Imaginary Gardens (with Real Toads)

Songs, poems, snippets, and glimpses. Words that I love and I want you to love, too. Close readings of writing that was not meant to be closely read.

Occasional concert reviews and links.

My primary folk music website can be found here. My actual tumblelog can be found here.

Comments can be sent to 'becca here.
Sun Jan 23

12 Memorable Concerts from 2010

(Cross-posted. I’ve largely abandoned Imaginary Gardens for Bricolage and my folk music website, but it seems appropriate to post this here as well.)

Here is a description of twelve memorable concerts I saw in 2010. I won’t say that they’re the most memorable, because I don’t like to commit to absolutes like that, but they all stood out for some reason. I decided not to include Falcon Ridge, because it’s not really a concert in my mind, and the description would either have to be way too long or way too short.

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“The Women of Folk Music” @ The Birchmere (Alexandria VA), January 22nd

This benefit concert for WFMA featured a stellar lineup: SONiA, Nerissa and Katryna Nields, Maura Kennedy, Catie Curtis, and several others. Sort of a mini one-night folk festival. My musical highlight was actually Catie Curtis, who I rarely remember to seek out (certainly less often than the other aforementioned performers) but really enjoy. My social highlight was the overwhelming sense of being part of a community. Friends and acquaintances dotted the audience. Two different people practically admonished me for not asking them beforehand for a comp ticket. (As it was, I was splitting a comp ticket with a friend, and I was glad to support WFMA as much as I could afford to.) One of the performer’s managers rescued my granola bar when the Birchmere staff confiscated it (I had forgotten about the Birchmere’s bag searches) and smuggled it back to me later. The contemporary folk community is something special.


Peter Mulvey and Jeffrey Foucault @ Wagon Shed Concerts (New Freedom PA), January 23

This was my first concert at The Wagon Shed. The upstairs of a barn in a small town on the Mason-Dixon line hardly screams “amazing venue,” but it’s one of the best-kept folk music secrets in the mid-Atlantic. The room is beautiful — all wood — and has the intimacy of a house concert: perhaps 50 people sitting in a horseshoe, spitting distance from the stage. But it has the acoustics of a professional venue, they stream live on the web, and they somehow get big names like David Bromberg and Alison Krauss. People were almost surreally nice: I was a little nervous about going to a new venue by myself, but by the beginning of the show, I had been given a glass of red wine and the business card of someone who wanted to go hiking. There was a mid-show potluck. Peter Mulvey and Jeffrey Foucault have good energy together in general, and they responded to the intimacy of the venue by being delightfully silly, adding to the warmth and magic of the night.

 

Girlyman @ Jammin’ Java (Vienna VA), March 13

Girlyman is one of my very favorite bands to see live. Their distinctive lyrics and harmonies already make them stand out, but they are also great improvisers, and their patter and stage personae are hysterically funny. (What other band could pull off an entire album consisting of tuning songs?) Another band guaranteed to leave me in a better mood than I was in before. It’s been fun to watch them grow over the years, too: they just keep on getting better, both in terms of their songwriting and their live shows. This show also featured a cozy collision of friends old and new: nookers, Obies (well, one, but an important one), CTY/Baltimore relationships (well, again, one, but an important one), Darlings, contra dancers, etc.

 

Pat Wictor and Toby Walker @ Focus (Rockville MD), April 27

I always enjoy hearing Pat play. To quote boyhowdy at Cover Lay Down: “Wictor’s undeniable talent as a performer and songwriter, coupled with the relatively unique combination of bluesy, fluid, slide-guitar-driven folk and spiritually uplifting lyrics, are a potent mix. His warm, mellow tenor drips with Dave Carter’s gentle soul, and a soulfulness that is as light and graceful as Odetta’s was deep and dark. Combine this with his powerful, gentle presence — there’s something genuine and earnest about Pat that comes across through both his studio work and his live performance — and you’ve got something rare and precious, indeed.”  But I especially look forward to his co-bills. Folk musicians vary widely in their ability to improvise and play well with others. Co-bills with singer-songwriters who only have functional understanding of their instruments can be less fun: it’s basically like seeing two half-shows. But Pat and his musical comrades (Toby Walker, Jon Shain, Abbie Gardner, Brother Sun I’m sure) show ‘em how it’s done: not only can they dance solo on their fretboards, but they also have the musical sensitivity and technical prowess to add their signature styles to each other’s music in ever-changing ways.

 

Dala @ Moore Music in the House (Rockville MD), May 8

Dala is the only featured performer on this list who I had never seen live before. (Others were in new configurations or co-bills, though.) It’s a rare experience for me to go to a concert and think, “Wow, these people are going to be famous soon, and I’m seeing them in someone’s basement.” Sure enough, the next time I saw them was in front of thousands of people at Falcon Ridge, and they have since won awards, played major festivals in the USA and Canada, been signed to Compass Records, been hailed by Cover Lay Down as “one of the biggest rising stars on the popfolk circuit.” And indeed, the Dala girls are popfolk at their best: charming patter and presence, catchy melodies, sweet yet distinctive harmonies. (I found that their harmonies come through more clearly in their live performances and recordings than in their produced CDs.) Definitely one of my most exciting new discoveries of 2010.

 

Lindsay Mac @ Focus (Alexandria VA), May 16

I have long-standing penchant for classically-trained singer-songwriters. I also love the cello, especially in the context of contemporary folk (Gideon Freudmann, Rushad Eggleston, Natalie Haas, Hannah Alkire, etc.). Given that Lindsay Mac is a singer-songwriter who plays the cello like a guitar, I was predisposed to like her. That was before I heard her perform at Falcon Ridge (on the main stage, but even more so when we were all torrentially trapped in the Budgiedome) and discovered that she’s also a great songwriter, that her music has the best aspects of Ani without the annoying aspects of Ani. She rarely plays south of New England — sadly — so I had been anticipating and promoting this Focus show for many months. (I rarely make it down to Focus Alexandria, but every show I’ve seen there has been memorable.) I was not disappointed. The energy was amazing, the audience enthusiastic, whether they were hardcore Lindsay Mac fans or first-timers under the influence of their friends. Mona Tavakoli, who accompanied her on percussion and backing vocals, added a lot musically and was also really fun to watch play. For the encore, LM requested to have the lights turned off, and she sang out of semi-darkness (“Drifted,” I think?), which was appropriately chilling, especially in contrast to the informal warmth of the venue.

 

Danielle Miraglia, David Morreale, & Jonathan Byrd @ SNAFU (Baltimore MD), June 9

SNAFU has risen phoenix-like from the flames, relocating to the third floor dining room of the Waterfront Hotel, my favorite Fells Point bar. One particularly memorable aspect of this show was the striking use of the space: the three performers sat in a circle in the middle of the room, facing towards each other, with the audience ringed around. (David and I managed to grab a couch, which is definitely the right way to see music in a bar.) The show was under-attended, likely due to basically non-existent promotion, which is too bad: all three singer-songwriters are talented and worth seeing live. They’re also friends and fans of each other, which could be seen in their harmonies, their laughter, and their almost involuntary singing along to each others’ songs. I was especially delighted by DM singing along to Byrd’s word-dense “Cocaine Kid.”

 

Joe Crookston (with Brad Yoder) @ SongSpace (Pittsburgh PA), September 25

Joe’s a strong performer, and he’s strongest in venues of this size: small enough to sing off-mic; big enough feed off the audience’s energy. Both intimate and foot-stompin’. And SongSpace is everything that a folk concert venue of its size should be: cozy arrangement, comfortable chairs, refreshments (including black tea in real mugs!), a full house vibrating with quiet excitement. Joe had never played Pittsburgh before, but the show had been well-advertised. Having Brad open was also smart, since he’s a household name in the local folk scene, and seeing them play together is always a treat: Brad’s soprano sax added a lot, especially to “Red Rooster.” Additionally, the UU church that houses SongSpace has a folk orchestra (!) that had covered “Fall Down as the Rain,” so there were several members in the audience who had been introduced to Joe’s music that way — brilliant. (UU churches hosting folk concerts is not uncommon, but having a large number of congregation members in the audience is uncommon and certainly an asset.) Even I knew about a dozen people in the audience, which was impressive given that I had only been living in Pittsburgh for a week at this time. (I had met many of them at the Danielle Miraglia house concert the weekend before; some I knew from NERFA. Friendly faces everywhere.) 

 

It’s All About the Drums (Cheryl Prashker and friends) @ Focus (Rockville), October 12

Among her other notable roles in the folk community, Cheryl Prashker is arguably the best folk percussionist out there. (Pat Wictor calls it Extra-Sensory Percussion.) Typically a drummer is invited by a main stage act to accompany hir; Cheryl turns this model on its head for her “It’s All About the Drums” shows by inviting a handful of singer-songwriters to play with her. The lineup was strong and varied: Zoe Mulford, Brad Yoder, and Reggie Harris in the foreground, with two other percussionists joining in at times. (I hadn’t seen Reggie Harris live since I was a kid. He’s amazing!) The show featured all sorts of quirky and charming and semi-improvised combinations of singing, banjo, glockenspiel, guitar, and sax, with one to three drummers ever-present to hold it all together. Totally worth eight hours of travel in two days.

 

Ellis @ Moore Music in the House (Rockville MD), November 6

I spent a large percentage of this show with a stupid grin plastered across my face. Seeing Ellis perform always makes me feel happy afterwards; it’s some synergistic combination of her laugh, the comedy of the coffee song and the yoga song, the layered optimism of my favorite songs on “Break the Spell,” her storytelling, her guitar riffs, the palpable way that audiences fall in love with her. She doesn’t have that much in common with them musically, but this rush of positive energy is similar to Kennedys shows and full band Nields shows in days of yore. My elation at this particular show was multiplied by going with B., who was seeing Ellis live for the first time.

 

Brad Yoder CD release @ Church of the Redeemer (Pittsburgh PA), November 20

Songwriters, take note: Brad provides an excellent model for how to create a memorable CD release show. It was downright opulent, musically and gastronomically. There were two opening bands (Judith Avers and Pearl & the Beard) and some dozen back-up musicians (up to six at a time). A back room adjacent to the chapel featured free snacks, free lattes, and free home-brewed beer. (Another first: getting carded in a church.) The result was half-concert, half-party, and overall good time. In typical Pittsburgh fashion, I ran into two of my coworkers, one of whom was a backup musician. The released CD, “Excellent Trouble,” is also, well, excellent, and it was fun to hear the songs with the richness of a backup band: I had only heard him play solo or gently accompanied, and this show was closer to the flavor of the CD.

 

We’re About 9 @ Cooper’s House (Columbia MD), December 18

Seeing We’re About 9 perform is like coming home. I’ve seen them live more times than any other band, but it had been a while (given that neither of us live in MD right now). Much jumping up and down ensued. Most of the songs were at least FR years old, but the arrangements and the patter provided pleasant surprises. I would not have guessed that a glockenspiel — of all things! — would add so much to “Slow Sliding Funk.” (Glockenspiels, as Brian pointed out, are becoming hip in the contemporary folk world, but they really can add something if used sparingly.) And their “guess the movie” game was even more hysterical in a house concert setting than in a “big folk festival” setting. Talking to friends between sets was also really nice. Shows at Myra and Steve’s are always cozy, both due to their warmth and the architecture of their house, but this was even more so. I knew over 1/3 of the audience members by name (out of about 75 people); some I had known for a decade and some I had known for under a year. My core group of friends in Baltimore has changed almost entirely since even the last time I saw WA9, yet despite this, the majority of the people who I love most in Baltimore were there, gathered together.

Wed Jul 29

PSA

In case it’s not obvious: Until further notice, I’m directing my tumblenergy toward my other Tumblr page: Bricolage. It’s more tumbleloggesque, anyhow.

Thu Feb 5

What would Buddha drink?

A thread for possible future consideration, spinning off of the last post: the number of “religious figures in contemporary context” songs that place Buddha in a coffeeshop (or drinking coffee at a diner).  There are at least three: “Talkin’ to the Buddha” by Gandalf Murphy and the Slambovian Circus of Dreams (video here), “Where You Been” by Carrie Newcomer, and… it slipped out of my mind, but there’s another one.  Excerpts below.

CARRIE NEWCOMER:
I saw Jesus talking shop with Buddha at the Starbucks
I saw Gia and Ganesh doin’ Double Dutch in the park
And Mohammad was throwing popcorn
To the pigeons and the sparrows
And all us crazy holy hungry ones
Still believe in something better

GM & THE SLAMBOVIAN CIRCUS OF DREAMS:
He said meet me at Joe’s Diner
Where Route 6 meets 88
Well I arrived at the appointed time
But Buddha said You’re running late
So we ordered an espresso
From the owner’s new machine
And as the jukebox played Nirvana
He said Ignorance is mean

Tue Feb 3
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

”Fisher King” by Carrie Newcomer, on “The Gathering Of Spirits.”

[Embedded mp3 above. If it’s not showing up on your feed/reader, go to the original post.]


I have a general appreciation for songs that build on mythology, incorporating archetypal characters in way that is relevant and personal. Some add a new perspective to ancient tales by contemporarizing them, while others conversely use the archetype to provide another way of thinking about a personal or contemporary emotion or situation, making it seem more universal. While many contemporary singer-songwriters look to the Greeks for their mythology (Devon Sproule’s “Tristan and Isolde,” Danny Schmidt’s “Tales of Sweet Odysseus,” Anaïs Mitchell’s “Hades & Persephone,” Jennie Avila’s “Persephone,” The Kennedys’ “Feather in the Flame,” the list goes on), and even those who draw on the Arthurian legends usually dwell on more central characters (notably Dave Carter’s “Lancelot” and “Merlin’s Lament”), Carrie Newcomer’s “Fisher King” focuses on a fairly minor Arthurian character, the Fisher King. (Carrie Newcomer and T.S. Eliot, right?)

First, a bit of artistic appreciation. The melody is gorgeous, and CN’s voice is expressive and rich. The music is intimately woven with the subject matter, from the meditative finger-picking to the subtle shifts: the dynamic rises and falls, the melodically simpler rippling bridge followed bt a split second of silence before plunging into the next verse. Exquisite.

There is just enough in the song to ground it in the Arthurian legend. The grail appears in the chorus, and the first verse is solidly Arthurian, presumably speaking to Percival: “Are you the one that’s common born, are you a fool in many ways / Have you searched half of your life, looking for some Holy Grail? / Did you see it in a dream, a vision once when you were young? / Does the circle lead you back, to the place where you begun.” But note the modifer “some,” not “the.” And that last line sounds more Sufi than Christian (though someone with more knowledge about the Arthurian legend, or Christian mysticism in general, can feel free to dispute me on that).

Unsurprisingly, then, after the first verse, the song blossoms into the more spiritually universal. Here is the third verse:

Are you the pilgrim on the road, are you the hermit in the wood
Have you followed what you know, what you want, or what you should
Have you learned a thing or two, have you wondered at the time?
In the dark night of the soul, am I the one you thought you’d find?

Without using any specific references, Newcomer firmly roots this verse in semi-universal imagery of spiritual paths. The choice of the definite article in the first two lines (“the pilgrim,” “the hermit”) underline this: she’s not asking if you are a pilgrim or if you are a hermit; she’s asking “which archetype are you?” Aren’t two of the most commom spiritual figures, from Christianity to Buddhism, the one traveling to a sacred space and the one residing alone in a sacred space (especially in nature), and more broadly, aren’t movement and statis the two basic options? Similarly, in a single line (“Have you followed…”), she gracefully divides our fundamental motivations into three basic possiblities. She does use one specific reference, though, which is also worth mentioning: she incorporates Saint John of the Cross’s phrase “the dark night of the soul.” Her use of these words taps a ready-made metaphor, expands it, and also adds another strain of medieval Catholic mysticism, which is appropriate enough. (She’s especially good at weaving in those hard-hitting mystic lines; another song on the same album borrows from Rumi, reminding us that “The wisest say there’s a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the ground.”)

This is getting long, but I wanted to say just a bit about the bridge and last verse:

Grace and laughter, ever after
Sorrow folds her hands together
Was it all and did you mean it
In the dark you’ve always seen a
Bright and shining true idea

I am the wound that will not heal, I am the song you cannot sing
I am an endless restless ache, I am I am the Fisher King
And all that I can ask of you is do what small good that you can
Speak the words I long to hear, and meet me where I am

The bridge is especially lovely in its traditional poetic features, despite its lack of end rhymes. It is very clean metrically: each line has eight syllables divided into four Trochees (i.e., four sets of a strong beat followed by a weak beat). There’s personification (“Sorrow folds her hands together”). There is internal rhyme (laughter/after, mean/seen) and assonance (bright/shining/idea, which anticipates all of the “I”s in the next two lines).

These verses return us back to imagery of the Fisher King specifically: by name, by reference to his “wound that will not heal” (his distinguishing feature), and “speak the words I long to hear” (which works more broadly but presumably refers to the King’s inability to be healed until the Grail seeker asks what ails him). Yet it remains metaphorical until the last phrase: “I am I am the Fisher King.” These metaphors, all getting at the same idea, make that last phrase all the more powerful. The repetition of “I am” is both rhythmically necessary and adds the idea that the speaker has run out of metaphors, leaving no other way left to describe himself but the simple declaration, which – paradoxically – potentially adds more shades of meaning than the metaphors, at least to the listener who is familiar with the myth.

Tue Jan 27
[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

“Away from the Lights” by Annie Gallup, from “Half of My Crime”

“Away from the Lights” is a prime example of a poem for which the words on the page do not begin to capture its flavor. It’s all about Annie Gallup’s delivery: her pacing, her intimate and seductive tone. Before hearing this song, I had no idea what a stunning word “participatory” was, especially when whispered.

Given that, I’ll just say a few words about the lyrics. It begins: “Maybe you were riding through small towns in the backroads of East Texas under a full moon in a derelict Cutlass Supreme.” In just one line, four prepositional phrases, she has nailed the setting, even specifying the illumination. The choice of the second person perspective is an uncommon one, especially coupled with “maybe.” The result is that the song starts in a sort of second-person ambivalent imperfect, which sets the song’s tone.

As you listen, here are some of my favorite lines:
“and the woman behind the wheel was not a mysterious woman, but she had a mystery about her that meant something to you on a cellular level, in a participatory way.” “but the moment already has a momentum of its own that you don’t understand, so instead you just watch her driving, cotton dress pale in the x-ray dashboard light.” “over and over until it becomes an idiomatic phrase in an archaic language without context or meaning, so somehow comforting like a refrain.”

Mon Jan 26

What was, what is, and the hope for what can be

Angela Page hosts the folk radio show Folk Plus on WJFF.  This past weekend, her theme was “Post Inauguration: What was, what is, what can be.”  She says: “This week the world watched, listened to, or at least knew about the inauguration of the 44th President of the United States.  And many under a certain age, not having been touched by the history that made this so emotional for so many, missed out on much of the significance of the event.   Today on Folk Plus I would like to air some of the inauguration speech, preceded by how times were and followed by the hope of how times could be.”

I really like this idea of using folk music to contextualize a contemporary event.  And it’s really well done; the music is excellent and it is organized and explained in a moving and thought-provoking way.  It was not so long ago that Odetta (and Leadbelly before her, of course) sang “”I tell all the colored folks to listen to me / Don’t try to find you no home in Washington, DC / Cause it’s a bourgeois town.”

Listen to the archived show here (two hours). It’s only available until February 7th.

Read the playlist with some commentary here. This is available indefinitely.

Wed Jan 21

Pete Seeger, Tao R-S, and Bruce Springsteen
“This Land is Your Land”
Presidential Inauguration 2009

Bruce Springsteen: “We’d like you to join us perhaps for the greatest song ever written about our home, with the father of American folk music, Pete Seeger, and his grandson Tao.  Lead us, Pete.”

Pete Seeger: “You sing it with us.  We’ll give you the words.”

What is most notable — besides the fact that Pete Seeger is performing for the president, which is not so new; consider this 1944 photo of Pete performing with Eleanor Roosevelt in the audience — is that they sing the controversial (“subversive”) verses. The verses that Max Ochs (Phil Ochs’s cousin) sang that contributed to getting him fired from hosting Quiet Waters just a few years ago (combined, fittingly enough, with his less-than-complimentary words about Bush).  Sung to Obama and (half a million) friends!  This is change that we can believe in; well, change in a back-to-Guthrie kind of way. Here are the verses:

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

There was a big high wall there that tried to stop me;
Sign was painted, it said private property;
But on the back side it didn’t say nothing;
That side was made for you and me.

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

Thu Jan 1

“Take All the Sky You Need” by Ellis Paul.  Live at Makor, posted 2007.

Interesting note: the verse that I discuss below has changed again.  The words now are:

If I climb to the rooftops / And look down at my story / And it swallows me
There’s a full moon horizon; the taillights keep calling
Will you follow me?

I like these changes: it brings back the action (climbing vs. standing), and second line brings back the present tense — even the urgent — instead of the conditional/abstract.

Revisions: “Take All the Sky You Need”

In Ellis Paul’s introduction to “Take All the Sky You Need” during Falcon Ridge’s 2004 Songwriting Process Workshop, he says, “I wrote it in May and I’m still kind of working on it.”  Sure enough, the lyrics have changed a lot.  A while ago, I put some thought into the differences between that version and the version that ended up on “American Jukebox Fables” a year later. As I wrote then: “In a way, their changes give more of a clue to their songwriting process than the workshops themselves did at the time.”  Here are some of my observations, reposted with some modifications. The full lyrics to the “American Jukebox Fables” version (with a sound clip) are here.  I’ll just focus on one verse.

2004:
If I run through the street / And the rooftops screaming / Will you follow me?
You love me like moonshine / Mason jar drinking / It swallows me
Take me, do you know who I am / I get a little drunk on wanderlust
Like a moth in your hand / Would it be so treacherous if I fly or I stand
If I stand here hoping / You keep your hands wide open?

2005:
If I stand on the rooftops / And look down on my story / And it swallows me
Beyond the horizon, the taillights, the glory / Will you follow me?
Freedom, I need to know who I am
Freedom, I’m like a moth in your hand,
Sweet freedom, do I fly or stand / Or fall on my knees?

While many of the same words remain (If I…will you follow me, it swallows me, a moth in your hand, I fly or I stand, etc.), the feel has changed rather dramatically.  The older version is very much about movement: running and screaming becomes standing and looking down, and “I get a little drunk on wanderlust like a moth in your hand” (how could he scrap this line?) emphasizes flitting while trapped inside the hand significantly more than “I’m like a moth in your hand.” The newer version is altogether more introspective and metaphorical: following him through the street […] screaming becomes following him beyond the glory, and the external question “Do you know who I am?” becomes the internal “I need to know who I am.” And the alcohol references are gone, and replaced by him saying “freedom” a lot, which I find tacky.

Also, simply by switching the placement of “Will you follow me?” and “It swallows me,” he changes the tense.  In the 2004 version, the “if I…will you…?” is contained in the first line, which allows the second line to be present tense and descriptive.  By moving the “will you follow me?” to the end of the second line, both lines together are contained in the “if I…will you…?” construction, which makes the whole verse more abstract and conditional (and more about the speaker’s internal growth instead of their relationship).

This tendency towards the more broad and figurative appears in other places as well. For example, “We could turn this car around” becomes “we can wake up this lullaby town” (“wake up” having both literal and metaphorical connotations). He said in 2004 that this was his attempt to write something a little different, so it seems plausible that he would combat the uncertainty of going on a limb by adding typically Ellisesque phrases like “lullaby town” and “beyond the horizon, the taillights, the glory” and that weird spoken word bit at the end. I ultimately think that those changes weaken the song, but it is more of an “Ellis Paul” song in the end.

Wed Dec 31

“Stay Here” by Richard Shindell. Video from Madcap Theatre, August 2007.

The following line sends slight shivers down my spine every time he sings it:

You stay here and I’ll go look for God
It’s not so hard, ‘cause I know where he’s not

I don’t have much else to say about this song except that I love the progression from wood to bread to coats to guns to God (and then back to wood). And that you should listen to it. I’ll also quote Ron Greitzer circa 2000: “It wasn’t until I heard it a few more times that the power of it started to sink in. I think it’s the “coats” verse that first nailed me. I had never really given it much thought, then I read a review which surmised that the coats were being taken from dead bodies, and that the snow was being used to clean off the blood. And all of a sudden the song scared the living crap out of me. […] Anyway, as great as this song is on SNP or when performed with a band, I love when Richard does it solo. Yeah, there’s that inhuman flatpicking, but I love the way the song builds in intensity, climaxing at the “God” verse where Richard just starts banging away, practically spitting out his anger at the way God has treated the protagonist.”