Wednesday 8/21/24
The artists whose work means the most to me at this point in my life are Laurel and Hardy, Judy Garland, Powell and Pressburger, Nick Drake, and the Grateful Dead.
John Lennon was always hoping someone might slip him "the answer." As in, to it all. In music, the Grateful Dead come the closest to providing that answer.
What the Dead did starting with the opening track of "Uncle John's Band" on Workingman's Dead represents the greatest 180 in popular music history.
Also: There are no two finer albums in succession than Workingman's Dead and American Beauty.
William Sloane had two books of fiction. One of them, his second novel, The Edge of Running Water, is a perfect volume for summer. It's set in Maine and there is a lot of robust swimming in it. His first novel, To Walk the Night, is, as I have written elsewhere, the perfect book for autumn. It's also one of the best books I've ever read, which is why I've read it the twenty times or so that I have now.
I located five hours of audio of interviews that Lawrence Ritter conducted with players from baseball's early days for his 1966 book, The Glory of Their Times, which is another of the best books I've ever read. It is essential American reading, like Twain's Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Whitman's Leaves of Grass, Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs. These interviews are rich and resplendent tapestries. These were men who knew how to tell stories. Very rarely now do we encounter anyone who can tell any kind of story, not even their own, such as it is.
A story has a shape. Not necessarily a geometrical shape, though geometry is central to writing well. I'm talking about a shape of needing some more here, having too much there; contours. This needs to be taken in, this has to be more rounded, there needs to be greater distance between this point and that point.
Stories also have to breathe a certain way. Very few writers give any thought to the respiratory aspects of story.
Among the most inspired moments of music-making I've experienced in person was the White Stripes' November 2003 performance of "Red Bird" here in Boston, which I believe is the only time they ever did this number.
Watched the third season episode "Badger's Remedy" from The Wind in the Willows, which is my favorite all-time show. Badger is voiced by Michael Hordern, whose performance as Jacob Marley I wrote about at length in my book on 1951's Scrooge. If Michael Hordern is involved with it, it's likely to be a notable work, whatever the work is. Mole nearly dies in this episode, and it is Toad, the one whom we'd least expect, who blunders--for it would have to be that way with Toad--into saving him.
Downloaded Mosaic's box set of T-Bone Walker's 1940-54 recordings and an eighteen-minute recording of the Small Faces playing Newcastle in 1968.
Listened to my favorite audio recording of "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow." I don't know who it's by. I should look more into it. There are some sound effects, but not many, and a few witty, punctuative extra-textual insertions. The story is so well-written in its chosen style--which is the perfect style--voice--for the story Washington Irving wants to tell--that I think just about no one could understand it today. It's clear and efficient in its language, but you have to know what certain words mean and people don't. There are just too many of them.
There's a great deal I like about this story, and one of those things is that it's about a prank a meathead-type played on a kind of pretentious idiot, but a pretty harmless pretentious idiot (there are different kinds). This doesn't undercut the the story as a work of horror, though, even if it's also not horror. Irving achieves so much with the work that nothing is outshone by anything else--that is, done away with by anything else. It has these different and viable facets of existence and identity.
"Inspired countless blah blahs" is just a thing that gets said that is rarely close to true. Recently I saw an ad claiming that Les Yeux Sans Visage inspired "countless horror filmmakers."
No it didn't. Why do we just have to say things just because? How many horror filmmakers have seen this film? And some "countless" amount was influenced by it? What does that mean? Millions and millions?
Let's say you know this film. Besides myself, whom you don't know in "real" life, is there anyone you've ever known who has known this film or is likely to?
I feel like it is so much better to consciously try the best we can to say something nearest the truth as possible.
Doesn't that sound better? Doesn't that sound like a much more efficient way for us to talk and communicate? Wouldn't that make a lot of things easier? Create less confusion?
In music I think the Yardbirds did influence a lot of people. As far as music itself goes, probably more than any other band in rock and roll history.
Downloaded material from Martin Hannett's personal tapes of working in the studio with Joy Division. Trying to determine the best version of the Beatles' Stowe "school gig" for repeated listening. There's been a lot of fiddling around with it. The original tape didn't run at the correct speed and the speed changed over the duration of the recording.
Oasis from April to May of 1995: Fucking hell. There was a band that had it going on.
Acquired the complete haul of Dinah Washington's recordings with Clifford Brown, which consists of jam sessions. You don't get a lot of vocalist jam sessions.
I like all of the Three Investigators books and have read and reread them over most of my life, but the ones that get the boys out in nature--including by the sea--can really hit the spot. Not that you want them going too far, because we have to get back to headquarters at the salvage yard. You wouldn't want a Three Investigators story without headquarters.
Back to the Grateful Dead: The transition from "Truckin" to "Dark Star" on the 11/8/70 Capitol Theatre is mind-blowing.
Rewatched all of Freaks and Geeks for the first time in a while. I really like the character of Millie--she's a great friend and that's such an honest depiction of friendship, both unfortunately I'd say and fortunately. There are friends who stop being friends and it isn't because they don't care about each other, but rather because of other things. I'm not this way, but just about everyone else is. I'm constant. No matter what changes or what I'm going through--my friend is my friend and I'm present for the friendship as I always was.
I say I don't have friends because I don't. Friendship doesn't much exist in the world right now. People have lost the ability to be friends. They might have an immediate family unit, which they usually secured so they would't be alone. A lot of settling happens. People have no standards for themselves and they likewise have little standards for others. Lots of low bars and people who just don't want to be alone who have no idea--until later--that being with people doesn't necessarily make you less alone. There is also not much love in the world. People get very upset if you say this, but if you swapped out everyone in their immediate family unit and swapped in people who could have been the members of that person's immediate family unit because they met someone else and reproduced with someone else, you'll find that nothing has changed. Love is then circumstantial. And that's not how love works. I realize I have different definitions of these things than other people. But I'm not other people. Millie is a friend no matter what changes in life. And I think that's a great way to be.
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