a sort of tribute

The title of this blog refers to what one might call the sensibility of its author. I am in the end a relatively quiet sort, one might say even misanthropic.

Although a self-analysis of my silence could certainly fodder for future blogs, it is not the subject of this one. My point, in bringing up my tendency toward non-interaction, is to point out that quiet is something quite different than indifference (although there are times i attempt to conflate the two). In fact, it is the silences that we allow ourselves to observe those who surround us, who are living out their lives in the spaces we all inhabit. It is a profound interest in people, in my interpretation of their stories, their dramas, that often animates (dis-animates) my silence.

This, of course, is my own, rather convoluted, way of paying tribute to the life and work of Studs Terkel. Terkel, ultimately, wasn't quiet; he was both a writer and a talker, a jovial sort who never seemed at a loss for words. But Terkel knew when to be quiet. He knew how to step back let other people tell their stories in a way that was not only revealing to the eventual reader, but also often to the storyteller him- or herself.

This was obviously Terkel's interview style, but more importantly, it was his writing style. Unlike the biographer or the ethnologists, Terkel didn't struggle to insert himself in the story; he never came off as particularly impressed by the insight of his own questions or the profundity of his prose (as is, say, someone with a personal blog). In fact, Terkel's best work isn't really his at all. He is merely the narrator, who sets the scene, who provides the imagery that allows us to "place" the protagonists in space and time, and then he lets his subjects talk, to tell their own stories in a way only possible because Studs was the one listening.

say anything . . .

I didn't write yesterday. Not just on this blog, mind you, but not at all. Yesterday was the first day since I started writing this thing that I didn't do any kind of writing.

I've thought about this a lot--too much really. If I work on a paper but don't write a blog entry, is that a failure? Probably not, but the too are not mutually exclusive; there's no reason a blog entry can't be an exclamation point at the end (or beginning, or middle) of an otherwise productive day.

Why I didn't write yesterday is hard to say, other than the fact that I was busy, and tired, all the obvious excuses. I can say that the only reason I'm writing this entry, right now, today, is because I realize why I wasn't writing it it. I realized the heights to which my procrastination (or avoidance) can take me.

I've been pretty good at writing about anything, writing for the sake of writing. I've come to this page with absolutely nothing to say. Believe it or not, writing with nothing to say is not the obstacle. The obstacle: what do you title a blog when you have nothing to say. Somehow, I've convinced myself that the title is important, that it has to be crafty or witty, that it has to capture the essence of what is to follow. Perhaps it does. But I realize now that I'm allowing the lack of a title to put me into a permanent holding pattern; I'm not able to write, because I'm not able to entitle what I'm not writing about. I guess the notion that the title might be inspired by the writing, rather than inspire the writing is a bit too obvious for some of us.

rainy days and sundays . . .

11:04, Sunday night.  I'm tired, and I really don't want to write. But I said I would write everyday, and it's looks like I'm just going to make it.  

Sundays have a sort of time-machine quality for me.  From the minute I wake up in the morning I'm instantly transported back in time, to 1984 or 85.  For someone who disliked school, Sunday was a day I hoped would never end, every passing moment was a moment closer to the inevitable.  

Sunday was also a lonely day, not because I was particularly more lonely on Sunday on any other day, but because it seemed to me I was the only person in the world who felt this way about Sundays.  I think my friends, for the most part, liked school.  Not that they did all that well, of course--none of us did all that well.  But, for the most part, they seemed to like the routine of it, or it least they weren't up for challenging its inexorable reality.  

I tried to extend my Sundays, to hold out as long as I could against the reality of Monday morning. I would take long walks on dark Sunday evenings.  I remember the autumn evenings the most. I can still feel the chill of the air and the crunch of almost frozen leaves beneath my feet.  I would fight as hard as I could against the cold, roll my hands up into the sleeves of my Levi's jacket, pull my collar tight around my neck.  At some point, however, the cold would win, and I would head home, out of the cold, but not out of options. I wasn't ready to surrender, not ready to wave my white flag and let the coming week win.

Thinking about it now, I can see how Monty Python's Flying Circus came to mean so much to me. Python came was played at eleven on our local PBS station, and although I was supposed to be in bed by then, I regularly found myself down to the living room, tuning in our aging television to the UHF band.  I watched intently and I laughed to myself; I sat with my face four inches from the screen, so I could hear, but my mother--fast asleep in the bedroom above--couldn't. In Monty Python I found friends, a comrades, a companions.  They were my company for a the the last few minutes of Sunday; I could forget, for awhile at least, the week that awaited.  

I guess there's nothing like that now, really.  Nothing to leaving Sunday night hanging there in suspended animation.  Well then, I guess I'll go to bed.

The end of a temporary innocence

Occasionally a record comes along that is just "in the moment," so appropriate to the times that you can 't help liking it.  You might not recognize its relevance at first; that comes later.  

This seems to apply to the Killers Hot Fuss album.  Perhaps we didn't realize it at the time, but the first Killer's record seems to capture a unique chapter in the American experience, one that now feels like ancient history.  It seems to capture a brief reprieve from the heaviness of the post 9/11 world, a brief moment when many of us seemed to imagine "everything" was "going to be alright." 

Yes, I know--everything wasn't going to be alright, and some of us were hip to that reality.  But even for those of a bit more cynical, unhappy with the Iraq War, the Bush Administration, the possibility that humanity had irreversibly altered the climate, there was sense that the worst was behind us, after all, how much worse could it get?  

It did get worse of course: as the year progressed, we became aware of the atrocities committed at Abu Ghraib, we witnessed more and more Iraqi citizens dying in the marketplaces and cafes, and we came to recognize, as the Democratic primary season came to an end, that our hopes for change rested with that no-talent-ass-clown John Kerry.  Things could get worse indeed. 

Into our cultural ambivalence walked the Killers, a band, appropriately, from Las Vegas, who reminded us of youthful naiveté , of the 80s, of a souped up Duran Duran.   We'd had enough of Toby Keith's post-9/11 jingoism, or Bruce Springsteen's melancholy.  Give us an upbeat song about obsession we can dance to.  

An album like this couldn't work now; sales of more recent Killers albums seem to prove that.  The culmination of two wars, an economic crises, the failure of the political system have left a palpable heaviness on the American psych.  Will anyone be able to capture this heaviness in the same way the Killers captured its opposite?  Is there a Revolver out there waiting to happen? It'll take a heavy record to reflect the gravity of these times. 

15 minutes to kill

This is the real test. Writing, when I really have nothing to write about. This isn't quite true of course, but I have about 15 minutes before lunch-time basketball, and I can't really write something all that insightful in 15 minutes. Can I?

So I guess I'll just write. See where it takes me, where it goes. As I mentioned earlier, I used to like to write, I liked the craft of it, writing, revising, re-writing. Now every stage in that process seems god-damned painful. In some ways, it's a sort of perfectionism on my part, of being deathly afraid that my vision might not be realized. This makes it easy to not accept the challenge, unwilling to do the work that stands between the raw material and the final product. They say to overcome this is to write, everyday, regardless, so that's what I'm trying to do here. This isn't much, but it's something. And there are plenty of days that I end up with far less than something.

What is it inside that makes us think we can write, that we have something to say. I think success, in any field that required self-expression, demands walking a fine line between arrogance and humility. You have to be a bit cocky to think you have something to offer don't you? I know some would prefer to call this confidence; the two aren't unrelated.

Regardless, I doubt that stepping over the line into overconfidence rarely results in negative productivity. Perhaps the product isn't very good, but it is produced, it is concrete, realized. My problem seems to go the other way--too much humility (which is of course a very humble thing to say). Let me explain though: I'm not claiming this humility is laudable. It's not the "he's so down to earth" type of humility that everyone admires. I'm not fucking George Clooney. My humility's more driven by fear and self-loathing, a defense mechanism on guard against potential humiliation.

I think that's probably indicative of the human condition. If we could inside the heads of others, I think we'd find we've all got something to offer. Buried deep within us all is novelist, a poet, a songwriter, a chef--but usually we live a life predicated on not letting that potential self show through, we lock our creative selves up deep inside, diminish the importance that part of our self plays, until we forget this creative self ever existed.

Five paragraphs: that's something.

I'll try . . .

I wasn't going to write tonight; I couldn't imagine writing through the headache.  Well, I call them headaches; they start somewhere in the middle of my back, a ball of tightly wound tension that slowly branches off and runs up the back of my neck stopping somewhere mid-temple.  It's clear they have something to do with the weather, and the medical experts on the interwebs seem to think you can discover the trigger if you pay close attention to the atmospheric conditions-- barometric pressure, humidity, etc.--that accompany them. I've always wanted to figure this all out, but, in the end, it's always the last thing I want to do when I have a headache.  

I was thinking there is something about the ostensible publicity of this that blogging thing bothered me.  Can I really use this to cultivate good writing habits when there's always an outside chance someone might read it? Can I be honest? Sloppy?  It's not like journal or diary, buried in an out-of-the-way desk drawer, beneath a stack of old pay stubs, broken pencils, and rolls of pennies you've been meaning to take to the bank for about 3 years.  The blog is there for everyone to see, public, out in the open.

Then I realized I was exactly wrong.  This is much more inconspicuous than a journal.  People always find your journal--they're rummaging through a desk drawer, looking for scissors, or a paperclip, maybe Chapstick, and there it is, right in front of you.  And who can resist the desire to read someone's else's deepest thoughts, their regrets, hopes, fantasies? Who can resist the urge to discover that your best friend or closest family member is just a little more fucked up than you are and, perhaps, a little more interesting than you thought.

But reading someone's blog, that's a different story.  First, stumbling across this thing is unlikely (what combination of search terms would bring this up on the Google?).  Second, if I did stumble on something like this, I think I'd just move on.  I can't imagine most people find the random thoughts of some self-absorbed stranger all that interesting.  Or maybe that's just me.

Liner Notes

I'm no audiophile.  Sure, we probably lost something moving to digital; there's probably an element of "the room" that ones and zeros will never capture.  But the MP3 player has definite advantages. First, it's easier to dust than a shelf full of records, and lets face it, searching beneath the passenger seat at 70 miles an hour for the Cult's Love cassette is clearly not a good idea.  

What I do miss is liner notes.  I miss the hands-on experience of the first listen, reading the lyrics and the thank you lines, seeing who got songwriting credit, who played the Hammond B-3, who sang back-up vocals on "Past the Mission?"  

Why bother?

OK, OK. So the world needs another blog like it needs another KISS tour. So let me explain myself. If you're reading this blog there are two things you should know. 1. there must be something better to do. I mean spend time with your kids, mow your lawn, volunteer, or something. 2. This is for me, not you. See, here's the problem. I spend way too much time watching TV, grazing, and not nearly enough time writing, and although this is barely writing, it is a step in the right direction. This is an attempt to get the gears turning, to remind myself that I used to want to write. Will it work? Who knows. But hey, the road to hell probably needs repaving . . .

So here are the ground rules: I plan on covering a lot of ground on this blog, from the personal, to the political, to popular culture (not that the latter two are all that dissimilar). What I won't be is partisan, not because I necessarily dislike partisanship, it's just that what passes for partisanship these days seems to lack conviction, it puts marketing over morality. I have no stomach for that sort of thing.

I'll also swear--a lot. I know, it gets old after awhile, and if I had to justify it I could come up with something about holding onto my working class sensibilities or something like that, but the fact is, it's just habit at this point. There's this great passages in Hornby's Long Way Down where the character JJ puts it best: 

"How do people, like, not curse? How is it possible? There are all these gaps in speech where you have to put in a 'fuck'" (146).

I'll "put in a 'fuck'" quite often.
The other ground rule is not over thinking this thing. It's not going to be perfect, not even close. Perhaps, to borrow a phrase from the pedago-fascists, this is an exercise in "free writing," in writing for the sake of writing, of not caring about the clarity, or logic, or grammar.