Ruth Reichl

I heard Ruth Reichl on NPR this morning say:
"The truth is, you find time for the things you care about." And so I ask you, all of you: What do you care about? What do you find time for?

Ed Wolfe

Read Stanley Elkin's I Look Out For Ed Wolfe last night and I highly recommend.

The rants here and in The Franchiser are just too delicious not to consume, even if you feel a little, abused economically and ergo, personally.

Will you look out for Ed Wolfe?

The 505 Tom Wolfe

Tough assignment from the 505: write a la Tom Wolfe.

Ooof.

But...I read Wolfe's The Electric-Kool-Aid Acid Test and Style As Argument by Chris Anderson.

I tried to capture, somewhat, this idea that elite musicians are channels for something greater. That the music comes THROUGH them, not FROM them. I first heard this reading Plato, regarding the poets. Then oddly enough, after Stevie Ray Vaughan died and Eric Clapton talked about SRV's playing:

Eric Clapton I don't think anyone has commanded my respect more, to this day. The first time I heard Stevie Ray, I thought, "Whoever this is, he is going to shake the world." I was in my car and I remember thinking, I have to find out, before the day is over, who that guitar player is. That doesn't happen to me very often, that I get that way about listening to music. I mean, about three or four times in my life I've felt that way, in a car, listening to the radio, where I've stopped the car, pulled over, listened, and thought, I've got to find out before the end of the day, not, you know, sooner or later, but I have to know NOW who that is.
...and I remember being fascinated by the fact that he never, ever seemed to be...lost in any way...It was as though he never took a breather...or took a pause to think where he was gonna go next, it just flowed out of him. It's going to be a long time before anyone that brilliant will come along again.
I didn't get to see or hear Stevie play near often enough, but every time I did I got chills and knew I was in the presence of greatness.He seemed to be an open channel and music just flowed through him. It never seemed to dry up.
I have to tell this story: We played on the same bill on his last two gigs. On the first night, I watched his set for about half an hour and then I had to leave because I couldn't handle it!. I knew enough to know that his playing was just going to get better and better. His set had started, he was like two or three songs in, and I suddenly got this flash that I'd experienced before so many times whenever I'd seen him play, which was that he was like a channel. One of the purest channels I've ever seen, where everything he sang and played flowed straight down from heaven. Almost like one of those mystic Sufi guys with one finger pointing up and one finger down. That's what it was like to listen to. And I had to leave just to preserve some kind of sanity or confidence in myself.

ENL 505 - Stylistics

Tom Wolfe Assignment

An infinitesimal minority hear the calling. Of those, few heed the call. The heeders? Many fall by the wayside; rolled over and tumbled in the wake of doubt, or block, or aesthetic attrition.
You and me? The most boring mortals never hear the call... a call. No brrinnnggg brrinnnggg for us!

But there are sentient savants among us, and they offer us, oh just: vicarious prodigy, vicarious transcendence, vicarious peak experience. We can’t have these...on our own. Pshaw!
It’s no one’s fault. Blame is moot. Why try to explain the inexplicable? Got some sort of Sisyphus complex, do ya? Why fret when you can live vicariously?

Face facts! Few will ever possess and only a few more will ever understand, remotely, the genius. Can you think of a more overused word than genius? Gawd! But it is genius proper in these carnate gods. They possess, in spades, a shrug-your-shoulders, don’t look at me, holy schnikes kinda genius. The kind of wunder mensch, beyond talented, kinda brain that can juggle sense data out the yin yang in a nanosecond over a corpus callosum thick as nautical rope:

Right Brain
            ::::left fret hand
            ::::hammer-on index-middle-pinky finger succession
            ::::low e string frets 3-5-7
            ::::low a string frets 3-5-7
            Index-middle-ring::::low d string frets 4-5-7

Left Brain
            ::::right pick hand
            ::::index finger low e (dampen strings below e with remaining palm)
            ::::index finger low a (dampen strings below a with remaining palm; thumb dampen e above)
            ::::index finger low d (dampen strings below  with remaining palm; thumb dampen a & e above)

Whole Brain
            ::::hear but don’t listen-don’t play but be played-imagine ahead-hear the notes a priori-sing the notes in your mind’s voice-feel for the bass line-feel for the drummer-feel for the chords-feel for the crowd...feel…
...with your sixth sense.
Or seventh or eighth sense...or ad infinitum sense.

Do it...ALL AT THE SAME TIME!

Unless you’ve tried to play an instrument, you can’t really fathom the magic that elite musicians pull off. You just watch in awe as the rabbit isn’t only pulled out of the hat but is ejected into the aural stratosphere and explodes to fill your existential/aesthetic void with
je ne sais quoi but something you needed!

Unless you’ve played an instrument and tried to master it to the level of even pro-am status, you’ve no clue the voodoo that they do when they do what they do indeed do. But done it is.

Maybe you’ve near-mastered something in your life. Hell! maybe back in high school you were capable of going from a back handspring into a full-fledged flip and as a result, have an immense appreciation every time the summer Olympics roll around and you watch agape the floor routines as human springs bound and coil and twist with needle-threading precision but never tire or dizzy or seem anything but unbound, untethered, unREAL.

But this isn’t even about mastering. Mastering is B-O-R-I-N-G. This is NOT run of the mill, hey hey kid’s got some talent, second place in some High School Gong Show. This is NOT even about impeccably gifted musicians who can earn a meager life-on-the-road living, performing music. Not even the same ballpark, area code, universe.
This is about those musicians that when you hear, you know...when you are in the presence of...and… when there are no words that pop up, come to mind, do justice -there just aren’t. We don’t need a vocab when we slide into aesthetic nirvana like melting into a hot bath. Seeking is suffering. Epistemic justification is as worthless as justifying epistemology.

But it is certain, oh as certain as 2+2=4. We know because we are changed; certain because we are accosted, held hostage, raptured with an aesthetic drug in our blood, as formless, metaphysical, righteous beauty fills, no sates! us...still; immobile, wordless, clean and cleansed, we cannot reckon...but reckoning is soooo beneath us now.

These musicians are pregnant with god, however defined, in eternal artistic labor, their past dedication and practice serving as the dilation that allows the deity to be delivered but never, ever, apart...always attached via an umbilical of equal reciprocity: each possessed and nurtured by the other.

We mortals never hear the call but we can always hear the music.

***

Word Count: 702

Write: For this assignment, take a brief piece (500-750) you have written and revise/ write in the style of the featured author. In other words, revise so as to mimic the style

of the featured author. You can, as well, compose a brand new piece in this style.

I am not Left Handed

Maybe you've seen The Princess Bride and recognize the title as those words spoken by Inigo Montoya.

Nor am I left handed and nor do I usually blog about my work. I do enjoy a good noir flick though (The Third Man, Double Indemnity come to mind).

But I have an advisee who has shaken me to my core. Probably because I don't do enough crunches or planks but that's not important right now.

Here is what he said:

I found out ten years ago I'm left handed.

I shit you not.

Take a moment and let that sink in.

What does that even mean!

You've used your hands all life long, assuming you have both, you've used both of them, all life long.

What does it mean to learn you are left handed???? and how did you learn it??? did someone tell you after a battery of tests???? because you couldn't figure it out and had to solve the mystery before you died???

What the living fuck? What kind of person drops this nugget ninja in my cranium to fester and bite at my brain like a mosquito?

Dammit this is why people are the worst.

Rough Week

Really rough.

Feeling very low and emotionally lethargic.

So these comments on my ENL 505 Autobiography Biography assignment were really needed:

Shannon, These two pieces validate the worth of the assignment. Both pushed hard at their limits, high and low, and both achieved a stunning originality. Further, there are numerous treats along the way: "the undeniable fact of the matter is that success for any brain, Shannon's or yours, must in part be determined by checking bank statements"; the concluding line of the biography; "cried like paint spilling over the side of the can"; "I fell. I'm falling. I will fall." 

Oh, I got paid to write a song. Sure it was off Craigslist and sure it wasn't for much and sure it isn't likely to win a Grammy or three but I can't help but wonder: what percentage of the population ever gets paid to write a song?

Don't Look In The Mirror

https://www.npr.org/2019/03/20/705363744/new-zealand-banning-weapons-like-those-used-in-mosque-attacks-in-christchurch

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced Thursday that the government will ban "military-style semi-automatic weapons and assault rifles," in an attempt to head-off "the kind of horror and attack that we saw on Friday." She said the outlawed weapons will be listed on a website and are the type that were used in the attack on two mosques in Christchurch last week.

We will not follow New Zealand’s lead because of our values. We won’t ban semi-automatic weapons because we value them.

We love military-style semi-automatic weapons. Adore, cherish, esteem...pick a verb.

Have you ever fired a military-style semi-automatic weapon? Oh my gawd the insane power...as fast as you can pull the trigger. Exhilarating! It’s like a roller coaster ride but with gunpowder. Fucking incredible. Better than sex.

Even in a climate controlled, sterile, shooting range, the wash of power from a military-style semi-automatic weapon pulsing through you is so powerful it’ll make you cum your underwear full.

It gets better. Have you ever defended your home or your loved ones with a military-style semi-automatic weapon? What a rush! I keep mine under the bed just in case someone tries to steal our gazing ball from the yard or makes a play for the minivan. Sakes alive, shooting another person in defense of property or loved ones is an immeasurable rush; you just haven’t lived until you’ve killed someone with a military-style semi-automatic weapon as they try to pilfer your lamps.

Is there a greater good argument to be made about banning military-style semi-automatic weapons?

What’s that? I can’t hear you over the awesome cacophony from my AR-15 as I help control the deer population.

BBBBRRR!BBBRrrrbbrbbrbRBBRBBBBBBBBBBB!RRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRbRRRRrrrrrrrrrrrr!

[finger rest]

bbbb!bbbbbbbbbrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrRRRRRRRRR!RR!RRRRBBBBBBBBrrr!rBBBBBBBBBBRrbrr!

Don’t look in the mirror America. 
Don’t look at New Zealand. 
Don’t look at the dead bodies. 
Don’t look at your values and don’t mind the dissonance. 

It’ll go away, just like the soul of the country.

The 505 Doubling

ENL 505 - Stylistics
Doubling Life Story Assignment

I

I was born then died, thinking.

My life story is relationships. You should see the other people. Ooof.

“He was unique. Like everyone else. Rust belt kid, rust belt sensibilities, and iron oxide emotions. He tried really hard though.”
-Todd Snyder, Ohioan

My mom said I scaled a fence just after learning to walk. I loved hearing her tell that story; she seemed to intimate I could do anything to which I put my mind.
And I have.
But I put my mind to a lot of the wrong things.

Jimmy Fallon: Tell us your life story.

Me: There isn’t much to tell. It’s a miracle I earned a college degree and it’s an even bigger miracle I earned a master’s degree. Can there be degrees of miracles?

Jimmy Fallon:

Me: So to make a long story short I work, parent, husband, and think about ranking miracles. I can’t believe, practically incredulous, I’m not back in Barberton, Ohio, drunk, working some soul-killing manufacturing gig, living in a double wide trailer, awaiting a triple bypass, after a fourth divorce. But enough about me, tell me your miracle.

Life story = biography = picture of life. My life. Is my life worthy of a picture? Worthy of a picture, others might care about? What have I done to warrant attention? To warrant interest in my life from dirt-poor Ohio kid with alcoholism in his genes, to married to an Ivy Leaguer, master’s degree educated, upper middle class, Rhode Island parent of three, still with alcoholism in his genes? You see any picture of life requires the past...the past that weighs like an anvil on your chest...All. Life. Long. No one escapes their past. Logicians, of which I count myself, don’t like to use “none” or “all” because “one” collapses the argument. But everyone has a past because they have a present. If you don’t believe me, and I don’t blame you for not, consider this line from Being There: “A man’s past cripples him. His background turns into a swamp and invites criticism.” So it seems I’m crippled. And in a swamp. Not a great combo. And for the trifecta I have you there, reading this, criticizing. Probably murmuring something about metafiction and how cheap and lazy it is. Great.

II

Think of the way it feels when you hear your voice on a recording. Most of us bristle, even if a little. “Is that what I sound like?” Autobiography asks a similar question: Is that what I’ve lived like?” Autobiography tosses your lump of a life onto a steel-cold table in the gross lab, where with razor sharp scalpels and muscular forceps and probes, tears apart your judgement and character and personality with unceasing fire-breathing criticism of your horrible decisions and gnashes teeth at your incessant laziness and wrings hands raw due to your pathological sensitivity and erodes all possibility of contentedness or serenity or self-actualization at best and at worst births institutionalization, to produce the same face piercing cringe when you hear your voice through your ears and not through your head. Autobiography is not some mild, innocuous self-sadism akin to a sauna what with its relaxed-muscles finale. Nor is it torturous introspection to reveal the glass is half-full and “just look at all you’ve accomplished from such modest beginnings!” Honestly and authentically, factually, it exposes existential pain reaped from a life lived not through the ears, but through the head.

When you hear what you hear, matters. I heard I am a being-unto-death in an Existentialism class in 1992. Death - the possibility of me that prohibits all other possibilities. In my early twenties I was open to information, a sponge soaking up the world and Heidegger. Saturated I became. I have lived, knowing there is an end. An end that cannot be outstripped: by women, booze, weed, tv, NOTHING...looms on the horizon quite like it. I proceeded accordingly, but took chances, put myself on the line, THE line! for us both. For all of us.

Hear me: My life is counter to Pascal’s wager. Infinite gains necessitate infinite beings; I am finite. What I believe matters. Beliefs bloom behaviors.

The real eternity is before birth, in silence. I hear. I live.

A cacophonous, volume-sickening, ear-splitting, authentic, life.

***

Write your life story in 6 words. Then, write your life story in 12 words. Then 24, 48, 96, 192. Or, if you want to begin with 192 and work your way down to 6, you can do that, too.

Caveat: once used, you cannot repeat any phrase. That is, you are not simply revising, adding, filling. Each piece should be unique. And try not to repeat your “style” or “voice” from one to the next. Mix them up. Take chances. But meet the word count. Focus on making each word a vibrant contributor.