Wednesday 12/11/24
Monday night I came up with a story idea and I knew it was special. I lay in bed and thought it through, knowing it'd be the first thing I did in the morning. I got up really late for me at 5:23 and was at the desk by 5:25. The whole story was written by seven in the morning. 2000 words. Then I came back and worked on it more last night until half past ten or so. Got a couple hundred words longer. And it is indeed a special story. An all-timer for all ages and for all ages, if you follow me. It's called "Thank You, Human--a Bedtime Story."
The story a dialogue between a mother and her four-year-old daughter--there isn't a single line that isn't said by one of them--as the mom tells her little girl this bedtime story about a penguin that was four apples tall. Because it's me, it's about more than a penguin that was four apples tall. I knew a lot of the story would emerge from interplay between the mom and the girl and their dynamic. I've learned that the best writing--writing that is truly great and has the most value--needs to be simply complex and complexly simple. And this is that. The story about this penguin gets told, but it's not the only thing that's talked about.
One of the greatest challenges of writing is to create work that contains truths that people aren't consciously aware of, which they don't consciously articulate--the things that are beyond us, which at the same time make us us and life life--and to pack all of that meaning into a work that is open and understandable to the biggest range of people.
“Was the lady crying?”
“Yes, she was crying a little, but for every sad tear there were five happy ones.”
“Good.”
Everyone can understand that. Everyone can relate to it, but in their own way that's specific to them. But there isn't anyone who could have written it.
On Friday night I came up with another major idea for a story. It pertains to Christmas, but I'm not sure I'll have it done between now and this Christmas.
Wrote a piece on 1974's Black Christmas on Sunday. This is from it:
The women are beleaguered by a series of obscene phone calls, and we huddle around the receiver with them as they listen in on the latest. It’s a doozy—the type of thing that is sure to produce coal in the stocking, if that. Let’s just say that the principal c-word isn’t Christmas. Before phones rotted minds in the next century, they were sometimes weaponized in 1970s horror films. Any time the phone rings in Black Christmas—and with each subsequent ringing (and we’re not talking the bells on Christmas day)—we feel dread. This is a coarse film of paradoxical solemnity. The Christmas spirit is in consistence evidence (everything is suitably decked out, lights twinkle, trees are trimmed), but it’s as if we’re witnessing it from some remove, rather than drinking directly from its wassail bowl. The sacred and the profane are like two reindeer tethered side-by-side at the head of Santa’s sleigh on a night when Rudolph had gone missing.
Also went to the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols at BU's Marsh Chapel, then walked to the Museum of Fine Arts and spent a couple hours there, and afterwards walked to Jordan Hall for Boston Baroque's Messiah. Was early for the performance so I got a tea across the street and then sat outside around the corner of Jordan Hall and read J. Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White, one of my favorite books. A man came up to me and jokingly asked how much for my hat, which is a Patriots cap with the throwback logo and colors. Ran 5000 stairs at City Hall, too, and then another 3000 each of the last two days. I've been inconsistent with my push-ups of late. So I'm just doing a mess right now (200 Monday), fitting in "extra" sets when possible, which I'm going to keep doing. Even if I've done my daily allotment, or exceeded it, I'm going to do a set each time I come in or go out. No reason not to. Sunday marked 3073 days, or 439 weeks, without a drink.
A couple pitches:
I have done much studying of Chuck Berry's "Run Rudolph Run," and I want to do the definitive piece on it, because I think it's brilliant. In my view, he was one of the last century's best writers. I hear "Promised Land" and I'm unsure how you write a better song, lyric, story in song, than that. "Rudolph" impresses in the same ways. There is so much happening in this song, in terms of the language, sociologically, creatively, commercially, critically; we're not talking some Christmas cash-in here. I think it's brilliant. And Berry also deserves to be discussed as a guitar god like Hendrix, Clapton, Beck, Page. But I want to set the bar for a single piece on this number.
My other Christmas idea pertains to Beatles for Sale. It's Christmas 1964, and so many people received this album as a gift. Had more people ever received a record as a Christmas gift than Beatles for Sale in 1964? I'd bet no. We're told--and this is how the music history books sum it up--that the Beatles were so tired by the time they got to Beatles for Sale and that's reflected in the music. Not so fast, I say! Beatles for Sale is the Beatles' dark horse album. It's a jewel, but one less openly recognized as a jewel. If someone said it was their favorite, I'd respect their ears, if you will. And if someone wanted to make a case for it as among their best, I'd be all ears.
Neither was assigned. I will be writing a piece on Berry's "Promised Land," though. I pitched something on a fantastic New Year's Eve (-ish) recording by the Animals. Also something on The Twilight Zone.
There's some real ugliness coming in these pages, I'm afraid. I do everything I can in trying to help someone not be exposed on here. It's like, "Help me to help you not to be lit up for all to see and deride and know you for these disgusting things." But when it's on, it's on, and you can't be helped then, and there's nothing that can be done about the things that are then said and shown here because it's all true and it's all there for people to see. And it's that obvious how bad it is.
On Sunday my mother went to this annual candlelight vigil she attends for my sister. I phoned Monday to see how that went--obviously it's very hard for her--but she wasn't home, but caught up with her yesterday after I finished the stairs. She also had a Christmas brunch to go to on Sunday morning--so this was a long day for my mother--with my other sister and her kids. I asked my mother to give my buddy two Christmas messages--one from myself and the other from this kid (the Little Ghost Girl) we know, but she forgot.
Found and downloaded a copy of the new eight-disc set of the Faces' complete BBC recordings from 1970 to 1973, Lucinda Williams' new set of Beatles covers recorded at Abbey Road, and two John Lennon Misterclaudel bootleg sets (Mind Games Sessions and Walls and Bridges Sessions). Picked up a couple books: a volume of Robert Bresson's interviews and Rene Goscinny's children's novel Nicholas.
I was thinking the other day about this date--I'm not sure that's the right term--I had once. It was with this out of shape woman who smoked. She was ordinary in all of the other ways. Most people are the same. Which is fine for those people with each other, but not so for me with them. Anyway, we went to the Public Garden, sat on a bench, talked, and that was plainly that. A week or so goes by--despite this being plainly that, with no further contact--when she texts me to say that she didn't think we were a fit. And I laughed, of course. That there was this need to do this ridiculous thing, and for what? To try to feel a certain way about one's self?
Monday I was at the Golden Goose where I get Swiss cheese. I eat a lot of Swiss cheese. It's among the only cheeses that is not bad for you because unlike other cheeses, it is low in sodium. It's the only cheese I eat. I have it in a wrap with kale. This is what I eat more of than probably anything. As I said, I am not a foodie. My focus is elsewhere when it comes to food. Keeping going, being strong, the health of my heart.
I was at the counter, waiting my turn, when one of the store employees asked who was next. I was next, but there were these two older women at the far end of the counter. I didn't say anything, because if they wanted to say they were next, that was fine with me. But they didn't say anything, so I asked the one who looked like she had the ordering to do (I think her friend was just accompanying her), "Are you all set m'am?" Meaning, "You go ahead." Anyone who knows me--or who knows me though these pages--will know that this is exactly what I'd do, no surprises. In this case, though, the woman yelled at me, saying, 'I think I was here before you," with this "How dare you, young man," tone. No good deed, etc.
I know a woman who is very boring. She has nothing to say. Whatever she does say falls into the category of pleasantries that are delivered with exclamation points or things about herself. She doesn't work. She doesn't do anything. About a week ago, I said that I was having a horrible time of a day. Something really bad had happened that will result in people being exposed on here. If I say something like that--and when I did in this case--there isn't any "What's wrong?" or "What's up?" that comes back. Ever.
I don't normally say things like this to people because they suck. They only care about themselves. They're unhappy and they have terrible, empty lives, and they can't see that they're a big part of the reason why. That being like this is a big party of the reason why. That they're the problem. As much as anything. Maybe not the only problem, but a real problem. I should add that I'm very nice to this person. Very supportive. Because I am kind. I listen, give counsel. But they wouldn't ever so much as ask me how I was doing. I could say, "I can't go on any further," and they wouldn't respond to that. But if five days passed and then I texted, "How are you?" she'd respond, "Hi!!!!!"
This is how people are now. If you're one of them, you can wander amongst all of your fellow soulless zombies. Self-medicate, maybe marry a fellow zombie, be miserable, have no purpose to your life, breed, do that thing, and then eventually die having wasted your entire life. Added nothing to anybody else's. If I say that I wrote X amount of words that morning, this person won't ask me about what, but is likely to say that she's trying to figure out what book to read next. It's beyond insulting, and naturally I have no real respect for such a person whatsoever. There isn't anything I could say about myself that would so much as result in any form of acknowledgement, and she'd never ask anything about me.
You know what, though? I could text a bunch of people today about the story mentioned above and I could say to each of them, "Hey buddy, I wrote this story I think is pretty cool and I'm going to be sending it your way," and most of them wouldn't even say, "Great! Looking forward to it!" They'll make like I said nothing. They'll make like that text didn't come through or it caused them to go temporarily blind in that one instance. It's as if they all got together and conspired to gaslight. If I say three other things in that text, there's a chance they'll respond to those three things but not this one thing about the story I wrote and offered to send them. I'll send them that story. I'll send it to them as a kind of Christmas present, with a very touching letter. This beautiful, beautiful, beautiful story. This story that made me cry a dozen different times yesterday.
When I do that--because I will--most of those people won't say a word. And they can be people who love me, like the Admiral and the Captain, who definitely are not up to no good. But then we're getting into other things, like people being terrified of my mind, intimidated by it, thinking they're not smart enough to say anything to me, etc.
What you end up with is being treated like this because you are these amazing things and have this ability no one else does. And you can't get anywhere if people--millions of them--aren't talking, and these are the people, in theory, who like me, or at least don't want me dead, and they won't say a word.
But in this instance, with the story example, if I was some idiot chump-boob--you know, some talentless pretend writer who wrote shit an eighth grader could bette and some regular garden variety mediocre person--and I sent some stupid garbage that they knew wouldn't be worth reading, they'd all respond, "That's awesome! Can't wait!!!!!" or something like that.
Because that's how it works.
I know another woman who is manipulative, a user, and a narcissist. She has a convenient condition and what I mean by that is she deploys it at her convenience and to what she thinks is her advantage. Comes and goes in a form of synchronization with what she wants. She would never ask about me. It can be nine in the morning and if I respond to a text by saying I've had a very long day already--which would be because I'd already worked for seven hours, various bad things had happened, I'd dealt with the discrimination, someone had decided they weren't going to pay me, maybe there was some fresh horror with the IRS thanks to the incompetent people at The Wall Street Journal; I mean real stuff, real hard stuff, blow after blow--she'd be apt to respond that she had had the longest day herself because she'd done a lot of laundry.
She'd think she was the one heroically dealing with something epic. She'd actually believe that because in order to exist, most people need to warp themselves. They cannot deal with the truth. It's like if you're an animal who lives in a cave--your eyes change, right? Because you don't use them. They're not working eyes anymore. She doesn't work. She sits at home and someone supports her. She'd act like I hadn't said anything. I could tell her--after the focus had been on her for three straight months--that I was dying and it wouldn't produce a comment. Everything has to be about her. And she is also not interesting. Not stupid, actually. Smarter than average. But all she does is think about herself.
One thing I am saying is that the most boring people are usually the people most into themselves, despite them being so boring. Isn't that ironic? Interesting people are interested in many interesting things outside of themselves. Sometimes those things pertain to themselves or come to pertain to themselves in facilitating their knowledge and growth, but we now have a society in which nearly everyone in it is this way. Those people would read this and think, "I'm not like that at all!" The two people I just described would think that, because people almost never think it's them, when it's totally them. They'd just get angry.
When I was at the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols, someone texted me to ask if Ron Hextall was one of the top ten goalies of all-time. The stunning ignorance that is out there. I said no, of course not, maybe somewhere around sixty, and they texted back to say they were at their kid's Hebrew school like they always are on Sunday morning and these dads were talking about Hextall and one said he was top ten and the other agreed and the first guy has a sports podcast so the other idiot dads look up to him and want to be him because he's an achievable idiot. My friend added that he had heard the word "literally" at leat 200 times that morning. "Tom Brady is literally the GOAT."
My friend said to me that these guys would hate me, which I already know--that everyone would and often does hate me for this reason is one of the biggest parts of my problem--because I am the guy who actually knows and, what's more, knows everything and that stops these idiots from doing what they want to do, which my friend correctly summarized as saying whatever the fuck they want and thinking they're making their "amazing points." The person who actually knows things put an end to the fun. What are you going to say to me? We're going to be discussing Frank Brimsek?
Based on what these guys were saying about Hextall, I knew their age, because people don't think anything existed before they were a certain age when they got into that given thing. They would have been born in the late seventies and all they would know Hextall for was whatever he represented to their twelve-year-old self. If you said he's not even the best Flyers goalie, that would be Bernie Parent, they wouldn't know who he was. If you said that Hextall wasn't even the best Flyers goalie of the 1980s--that would be Pelle Lindbergh--they'd maybe know that name because of how he died. My friend goes on to say that he could guarantee me that after Hebrew school there would be at least three car rides home in which some idiot guy was told by his idiot wife that he should just go for it and start a sports podcast of his own because he knew "literally" everything about sports. I was thinking the same thing.
Something I find interesting is that for all that people aren't good at and won't do, and how lazy they are, and often how weak, quite a few people are good at not drinking and solving their drinking problem. It's not rare that you see someone do this. And it takes a lot. Because often it's not easy.
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