Episode 79: Artist in Landscape

the memory palace

Nate DiMeo

Radiotopia, Publicradio, History, Natedimeo

4.8 • 7.2K Ratings

🗓️ 22 July 2023

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

This show is a proud member of Radiotopia from PRX.

This episode was originally released in November, 2015.

Music
* Under the credits is Harlaamstrat 74 off of John Dankworth’s Modesty Blaise score.
* They first meet to a piece called Brouillard (version 1) from Georges Delaure’s extraordinary score to Jules et Jim. (A second version comes in later when J.J. Audubon is living the high life in England).
* We also hear Waltz by Mother Falcon.
* I go back to the Marcelo Zarvos/Please Give well when the Scotsman arrives at their store. Note: it’s the go-to soundtrack for “People Arriving at One’s Store With A Life Changing Proposition” here at the Memory Palace. Also: go watch Please Give.
* The little piano piece is from Nathan Johnson’s score to The Day I Saw Your Heart.
* Lucy and John titter like plovers to Andrew Cyrille’s dope, skittering drums on Nuba 1.
* The especially sad bit, right before the end is Dream 3 (in the Midst of my Life), from Max Richter’s giant, From Sleep album.
* A couple times, including the ending, we hear “the Lark Ascending” from Ralph Vaughn Willliams. It is beautiful. You should buy it.

Notes
As per usual, I read a lot about the Audubons and the Bakewells.
I relied most upon the charming and smart, On the Road with John James Audubon by Mary Durant, and Carolyn DeLatte’s lovely, thoughtful book, Lucy Audubon: a Biography.
* Just a quick note: there’s a very enjoyable PBS/American Masters/Nature documentary about Audubon. It’s a fun and informative watch. But, I’ll say, you come out of that thinking that things were fundamentally swell between Lucy and John in a way that I’m not entirely sure is supported by the facts. Or jibes with, you know, human nature.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is the memory palace. I'm Nate de Mao.
0:05.0	This specimen was approximately 1.8 meters tall, weighing roughly 72 kilos. Here was thick
0:11.2	and brown in color at the time of observation, July 1817, in the field of marsh grass located
0:17.7	north northeast of Louisville, Kentucky. This specimen demonstrated keen eyesight, and
0:22.8	the capacity to move swiftly while maintaining a quiet, stealthy bearing, so as best to track
0:28.1	its prey. Its vocalizations, while infrequent in this environment, as again, stealth was
0:33.7	a vital component in its hunting strategy. It was notable for its varied tone, pitch and
0:39.8	volume, and for its French accent, which was known to make the ladies swim.
0:47.6	So it was when the specimen, born Jean-Jacques Adoubon, on a plantation owned by his parents
0:53.3	in Haiti in 1791, met Miss Lucy Bakewell at her parents' estate in Pennsylvania. He
1:00.6	was 18, a year her senior, and had emigrated to the states the year before, when he changed
1:06.9	his name to the more American sounding, John James Adoubon.
1:11.4	And Lucy Bakewell had never met anyone like him before, with his long, flowing hair,
1:16.9	with the accent. In this fire, this thing in his eyes, she certainly hadn't seen that
1:23.8	thing in the men in her own family, not in her stern, protrusioned father, the English
1:29.3	gentleman who preached the virtues of discipline, of a quiet home and quiet daughters, who once
1:35.4	caught Lucy and her sisters weeping over the plight of doomed lovers in a romance novel,
1:41.2	and then tossed it in the fire.
1:46.8	This young visitor, this peculiar boy, with the hair and the eyes in the Frenchman's
1:51.6	charm, had life in him, the kind that is undeniable, especially when discovered by a 17-year-old
1:58.9	girl, especially when all she knows of love is what she had seen in her own home, and
2:05.1	maybe she was only 17, but she was old enough to know how different that love looked
	...

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