In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Jeannie Vanasco’s memoir A Silent Treatment is a captivating account of the how painful (and powerful) withholding communication can be to a family.
Booklist wrote of the book:
“Vanasco’s third memoir, focusing on her relationship with her mother, is her most potent yet…. Vanasco captures the hurtful confusion of the silent treatment so clearly…. A beautiful gift to all who have struggled to care for a loved one in the way they needed.”
In her own words, here is Jeannie Vanasco’s Book Notes music playlist for her memoir A Silent Treatment:
After some friends learned I was making a playlist for my memoir A Silent Treatment, they asked if John Cage’s “4’33” would be included. But my mom’s silent treatment seems more like noise music. It’s aggressive. The distortion shifts unpredictably. It feels punishing. And then it suddenly stops. You won’t find any noise music here, though (nor “4’33”). These are songs I listened to during, and shortly after, the silent treatment described in the book. For the love songs, I took Sophia Shalmiyev’s lead. In her memoir, Mother Winter, she writes: I picture myself as the guy and I’m speaking directly to my mother. If the lyrics seem sexual I bypass those words by humming and concentrate on the need, the want, the chase, the absence, the raw and base desire to be one with another. Unless you’re okay with tonal spoilers (if that’s even a thing?), stop listening after “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg.” Here are my selected annotations.
“Only the Lonely” by Roy Orbison
When you feel lonely and rejected, leaning into melancholy can help you feel agency, and that’s what I hear in Orbison’s first hit song. His extraordinary vocal range set against his straightforward lyrics helps the heartbreak sound deep yet controlled. What makes the song complex without seeming complex: his shifting, hard to anticipate, tonalities.When writing A Silent Treatment, I thought a lot about my mom’s tone (especially in her texts and letters), and my memoir’s. I didn’t want the bookto be sad, sad, sad. I like how Orbison’s song contains some moments of lightness. I smile every time I hear it.
“Crying Laughing Loving Lying” by Labbi Siffre
“There are things you can say in a song that you would be too embarrassed to say in conversation,” Labi Siffre said in a 1972 interview. “In a song you can say it and it sounds correct. It’s a cowardly way of saying things one would never say.” Swap “memoir” with “song,” and you have my artist’s statement.
The song’s repetitions (“never did nobody no good, no how,” “did somebody some good, somehow”) elevate the lyricism while maintaining plain diction—a style I love. And the double (quadruple?) negatives remind me of when I rudely corrected my mom’s grammar, a regret I go on and on about in a truly deranged voice memo that includes my quoting a henku (haiku about hens) while “Crying Laughing Loving Lying” plays softly in the background.
“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” by Nina Simone
In Simone’s voice, I hear obsessive regret and the desperation to be forgiven. “Don’t you know I have faults, like anyone? / Sometimes I find myself alone regretting some little foolish thing / Some simple thing that I’ve done / I’m just a soul whose intentions are good.”
My mom’s silent treatment left me analyzing my many faults (some real, maybe some a real stretch), going back to my first word: Dad. Why couldn’t it be Mom? Very rationally, friends said: “Jeannie, you were a baby.” And I thought, Exactly. From the moment I could use words, my words have hurt her. And, I shouldn’t have included that detail in my first book because maybe that hurt her. And, My first book should have been for her. And, A book for her should not focus on her silent treatment. And there’s always another and.
“I Know There’s an Answer” by The Beach Boys
The song’s compositional irregularity, like my mom’s silent treatment, can be hard to notice at first. (The verses split on 8-bar A and 6-bar B sections.) Sometimes I didn’t know when or why a silence was happening—yet I believed I could figure out the reason: “I know there’s an answer / I know now, but I have to find it myself.” Those lyrics contradict the opening line, “I know so many people who think they can do it alone” and I love a good contradiction, in theory. My mom wanted to be closer to me, but she isolated herself from me.
“I’ll Be Your Mirror” by The Velvet Underground
Mirroring your mother is easy when you share a legal name and an address.
“A Violent Yet Flammable World” by Au Revoir Simone
I often turned to this song for its dreamy mood and mysterious lyrics: “We fold like icicles on paper shelves.” What does it mean for icicles to fold? Is that a bad thing? The next lyric seems to say so: “It’s a pity to appear this way.” But the title’s “yet” suggests not everything is logical or needs to seem logical.
“Mothers and Daughters” by Colin Stetson
Colin Stetson’s “Mothers and Daughters,” from the Hereditary soundtrack, has warmth and dread—which perfectly echoes how I felt between my mom’s silences. The film itself was reassuring: my situation was never that bad. (My mom’s review of Hereditary: “goofy” and “not that scary until the end.”)
“Always See Your Face” by Love
What memoirist hasn’t asked, “Won’t somebody please / Help me with my memories?” (Also, what a rhyme.)
“The Pain of Loving You” by Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris
“Oh, the pain of loving you / You just can’t stand to see me happy / Seems you hurt me all you can” doesn’t apply now but certainly applied then.
“Largo [Harpsichord Concerto No. 5 in F minor BWV1056]” by The Swingle Singers
I’m including this for its mostly peaceful, calm tone—and because it’s from Ari Aster’s Beau Is Afraid. Some viewers were disappointed that Aster veered away from strict horror. But a story about a middle-aged son, anxious about visiting/disappointing his mother, seems like horror to me. (Every time I watch the film, I laugh when he writes on the bottom of a mother-child figurine: Dear Mom, I am sorry this is the anniversary of dads death. thank you Im sorry. Love — When he goes to sign his name, the marker is out of ink.)
“Home” by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Chris’s character gets rave reviews. The latest: “an oasis of calm and rationality amid two women who both seem to be having nervous breakdowns.” This song is for him. “Home is wherever I’m with you.”
Jeannie Vanasco is the author of A Silent Treatment: A Memoir (Tin House).