44 Years Later

I finally felt better this morning, even if I did not crawl out from under the covers until 8 am.

Last night was a problem. I went off and did the laundry. Riding the bus there and walking back. I still needed to get distilled water and ink for the printer. I walked down downtown - a ten-minute walk - to catch the #3. Only I got on the wrong bus. They were working at St. Barnabas and I had a small ambition to make it there. Just getting on the wrong bus wrecked all my plans. I ate at the new Filipino place, Baryo Muncie, for dinner. I had a vegetarian meal - loved the garlic rice, but the peanut sauce was watery compared with Thai - but I will go back. (I had the leftovers for lunch - huge portions!) then caught the bus back here. After that, it gets murky. I did some work on the blog, but mostly it was Netflix (Resident Alien). My stomach rumbled all night. I have not been good at avoiding the cola. I know I called KH while waiting for my dinner. He is well.

Today, I worked on posts. I have the group therapy sessions done up to the end of October. 

Some things I did not put into separate posts follow.

A.D. Amorosi Grace Bowers: Have Guitar, Will Travel (Variety) profiles the guitar player who will be receiving the Next Gen award at Variety's Hitmakers event. I ran across Bowers on YouTube without knowing anything about her. This caused a very serious miscalculation on my part - I assumed she was about 10 years older than she is. This assumption was based on what she played (Led Zeppelin and Sly and the Family Stone), and how she sang. She did not sing like an 18-year-old, but like someone who had lived a bit. I do think her singing is underrated.

Guitar heroes come and go. Who remembers Roy Buchanan, or Rory Gallagher, or even Mick Taylor? Has not Stevie Ray Vaughn become a ghost?

Yes, I know the list could be much longer. Feel free to ad your won in the comments below.

James Salter is a writer I have read much about in the last 15 years, but I have only read his novel The Hunters. Today, The Paris Review released James Salter, The Art of Fiction No. 133. As has become customary for me with thse writer interviews is to excerpt the things I wish I had known when I was younger, when I wanted to be a writer, and before I got old and lost whatever talent I had.

INTERVIEWER

So it is crucially a process of revision?

SALTER

I hate the first inexact, inadequate expression of things. The whole joy of writing comes from the opportunity to go over it and make it good, one way or another.

INTERVIEWER

Do you revise as you go?

SALTER

It depends, but normally, no. I write big sections and then let them sit. It’s dangerous not to let things age, and if something is really good, you should put it away for a month.

INTERVIEWER

Do you think of the sentence or the paragraph as an organizing unit?

SALTER

Normally I just go a sentence at a time. I find the most difficult part of writing is to get it down initially because what you have written is usually so terrible that it’s disheartening, you don’t want to go on. That’s what I think is hard—the discouragement that comes from seeing what you have done. This is all you could manage?

INTERVIEWER

You give a lot of attention to the weight and character of individual words.

SALTER

I’m a frotteur, someone who likes to rub words in his hand, to turn them around and feel them, to wonder if that really is the best word possible. Does that word in this sentence have any electric potential? Does it do anything? Too much electricity will make your reader’s hair frizzy. There’s a question of pacing. You want short sentences and long sentences—well, every writer knows that. You have to develop a certain ease of delivery and make your writing agreeable to read.

INTERVIEWER

I find your prose style wholly distinctive, beautiful and implacable. How did you hit upon it?

SALTER

I like to write. I’m moved by writing. One can’t analyze it beyond that.

This should be thought about by the men reading this; what passes for masculinity seems like out-of-control adolescence. 

INTERVIEWER

Your work seems unique in the way it brings together a set of apparently masculine concerns, ordeals, initiations, with an exquisite prose style. Is that how you see it?

SALTER

I’ve made an effort to nurture the feminine in myself. I don’t mean overtly, but in terms of response to things. Perhaps that’s what we’re talking about. I am happy with my gender, but pure masculinity, which I have been exposed to a lot in life, is tedious and inadequate. It’s great to listen to men talk about sports or fights or war or even hunting sometimes, but the presence of the other, the presence of art and beauty, which crude masculinity seems to discount, is essential. Real civilization and real manhood seem to me to include those.

INTERVIEWER

Some readers complain that your work is too male oriented, yet you have said that women are the real heroes. Why?

SALTER

I deem as heroic those who have the harder task, face it unflinchingly and live. In this world women do that.

And I will close with that.

A half-hour break and I need to move on to other items for posting, then cleaning the kitchen.

Back to 1982: Imperial Bedroom (Pitchfork).

A trip down to the convenience store is the furthest I have gone today.

I cleaned out the refrigerator and washed dishes. There was a call to my sister. I should have made more phone calls. Now, I want to call it a night. I watched/listened to Black Doves on Netflix, and thought it quite good.

WMBR has changed its archives and I could not listen to Backwoods. Another old friend gone by the wayside.

Oh, I got a rejection for my play:

Thank you very much for sending us "Getting What You Asked For." We appreciated the chance to read it. While, unfortunately, the piece is not for us, we wish you all the best in finding a home for it.

Sincerely,

Clockhouse

Oops. I forgot to tell them it had been accepted. 

Do we really remember it was 44 years ago that John Lennon died? Longer dead than alive now.

I admit I forgot until I was looking at Wikipedia last night. Then I was shocked at my forgetfulness.

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