Pretty as Can Be Saturday, October 11, 2003

Gearing up for the drive. Unconscionably early for a Saturday: Every day's a weekday! Listening to a record a bought last year and forgot about--Beth Gibbons, she of Portishead, and some creature called Rustin Man, which sounds like a hippie gathering outside of Pittsburgh. It combines the usual Portishead trippy spy-movie thing with a folky sound, e.g. there are actual guitars and horns in evidence, and even a touch of Dead Can Dance. As usual, the lyrics are indistinguishable and unjudgeable, so you're coasting on vibe and voice. And Beth's got a wonderful one. It just occurs to me who she sounds like: Billie Holliday, of all people, if Billie Holliday were a trashy Brit go-go dancer.

I write paragraphs like that mostly to prove I'm not turning into a complete snob. But then I re-read it and realize: I'm defending something that shows minimal musicianship and presents lyrics as an afterthought--mood music for ravers. Alec Wilder would be spinning in his grave.

Now the car. See you in a couple.

@ 6:54:00 AM, ,

Don't Let Go the Blog Friday, October 10, 2003

Chowing down on crow: The critics came through. The new Maria McKee album--she, late of Lone Justice--is outstanding. What does she sound like: tortured, shrieky, tough-chicky, but somehow it works. I stopped paying attention to the lyrics, which involve "the moon sleeping like a whore" and other artsy put-ons, but her voice is as rough and compelling as a prize fight.

Lots of driving this weekend. Lots of editing Monday morning: I am at cross purposes with reporters. In between, hopefully, bliss. Later.

@ 8:35:00 PM, ,

Ballin' the Jack Thursday, October 09, 2003

An evening for brain death. We wanted to watch something dopey, but were feeling just high-minded enough not to settle for "The Running Man" on cable. First shot: the "Special Features" disk of "Casablanca," in particular the "Warner Bros. Theater" TV show version of the movie. I'd gotten it mixed up with some other "Casablanca" TV show, and thought we were in for Bogie and Bacall with Hoagy Carmichael on piano. Instead, a bunch of overstiff Fifties actors defecating on a treasured memory. Click. How about "Deleted Scenes" instead? Ah, they have no sound. Click. Same problem with "Outtakes."

Nothing else thrilled, so we returned, as usual, to "As Time Goes By." Funny thing: If you start watching that often enough, you get the curious idea that all shows should be made that well. So there's hardly anything else we can stand these days. One of the truest shows I've ever seen, tart and gentle and even sexy, in its way. A show for past thirty.

Which reminds me of a poem:

Four in the Morning (by Wislawa Szymborska)
The hour from night to day.
The hour from side to side.
The hour for those past thirty.

The hour swept clean to the crowing of cocks.
The hour when earth betrays us.
The hour when wind blows from extinguished stars.
The hour of and-what-if-nothing-remains-after-us.

The hollow hour.
Blank, empty.
The very pit of all other hours.

No one feels good at four in the morning.
If ants feel good at four in the morning
--three cheers for the ants. And let five o'clock come
if we're to go on living.

One of the great B.A. downer poems. But the person who gave it to me is getting married in two weeks, and I'm about to celebrate my second anniversary. We put some sugar in our blues.

Another thought: Rock reviewers are insane. I'm halfway through the latest record by a band called Ladybug Transistor, lauded exhaustively, and it's...I hate to say "shit," but there's just nothing there. Dopey lyrics sung terribly, backed with music called "chamber pop," which is the audio equivalent of drinking chicken stock.

Why recommend it? Why recommend, say, any of the basically indistinguishable "contemporary folk" or "power pop" acts on the market? Here's my theory: In devaluing universal standards, postmodernism asserts that everything has value. So if you're going to be a critic, you need to root out meaning and significance in even the most insubstantial nonsense. Sure, it sounds like crap, but not if you look at it this way.

I say this, of course, as somebody who wrote 1,200 words about how the latest Steely Dan record was a measured response to 9/11.

Enough theory. Nite.

@ 9:52:00 PM, ,

Nitty Ditty Nitty Gritty Great Bird

In the mornings I usually don't know what time it is until I get off the ferry and see the big Colgate clock across the river. I know if I'm early or late by the people I see. Today I saw Phil Spector and the lady on crutches, who I've written about previously (although he reminds me more of Anthony Zerbe these days), and when I hit the promenade in Battery Park City I saw Cowboy Dan. An old guy, as lean and leathery as a stick of jerky, moseying up the pavement in a brown suede jacket, range hat and boots that came off something cold-blooded. Usually smoking. He's got a cane, too, but he carries it under his arm.

Then, by the boat dock, there's the Large Man. I started off pitying the Large Man, who is monstrously obese and as such huffs along with his trunk skewed backwards and to the right. One day I realized: That son of a bitch dresses better than I do. He's mixing colors, he's playing with textures--if that's morbidly obese, bring me a pizza.

It's been tropical the past few days, misty and humid, but the summer's over. Windbreaker days.

@ 8:35:00 AM, ,

Waking Up Is Hard to Do Wednesday, October 08, 2003

Catching my breath, finally, after a couple days away. Not just work, but a general funk that has left me mostly sleepless and thoroughly miserable. I got a wake-up call today from a friend I've been commiserating with about writing matters: Enough bitching is enough. Let's get to work already.

So there. More later.

@ 4:37:00 PM, ,

Castles and Christians Sunday, October 05, 2003

I got the Sunday night shakes something fierce. I see an evening of kicking at the covers and thinking there's a burglar every time the cats knock something over. If this were a Philip K. Dick story, we'd have a Mood Organ over the bed that would take care of all the bad stuff. Then again, I'd probably wake up and find a memory tape inside my chest.

I think I know what's terrifying me about the Secret Thing: It's not where I live. In one of his last interviews, PKD talked about visiting the set of "Blade Runner" and realizing: "Holy cow, this is the place I go every day." The Secret Thing is not where I go. Mostly I stay in this time but take a step sideways; or go someplace long ago that suits me better. For the Mars book it was 1929. For Secret Thing #2, it's 1914, or thereabouts. Secret Thing #1, however, takes place in a period that intrigues me, and I have a lot to say about, but I'm not quite sure how to make it mine.

(Just heard a great line from a Prefab Sprout song:

You offer infrared
Instead of sun)

Part of the problem is that I appreciate this Secret Thing's subject matter as affectionate camp more than anything else. i.e., I take it seriously as a social signifier, and goofy entertainment, but not necessarily as any kind of art worth emulating. But the whole selling point of the Secret Thing is that it's based on this specific subject. So there's a limit to how much of a personal spin I can put on it.

The bigger problem: I always feel like I should be doing something else. If I'm cleaning the house, or spending some quality minutes with Mrs. WTJ, I should be writing a short story. If I pick up Walker Percy, I should be reading a history of New York in the 1910s. And if I actually do sit down to do some work, as I did this weekend, it's not the right kind. I spent several days writing a not-terrible 1,700 words' worth of story--but, goddammit, I should've been clearing the Secret Thing off the decks, so I could get to work on Secret Thing #2, so I could clear that away and get to the thing I really want to do. Which has yet to disclose itself, but if I sit at my desk and pretend to type for long enough, it'll show up. That's the way these things work, right?

Now Pete Townshend's singing: This is the dream that you wake up dreaming.

See you in dreamland!

@ 11:06:00 PM, ,

How It Yells in My Ear!

I have nothing to write, which is always a sign I should write something. Just finished up 1,700 moderately dopey words for a co-authored article. Not bad, purple as grape juice, and fun to whittle down. Now what? Dum-dum: The Secret Thing looms.

Another weekend reorganizing. Donated about ten big boxes of books to a baffled pastor at a squishy Episcopal church in Jersey City. It almost looks like humans live here!

What next? Eggses, I think, for dinner. Thanks again to the elves from the Last Homely Apartment for help.

@ 1:27:00 PM, ,

You Know You're in Trouble, Part 75

When the sermon starts: "I don't know how many of you have been to Disneyland."

@ 10:13:00 AM, ,