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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. (livejournal, 18 September 2003)
On the way to the subway this morning, Velma spotted a sign that advertised a Dog Costuming Contest. I groaned (predictably). I said I supposed it would be a kindness to tell Eleanor. (It’s on Saturday, Ellie, at a street fair on Sixth Avenue between 12th and 13th streets in the Slope. 2:00 PM.) Velma allowed as how she thought she could put up with it for Ellie’s sake. Great creeping sowbugs, I said, I didn’t say we were going. Just telling her. There are limits to friendship. Even if I didn’t shudder at the idea of so much cuteness and cooing — I shuddered — I feel too much empathy for the dogs.
Velma said, well, at least it wasn’t cats. Oh no, I said, I feel worse for dogs. Cats, sure, it’s an insult to their pride, but dogs trust you. Put a pair of deer antlers on a cat, and it’ll go, “What? Hey! Knock it off! Look, I am not wearing that! What do you think I am? All right, you’re bigger than me, I get it. Oh, you are so going to pay for this. Sheets, couch, books, record albums, you’d better not take your eyes off of anything, it is so toast. You suck.”
But not a dog: “Hey, what? This is new. Is it a toy? Hey! That’s kind of uncomfortable. Is it good for me? What’s so funny? Lemme see…. I… I don’t know. Are you sure? I mean…. Have I been bad? I’m sorry. I’m really sorry. I’m sure I deserve this…. Sigh. You… you know best. I can take it…. When this is over, I promise I’ll be the best dog ever.“
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. A story about a succesful, unpopular lawyer in the 1820s in the Border States, who moonlights as a slave trader. A slave in his thirties with consumption was sold by the lawyer; he dies two days later. The lawyer covers it up; the only witness was another slave, a blacksmith, and a slave’s word is no good in court. The purchaser knows he got cheated, but can’t do anything.
The lawyer and purchaser meet by chance that night, while the purchaser is getting his horse shod by the blacksmith. The lawyer decides to be fair, or at least half-fair. But the purchaser growls, and reaches for (the lawyer thinks) his gun. The lawyer shoots the purchaser. But the purchaser’s hand is empty, and he is dead. The lawyer is quickly surrounded; the unarmed man, dead, and the lawyer, alive and holding the smoking gun. The lawyer, panicked, turns to the blacksmith slave. The slave is silent.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. Song Project #20
Did you know that reality tv went back to the seventies? And PBS started it. An American Family was shown in 1973, twelve episodes long, depicting an actual family, the Louds. And yes, the Loud Family got their band name from them (and no, not the Loud family on Saturday Night Live); but that’s not what I’m writing about now.
Lance Loud, one of the sons, was gay, credited with being the first openly gay person in television history. Eventually he died of AIDS, in 2001. But first he led a critically-respected rock band, the Mumps, in New York City, part of the late-seventies CBGB’s scene. A friend from high school, Kristian Hoffman, was the keyboardist.
Kristian Hoffman is not famous, but he should be; well, at least at the level of the new wave and no-wave bands that he played in. He played with Ann Magnuson and Lydia Lunch, and was in Klaus Nomi’s band: he wrote “Total Eclipse”, the most famous Nomi song. Eventually he arranged for Rufus Wainwright’s band, and became a long-term keyboard player for Dave Davies’s band. And he played around the Los Angeles scene in the eighties and nineties, becoming not famous, but known to musicians.
I didn’t know who he was when I picked up a used cd in a pile of one-dollar cds, but the names made me curious. It was called &; in fact, it was an album of collaborations: fifteen of them, and all of them more famous than him. Rufus Wainwright, Russell Mael, Anna Waronker. Maria McKee. Ann Magnuson, Michael Quercio. Lydia Lunch! Stew! Van Dyke Parks! Paul Reubens?? Well, I bought it.
I didn’t prepare myself for the barrage of hooks that came at me. From the first song to the last, one listen was enough to tell me this was a once-a-year find, one I’d play tomorrow and next day and twenty years from now; a top-five for the year. And fifteen songs in (out of 17), the song that blew me away:
Sex in Heaven
That’s Ann Magnuson and Kristian Hoffman, trading off. It starts with Magnuson, hushed, piano-driven; the first hook, the verse hook, on the words “boy, earthbound”, then loud drums, dum, dum, pause, dum, dum, dum, dum, dumdumcrash. Then repeat the verse. Then the chorus, the drums now there throughout, with tambourine, and guitar, Hoffman singing lead and Magnuson wordless harmony. The main hook at the end of the chorus: “where do I sign?” with the jump up an octave. Then stop, and head back into the verse, again hushed, but added vocal by Hoffman, though distant, ethereal. Then repeat verse, with two added keyboards. Then the bridge, then verse, once through this time, then the chorus, twice.
The chorus is amazing. It occurs four times, and each occurrence has a different musical lead-in to the title (”that’s what is costs to buy a note so pure and high and so divine”) and after the title (”the bottom line”), and that’s gravy: the hook can stand by itself. And the words: it’s about castrati, and the longing for the singer (”where do I sign?”), perfectly captured by the hook. That’s a perfect pop song: words and music working together.
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(quoted by Nate Silver:)
“How to get 63% of Americans to support gay marriage. (Maybe.)
“Back when I used to do high school debate, there were all sorts of esoteric arguments related to the notion of positive and negative rights. The distinction, to simplify the matter greatly, is that a positive right is something that permits you to act a certain way — something granted to you — whereas a negative right is a claim to noninterference — something that precludes action from being taken against you, either by government or by other people. […]
“Take for example the issue of gay marriage. When gay marriage is polled, it is almost always framed as a positive right, as in: “should the government permit Adam and Steve to get married?” […] But there is a different way to frame the question that is no less fair, and flips the issue on its head. Namely: “should the government be allowed to prohibit Adam and Steve from getting married?”. This is closer to the logic embodied by the court decisions in Iowa, California, Massachusetts, and other states. […]
“And it turns out that if you frame a polling question in this particular way, as Gallup and USA Today did recently, you get a very different set of responses. […] When USA Today asks whether gay marriage is a private decision, or rather whether government has the right to pass laws which regulate it, 63 percent say it’s a private decision. […]
“[L]ook at what Equality California said on its website at the time:
Every Californian should have the choice to marry the person they love. It’s a personal and fundamental freedom guaranteed by the California Constitution.
[…]
“What if Equality California had instead said this:
California’s government should not have the right to interfere with the decision of two loving adults to get married. It’s a personal and fundamental freedom protected by the California Constitution.
“You see the distinction? Equality California was still stuck in the positive rights paradigm.”
(there’s more)
Originally published at Memory Machine. You can comment here or there.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. I’m home, after eight months of hospitalization and rehabilitation. I’m out, I’m free, I’m terrified. Now I’ve got to figure out how, well, everything by my myself. Of course, Velma is here, mornings and evenings and weekends, and I’ve got a home care attendant every day. But I want to do it by myself.
Good news and bad news: I got social security disability, but it’s not enough. I figure I can work again in about six months; at least, I hope so. In the meantime, I am asking for charity.
Thank you. I really wish to not have to do this anymore.
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Monday was a test day: Velma and I rode the Long Island Railroad, with fast changes, and we made it, though it was hard, especially my visit to a bathroom on our return trip. Turns out our car didn’t have a bathroom; the bathroom was in the next car down. So I trudged the narrow aisle, assisted by left-sided seat handles, but I couldn’t open the door; fortunately my friend Rob opened the door. Then heading back: and my face fell. The left-side seat handles were the only seat handles. So, very carefully, I made it back, trailing Rob in case I fell.
It was a good thing, because we had an excellent time. In fact, I had a wonderful time, the best time since the stroke. Good barbecue, seventy-ish, beautiful woods, and friends: Gavin and Jen, Bill and Theresa, Rob and Ally (and various kids). All of them except Bill seen for the first time since the stroke. Most of the discourse happily revolved around music; I gamely kept up the conversation, though it’s hard, and sometimes I couldn’t (I mean, I understand everything, but I can’t participate).
And you know, I think for twenty years I had underrated myself as a writer. Rob, for instance, is a very good writer; I look up to him. (As I do also Gavin and Bill and Velma.) (Probably Theresa and Jen and Ally too, but I’ve never read them.) I found out Rob read lots of things here at Parlando, and enjoyed it. And, well, that felt good. Maybe I am good. (And sometimes, of course I am good; I am good, I am mediocre, I am somewhere between.)
The point is, now I am broken. I want my writing skill back again. And I really, really mean it: I will never take my writing talent for granted again.
Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. “Virgin Violeta” by Katherine Anne Porter.
Violeta is fifteen, infatuated with cousin Carlos who writes poetry. But Carlos is taken by Blanca, Violeta’s older sister. Carlos is casual with Violeta. But when the two of them are alone, Carlos holds her arm kisses her: “Violeta opened her eyes wide also and peered up at him. She expected to sink into a look warm and gentle, like the touch of his palm. Instead, she felt suddenly, sharply hurt, as if she had collided with a chair in the dark. His eyes bright and shallow, almost like the eyes of Pepe, the macaw. His pale, fluffy eyebrows were arched; his mouth smiled tightly.”
Violeta is terrified; Carlos then does denial: He kissed her like a cousin. “‘Ah, you’re so young, like a little newborn calf,” said Carlos. His voice trembled in a strange way. ‘You smell like a nice baby, freshly washed with white soap! Imagine such a baby being angry at a kiss from her cousin! Shame on you, Violeta!’”
The story is a violation, and Violeta, while clear that something is wrong, doesn’t know what it is. And she keeps it inside. But her infatuation with Carlos, and his poetry, has turned bitter.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. [Katherine Anne Porter, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”]
Oblivion, thought Miranda, her mind feeling among her memories of words she had been taught to describe the unseen, the unknowable, is a whirlpool of gray water turning upon itself for all eternity . . . eternity is perhaps more than the distance to the farthest star. She lay on a narrow ledge over a pit that she knew to be bottomless, though she could not comprehend it; the ledge was her childhood dream of danger, and she strained back against a reassuring wall of granite at her shoulders, staring into a pit, thinking, There it is, there it is at last, it is very simple; and soft carefully shaped words like oblivion and eternity are curtains hung before nothing at all. I shall not know when it happens, I shall not feel or remember, why can’t I consent now, I am lost, there is no hope for me. Look, she told herself, there it is, that is death and there is nothing to fear. But she could not consent, still shrinking stiffly against the granite wall that was her childhood dream of safety, breathing slowly for fear of squandering breath, saying desperately, Look, don’t be afraid, it is nothing, it is only eternity.
Granite walls, whirlpools, star are things. None of them is death, nor the image of it. Death is death, said Miranda, and for the dead it has no attributes. Silenced she sank easily through deeps under deeps of darkness until she lay like a stone at the farthest bottom of life, knowing herself to be blind, deaf, speechless, no longer aware of the members of her own body, entirely withdrawn from all human concerns, yet alive with a peculiar lucidity and coherence; all notions of the mind, the reasonable inquiries of doubt, all ties of blood and the desires of the heart, dissolved and fell away from her, and there remained of her only a minute fiercely burning particle of being that knew itself alone, that relied upon nothing beyond itself for its strength; not susceptible to any appeal or inducement, being itself composed entirely of one single motive, the stubborn will to live. This fiery motionless particle set itself unaided to resist destruction, to survive and to be in its own madness of being, motiveless and planless beyond that one essential end. Trust me, the hard unwinking angry point of light said, Trust me. I stay.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. “Hello,” said Dr. Hildesheim, “at least you take it out in shouting. You don’t try to get out of bed and go running around.” Miranda held her eyes open with a terrible effort, saw his rather heavy, patient face clearly even as her mind tottered and slithered again, broke from its foundation and spun like a cast wheel in a ditch. “I didn’t mean it, I never believed it, Dr. Hildesheim, you mustn’t remember it–” and was gone again, not being able to wait for an answer.
The wrong she had done followed her and haunted her dream: this wrong took vague shapes of horror she could not recognize or name, though her heart cringed at sight of them. Her mind, split in two, acknowledged and denied what she saw in the one instant, for across an abyss of complaining darkness her reasoning coherent self watched the strange frenzy of the other coldly, reluctant to admit the truth of its visions, its tenacious remorses and despairs.
“I know those are your hands,” she told Miss Tanner, “I know it, but to me they are white tarantulas, don’t touch me.”
“Shut your eyes,” said Miss Tanner.
“Oh, no,” said Miranda, “for then I see worse things,” but her eyes closed in spite of her will, and the midnight of her internal torment closed about her.
[Katherine Anne Porter, “Pale Horse, Pale Rider”]
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. Linking words, helping words, are really hard. Articles, prepositions, pronouns, conjunctions — especially conjunctions; sometimes I will fill up with nouns and verbs, but I can’t complete the thought. Today I explained why Katherine Anne Porter’s “Pale Horse, Pale Rider” is important to me (it’s directly about the 1918 flu pandemic, which Porter nearly died from) to my speech therapist. And nearly every time, thirty or forty repetitions, I said “he” instead of “she” (and my speech therapist corrected me). Sometimes I marvel that my mind is fucked up this way; I mean, I never mislabeled pronouns since my infancy. Most of the time, though, it’s really irritating.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. I ran across an old post, one of my favorite poems, by John Clare. Now I love it even more; it fills me with inner peace, and believe me, right now that’s hard:
I am — yet what I am, none cares or knows;
My friends forsake me like a memory lost:
I am the self-consumer of my woes;
They rise and vanish in oblivion’s host,
Like shadows in love’s frenzied stifled throes:
And yet I am, and live — like vapours toss’t
Into the nothingness of scorn and noise –
Into the living sea of waking dreams,
Where there is neither sense of life or joys,
But the vast shipwreck of my life’s esteems;
Even the dearest, that I love the best
Are strange — nay, rather, stranger than the rest.
I long for scenes where man hath never trod
A place where woman never smiled or wept
There to abide with my Creator, God,
And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept,
Untroubling, and untroubled where I lie,
The grass below — above the vaulted sky.
–John Clare, c.1842
I know, it’s distraught, not at peace. Clare was crazy, inside an institution. (And of course my friends have not abandoned me.) But I feel it; especially the longing, in the long past.
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I am depressed. I fight, but sometimes I lose. You see, everything I can accomplish is now trash. Everything. Maybe someday I will gain some of them; but it’s a long, long way. For now, it’s lost:
Writing. The big one. Especially humor; I can’t figure out anything. I admire humor, and it’s frustrating. I look back at humor pieces in my past, and I can’t do it. Not even close.
Also, arguing.
Juggling.
Singing.
Even whistling. (Yes, I used to be good at whistling.)
Basically, everything I used to accomplish. I’ve left with listening to music and reading: that’s nice, but it’s not accomplishing something. I’m, well, helpless. Except maybe, one day, two years or three, maybe I’ll figure out writing. I used to be good at it, to the point of never thinking about it. Well, I thought about it, but I figured out stuff. It was fun. Not every day, every hour, every second, torture.
Originally published at Memory Machine. You can comment here or there.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. Today we began with pain. My physical therapist was switched; Douglas was now my PT. And boy, he caused hurt for a half an hour. And I mean, I wept. My arm was bad — the tone was steadily worsening, and finally it was time to do something about it. It will be bad every day for at least a while. But what can I say? This is the road to being better. I hope.
So I rewarded myself. I sat down, coffee in hand, and I read a story from The Collected Stories of Katherine Anne Porter. This was my first story, for pleasure, since my stroke. It’s ten times harder than before. But I can do it. I chose Porter because, A) she’s adult; B) she’s awesome; and C) she’s pellucid; she’s not difficult, but she’s very very good.
Now it’s been half an hour writing this post. It’s tiring. But still: I am improving, every day. And now I can read fiction. It’s good. It’s funny; for the past ten years, my fiction reading dropped to nearly nothing (except for pay). But now, post-stroke, I’m itching for fiction. And now, I can. Slowly; but I can.
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Originally published at Memory Machine. Please leave any comments there. I am waking up. My mind, hesitantly, fitfully, is stretching, stirring. My right leg is continually improving; today, I walked several steps without anything: no cane, just my legs. My right hand maybe is improving; it will be four months since the last sign of improvement.
I wrote a letter to work, the first time. My boss wrote back immediately. She said — gratifyingly — all my friends were concerned, and some of them followed my adventures here. (Hi Mary!) It’s good to know, maybe three, maybe six months away, there will be proofreading (even if sometimes slow; it’s like that sometimes).
Today, for the first time, I really truly believed, I think, that I can overcome this. There is permanent damage, yes. But I can go on. I’m still desperately hoping that my mind will recover 90% to 100%. I will be anxious until that day, maybe one year, maybe three. But I am hoping.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. I am waking up. My mind, hesitantly, fitfully, is stretching, stirring. My right leg is continually improving; today, I walked several steps without anything: no cane, just my legs. [edit: Not exactly. I had on my splint. I forgot it because it’s with me every day, except sleeping. I cannot walk very well without it; walking with no cane, forget it.] My right hand maybe is improving; it will be four months since the last sign of improvement.
I wrote a letter to work, the first time. My boss wrote back immediately. She said — gratifyingly — all my friends were concerned, and some of them followed my adventures here. (Hi Mary!) It’s good to know, maybe three, maybe six months away, there will be proofreading (even if sometimes slow; it’s like that sometimes).
Today, for the first time, I really truly believed, I think, that I can overcome this. There is permanent damage, yes. But I can go on. I’m still desperately hoping that my mind will recover 90% to 100%. I will be anxious until that day, maybe one year, maybe three. But I am hoping.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. M83 - Saturdays = Youth
Mediocre. Yet another shoegaze thing; I forget every song once another song’s started.
Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend
Every song is catchy, but every song, once you pay attention, is not that much. Still, every song is catchy; maybe every song is better one at a time.
TV on the Radio - Dear Science
Still not getting it, though it continues to interest me.
No Age - Nouns
First time. Hmm. Noisy.
Deerhunter - Weird Era Cont.
Ahhhhh. That’s it. Lovely and weird, first time. The flip side, as it were, of Microcastle (which I already fell in love with); when Microcastle leaked, Deerhunter came up with another disc, two-for-one. And it’s awesome, too.
Lindstrom - Where You Go I Go Too
Cut Copy - In Ghost Colours
First time. Sounds really good. Thick sound, but still has hooks. “So Haunted” is Pixies verse and the Sound chorus.
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Originally published at parlando. You can comment here or there. Song Project #19
The Dismemberment Plan was my favorite band from their third album (1999, where I became aware of them) to their fourth album (2002, whereupon they broke up). They were probably my most obscure favorite band. (My favorite bands? In chronological order: the Beatles, the Spinners, Talking Heads, R.E.M., Throwing Muses, Pixies, Throwing Muses again, Blur, the Dismemberment Plan, Café Tacvba, Belle and Sebastian, Sleater-Kinney, Meshuggah, Of Montreal.)
Velma, too, became a fan, and we reacted with dismay when the announcement came that the Plan were no more. We bought two tickets for both of their farewell shows, and were gratified when almost none crossed over; one repeat song, their perennial favorite “Okay Jokes Over”, otherwise no overlap: 49 lovely songs. I can’t tell you how much joy was contained in those two nights, and how much sorrow.
The third album, Emergency & I, was perfect. The fourth album, Change, was nearly perfect, stretching out and sometimes missing, but even the wrong parts were interesting. The four songs that closed it were fabulous; four songs fit to end a career. The first song was “Following Through”.
(Listen to “Following Through”)
Six things I like about “Following Through”:
1. The fast start, following the drum fill at the beginning all the way to forty seconds from the end.
2. The end, still as fast but quiet, first solo guitar, then joined by another guitar, then bass, and finally drums.
3. The drums, steady yet changeable throughout.
4. The bass, which doesn’t cut in till the A part has been by once. Then four notes, silence, four notes, silence, four notes, silence, five notes. Then after the chorus, the silences are filled: four notes, four notes, etc.
5. The chorus. The way one note is held for half the chorus; the way that “following through” sounds different from the rest. And my favorite part: The vocals, lead and harmony, are an octave lower the second time.
6. The way that the chorus is led into the second time: “I’m quite, oh, kay, with, losing that fight!”
Not a promise nor a threat nor an ultimatum though I can do those too. Yeah.
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Originally published at Memory Machine. Please leave any comments there. Five months ago, in early October, I had a stroke. I took stupidly long getting to hospital care — maybe three or four hours — the power of denial and ignorance. I almost died, and a month was spent locked up in my head. Nighttimes of nightmares, vivid and frightening, with occasional lucid daytimes, scattered. My sister and my mother were probably my first memory, soothing and tranquil, my sister calming though even then I could catch the undercurrent of crying. Velma, my wife, was there every day, even when I tore out the catheter and feeding tube, even when I was convinced I was eighteen, even when I slapped her wildly. I didn’t know, didn’t remember. I was forty-four years old.
Gradually memory came, and with it despair. My right leg and right arm were paralyzed; worse –- even worse –- my brain was fried. My speech was gone, my reading. Tongue-tied, nearly mute, everything gone, or nearly. Forty-four, reset.
Slowly, agonizingly, it grew better. Despair gave way to determination. Five months and I see a light, though it’s way off; two years, three. My arm still lies there, and it maybe still will. My leg, better; maybe fifteen percent. My memory is best, though still two, three, five years; still hard, very hard, my memory. Maybe ten percent. For instance, it’s very hard to work at the computer.
But I’m trying. Soren DeSelby, mark two.
(time composed: 3 hours, 10 minutes)
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![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
wait, what?