Monday 3/3/25
With everything I do in writing I'm thinking about the reader. There is never a time when I think of anything else before them. With every choice, every title, ever word, every aspect of everything I write. Will this be clear to the reader? Could it be more memorable for a reader? Will the reader remember this? Is this the best way to put this for the reader? Will this give the reader pause?
Took the trash out before four this morning. Quiet outside. Cold. Felt good. Did four sets of push-ups over the course of the trip to the curb and the trip back.
Stayed up late watching My Man Godfrey (1936). Delightful film. William Powell reins it in a bit more than he usually does with the kind of character he plays and that works well. He is more the straight-shooter and less the insistent firer-off of quips. Carole Lombard is enchanting and funny.
My back has been hurting for the last week or so--the muscles on the right side especially. Need to get back to doing planks.
Saw some of the Celtics-Nuggets game yesterday. Celtics had another big lead they almost blew. Game was on ABC so I switched over to the Celtics postgame after, and you can tell that despite the win, even homers like Eddie House and Brian Scalabrine are concerned about this team and are aware of issues that can spoil their title defense. Listening to them I could imagine what they'd say if the Celtics had just been eliminated in the second round. I'd said before that the Celtics could really make a statement with the week that just wrapped up, but instead it was keeping in line with this team has been all year.
Social media also makes it plain how shockingly few words people know. It's like everyone uses the same thirty or forty words.
Most of the people calling themselves writers who go to AWP spend more time going to AWP each year than they will writing each year.
A treat: A soundboard recording that captures the crowd at a show where the crowd is important/a factor. The Grateful Dead's Fillmore East performances from 1/2/70 and 2/13/70 are excellent examples of this.
The Great Pumpkin over Godot.
Have now seen all six seasons of Brassic. Despite being inconsistent and repetitive, it's watchable and entertaining enough. Also saw the Christmas episode. Padded but satisfying. The plot with Edie was sweet.
I've had things backing up on a cloud site for sixty-six hours and it's still only seventy-five percent done.
The other day I had to get on the phone with this cloud site's tech help person. This isn't something I excel at. I couldn't have done it with the old computer because it just would have been too slow. This new computer has been like a voyage of discovery for me. I'm able to do new things--new things for me. They're not amazing things that other people don't do all of the time, but I'm often not as good at this stuff and less up to speed and less comfortable, but I'm getting a tiny bit more confidence. I don't even know how to work wireless headphones, but I plan to order a pair this week and hopefully I can figure that out. (I had a pair that I never used and they either don't work or I'm doing something wrong.)
The person on the phone had me download software, I installed it, and they were able to access my desktop from their end, which is neat, even if I don't totally understand how. I kind of do. Seemed like I had accidentally thrown away a portion of a software that I needed for this cloud site when I was doing a clean of the computer with that relevant application.
Sent my buddy Howard a new Beatles discovery and this fascinating radio segment from 1967 in which Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh acted as guest deejays. More on both later.
Was listening to the Dead's 5/15/70 Fillmore East show--shows--last night. For all of the dedicated curatorial efforts on the official release front, I don't understand why there are releases issues of partial concerts when a recording of the entire show exists. You really need the right recording--which includes everything--of that 5/15/70 as one example. Usually the official releases get it right, but not always.
Each audience is different with a Grateful Dead show. This one will clap along to "And We Bid You Goodnight" in this syncopated way, and then ten days later another audience will clap right on the beat. Different energies, vibes. Different communities, interactions, things happening in the room.
At that 5/15/70 show--which was made up of a bunch of sets over a lot of hours--the Dead play "Cold Jordan" twice. The second time is the encore that ends the marathon night. It was the not-so-very early hours of the morning by that time. And people go nuts. They're wild for it, clapping along. It's a remarkable moment.
The Bruins have twenty games left in the season and Brad Marchand is talking about them not making the playoffs and instead building for next year. That's odd. This team is a badly constructed mess. Badly constructed in terms of talent and also attitude and make-up and the mix in the locker room. They won't do it, but if they want to get into the playoffs--which they also won't do--they should make Swayman the back-up and see if they can get something out of the other guy. He's been better. You'd have a viable case that Swayman is the worst starting goalie in the NHL this season.
When I go to sleep, I close my eyes and think about work. A story, stories, a title, books, ideas for pieces. It's the same every night. Last night it was the title for that Oscar Wilde Happy Prince type of book--which of course really has nothing to do with Wilde and his book. I have three variations on this one title. Thinking, thinking, thinking. Maybe all of these stories come out in different books and then they come out way after that in a different book together that, on the face of things, seem s to be for a different market. I don't like to reuse. but there could be a special circumstance, and it'd be its own totally different book. This is just something I sock away. It's not like it goes anywhere or I'm going to forget. In the meanwhile, I keep writing and creating, keep making more, start making more, finish what I should be finishing, make what I should be making, do the different kinds of things I need to be doing.
Photo from the other day. Just to chart fitness matters. The winter is less conducive to the kind of working out I do--given that it's all outdoors, unless one counts being inside of the Monument--and I have to be careful not to move backwards.
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