The Missing Tooth #3: Billy Joel, French, and every book I read in 2020
Good morning,
Here is the third Missing Tooth and the last for this year.
I’ve enjoyed writing it and hope you enjoy reading.
I look forward to seeing you all in person in the new year.
All best,
N.
PS Corrections—particularly of my spelling, grammar, and overuse of em-dashes—are always welcome.
Bea Story
I just walked into the kitchen and asked Bridget where Bea was.
A voice from under the kitchen table whispered: “The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist.”
And that’s why you shouldn’t let your kids watch Youtube by themselves.
Je parle Français petit
Bonjour!
J'étudie Français avec DuoLingo. Je c’est tres bien pas. (Je femme, Bridgette, parle Français plus bien que moi.) Étudies avec moi s'il tu plaît.
Mon nom a DuoLingo est NicholasJo257432.
Merci beaucoup.
P.S. Salut Flo! Est-ce que votre portefeuille?
The Magic Lantern
The Magic Lantern’s To the Island soothing, but never soporific, folk/jazz helped me get through a rough time last year. It’s like a three cheese toastie for the soul. But the cheeses are all saxophones.
Jamie Doe, the Australian musician behind the project, describes himself as “an artist dedicated to remedying the anxiety and fear present in everyone.”
I think he’s succeeding.
Uptown Girl: A Love Story
1997
My new girlfriend, Bridget, gets in my 1985 Ford Laser. Uptown Girl by Billy Joel is playing on the cassette player. She teases me about my taste in music. I go pink. A few weeks later, the song plays again, this time on MIX 160.3 FM (classic hits from 70s, 80s and today).
I lend her my car. I make sure Uptown Girl is the first thing to play just to show her I don’t care.
I do care.
1998
I request Uptown Girl on Love Songs and Dedications on MIX 160.3 FM. I forget to tell Bridget I have done this (she listens to Triple J). I listen alone.
1999
To celebrate our second anniversary I make Bridget a mix CD. The bonus track, which plays thirty seconds after the final song, is Uptown Girl.
2004
Bridget and I marry. She walks down the aisle to Here Comes The Sun. Our first dance is to The Ship Song. Bridget looks relieved. Little does she know, I’ve packed my iPod Mini with Uptown Girl for the reception playlist.
2009
We’re living in Edinburgh when Bridget discover a new streaming app called Spotify. You can make your own playlists and queue songs. Her’s somehow end up filled with Uptown Girl.
2014
Bridget is putting together a childbirth playlist on her iPhone for the first child. I get an idea. “If you put Uptown Girl on this list I will fucking kill you.”
I do not.
2017
I’m in the wings at a gig when I look at my phone and realise my Spotify account is playing Kanye West from Bridget’s MacBook Air at home. I set up Uptown Girl to play ten times in a row and go on stage. Bridget does not know how to clear the queue.
2018
Bridget gets in the car to go to work. My iPhone, in the kitchen with me, automatically connects to the car’s bluetooth. Bridget stops the car at the end of the driveway and swears at me from the car window. I giggle as Bill Joel’s voice blares out of the car.
2019
Bridget joins the gym. The gym uses crowdDJ, an app that allows members to cue songs to play throughout the gym from their phones, even when they’re not at the gym. Bridget is furious when she gets home.
2020
I’m updating iOS on Bridget’s iPhone. I discover that Shortcuts has the ability to automatically play any song when her AirPods are connected. Bridget is not aware of Shortcuts.
My thumb hovers over the Add button…
Make a Fist
We forget that we are all dead men conversing with dead men.
—Jorge Luis Borges
For the first time, on the road north of Tampico,
I felt the life sliding out of me,
a drum in the desert, harder and harder to hear.
I was seven, I lay in the car
watching palm trees swirl a sickening pattern past the glass.
My stomach was a melon split wide inside my skin.
“How do you know if you are going to die?”
I begged my mother.
We had been traveling for days.
With strange confidence she answered,
“When you can no longer make a fist.”
Years later I smile to think of that journey,
the borders we must cross separately,
stamped with our unanswerable woes.
I who did not die, who am still living,
still lying in the backseat behind all my questions,
clenching and opening one small hand.
Every Book I Finished This Year
With deteriorating eyesight, neurological shenanigans, and a general lack of practice, I’ve struggled to read in recent years. In January, I determined to improve my skills.
I haven’t included any books I only dipped in and out of. So no cookbooks, reference books or poetry collections.
I enjoyed them all and would love to talk to you about them.
Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
Atomic Habits by James Clear (audio)
Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Bonjour Tristesse by Françoise Sagan
Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
Dept. of Speculation by Jenny Offill
Double Happiness by Joe Bennett
Dreyer’s English by Benjamin Dreyer
Fight Like a Girl by Sheena Kamal
French Exit by Patrick deWitt
Going Postal by Terry Pratchett (audio)
High-Rise by J.G. Ballard
How To Cook A Wolf by M.F.K. Fisher
Mary Ventura and the Ninth Kingdom by Sylvia Plath
Nightingale Wood by Stella Gibbons
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Ratburger by David Walliams
The Scab King by Simon Keck
The Cockroach by Ian McEwan
The Day of Creation by J.G. Ballard
The Elements of Eloquence by Mark Forsyth
The Embassy of Cambodia by Zadie Smith
The Etymologicon by Mark Forsyth
The Loved One by Evelyn Waugh
The Midnight Gang by David Walliams
Murder Your Darlings by Roy Peter Clark (audio)
What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Raymond Carver