up at the beautiful Hospice Gantois, an exquisite hotel built in the 1400′s as a hospital. The building has been renovated in an elegantly modern way (I’m a sucker for the combination of clean modern design and old spaces; one of my favourite hotels, the Wheatleigh, near Lenox, Massachusetts, where Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown did a beautiful job renovating a faux Italian palazzo in the Berkshires – I completely stole their bathroom design ideas for my loft in NYC).

My room had a view out over a small park that reminded me of the courtyard gardens in Ico, the brilliant videogame created by Fumito Ueda, about which more here; Ueda is one of the inspirations for Jun Saito, one of Jenner’s closest friends.

The conference was a fascinating glimpse into the differences – and similarities – between the way the French practice forensic pathology, and the way we do it in New York. I spoke for two hours on gunshot wounds; I lectured in French, which was fun for me and doubtless  arduous for the audience. Still, we all survived, probably because my lectures are so heavily illustrated – I showed more than 300 images.

They didn’t guillotine me afterwards, so overall I think it went fairly well. After I’d lectured, I relaxed a little – I got to catch up with old acquaintances and make new friends. We had a great dinner at l’Huitriere, a superb Art Deco Michelin-starred seafood restaurant tucked behind a traditional fish merchant’s.

It was a wonderful experience – I even got a Bronze Medal from the city of Lille for my participation. I wasn’t in Lille long enough to really get to know it, but it’s a lovely city, with handsome old rowhouses with Flemish-style red and brown brick, and an elegant city center; I’ll certainly be back. As a returning Bronze Medalist, I have no doubt that they’ll let me ride the buses and subways for free.

What I did during my 11 month blogvacation…

by Jonathan on October 28th, 2009

Well, a lot of stuff, really.

Mostly I’ve been working on A Hard Death; that’s now done, with Random House putting out the English edition on November 5 of this year, and Harper Collins still figuring out the US release date, Droemer the German date, etc.

I wrote it mostly here in New York, and a bit in my place in Paris. The whole experience was delayed a little because I fell  in love, which was great, but also tumultuous – in the end, a short ride in a fast machine. I emerged from it a little scalded but better for the experience.

My renovation in Paris is nearing the end. And so am I! It’s been a ridiculous experience. I can’t really justify it, either as an expense or as an investment, but it’s really pretty perfect, the ideal place to chill, read, write.

I stripped down the old fireplace, and rebuilt it in a more modern way; you can see it more clearly here:

I left the floors raw, without finish or oil; I really like how they look. We’ll see how well they hold up…

My bed is insanely comfortable; since the place is so tiny, I decided I would spare no expense in fitting it out. I have a Swedish  mattress, topped with a goose down feather bed, linen sheets and a linen and silk coverlet. Please believe me: when I say “insanely comfortable”, I mean just that.

I designed a small desk, and had it built in padauk wood, a beautiful African hardwood that darkens over time. I don’t like the proportions of the desk; when I’ve adjusted it a bit, I’ll post a photo. I’ve also got two chairs, very plain.

I know it’ll probably be too spare for some people – there will be art work going up, but not a lot: I’m going for a “luxury monastic cell” look. Essentially, it’s a more austere version of the bedroom in my loft in New York, where my original design brief was “a TB sanatorium near Prague in the 1930′s”.

And I think I’m getting there…

OK! There you go – an actual real post with content – including photos and at two (find ‘em!) links! I’m making my way back!

Saints be praised! It’s a miracle! Et cetera!

Bouchercon II – A Virgin No More

by Jonathan on October 18th, 2008

As Bouchercon went on, I could feel myself wearing out. At home, I’m frequently woken during the night by my two cats (one inherited from my ex-girlfriend, the other acquired when my ex-girlfriend insisted the first needed company. Ever since, the two have waged a full-on yakuza-style feud, the violence unrelenting, the body count high. Actually, I am the body count, my chest leaped on every night at 4AM  by a 20 pound cat with claws of honed stee – mine is a truly Promethean existence.), but for some reason, I slept badly every night I was in Baltimore. Adrenaline, I suspect.

Saturday was my birthday, and a pretty fun and hectic birthday it was too. I spent a slightly sluggish morning, drifting groggily through the halls, and was pleased to find that many of the attendees were in a worse way than me. Some had rolled back into the hotel well after 5AM, but were pressed back into action before 9AM, sore of head, furred of tongue and possessed of photographs of themselves chugging down champagne bottles in seamy-looking bars, and of the police cruisers dispatched to greet them (reflection of the City of Baltimore’s devotion to literature). I realized that being tired because I’d slept poorly was a pretty damn feeble excuse – while they’d been out on epically worthwhile Bukowskian benders, the stuff of writerly legend, while I’d stayed home and played the Princess and the Pea like a wuss.

At 11:30AM, Brian Lindemuth was the ringmaster for the Serial Killer panel, with Mark Billingham, Michelle Gagnon, Alan Jacobson and myself roaring and batting at his questions with our paws. We went back and forth on the realism question, on whether or not the motive of a serial killer could ever be really understood, discussed some prominent real and fictional serial killers, and debated Hannibal Lecter’s underwear choices (full credit to Brian for keeping the discourse snappy with carefully crafted questions, including the occasional curveball).

Afterwards, I signed books in the uh, book-signing room. Through a pleasant accident of alphabetical coincidence, I found myself next to Christa Faust, a strikingly pretty, compact blonde whose preference for sleeveless tops won her the Most Visibly Tatooed Author at Bouchercon 2008 award. She’d also be a shoo-in for the Most Direct Conversationalist award – I knew her as a wildy popular author of hard-boiled fiction for Hard Case Crime, but was pleased to discover that she was a professional dominatrix specializing in bondage and foot worship within two minutes of striking up conversation (Englishmen are always delighted to learn things like that, trust me.) Since the first friend I made when I moved to New York City was the infamous photographer Eric Kroll (warning – if you have a delicate constitution or are easily offended, do not click on that link), it wasn’t surprising that we had friends in common. With a funny, smart and beautiful companion, my minutes in the signing room blasted by, and I was soon sprung to find Alafair for a bite of lunch.

In the afternoon, I visited the book stores, but couldn’t find a copy of the book I’d been looking for (James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss, since successfully located). I milled around the halls a bit, repeatedly bumping into Jonny Santlofer – a man who’d hold impromptu court on a lily pad, if that’s all that was available – and finally decided I’d be better off back in bed. A nap later, I swung by the bar, where the New York branch of the Mystery Writers of America was holding a get-together, chatted with Meredith Cole for a while (admiring the scarf she’d whipped together, which had the cover of her upcoming book printed on it – true Williamsburg hipster crafting!), then with Joanna Powell and Sharyn Rosenblum from Harper Collins, spotted Tasha Alexander and, I think, Danielle Emrich and their posse plotting malfeasance in the lobby, then Alafair summoned me to dinner.

 

Harry Hunsicker and Margery Flax had hastily assembled a small group; superior logistical technique resulted in a minivan magically appearing to whisk us away to dinner at Oceanaire, a sleek modern seafood restaurant where one could freely eat crabcakes without risking the food poisoning that had gutted the Bouchercon ranks.  It was a fun group of people – Margery, Harry and his wonderfully stylish wife Allison, Alafair, her friend McKenna Jordan from Houston’s Murder by the Book, Tim Maleeny, Dan Hale, Charlaine Harris and her agent Joshua Bilmes.

Not only was it fun, it was raucous fun: the rendition of “Happy Birthday” I endured on the way to the restaurant had the sort of bracing ferocity one only encounters once in a lifetime, if one is lucky. Alas, they nailed me with it again when my Baked Alaska arrived, and quite possibly once more on the way home, although by then I’d packed my ears with a prophylactic paste of birthday candle wax and meringue. When my hearing finally returned, Margery was telling a blood-curdling story of dancing the Hustle in a New York City bank in the early 1970′s – apparently that kind of behaviour, like leisure suits and snorting cocaine, was acceptable back then. O tempora, o mores!

I’m a huge fan of True Blood, the bodice-ripping Southern Gothic vampire series on HBO that Alan Ball has created from Charlaine’s Sookie Stackhouse series. It was a real treat to meet her, and to hear that she’s a huge fan of the show, too. Of course, how could she not be? – the week of Bouchercon, it was announced that all seven of Charlaine’s Sookie books had bounced onto the New York Times bestseller list. She was supersweet (and probably continues to be), and had all sorts of choice gossip about the show.

By the way, about the show: on various groups, I’ve heard people complain about the explicit sex and violence in the TV show. WTF??? That’s like being outraged to discover bacon or chocolate in your dinner! Sex and violence are the spice of premium cable! It can’t all be Wheel of Fortune and Everybody Loves Raymond…

Back at the hotel, I was flagging again. I said hi and bye to a few people, then watched Jonny Santlofer holding court again in the corner of the lobby, this time sprawled on a banquette, showing off his expensive and curious footwear to Dan Conaway and Megan Abbott,the foxy Wednesday Addams of Crime Fiction. They were fading fast too, and so I left before I had to carry them up to their rooms.

On my way back to my room, my Bouchercon visit effectively finished, I passed the electronic podium in the Sheraton lobby that showcases the best that Baltimore has to offer. I realized I hadn’t taken a single photo at the festival, so I did:

Then I went to bed, after offering a little prayer that I’d survive another trip on I-95 with Alafair at the wheel.