Back After a Brief Hiatus - Sliding Through A Greasy Time - Kokomo Wears Me Out

Thursday was another one of those days when my entire body felt like it was cramping up. I was 90 minutes late getting to work. The walk was a sheer exercise in will to get there. I talked to KH about the climax I have planned for "Chasing Ashes". After work, I made it to the hospital to see CC, but she was asleep. I did not wake her up.  Back home, I did some reading online, nibbled on some food, and had a hot shower. Musically, I got on a Candi Staton and Jo Jo Gunne kick, but I also went off on to things political and cinematic:

Okay, that was a little out of date.

I would have included The Strawberry Blonde and Torrid Zone instead of some of the movies on the bottom 6.

I am not sure what I learned from the last one, but I think the point is that the Picts were absorbed into Celtic Scotland. Or maybe not. I did not give it the proper attention, I was multitasking.

Shameless curiosity.

Scorsese and John Ford? Who would say no?

Because Newhart is always brilliant. R.I.P.

Because we always had to watch whatever show Lucille Ball had on TV. We had only one TV. Mom had her shows. She was also a redhead. Redheads are a loyal bunch.

I walked over to the convenience store on University for smokes and RC Cola. I saw a snake swimming downstream in White River.

When I got back, I went to bed.

The problem with my joints was much better on Friday - just my right shoulder and arm. Work went well, but I wanted to get over to the hospital to see CC. The phone was not letting me make calls, then when I got it working, there was no answer on her end. I got a text saying she was back home. When I got back here, I ate and got a little dizzy. Calling CC was put off. Unfortunately, I was out of action for about three hours.

Feeling like a zombie, I tried getting through the email and did not feel up to writing. I diverted myself with more videos from YouTube:

She fascinates me - she makes me think of Oscar Wilde. More famous for being herself than for her work. Yes, she could have been her work.

Funny, smart, good-looking - I have had a crush on her for years.

I really liked this show when it was on TNT. It was good to see Timothy Hutton working.

Even scarier - Trump may actually think like this!

One last fling with John Ford and TCM.

I have noticed over the past few years more interest in the Federal Theatre Project. Another is Stealing the Show: Why conservatives killed America’s federally funded theater by Charlie Tyson from The Yale Review. I heard of it first reading about Orson Welles. It seems to me another idea benefical to the public squelched by the conservatives wanting to control how the public thinks.

The Federal Theatre’s achievements were significant—creating jobs for out-of-work artists, tackling politically sensitive issues, and bringing theater into the lives of millions of people who had never experienced it before. Shapiro argues that these entertainments strengthened America’s “associational life,” contributing to the net­works of sympathy and affiliation on which democracy relies. We can get a sense of the Federal Theatre’s civic potential from a pho­tograph (one of several fascinating images in the book) of Crotona Park, in the Bronx, filled with hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people gathered for an outdoor performance: public space, public assembly, public art. By bringing drama to ordinary people, the Project showed that theater was not a marginal or specialist interest. It was the expense of theater tickets and the rarity of high-quality theater outside major metropolitan areas that made it seem as if it were out of reach. In all, thirty million Americans—roughly a quarter of the population—attended Federal Theatre productions.

But weren’t these hundreds of productions recklessly expen­sive? This federal investment in theater, although substantial, amounted to less than 1 percent of the overall funds allocated for federal work relief—or, as Flanagan put it, the subsidy was roughly the cost of building one battleship. Her hope was that Americans would continue to support theater as a vital element of community life after the federal project ended.

I really like this idea, it was one that I had in prison. With all the disconnect from digital media and COVID-19, I thought that theater had two things going for it: that it cannot be replicated endlessly and it is communal. I may be wrong about the latter, but movies are not exactly filling theaters. I put that down to their capability of being digitally replicated. I should give credit where credit is due for my thinking - my mother. She would take us to see musicals at the old Starlight Musicals in Indianapolis instead of movies because movies would show up on TV, sooner or later. (She also adored musicals.)

In drama, Willa Cather wrote, “a story of human experience [is] given to us alive. . . . Only real people speaking the lines can give us that feeling of living along with them, of participating in their existence.” American theater is in financial peril. But as a cultural force it may yet have its part to play. Against the homogenization of culture, theater brings us back to the local and the particular. Against the evacuation of social life to the digital realm, it returns us to the body. The theatrical has long been seen as the archetype of the unreal or imitative. Yet when set against, say, entertainments generated by artificial intelligence, live drama may begin to mark out for us a new standard of reality in art.

Something about Jay Neugeboren's  Martha Foley’s Granddaughters attracted me and kept me immersed in a story about people I had never heard of - it is a humane story, bittersweet but hopeful. I guess I needed that. If you feel the same, give it a look.

When I walked over to University for smokes last night, I saw the blue heron wading in White River. It may have been the same bird as I saw late on Wednesday night.

Some quick notes, stuff I save to Google Keep follow.

In the Ruins of Edward Gibbon’s Masterpiece by Mike Duncan (The New Republic), because I have always been tempted to read the book and still have not:

Finally, Gibbon’s work sits comfortably on a chronological continuum of imperfect Roman historians from Polybius to Sallust to Livy to Tacitus to Plutarch to Ammianus Marcellinus to Zosimus to Zonaras. When we read any of these authors to glean insight into Rome, we always start by placing them in their proper times, places, and purposes. The same is true of those who followed Gibbon on this continuum, like Theodore Mommsen in the nineteenth century, Ronald Syme in the twentieth century, or Mary Beard in the twenty-first century. We do not say, “Don’t read Livy” or “Don’t read Plutarch” just because we understand that limits and qualifications must be taken into consideration when reading their work. I read Gibbon the same way I read the ancient writers: as an often unreliable, biased, and mistaken guide of ancient Rome who is valuable and pleasurable nonetheless. If we are lucky, future historians will consider what we write today just as blinkered, inaccurate, and misguided as we consider Gibbon. Because that means the process of transparent, source-driven, critical history that Decline and Fall did so much to define is working.

We Need Speculative Fiction Now More Than Ever by N.K. Jemisin (Esquire), who I read while in prison and think is a genius and you should read her:

Never fear, Area X reassures. Colonization and its associated harms, terrifying and painful as they might be, are not the end—however much traditional science-fiction stories might suggest otherwise. Survival is possible, if one is lucky, brave, and clever...but it might require a transformation far more nuanced and complex than mere death. And this is a reassurance! Speculative fiction has historically framed colonization as a contest with winners and losers, but it’s never been that simple. Human beings are syncretic; some element of who and what we were will always remain in what we become. Entropy cannot be stopped, but new energy can be added to the system, and those who are caught up in the transformation can claim a degree of that power for themselves. And ultimately, syncretism means that we are carried forward regardless—if only in part. Still better than nothing.

‘I’m very excited’: A warm welcome in Indy for Kamala Harris’ visit by Peter Blanchard from MirrorIndy - Harris is handling herself better now than she did when she ran in 2019.

Biden’s Oval Office speech amounts to a wistful first farewell (WAPO), again, explains why Biden just ascended to greatness - most politicians are just too vain:

He also hinted in the remarks that he himself felt he deserved a second term but acknowledged that the doubt about him within his party was growing too all-consuming for him to overcome.

“I believe my record as president, my leadership in the world, my vision for America’s future — all merited a second term,” he said. “But nothing, nothing can come in the way of saving our democracy. That includes personal ambition.”

Off the record, I am resigned to the Big Bad Wolf from Alexandra Petri (WAPO) is satire; and against Biden's withdrawal, it show also his greatness:

But I’m just one individual. One individual who, I guess, could say, on the record, “Hey, I don’t think we’re in a good position to fend off the Big Bad Wolf right now, and I think unless we do something different, we’re in for some bad times.” But that could be the end of my career! And if we have to endure the onslaught of the Big Bad Wolf, I at least want my career to survive.

Last night's great accomplishment was getting my printer halfway to being set up. I did some legal researchon on some business I ahve up in Kokomo, and feel lost. My only hope for making sense of this mess apparently lies with Mr. Dodgson.

Email and YouTube this morning, and writing up this post have taken the last 3 hours. I finished installing my printer. Thank you, Paul Finholt.

Indiana's contribution to adult entertainment.

Hard rock, ambient weirdness and UFOs: exploring the greatness of early 70s Fleetwood Mac hits on the one song I heard of the band before Buckingham-Nicks joined - Hypnotized. The radio used to play this one, and it is strange.

Welch’s weirdest contribution to Fleetwood Mac was his unquenchable desire to get at least one song about UFOs on to every album. Hypnotized was the moment when his paranormal inclinations collided with musical gold: a gently entrancing haze of electric piano, guitar and ethereal harmonies over an insistent Fleetwood beat. It would have been a hit, had the band not relegated it to a B-side.

Another item on the issue of writing genres - Genres: Literary Fiction vs. Everything Else by Melissa Donovan. 

Ultimately, each of us decides for ourselves which stories hold the most merit. We get to ask ourselves whether we want a gripping story or a story that makes us think, feel, and question. Do we read to be entertained and to escape, or do we read to broaden our perspectives and enlighten ourselves?

Hopefully, we get all of these things from a truly great work of fiction.

I think Dickens, Tolstoy, and Melville meant to give us gripping stories that made us think (and feel). Some of Hammett and much of Ross MacDonald do the same, if on more grimy terrain. Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh  Mistress, Gore Vidal's Burr, and Dorthy L. Sayers' Gaudy Night, still have a grip on me, both made me think. Now, if I could do the same for my own writing!

Not as sensational as its title makes out, there is some meat to this short bio of Errol Flynn:

A cautionary tale.

Looking at possible places to submit stories. Then laundry, a concert tonight at 7 pm downtown, and dishes are on my to-do list for today.

I have been playing The Pinstripes this morning, they have the kind of energy I need to get caught up with myself.

I have WMBR on, taking me to lunchtime.

sch 11:38