The slippery middle ground

I'm a big proponent of balance. I think probably most people are, too, if you get them to open up enough. Somehow I kind of doubt most people enjoy being one-sided and ornery; certain things kick up your dander for a bit, but once the crazy emotions subside you realize it's much more beneficial (and feels good for longer periods of time) when you come to a reasoned, balanced viewpoint.

I'm usually hesitant to write at any lengths about political stuff because, A. I don't follow it all that closely, B. I don't usually have firm opinions (I'm almost always able to see reason in multiple points of view), and C. what political knowledge I do have comes from The West Wing, which (although awesome) is not real.

So I'm not going to write at length about political stuff. I'm just going to re-post President Obama's speech last night on immigration, because I think it's one of the more thoughtful and balanced responses to a contentious issue that I've heard in a while. Try, even though it's hard, to block out all the one-sided opinions this speech will bring out of the woodwork and simply listen to the words. (Or, read them, here's the transcript). Entertainment thrives on winners and losers, one party vs. another, and those things are fun in the right context. But when it comes to serious stuff, me vs. you is not just boring, it's insane. Think about why sportscasters and athletes are always only able to say the same things over and over...

For some reason it seems like a lot of folks dislike President Obama (despite the economy not imploding, gas being under $3 a gallon, more of our troops being at Home and not abroad...the list goes on) but I'm again not really sure about what it seems like. It's tough being moderate. Everybody's shouting at you to pick a side, when the real world isn't me vs. you. What it seems like is a lot of loud people with rigid opinions not liking him.

The thing about loud people is that they shout because they don't want to give anyone the time to stop and think about what it is they're actually saying.

Alright I wrote a little more than I intended; please feel free to yell about that.

Pay Attention, Read, Think, Thank You

There are days when I'm convinced everyone's crazy--I'm sure you've experienced this sensation--when in reality I'm just paying attention to the wrong things. Probably I'm a little bit crazy.

I was at a Halloween party and overheard somebody, drunk, say, "Literature just ain't what it used to be!" which is a truly awesome thing to say. I'm assuming they meant that literature is no good now, compared to...who knows when. But part of me wants to believe they were making a literal comment on the fact that 'literature' (whatever that all encompassing word even means) is constantly evolving. In which case, yes, people alive and writing now are certainly different people than those who wrote before. Well said!

But without booze in the veins, thinking less cynically/sarcastically, I'm now choosing to focus on the fact that at a Halloween party, with sobriety compromised, somebody was talking about books. Neat!

Anyway, should you ever find yourself of the opinion that today's writing isn't on par with the great writers of the past, just know that you are crazy and have probably completely given up searching, which is sad. I try to read and write every day; while I don't think everybody really needs to do that, if you are going to have bold, all encompassing opinions (that party was not nearly the first time I've heard the "ain't what it used to be!" argument), you really ought to go out and read a ton first.

So I figure I should share some of the billion wonderful stories I've stumbled on over the years--here's a start with something from The Kenyon Review from 2003. This story is about two Turks running a struggling pizza and kebab shop in Dresden fifty years after Allied planes pretty much erased the city. They encounter neo-Nazi skinheads and drunks who defile their restaurant on a nightly basis. Then they meet one otherworldly young woman.

As far as I'm concerned these are real characters, written ferociously one minute, then intensely compassionate the next. Check out some of these sentences:

"When one of the skins came into the shop, Amar felt the hummingbird in his ribs trying to fly its way out. The skinhead’s vomit-brown pants were ripped from knee to foot, he smelled of kerosene, and he had tiny beads of dark blue in the piss-yellow whites of his eyes."

"Dresden, parts of it with a new veneer of cobble and mortar, except everyone knew about the cracks underneath and, more important, about how the stones had not been sturdy enough before. Dresden, with its streets snaking through his veins, from the days when he pushed the lunch cart, which had become the restaurant, which threatened to become a bankruptcy of empty bricks. Dresden, and Amar never even went to the church, which the Germans refused to refurbish, where the angels still kept their broken faces, but he knew all about it. After Amar put Benji to bed, those angels wrinkled up their concrete half-noses at him as if they were about to whisper. Amar was not sure if it were he or their rubbled tongues that never allowed them to speak."

"How at night Amar took Benji home and made him dinner and cleaned his corduroys and played imaginary games with a child’s rules, flexible and fantastic, as if every event would turn out OK as long as Benji had a little more time to think."

Anyway, swim on over and READ: Daniel A. Hoyt's 'Amar' in The Kenyon Review.

Down in Ol' Virginny

Ms. Melvin Ralsh and I are taking a trip down to the homeland, Fairfax, VA! It's been a little while since I've been back home. I'm a bit of a Civil War nerd and for some reason didn't nearly appreciate the historical turf I grew up on while I was there. One of the first major skirmishes of the war happened at the Fairfax City Courthouse, only a couple miles from my parents' house. During that skirmish, the first Confederate officer was killed, and Quincy Marr Drive in my subdivision is named for him.

Anyway, I wrote this short story as a fun exercise, and it's moderately based on that courthouse skirmish, though is mostly fiction. Check 'er ouuut.


Home Again
by Kevin Walsh

                On the occasion of I find myself here on this besparkled floor of the formerly Fairfax County Courthouse turned battalion headquarters, here with my fine brother who may soon bleed to death.

                Well the first thing we did was disobey Pa, who has this terrifying way of getting angry only in short bursts of the most intense fury. Reminds me of like the time me an’ Gilly forgot whose turn it was to milk Henrietta, for like a week, then there was that awful mess. Anyway Pa made it perfectly clear enlistment was not an option of viable character, owing to there was so much to be done around the farm anyway what with us forgetting milking as it is, and so forth; and furthermore we weren’t even technically old enough to be enlisting. But we did anyway.

                The Rebs aren’t exactly bursting at the gullet on a banquet of able-bodied boys, but it’s early yet. Both sides still hanging back at the barndance, too scared to mingle more than a few whoops and hollers. Of course you got the seriously better funded Union boys yonder ‘cross the river with actual ammunition fer their guns, which is what one might call Essential. So no way the Johnnie Rebs were about to turn down a couple able-bodied farm boys with finely tuned arms and legs.

                So Gilly and I we sneaked out with Pa’s rifles and ended up being I think two of about twelve fellers with ammo. The rest were getting themselves orientated in the art of rattling a saber or bayonet loud enough to scare away a seriously better equipped Union boy should one come riding over yonder. And but they stole our Minies anyway for so-called ‘professional marksmen’, who in reality couldn’t hit a cows behind with a shovel if it walked right in front of ‘em.

                That night we got hiked off to picket duty, which actually wasn’t so bad. Me and Gilly stationed all clandestine-like, which was just like we used to pretend play. They gave us a bullet each for emergency recourse and said when all else fails to fire that Minie then holler n run like a whipped mule. They hiked us up Little River Turnpike, maybe a quarter-mile up thinking that’d be the road the Union boys might venture, on the so-called ‘lowest of low chances’ that there’d be any barnstorming that night. Normally you got a couple dozen or so on picket duty, but nobody figgered any attack was imminent.

                Well let me tell you it was a god-damned ambush and by all rights should have been a complete massacre except owing to the fact of the Union boys can’t shoot neither. Me an’ Gilly were dug in playing Spit when Gilly tells me to shush and did you hear that. And what we hear sounds like a god-damned stampede of Savages, I ‘member Pa telling us about the War of the Indians and how you’d hear ‘em whooping it up from miles away, sounding like they was already all around you and ready to turn yer noggin into a gruesome headdress. But well informed of the knowledge that our forbearers had brutally removed most of the Savages already, Gilly and me figured this was the big Union line finally making a first push toward Richmond on nearly the eve of Independence Day. A symbolic push to flatten us dissenters. And it was.

                Well sort of. Gilly yelled a ‘Halt!’ but the words stuck in his barely post-pubic throat at too high a register, and something went ZING right past his ear, then little pockets of dirt danced all around us. The hollering got to an unkind decibel of great proportions and, well, I am ashamed to say I fired my one shot and then high-tailed it down the Turnpike back to the courthouse as was strongly suggested. Unfortunately my brother of blood Gilly did not make it back with me, to which I was unawares until my pulse stopped ringing in my ears after sufficient time. Before collapsing I squeaked out ‘the enemy is upon us!’ and Capt. Marr, who commanded the Warrenton Rifles, tried to rouse his boys, on whom you could smell the stench of true fear.

                What I did then was climb the highest tower I could find, of which there was only one in the courthouse, so as to survey the scene. Except owing to a blanket covering the stars and moon there was very little light other than the flashes of rifles and the oily streak of a lantern or two. What I could see was all chaos punctuated by Capt. Marr’s prodigious yelling, until the yelling ominously stopped and boys in gray coats started in to flailing about like a herd of sheep given chase by a coyote. What saved us were the good folk of Fairfax City, taking battle into their own hands and firing volleys out darkened windows at the lunatic band of Union boys, whom I have no proof but I know what a man looks like when he’s riding a horse completely wallpapered, and these Union boys were drunker than all get out. It’s a wonder they didn’t slaughter each other with their own wayward volleys.  

                I want to say the Union boys made three charges and were repelled each time by the aforementioned superbly pinpointed locals. Though what they were after I couldn’t clearly tell. There couldn’t have been more than 20 of ‘em, but they certainly kept the locals busier than a one-legged man in a butt kicking contest for a few hours. At some point I collapsed once again in the tower and only woke up when the sun’s rays peeked over the maples across the Turnpike. What I felt was not pleasure or gratefulness at being alive. There was no metaphorical attributation of the sun’s rays being the Lord Himself’s fingers tickling the feeble consciousness of my mind, or what not.

No, I just felt like a coward. Plain and simple.

I went down with the other privates to search the area for Capt. Marr. It took an hour of scourin but we found him face up in a delicate patch of clover, honey bees buzzin round his ears. His eyes were still open, absent of that special light and staring off into whatever awaited him in the middle of the night. His hands were locked stiff across his breast covering a horrific purpley bloom, but no open wound the eyes could see. One of the privates speculated an indirect hit, probably even friendly fire in the chaos of the Union boys’ drunken assault.

I wanted Home and I wanted it bad but all I could think of was my lost brother and what a coward I’d been the night before. I took another search party out by our picket station and searched all up and down without finding any trace of poor Gilly.

You know how the old stories of war and battle talk about things happening so fast that even with horrific events there isn’t time sit and let the sadness wash over you? Well that’s a goddamned lie I’m here to tell you. There is nuthin but time to sit and reason why; there is also time to do and die, as the poem goes. Please let it sink in that battle is hour upon hour of boredom punctuated by the flashes of rifles in the dark and barely time to act at all. It’s all instinct, and yours truly’s instinct was to cut and run. Then you get nothing but nightfall to ponder your cowardice.

I volunteered for picket duty this time, determined to prove some amount of worth to myself at the very least. And maybe there would be the slim chance of Gilly’s reappearing from behind enemy lines. I had the slimmest of hopes he was hiding until the cover of dark. So I got out there with my new pardner, who didn’t have much to say, which is fine by me. I’d rather a silent sentry pardner than somebody chatterin on and on about their miserable life til the rooster calls.

In the quiet you got all sorts of time to have yerself a good think. I thought about how we had disobeyed Pa and what a wreck he and Ma must have been back at home. I thought about the time Gilly came back from farmer Payne’s lot with this practically sparkling herb he called True Divination, and we mixed it into our pipe tobacco then I promptly went and got Pa’s wagon stuck in Woody’s Creek. Gilly heard me hollerin Help! Help! due to figurin I’d broken many a bone, the fear catchin me like wild. Turned out not a thing was wrong with my body and Gilly pulled both me and the wagon out of the creek like it was nothin.

He always kept his head cool no matter what was going on, and no matter what might have been churning inside him. This here is real sad and he never much chattered about it, but he had a little love fever for farmer Payne’s daughter Millicent for a real long time. Always took over fresh herbs and vegetables for their family when we had extra (which was often), but I know it was under the guise of seeing her. Farmer Payne was always trying to set her up with some needle-nosed suck-up at the church he ran up the hill, so half the time Gilly went over there some Catholic numb-nuts was sparkin her up a storm. Then last winter Millie took to a raging fever and went so quickly it’s like the Lord Himself scrubbed her from life’s record. Gilly didn’t even have a chance to say goodbye, went over one night to an empty bed haloed in her fever-sweat. 

After that, there was something a little more tired about Gilly. Like he was there physically but his moorings weren’t tied so tight anymore. I wish I’d been able to parlez with him but talking things out was never my strong suit. Things like that’d get me so uncomfortable, I’d just laugh in a way that isn’t funny and say something like “Well ‘least now you don’t have to worry about folks givin you guff for being Millie and Gilly.” Wasn’t too long after that that Gilly, known our whole lives to hold a skeptical and unpopular brain between his ears on the subject of religion, started in on joining up the Rebel cause mainly as a way to get a glimpse of, Gilly’s words, ‘the Lord Almighty Incarnate Himself Gen. Robert E. Lee.’ Which sounded exactly like the kind of balderdash that farmer Payne would spout and Gilly would make fun of behind his back.

But love fever is a gravitational force of its own and puts a man through the mill, especially on account of the object of your fever practically evaporating before anyone knows what’s going on. And I’d never been one to question Gilly before and certainly wasn’t about to in his time of low spirits. Now Gilly was in serious trouble and I needed to stuff all my courage together and help him.

It was at this point that my silent sentry pardner gave me a tap on the shoulder and a little “Did you hear that?” nod of the head in the direction of some woods up the Turnpike. I had in fact heard a rustling, so the two of us quickly fixed bayonets to go clandestinely investigate. Odds were it was some type of small animal, or a deer, but my body was filling with adrenaline hoping I’d get my hands on a Union boy for some old fashioned redemption.

We plopped down behind some thick brush and heard the noise again, but this night the moonlight was just strong enough to make out several figures against the tree line maybe 20 yards away. My pardner and I gave each other a look and held our ground. This was it, the second ambush, and one of us needed to warn the camp, except on account of what happened last night neither of us wanted to leave the other alone. One of the figures was slowly moving this way while the others seemed to lag back where they stood. When it got to about 10 yards away I gathered up my courage and aimed my rifle, shouting, “Halt there! Identify yourself or we’ll open the ball!” Normally you’d have 30 or 40 guys running a picket so I added a little bluff to my call-out, “We got a whole line of muskets trained on yer position, identify yerself!”

But nothing happened. The figure looked a little unsteady, but was moving even closer despite my warnings. I didn’t actually have any ammunition, though my pardner did. I told him to cover me and I went out from my position and started sneakin to where the figure was moving. I got close enough to where in the moonlight I could see the figure’s blue coat and kepi hat (ours were rag-tag forage caps). I didn’t know what the hell this Union muggins was doing but he was just about on my pardner’s position when the phenomenal crack of a rifle shattered the night silence and sent me into a momentary conniption. I charged at the Union boy with the whoop of a savage and got him right in the bread basket with my pig sticker. A couple more shots rang out as me and the Union boy sank to the ground. I felt a terrific rush, then terror at the reality of my actions, that I had actually just charged this countryman of mine with animalistic fury with the simple aim of ending his life. I felt quite peaked.

On top of the boy with my bayonet still lodged under his breast bone, a familiar scent hit me and I immediately recoiled stronger than any rifle. I dragged the boy over into a little clearing where the moonlight showed what my heart already knew.

It was Gilly, blindfolded, gagged and dressed up in a Yankee uniform.

Now they say we’re moving out, that the actual General Lee everyone seems to believe is some kind of walking deity is taking us down to Manassas where he’s staging a real build up of Confederate men with an actual battle plan. Only it’s a bit hard to know if either side really knows what it is they’re fighting for. Only time’s fullness can tell if there is something here truly worth fighting for; but right now there’s all this anguish for what seems like dumb macho pride more than anything else.

All I know now is poor Gilly here, dying of wounds committed by my hand, just wants a glimpse of the General before he passes on to wherever it is his girl Millie went. And I’ll be damned if he slips under before seeing him, even if it strikes me as a notion of insane proportions. But at least he believed in something before the end.

You hear that, Gilly? Stay with us just a bit longer, hold on tight brother, the General's comin to take you home again.   

WRONG!

Does anyone remember The McLaughlin Group? I'm sure you do. My parents would put this on when we got home from church on Sunday during that interval between getting home and football being on, and it was pretty much just background noise while we made lunch. All the show's pundits really ever did was yell at each other.

There was something mildly endearing about the show; they yelled at each other but they at least had to do it face-to-face. And they had that rule where the pundits were supposed to yield anytime John McLaughlin spoke. You can tell McLaughlin likes being ridiculous. (Wow, just finding out this show is still on!) There's clearly something that's kept it going for three decades and it isn't just people turning it on for background noise. It was kind of surreal and entertaining to me as a teenager, plus McLaughlin's face looks like a bulldog's.

I think everyone to some degree secretly wants to be their own version of John McLaughlin, and ideology doesn't really matter as long as you yell loud enough. Just about everybody's got an easy way to yell something out and there's a whole mess of websites dedicated to telling us what certain people yelled. I suppose it's kind of always been this way at least on some level, but there's something dark beneath the excess of it all.

Please feel free to tell me that I'm just getting older and that things aren't always what they seem, but here's a thought: in the time before Mega-Internet's 24-hour social media/fake news and the 1 Million ways to Personalize every aspect of everything, the majority of issues/stories that rose to national attention seemed a bit more important. Sure you'd get hyper-media stuff like OJ Simpson's car chase, or Marv Albert being insane and biting women, or whatever, but things like that in national media weren't a daily occurrence.

Now there's more like an hourly occurrence of something made to seem vital to your experience as a human, somebody shouting their very firm beliefs, somebody else shouting back. Yesterday's NY Times made me laugh out loud with the headline "Maine Nurse Goes for Defiant Bike Ride" -- sure Ebola's important, but until we've got shorelines crawling with infected folks I don't think I need to know the hourly whereabouts of somebody who might not even have the disease. Look at this shit; this got feature story billing for a bit:

"She rode down a quiet paved road with her boyfriend, Ted Wilbur, followed closely by the police and a caravan of reporters. The couple rode less than a mile, then turned onto a graded gravel trail on a former railroad right of way flanked by pines. Ms. Hickox and Mr. Wilbur, wearing jackets in the crisp Maine morning, returned to the house an hour later."

The crisp Maine morning! Man that is stupid. That piece got two by-lines, by the way.

But on to the darker thing: regular ol' folks getting their random doings somehow published all over creation gives false hope to this weird desire we all have to be famous. That dang woman Hickox got her defiant bike ride covered! Then the universe starts to shrink and the possibility of me, me, me being at the center of everything seems somehow stronger. The carrot is just about in reach. All I have to do is be a little more opinionated, daring, or outrageous and everyone might watch me, too! Then everything will be OK.

But most people won't get noticed, at least not in the way they're hoping. Then there's a nasty letdown and really important things get pushed aside. It's a little hard to see where this all leads; it's not like it's necessarily bad to be entertained, but to be made to feel like you're not successful if enough people aren't watching/reading what you're doing is deeply sad.

My great hope is that it leads to whole swaths of people getting phenomenally bored with this lukewarm entertainment. I think it's already starting to happen, though I don't have any firm data to present. It's just a feeling. Everything looks a little upside-down at the moment, but it's a welcome new perspective. It's a good time to not really give a shit and do whatever you want; maybe nobody's looking but I think that's all the better. It definitely feels more real that way, and if nobody's listening you don't have to yell.

'Til next time; bye-BYYYE.

It's a liar...so everything it says is a lie.

Today I almost threw caution to the wind and submitted a very short thing I wrote to this new...thing; I'm not sure what to call it other than a Website:

www.really-short-stories.com

Short stuff is wonderful. In more recent memory, a fantastic short story by George Saunders called "Sticks" in his collection Tenth of December was one of my favorite things consumed in 2013. Gabriel Garcia Marquez's very short novel Chronicle of a Death Foretold is tied in my mind with Crime and Punishment as the coolest thing I read junior year in high school. Some of those Pixar short films they show before the full deal movie are nearly as good as the full feature.

So it's not really about length (haaa), right? It's about what you say; the ol' cliche, which turns out to be unequivocally true.

But boy does this website suck. They talk about wanting to compete with Buzzfeed lists and Vine videos; that's like putting a raw onion in the candy bar aisle. They call it Short Fiction for the A.D.D. Generation, and go on to say, "No, this won't be exactly like getting published, so think of it more as contributing to a collective of young writers looking to create fiction that your peers will actually read in it's [sic] entirety."

So you're gonna bash a whole generation for not reading--then ask them to read? I'm pretty sure the folks running this site don't really read too much either. If they did, they would know that the American short story is doing just fine. There's something like a billion and a half literary journals out there now and you have to just, you know, read and find the good stuff. Turns out when you do even a little exploring, there's plenty of brilliant writing to go around. All lengths and sizes are represented in wonderful ways (heeeee).

Besides, the real competitor to Buzzfeed doesn't even give a shit; and knocks short stuff out of the park anyway. 

And, hey, my own short thing is getting longer! (Is this bad joke getting old?) Not too long, though, and when it's done I'll probably post it here instead of submitting to some grubby website that wants to compete with tabloids.

But while you're here, check out another drum video I did a month or so ago and forgot to post:

I Did This

It's OK It's OK It's OK It's OK...

Here's a smattering of recent headlines that have nearly convinced me that most major media outlets are pretty close to giving up by simply making each of their headlines read, "HELP! PLEASE NOTICE ME! PLEASE! WE'RE COOL, RIGHT?!"

"Everything You Know About Breakfast Is Wrong" [Outside Magazine]

"Let's be honest: Hillary Clinton is Running for President" -- Subhead: "I mean, seriously." [Washington Post]

"Learning to Love Sugar Again" [The Atlantic] (Actual article title is 'Being Happy With Sugar,' which is just as dull, but the editors apparently felt they needed to, ahem, spice up the link title.)

"The Girl Who Was Raised By Monkeys?" [NPR] (insert inflection) This is a question? Were they expecting an answer?

"This Clever Site Tells You If Your Favorite Bar Patio Is Sunny" [Gizmodo] Well thank god; massive white-person problem = Solved.

I definitely don't think people are getting less creative, even though these headlines lack any creative effort. But there's so much content out there and major editors/publishers are just losing their minds. I do tend to think young, expendable web editors get hired in massive numbers, are overloaded with horrifying pressure to generate clicks, so they basically write bullshit. I believe this because I was one of these folks for a couple different institutions. My jobs didn't last and paid basically nothing--huh.

The worse side of this freak out by editors/publishers is that they'll tend to publish insanely extreme opinions (from any viewpoint) simply because they know it'll generate InternetOutrage, meaning clicks, money, and a lot of dumb stuff.

Take this recent George Will column in the Washington Post; only the most insane, clueless, downright evil-spirited person would not think twice about writing the phrase, "supposed campus epidemic of rape, a.k.a 'sexual assault.'" (Just thinking about using snarky air quotes for "sexual assault" in a serious way, like Will does, makes me hyperventilate.)

It's easy to go on about how vile that column is: e.g. he tries to use his own arithmetic to tell you that sexual assault statistics are grossly exaggerated, when if you use your brain at all with the knowledge that it's pretty impossible to know exactly how many sexual assaults occur for any number of reasons, arithmetic kind of becomes useless; or this sentence: "...capacious definitions of sexual assault that can include not only forcible sexual penetration but also non-consensual touching." Dear George: 1). you are a Grown White Man complaining that non-consensual sexual touching ought to be OK? 2). your "capacious definitions" are both things that only terrible people do.

But the publishers know exactly how vile that column is; it's why they published it. They know there'll be a whole slew of subsequent rebuttal columns and internet arguments about the whole thing, and they'll laugh all the way to the bank while nobody really learns a thing. I'm probably even feeding into it just a bit by writing about it myself. But I think it's massively important to be aware of how it's in many media outlets' best interests to generate nothing but outrage, fear, and anxiety; and it's equally important to exercise your free will to turn away from these articles (and in many cases the media outlets themselves) as fast as you can. Because...

The world, as a whole, isn't as bad as it seems through these lenses. This is not to say that there are not vast swaths of people who struggle for survival on a daily basis. In real life, there is an unassailable fact that not everybody is going to have everything they need. But a lot of things point toward a world that is considerably safer than it used to be, and we are, more or less, pretty unaware of it. These are really hopeful trends that should keep us moving and innovating into the future.

But I think we need an innovation of thought, because the negative things that are on the rise are not so easily tackled with major advances of media and technology. While gun homicides might be down over the last decade, gun suicides are way up. Diagnoses of anxiety disorders, particularly in the US, have skyrocketed over the last decade (this is more complicated than this little sentence, but still). Like Tom Waits says, way too many people seem to be confusing information with knowledge, and it's rattling their brains apart.

You know me, I won't ever claim to have all the answers, and sometimes I'll claim to have exactly zero answers. But I do believe that one major factor is a problem of perspective and mindset. If you do not believe things are going to be OK, you're probably never going to be very satisfied with what life hands you. If you always expect things to be perfectly shaped, you're going to miss a lot of the weird accidental beauty that's out there. If you can't see things from other people's perspectives, you're bound to run into trouble with some of the 6+ billion people in our contained sphere from which there are few escapes.

If you french fry when you're supposed to pizza, you're gonna have a bad time.

I am reminded of the character of Mario Incandenza in David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest on an almost daily basis. He is physically and mentally deformed, is unintentionally hilarious, and is the single most compassionate, hopeful character in the book. He has a whole lot to be hopeless about, but it rarely shows.

I'm working on a little song that's based on a line of Mario's. For a little context, it's a kind of alternate reality and giant fans ('Air-Displacement Effectuators') surround Metro Boston and blow pollution up to Canada. Mario's roommate and brother Hal is losing his mind as they fall asleep talking, and Mario, in his own little way, is trying to calm Hal down:

"I like the fans' sound at night. Do you? It's like somebody big far away goes like: It'sOKit'sOKit'sOKit'sOK over and over. From very far away."

Then later in the same conversation, while not understanding a word Hal's just said in an anxious rant, Mario says:

"Hal, pretty much all I do is love you and be glad I have an excellent brother in every way, Hal."

To see with eyes unclouded

A quick update featuring things that have made my brain hiccup over the last month or so...

1. Here's a fun game to play; I call it Out of Context Anime:

Last night I re-watched Princess Mononoke after having downloaded it for the ultra low price of nothing. But webstealing (my new word) has its downsides, one of them being translation. A quick search finds the probably better-translated sentence in that scene as "Well, they say happy women make a happy village."

2. NPR recently covered a certain state's supreme court striking down said state's ban on same-sex marriage. (I'm refusing to look it up at the moment because I think it's actually remarkable that I can't remember off the top of my head what state it is, because these bans have been falling in so many places lately and that makes me happy). Within that coverage, NPR reported on how both sides felt. This included an audio snippet of a man from a Christian organization who disagreed with the ruling, saying without even the slightest hint of irony in his voice, that it's "not right for one side to feel persecuted against, to be made to feel like they are just wrong."

3. Overheard teenage conversation in CVS: "You smoked pot? Don't you know it gives you warts in your mouth?"


But in more uplifting news (burying the lede here just a bit), I'm having a story published in a new NYC-based journal called DenimSkin Review! The story is called Unsound and, since it's a bit long, they're spreading it out across a couple issues. The inaugural issue is out this Friday, May 30--if you're in the NYC area, apparently it will be in certain bookstores, cafes, etc. But no worries if not, you can also order one online. Check out their website or Facebook for more info on how to nab a copy.

Only bored as I get older

First, I'm going to apologize (because that's what I do); I usually like to be a little more optimistic than I think this post is going to sound. But it's Monday and life is again real, and these florescent lights are a little more irritating than usual.

One of the most boring things to me is when writers write about what just happened on TV. There was a MAJOR plot twist in The Good Wife! Somebody got annihilated on Game of Thrones! Robin Williams voices the genie AND the merchant at the beginning of Aladdin! (Just go with it.) What does it meeeeeaaannn?



Who is reading this shit? (Probably a lot of people, hence the articles' existence and their many accompanying advertisements...)

I don't particularly care about spoilers, though I do think it's odd that some people seem to need so strongly to blab. But I'm not really the kind of reader/watcher who gets upset knowing the basic plot points or even 'major' twists (I enjoyed Titanic just fine, thank you); and at least as far as mainstream TV is concerned, you can see a lot of these things from miles away. Like the Chekhov rule, when a gun is introduced to the story you can bet your ass it's getting fired. But I'm probably in the minority here; I can certainly understand people not wanting details given away.

So if you didn't watch the show, there's absolutely no reason to read the recap and plenty of reasons to avoid it. If you did watch the show, there's still no particular reason to read the recap. Other than to be told what it all meant, what it could have possibly meant, who did it, why did they do it, who else might have done it, where do we go from here, what was the setup, what's the fallout...these are all things the talented writers who created these shows are already doing for you, and will continue to do for you as you watch their story unfold. I get the desire to talk about it all, but it's not a need (just a very strong desire to not feel so lonely in this world...sorry, sorry that's the existential psychiatrist in me).

Most shows that make it to the popularity of things like Game of Thrones/Mad Men/The Good Wife/True Detective/whatever are there because, on some level, they are great and created by talented people. You should be damn sure that these talented people usually know how to make all things unfold with time (unless it's Lost and everybody's just making up nonsense), and eventually they make you realize that what happens isn't nearly as fun or important as why something happens and why the characters involved are so interesting.

I think this is the right moment to say what anyone reading this likely already knows: I'm way more of a reader than a watcher. So feel free to tell me that I'm perfectly capable of ignoring articles I find boring. You are correct. But should I have to? I don't know exactly what it says about our silly First World that two of the four main-slot articles on today's theatlantic.com are about TV shows, but I don't think it's entirely good. I know I can swim to safer Internet waters, but sometimes the thought of doing that is like standing in the supermarket's soup aisle confronted by a thousand different versions of tomato soup, and I haven't even looked at other kinds of soups and already I just want a fucking blanket and a pacifier...

Actually, I think I'm going to read outside. This has been Melvin Ralsh's florescent Monday morning; 'til next time, folks!

I Have a Question

Do you think people make up their own minds less often than they used to?

This is kind of an overly general question, the type I'm not usually too fond of, but I do wonder about some stuff...

When I was in college and liked writing music reviews a whole lot more than I do now, I had trouble shaking a bad habit of checking out other reviews of the same album to see where my opinion landed in the vast nothingness of music reviews. If I didn't like an album, I needed to double-check that other folks didn't like it either to make sure I wasn't an idiot, and this was way too easy to do. YouTube didn't even exist, and there weren't nearly as many blogs n stuff, but there was already an overload of opinions out there to Google. I could not stop doing this, but I can understand being younger, insecure, and not very confident about my musical taste/opinions. There were even a couple times I softened a review based, at least a little, on the fact that a bunch of 'professional' people had liked something I didn't. That's pretty hard to understand now.

So does the overabundance of Opinions out there mostly serve to feed our insecurities?

Are people actually more Opinionated now than ever before, or does it just feel that way because I spend a shitload of time on the internet, where Opinion is king?

Sometimes I get the feeling there are folks who get outraged by stuff only because a lot of other people got outraged by it; maybe this is no different than Time Before Internet, but it sure as hell seems to happen a whole lot faster and in larger quantities. Then it goes away and things move on more or less the same, but LO, we have ENTERTAINED ourselves. And probably somebody made a buck or two off it.

I have a question.

Boy child grows up

Strange happenings are afoot. My body is changing! Between the ages of 27-30 I think I grew at least an inch. My BoyChild brain is evolving, too.

Every once in a while I like to binge on YouTube comments, which can sometimes be serene and mesmerizing. I know this sounds odd. But I get all giddy imagining a commenter listening to a song, having a moment, one so intense it can't possibly be contained, and which Must be shared with the world OR ELSE. Most of 'em are like those folks at live shows who can't stand the deafening silence in their own brains between songs and must shout WOO. So you get really deep shit sometimes, like these ones from Caribou's 'Niobe:'

EarlKrempe

1 year ago

did not like

Loibeloire Hammes

1 year ago

my body feel like fucking tripping but my head is still oke

runjuliarunjuliarun

1 year ago

music is very much like... math, actually. it is a language and has a lot of math in it. it is a truly special and difficult art.

BluHart

1 year ago

its unmistakable, these guys are just musically gifted. I think they use mathematical equations to implement the vibrations...and they align very well with my taste. Keep steady on this path gentlemen it will suit you well.

To implement the vibrations! Man, what is it like to so powerfully need to post that? Probably a lot of people are lonely. But I think the strongest reason so many people post this stuff--stuff that not many are likely to read, and those that do read either already agree with you or hate you/themselves and are only there to troll; there's rarely a fertile middle ground where discussion and actual learning thrive--the reason there's so much of it is that it's incredibly easy to do. You go tap beep boop (like I'm, um, doing right now), click that satisfying Publish button, then smile at your own perceived wit/intelligence. Mmmmm, feels good.

It is so easy to find Anything, and equally easy to tell everyone (or at least feel like you're telling everyone; it's anyone's guess as to who's actually listening) how you feel about it. I don't think this is entirely good. Beck, who just released a great album, went to chat with the Boiling Bob over at NPR and had this to say:

"The rise of internet and all the blogs and the sort of internet criticism, I think it's affected a lot of musicians. There's sort of this critical voice in their head, like somebody's pointed a camera or a mirror at you, and you're a little more self-conscious. I feel like I've felt it in music over the last, you know, 10 or 12 years. When I started out, you were just throwing stuff out there; you had no idea what people thought. There would be a couple of record reviews, but you really were completely ignorant and unaware of what people actually thought. Unless you were at a show — you know, you could play a song and people didn't like it. That happened plenty of times."

Imagine that! Hearing something played live for the first time. Sure, you could boo the guy/gal, but as a human that's a little harder to do right to someone's face. You don't generally have somebody like EarlKrempe (see above) standing next to you on stage, arms folded, saying, "Did not like."

But see, I'm beginning to feel like the quintessential Olderish-Person-Who-Looks-Down-On-Younger-Generations. This is also not good. Because, clearly, not every musical appreciator is like that. YouTube-comments-as-societal-blueprint isn't exactly validated research. But what I do know is that music is laughably easy to find for free, chew for a bit, skip that song you don't like, write about how it wasn't what you wanted, pretend like you know exactly what the artist was trying to achieve, then spit on the floor having digested very little.

One of my band-mates in a new song talks about how instant evaluation is starting to crush his enjoyment of different types of art, and I could not agree more. It seems simple to just ignore it all, but it's becoming increasingly difficult to do as more and more folks use the Internet as a way of finding their own voice. Remember in high school how it kind of sucked and made you feel empty when everybody started loving that band you'd been following for forever? It's similar to the feeling you get when somebody tells you whatever book or movie they just devoured was the best thing ever. Your brain is instantly setup to have its expectations swung at and missed, because no one thing is the best thing ever, which transitions nicely into my next thought:

The overabundance of particular types of media might be leading a certain percentage of the population to believe that their lives aren't as worthwhile if they are not cinematic enough**, if certain moments aren't "the best thing ever." It makes people take fewer risks and retreat into what they already know they'll enjoy or, worse, what they know everybody else already enjoys. And because everybody's so keen on expressing why they love or hate something, there's all this media catering to extreme points of view, which this feller thinks tends to drown out that fertile middle ground where you can actually learn something.

Here's some quick examples: Bad Internet [note: please don't read much of this] vs. Good Internet [please read all of this]

So, if you're like me you're probably wondering what the hell to do. Unfortunately, if you know me at all you probably know I'm not entirely sure. All I can do is point you in the direction of folks I've enjoyed and who've made me think about how to handle things that make me uncomfortable. On the surface, these quotes don't directly pertain to media consumption, but I think they offer a path away from extreme points of view (and thus away from a lot of bad media), and I often find myself returning to them:

"Try to learn to let what is unfair teach you. What is unfair can be a stern but invaluable teacher."
~David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest

"To know one's own state is not a simple matter. One cannot look directly at one's own face with one's own eyes, for example. One has no choice but to look at one's reflection in the mirror. Through experience, we come to believe that the image is correct, but that is all."
~Haruki Murakami, The Wind-up Bird Chronicle

"Don't get set into one form; adapt it and build your own, and let it grow; be like water. Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless--like water. Now you put water in a cup, it becomes the cup; you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle; you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend."
~Bruce Lee

Some of the things I take away from those quotes are: Don't be afraid to feel stupid, and be wary of folks pushing agendas that claim to have all the answers; Look for stuff that feels genuine to you (and remember that authenticity and originality don't necessarily go hand-in-hand, and that's OK); Little things are infinitely important.

And for the sake of all that is holy to you, please don't you dare listen to music via YouTube at anything less than 480p.




_________________________________________________________________________________
**This is something I want to think about a lot more in another post, and one thing that comes to mind is how often you'll hear the same song used across different movies/TV shows/commericials to generate emotion in a given scene, and then when something similar to that scene happens in your real life, but you don't have the music to go along with it, it might not have as strong an impact on you.

Words that inspire a feeling of impending doom

"Is this ad relevant to you?"

"Art can be a slippery slope"

Pretty much anything involving the word "evoke"

"World music"

"Whether or not"

"Recommended for you"

"Activist"

"An Open Letter to..."

"I'm sorry, but..."

"MFW/MRW"

"Retweet"

"That awkward moment" [oh god, this is a movie]

Music described as "lush" and "sprawling"

"An air of sophistication"

Alright that's probably enough doom for one day.

Sure you do, pal. Suurrre you do.

Man, everybody's so smart on the Internet! It can be pretty daunting to even know what to write about sometimes. You don't have to search that deep and you can find basically any opinion on any topic, and of course a bunch of folks arguing about it all, sounding so sure of themselves.

What if you've never felt quite so sure about yourself? Or anything, for that matter. What do you write about? And where do you write about it? Is anyone interested in hiring a writer who has only questions and not answers? I have a few strong opinions, but not really too much drive to convince people of them, because I'm not entirely sure (ha) that type of stuff matters at all. I get confused by people who seem to spend a solid chunk of their lives working to convince others of their version of the Truth (which may not necessarily be bad. Though, don't a lot of those people seem to be pushing some kind of short-term agenda? It's very small numbers of these folks who appear to care about You.) So, let's say you convince enough people of your agenda, and then let's say you get some money, or time in the spotlight, or whatever the hell it is that you wanted. Then what? I'd guess that feels good for a while. But does it feel good enough? Isn't it way more exciting to want than to have? It feels like history has that pretty much proven solid. So, what do you want next after you got what you wanted?

I think I'd love it, for instance, if people listened to way less digital music and spent more time with what I think is a more fulfilling sound (records and tapes), but I don't have any desire to be the kind of guy who tells you what's best, because I really only know what's best for me, given 30 years of experience living inside this body and mind. I have yet to live inside someone else's body/brain, as far as I know. Even if I did honestly feel like I knew what was best for you, I'd rather you discovered it on your own anyway.

This seems to be turning into an exercise in writing whatever pops into my noggin.

I think what I wanted when I was younger was to tour in a rock band and write novels and stories, and my desires didn't really go much farther than that. So far I've done both of those to varying degrees of success, depending on your perspective. I consider myself truly lucky, so I'm a happy guy (I'm also in a fair amount of debt). When I think about it, I'm utterly overwhelmed by how many folks want to do these things that I love, by how much media gets created on an hourly basis. A lot of it's completely devoid of actual human feelings and just wants to be noticed, a lot of it is truly fantastic, and potentially the cream eventually rises to the top, but I am becoming less sure (here were are again) of that. I love what I'm creating, but it's hard to feel good about adding even more to the big ol' pile of creativity.

I don't enjoy self-promotion, though I still do it from time to time. It's a strange space to be in, wanting simultaneously to be noticed for things I've created and for everyone to just go away and leave me in my imagined writer's cabin (but please oh please come back and purchase my things so I can eat and pay off that debt!). And then there's the anxiety that my negative desire to self-promote could be interpreted by my friends and family as a fervent desire to keep them utterly in the dark about the things I've created. That's so far from the truth it's kind of funny, and somehow I doubt anyone I know believes that about me, but that's the thing about anxiety...it lies to you.

This post is a lot like most of the things I create in that it's purest intention is just to be something for me, and I'd usually tuck it away without posting. But I'm beginning to want to share all these thoughts, and share more of the stuff I've been creating for the last 10 years or so. Maybe in 2014 I'll actually share this novel I've been working on for so long. It could happen! Anyway, in the sharing spirit here's a couple tunes I was a part of that came out in 2013, and I am Quite proud to share them with ya'll.