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Dreaming Brooklyn

By Stephen Purcell

ON WASH LINES IN the convent yard hang the nuns’ undergarments: black stockings, girdles, and other stuff. Playing third base—the only girl on either team—is a pouty-faced, pony-tailed tomboy to beat Don Zimmer (third baseman for the Dodgers). The boy takes note of all of this, the underwear, the girl, and more.

It’s balmy for a late afternoon early in March. The air in Brooklyn is heavy with something the boy in his innocence can’t articulate, but which he feels intensely nonetheless. The weather seems almost an ‘occasion of sin,’ keeping him out late against his will.

It’s coming on dark. He’s going to be late. His mom will be worried. He’ll probably get yelled at. He’s decided, at the risk of committing a venial sin, to stay and finish the punch ball game with the older guys, and Miss Ponytail.

Miss Ponytail’s name is Regina. She’s in seventh grade, a year ahead of the boy. She reminds him of Justine on American Bandstand. He takes note of the darkening sky somewhere over Carnarsie, a blaze of orange, purple and pink. He notices, too, the Blob-like shadow of Blessed Sacrament Cathedral under which they play.

Something’s happening here, something momentous, maybe even miraculous. He’s excited and scared, wonderful and terrible, all at once. He’s never felt like this before. He doesn’t let on, though; he doesn’t dare. He plays it cool, like Elvis in King Creole. This wonderful, terrible feeling is larger than the boy’s innocence can comprehend, even if he has rated straight A’s since first grade. Suppose, he wonders, just suppose that the Pope at this very moment is opening “The Letter.” The letter that the nuns are always talking about… the letter from the Virgin Mary… the letter that tells when the world is supposed to end. Last inning. Tie score. He steps up to the plate, a chalked box on grainy blacktop. It’s do or die. There’ll be no extra innings to play today. The boy wants to get home quickly and see his mom and dad. Just in case . . .

At the plate, he bounces the soft, pink Spalding—once, twice, ten times. The creeping shadow of the cathedral looms larger now. To confirm the enormity of the moment, a black cloud shuts out the flaming colors over Canarsie. A sudden evening chill descends upon the borough of Brooklyn.

“C’mon, batter up. Punch the ball!” someone yells.

He might be the youngest player on the field, but he’s one of the best. They play him deep in the outfield, back up against the high chain-link fence.

Finally, the boy crouches into the punch. With his left hand, he lobs the ball a foot over his head, rears back and, with his right hand closed into a fist, smacks the ball with the flat face of his tender knuckles. The ball sails high, high up into the blackening sky, not hitting the outfield fence until he’s rounded first base and

scrambled halfway to second. Off the fence, the ball bounces funny, confusing the players in the outfield. He bounds past second and keeps running. At third, inexplicably, he slows his locomotive stride.

He could have scored easily. The game would be over. Game over, he could have rushed home to see his mom and dad, before. …

Anyway, brushing against Regina playing tight to third, the boy steps on the base and scrambles a few feet past her, stops, hesitates … and beats his Keds back.

“Nice hit,” Regina says, standing close.

“Thanks,” the boy says. “You could have made it home.”

The next batter up punches a single. The boy scores the winning run. He should tag straight for home. Instead, he walks the eight blocks along Ridgewood Avenue with several of his teammates. He bops to the rear of the sidewalk phalanx, all the while aware of pouty Regina strutting alone, across the street but even with him.

Once, for a wide yawning second, their eyes meet. Across busy Ridgewood Avenue, they glare at each other, like about-to-be combatants in a schoolyard rumble. Regina sticks her tongue out, breaks into a trot, and she’s gone, into the Brooklyn twilight.

The boy’s mom doesn’t yell at him for being late. She just asks him where he was and what he was doing. She says she was beginning to worry. His dad’s working late, so he gets to eat dinner and watch television in the living room. By the time his mom serves him Mrs. Paul’s fish sticks and macaroni on a TV tray, he’s forgotten the letter from the Virgin Mary to the Pope telling him about the end of the world. He hasn’t forgotten Regina, though.

Her last name was Donnelly, as I recall. n

interview

A.D. AMOROSI Diving deep into the archive

AS INFLUENCED BY EXPERIMENTAL electronica as she was traditional music—from R&B, to the gospel epiphanies of her youth in Cincinnati, to Sudanese fiddle folk—violinist and singer Brittany Parks set out on a path to craft unique, violin-laced electro soul. That meant becoming Sudan Archives, dropping several splintered sounding EPs (Sudan Archives in 2017, Sink in 2018) before truly exposing herself with her full-length studio album, the magical Athena, released in November, 2019 As she does on the cover of Athena and torrid tracks such as “Water” and her more recent “Confessions,” Sudan Archives opens up and bares her heart, mind, stories of growing up absurd, and the weird R&B she’s heard in her head since she was a kid.

Before her March 13 appearance at Johnny Brenda’s in Fishtown, Parks and I discussed Athena in all of its forms, sounds and visions. Your career is ascending. Are you enjoying the ride?

I’m the type of person that when stuff is happening, it doesn’t feel real to me, to be honest. I don’t know; it moves so fast sometimes, it’s surreal. I almost don’t get a chance to deal with anything as it’s happening.

You grew up as a student of music in the choir of the church you attended as a kid three times a week. Did that make music more of a pragmatic, workman-like skill?

It was always magic because there wasn’t really discipline with my instrument. I never really took lessons. It just seemed magical going up into the choir and learning all of the songs. Being there all the time—it was a vibe, something good. Music never felt like something that I had to do every day with a this-equals-that outcome.

Music wasn’t something that you had to miss childhood for.

No, because I didn’t know what that was either, as I was always a bit of a loner. I never felt as if I was missing out on anything in order to make music. Being a loner recording your first two EPs all but on your own, what was it like working in a more collaborative mode on Athena? At first, it was scary because it felt like… well, I was used to doing things alone in my bedroom, and that’s it. Suddenly there were people in my mind and people there to help me make my art. It was weird having a team for once, because it never felt like that before—but I won’t say that I didn’t like it. Yes, at first it was hard, but the final product was a huge relief, and now I have a bigger team that is more like a family behind me. Nobody wants to really be a loner, right?

Back in the day, you recorded for the pop soul LaFace label with your sister as N2. It didn’t last, but was there anything about that glossy sound that carried over? I ask because Athena is far slicker than your first two EPs.

Yeah. Back then, having a sister helping me write, leaving me to work on the melodies…that was cool because it was family oriented. It was my stepdad, my sister, and me working on a project, and going for our dreams. It didn’t work out. I was being difficult and got thrown out of the band. [laughs] But I always loved that sound. I missed it. That’s why “Did You Know,” the first song on the album, is on Athena—that’s the first tune my sister and I ever did.

How different is the new version from the original?

I sound like a little girl on the original. You can actually find it on Soundcloud. And the production is similar to the original. Actually, I like that sound, that production. There just happened to be additional things that I wanted that back then I couldn’t describe. I couldn’t communicate that with people, so I just appeared difficult to work with. I wanted to put that song on Athena as the first track because it shows my journey as an artist. I learned how to say what I wanted, and it started there. We just enhanced it for the new album. WHEN YOU’RE WORKING WITH OTHER WRITERS AND PRODUCERS, EVERYONE IN THE ROOM KNOWS WHAT THE SONG IS ABOUT. THEY MAKE YOU OWN UP TO IT, PUSH THOSE BUTTONS. IT’S LIKE WHEN YOU TELL A STORY AND OMIT THE JUICY PART, ANOTHER WRITER WILL GET YOU TO TELL IT. ][

The songs that are on your EPs are more fragmented, choppy, and frenetic than those on Athena. I don’t want to read too much into this, but would you say that it was purely a musical expression or a picture of where you were emotionally making the EPs?

It could be both. For the EPs, it was me, my violin, my loop station, and a laptop that was farting and just barely able to record onto, get ideas down. I was coming home every night, stressed out from, say, working my second job, and having to wake up at 6 a.m. with nothing to do but record an idea—real quick. Yes, that does represent where I was with my life, just barely able to get my ideas down without having to leave my house to work. The album sounds expansive and slick because it started in a studio, ended in a studio, and I had time to record. Plus, remember, those EPS are just me singing into an iPhone.

Are you a tech head or a Luddite? I definitely like to keep things more raw, get the first take down. We worked off of a lot of demos from my iPad—I can pour my heart into something with immediacy there. That’s where I feel most comfortable. I’m a gearhead. I love technology. I love my computers. I like equient I can touch with my hands. The iPad , the loop station, onto which I put my violin? That may all boil down to just two tracks, but you can’t mess it up. It’s archived there.

Do you feel the same way about writing lyrics? There’s family drama, confessions, and heartbreak laced throughout Athena. I feel your ache. Was that easy to convey?

Both. Maybe more so because it was harder. When you’re writing with only yourself, you can get it out. It’s also easy to be a pussy and go back on what you said, and cover it up. Like ‘um—I don’t know if I want the world to really know what I’m thinking, so I’ll make some abstract poetry out of it, use some metaphors so that no one will understand it.’ But when you’re working with other writers and producers, everyone in the room knows what the song is about. They make you own up to it, push those buttons. It’s like when you tell a story and omit the juicy part—another writer will get you to tell it.

Would I be right in assuming that you appearing as you do on the cover of Athena—nude, but as a statue—that nakedness is a metaphor for your lyrics?

Yeah, because I feel like this is the biggest, most real I’ve ever been—as a lyricist and a person. I shaved my head after I recorded the album! I’m tired of hiding. No more covering up with layers. I want to strip everything away. That was all me in the photo. I had to go into this 3-D printing van and be naked in front of 360-degree cameras. Every camera represented another set of eyes. Yup, that’s me. Onstage I want to look just like I do in my bedroom, because that’s what Athena’s about. Athena says this is me. Raw. I’m not hiding. This is the soundtrack of my life, so this is how I want you to see me. n

like Zelig, K RISTIN seems to pop up everywhere C H E N O W E T H

interview

SUSAN VAN DONGEN

SHE’S A MULTI-TASKING TALENT, starring in theater, film, TV and even voiceovers. Chenoweth won an Emmy (Pushing Daisies, 1999) and a Tony, (You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown, 1999), and has been nominated numerous times for both awards, including for her role as Glinda the Good Witch in the original Broadway production of Wicked. More recently, the Oklahoma native has been showing off her comedy chops as the scene-stealing heiress Lavinia Peck-Foster in the NBC comedy Trial and Error. Listen closely and you can hear Chenoweth voicing various roles on the oddball animated Netflix series Bojack Horseman. But, she’s probably best known as a vocalist and, short of gangsta rap, Chenoweth really can sing anything. Dig a little and you’ll find clips of her as Cunegonde, performing the virtuosic “Glitter and be Gay” from Leonard Bernstein’s Candide, a nod to her formal training in opera. Just a few months ago, Chenoweth released For the Girls, showcasing great songs made famous by legends such as Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand, Peggy Lee, Carole King and Linda Ronstadt, to

name just a few. She’ll be at the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia on March 13, celebrating the album.

Born July 24, 1968, the singer grew up in Broken Arrow, adopted when only a few days old by Junie and Jerry Chenoweth. She traces her musical beginnings to singing in church, performing as a soloist by age 12.

She went on to study opera at Oklahoma City University, earning a master’s degree in Opera Performance there in 1992. Indeed, Kristin was in grad school when she came to New York City with a friend, who came East to audition for a Broadway musical. Chenoweth decided to audition too, got a role and...well, you know the rest.

This petite tour-de-force took a break from her bustling schedule to speak with ICON last month.

What was your motivation to record ‘‘For the Girls?’’ Not a feminist statement, but a celebration.

I wanted to pay homage to the women who have come before me. It’s everyone from Lesley Gore to Dinah Washington to Dolly Parton. This is For The Girls, By The Girls, To The Girls and the men who love us.

You’re stepping into some really big shoes: how did you choose these artists and songs?

I’m challenged by things that scare me. These songs are all iconic and while I wanted to pay tribute to each artist. I also know how important it is to put my own stamp on each song.

You do Lesley Gore’s classic “You Don’t Own Me” as a duet with Ariana Grande. She’s super talented, but it also might have been like teaching music history—she’s so young!

Trust me, I picked the song specifically for Ariana and (myself) to do together. It’s old school meets new school. And as much as I hope I’ve inspired her, she’s inspired me, doubly so.

I had a little tear in my eye listening to “Desperado.” What’s your relationship to the song, and to Linda Ronstadt’s music?

Very first time I heard it, it was sung by Linda, then later I found out a couple of great guys wrote it. To me, I never understood why it wasn’t a woman’s song as well. And because of Linda, it gives artists like me permission to be somewhat of a “desperado” myself.

It’s so poignant now that she can’t sing anymore due to Parkinson’s. Did that cross your mind?

What really crossed my mind was the stamp that she’s made in music history. Linda is the same artist who did 70s rock, a Spanish record and the operetta Pirates of Penzance. When I was growing up, I wore out the record she did with the Nelson Riddle band of all American songbook standards (What’s New, 1983). So as I sing anything as Linda sung, I tend to focus more on what she has done than what she can no longer do.

I also got goosebumps listening to “I Will Always Love You.” Nice to hear it as Dolly Parton imagined it.

Let’s just say, when she said yes, I thought “I can retire now!” Every- > 35