4B — Thursday, January 12, 2017
the b-side
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com

This 
week 
Daily 
Music 

writers 
look 
back 
— 
and 

reconsider 
— 
less 
modern 

pieces of music.

In 
elementary 
school, 

Sunday mornings were known 
as golden mornings to me in 
a way that stood completely 
independent of the weather 
outside. 
Golden 
mornings 

existed nowhere else but my 
kitchen, where my parents 
liked to lounge after eating 
a late breakfast and where 
Norah Jones made herself at 
home. There wasn’t a Sunday 
morning that went by without 
her invisible presence filling 
the empty seats at our table.

I used to perch myself on the 

countertop and observe, with 
utter tranquility: the quiet 
rustle of newspapers turning, 
the gentle murmur of my 
parents’ voices curving around 
steaming mugs of coffee and, 
most 
importantly, 
Norah 

Jones’s voice flowing out of 
speakers as her album Feels 
Like Home played on repeat. 
With the sun reaching out 
from behind clouds, her voice 
seemed to paint the walls of our 
kitchen in shades of gold. Even 
in the dead of winter, when the 
snow that clung to the windows 
bleached the world outside into 
a monochromatic bleakness, 
our kitchen on those Sunday 
mornings never failed to glow 
with warmth. Music melted 
over my sleep-heavy limbs 
like the honey my dad liked to 
spread over his toast, filling 
every corner of our kitchen 
with tarnished sweetness.

So intertwined are Norah 

Jones’s harmonies with those 
Sunday mornings that when I 
listen to Feels Like Home today, 
nearly 13 years later, I am once 
again in that sun-drenched 

kitchen, filled with the same 
serenity I felt then. Feels Like 
Home isn’t just an album to me; 
it’s a collection of memories, 
holding between its notes and 
rhythms a reflection of my 
family’s Sunday morning sliver 
of paradise.

Like Norah Jones filling the 

cavity of my kitchen, music in 
general, I’ve come to realize, 
quietly fills the spaces in life 
that you didn’t even notice 
were empty; it weaves itself 
into the very underlining of 
an experience, embellishing 
and shaping the details around 
harmonies and melodies.

My kitchen holds the weight 

of many songs. For me, Norah 
Jones digs her way through the 
floorboards like a sunflower. 
For my mother, the song of 
her youth travels through the 
steam that emerges when she 
is cooking. In the hours before 
dinner is served, she likes to 
sometimes play the song out 
loud for herself as shadows 
begin to stretch across the 
floor. The bruising violet of the 
dusky sky outside 
perfectly matches 
the 
song’s 

haunting 
vocals. 

She 
explained 

to me once that 
her song is one 
of revolution, of 
childhood 
hope 

and 
resistance 

during 
dark 

times. 
To 
me, 

it’s 
beautiful, 

but to her, it’s something else 
entirely; the song folding in on 
itself to reveal an assortment 
of reminiscences so powerful 
that when listening, she has to 
close her eyes against the ache 
of remembering.

A lifetime has passed since 

she 
last 
heard 
its 
melody 

reverberate among the rolling 
slopes in the mountains of her 
adolescent home, but I know she 

will never forget the memories 
irrevocably stained by this 
song. I know because her face 
as she listens to the familiar 
notes is continually distant. 
She is instantly transported to 
a place I don’t dare trespass. 

The influence of a simple 

song lies in this: In the utter 
depth of memories it has the 
potential to hold, in the way 
it is simultaneously both a 
finished piece of music and 
also an empty canvas laying 
bare, waiting for listeners to 
splatter their own input over 
its unfilled expanse. When 
we flee to the long-standing 
songs of our past for solace, 
for strength, for bittersweet 
nostalgia, we don’t seem to 
be seeking out the comfort of 
the song itself but rather the 
various memoirs trapped in its 
notes. With music, the stories 
of the past are easily brought to 
mind.

For my mother, these stories 

are substantial and compelling. 
For me, Norah Jones brings 
about a simpler, gentler kind 

of recalling. It 
is something I 
turn on when 
the cold makes 
even my bones 
start to wither 
away. 
When 

I 
can 
barely 

bring to mind 
what the inside 
of my kitchen 
looks like with 
light 
spewing 

from the walls like a mosaic; 
when I notice myself spending 
more time in bed, heavy with 
an 
unexplained 
loneliness, 

drained with an unexpected 
sadness. I turn on Feels Like 
Home and allow myself to be 
enveloped in the kaleidoscopic 
memories of bygone golden 
mornings.

SHIMA SADAGHIYANI

Daily Arts Writer

Spending my Sunday mornings
with Norah Jones ‘Feels Like Home’

ALL THINGS RECONSIDERED

“Hag-Seed” 
is 
Margaret 

Atwood’s latest masterpiece. It 
is not only a modern retelling of 
Shakespeare’s “The Tempest,” 
but revolves around that play 
as well. At times, it’s hard to 
believe that the same person 
who orchestrated the somber 
drumbeat of “The Handmaid’s 
Tale,” or the hypnotizing pulse 
of “Surfacing,” has penned the 
frenetic third person narration 
in this novel, but Atwood 
once again smoothly reveals a 
deftness of craft 
and the power 
that the art of 
storytelling has, 
no matter the 
vehicle or venue. 

“Hag-Seed” 

follows 
the 

story of Felix, 
who 
considers 

himself 
an 

avante-garde 
director and misunderstood 
genius. Some consider him 
eccentric; others view him 
as essential to the Canadian 
theatre festival; a few consider 
him 
a 
nuisance. 
While 

wrapped up in his artistic 
visions of a bold retelling of 
“The Tempest” — including a 
possibly paraplegic Caliban 
and a cape for Prospero sewn 
out of plush animal skins — the 
signs of a mutiny by his right 
hand man go straight over his 
head. 

After Felix is ousted, he 

opts for self-banishment. He 
lives alone for years, before 
stumbling into a position that 
he never would 
have considered 
at the peak of 
his 
career 
— 

bringing theatre 
to 
felons. 
He 

grows 
to 
love 

it, 
wearing 

a different identity in the 
prison, enjoying the romantic 
anonymity and the opportunity 
to delve into Shakespeare’s 
work with those whom society 
has largely forgotten. Felix 

eventually 
learns 
of 
an 

opportunity 
for revenge too 
satisfying 
to 

pass up — which 
includes putting 
up his beloved 
production 
of 

“The Tempest” 
— 
and 
takes 

full 
advantage 

of it. Felix holds all the 
similarities between himself 
and Prospero close to his 
heart, even maintaining an 
unsettling relationship to his 
dead daughter Miranda. This 
relationship takes precedence 
over 
his 
relationship 
with 

reality, which is often tenuous 
at best.

“Hag-Seed” includes not only 

two stunning interpretations 
of “The Tempest,” but witty 
barbed pop culture references, 
including 
the 
Illuminati, 

political correctness and kale. 
Atwood’s strongest prose is not 
the economical storytelling in 
which the plot unfolds neatly 

(for 
the 
most 

part) but the rare 
moments in which 
we are allowed a 
prolonged glimpse 
into Felix’s own 
introspection and 
uncertainties. 

The relationship between art 
and grief is prominent, but 
it’s shown not only as a venue 
to solace but to spiraling into 
desperation. The arc of how a 
person goes from frightening 
themselves with their own 
delusions to relying on them is 
eerie, but Atwood draws it in 
one steady hand.

Some of the themes — how 

do we create our own prisons, 
and how do we find our way 
out of them— may seem kitschy 
when laid forth plainly, which 
is why Atwood’s weaving them 
under plot, over subplot makes 
them work. 

 “Hag-Seed” is part of an 

initiative by the publishing 
company Hogarth to release 
a series of novels based on 
Shakespeare’s most beloved 
texts, but the intent to reinvent 
is subtle. Like Felix, Atwood 
has somehow succeeded at 
something highly improbable: 
taking a text already thought 
to 
have 
been 
thoroughly 

exhausted 
and 
breathing 

something new into it.

“Hag-Seed”

Margaret Atwood

Random House

SOPHIA KAUFMAN
Daily Book Review Editor

‘Hag-Seed’ is a masterful adaption

MARK HILL/Flickr

Do you feel like she’s reaching towards as she breathe her final breath? Sunmit ideas below!

Norah Jones 
brings about a 
simpler, gentler 
kind of recalling

BOOK REVIEW

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Donald 
Glover shouted out "Bad and 
Boujee" as the best song ever 
(and was right).

The 
extremely underrated Meryl Streep 
ripped real Donald Trump in half 
during the most beautiful 
speech of the night.

Moonlight won and I can't even 
write anything funny about it 
because it was just so pure 
and wonderful.

Jimmy 
Fallon isn't funny that's it.

Leave 
"Sofía Vergara can't speak 
English" jokes in 2016. 

OR

Atwood has 

somehow succeeded 
at something highly 

improbable

THE LONGEST DEAD AD EVER: 

DEAD AAAAAADDDDDDDDDDDD

Join Arts for more spoken word wittiness! Email Natalie Zak at npzak@umich.edu for an 

application and our favorite gymnast.

