Thursday 1/23/25
A truly great work of fiction is for a greater good. It's an act of public service. Otherwise it's just writing. And writing should never be just writing. If you can help it.
I've been trying to do a little organizing with this new computer, with the plan being that eventually everything will be completely organized. I have so far to go.
Anyway, I opened a folder jammed with an assortment of seemingly everything from 2007, and in doing so located photos--because there were two pages--of a letter my mother sent my birth mother on the eve of my fourth birthday.
We didn't know her. I was the only one of us who met her, as such, and that would have been a brief meeting.
But my mother, being my mother, took it upon herself to at least write that letter and leave it with the adoption agency.
I was much moved in reading it. Mostly because of my mother--for that couldn't have been an easy letter to write, and then to write it with such grace and gratitude.
My mother mentioned in the letter that my biological mother loved music. She played the guitar. She talks about my love of music. It was never books for me with writing. For all that I've read. It was music. That had far bigger impact on my writing; the way that sounds go together, and how those sounds can be used to foster sense. You have all of these bad writers reading the same bad shit with their tin ears and then doing their tin-eared writing.
I say what I just did, but that music was always inside of me. The order in which the words would have to go, what they needed to be, how it all fit. It's just natural, that music. And it's a different kind of music all the time. It's never the same music twice.
You cannot teach these things, however slightly. The MFA programs do not state as much because how would the clips joints then get the money? And it's not like anyone in them has a clue about these things. They'd have no idea until they read it here. Which doesn't mean they'd ever be able to do anything about it in their own work, because they couldn't.
Was up to nearly 1:30 watching the Celtics game last night/this morning, which went to OT. They finally prevailed over a depleted Clippers squad. Was a battle, though. Horford and Holiday were out for the Celtics.
Have spent much of the day sorting out computer things. The new external SSD--and Time Machine with it--is in place as of today. First back-up is done. They'll happen every hour going forward. So that should be checked off.
My buddy didn't like the shirt I got her, though, to be honest, I don't think she'd have liked anything from me. She hasn't really liked me since before they came to visit--actually, when they were en route--in August. She is kind of mean. She's five, so I hope she'll grow out of it. She was bossy with her sister and also with my mom. She definitely likes "boys" a lot less than "girls."
My mom was like, "I'm going to tell her how lucky she is to have an uncle as nice as she does. With all you have going on you make time for her and ask about her and..." I said it's fine. We will have a chuckle when she's older. She's frightened of the Little Ghost Girl which, admittedly, I find kind of amusing, because she is so fresh. The LGG is also super nice to her.
Need to write film pieces on El Vampiro (1957), Le Corbeau (1943), and The Mummy (1932).
The Grateful Dead were magisterial in 1972. There was a grandeur and a range to those shows, the work of a unit that had figured it all out, night after night. These years are all so different from each other, 1966-1974 and 1977.
Dylan talked about that thin, wild Mercury sound, which is most in evidence on Blonde on Blonde. The Grateful Dead had their version of this in the final months of 1973, only the sound was more viscous. Honeyed.
My friend Howard hooked me up with the digital copy of the Tina Brooks Mosaic set. He numbers among my half dozen favorite tenor players.
Josh McDaniel returns, again, as the Patriots' OC. The Krafts are adverse to doing an actual job search. It always has to be someone from the fold for them. You are a bad team. You're a bad operation. Maybe explore all options? What is the harm? No one was going to give Josh McDaniel a job right now even as an OC. It was just you. He wasn't going anywhere. You couldn't have cast a wider net and interviewed some people? Heard what they had to say? It has to be one of your guys? Your lead coaches have to be former Patriots?
People so often say what they do about a song/record/band, a movie, something they read, on account of the feelings and memories it conjures of a time in their life. It's associative praise rather than praise based on evaluation--fresh evaluation; up to date evaluation.
They tend not to know that's what they're doing. But if they were to sit with me--or another person they know holds something accountable for what it is--and we watched or listened or read, they wouldn't maintain the same stance.
There's a rub-off effect with someone else, or with other people. We disassociate from our comfort space where we don't really challenge anything. It's like when you watch a movie on your own or you watch it in a theater. Stuff that doesn't stick out to you in the former scenario now does in the latter.
Every time I partake of something, it's a fresh evaluation. That can be whether I'm listening to A Hard Day's Night or watching Out of the Past, works I've partook of many times. This is how I live. I am eyeball to eyeball with everything. Looking openly and honestly. And often when people say things they say to me--which they'll do for various reasons which I'm well aware of (though I keep this idea and those reasons to myself)--I don't put much stock in it as something they've truly vetted. They are doing something different than I'm doing.
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