Author: Don

Weeknotes S05 E03: Proof of Life as Resistance

When I write my future memoirs, I hope never to include the line, “I was napping when World War III started.” I mean, c’mon, it sounds more like the opening line of an Etgar Keret short story. But if (when?) future generations ask me where I was when I heard we bombed Iran, the sad truth will be revealed.

With everything going on, I don’t know what the point of a weeknotes post would be right now. Like Charles Bradley sang, “This world is going up in flames”. But maybe that’s why I need to write one. Proof of life as resistance.

There are moments when my typical attitude of “The only way out is through” works against me. Moments when I only have one or two spoons left and it seems like everything on my list takes at least three. And so I look for ways to use the one or two I have left to get me forward anyway, even if 99% of the time all that generates is resentment which is a lousy feeling, but better than the alternatives (not really).

I’m not the only one to know this. I came across this reading Sam Lipsyte’s THE ASK:

I had learned long ago how to refine the raw guilt into a sweet, granulated resentment.

I had a burst of writing energy for the past couple of weeks which is on the usual trend downward and I know I’m there because while I know I need three spoons to working on my current short story, I feel like I need to be using use the one or two I’ve got to do what I “should” be doing. Like, reading all the stuff that’s won Nebula, Locus, or Stoker awards this month rather than 15-year old litfic novels. Or grousing about an article on AI boosterism I never expected to see in BREVITY, of all places.

I mean, c’mon…

And just as a hammer can build Habitat for Humanity or take a human life, the tool is dependent on the human user.

Yeah, except that hammer’s design wasn’t stolen off of the work of people’s blood, sweat & tears and mass-produced via a gross waste of natural resources. But I digress. After all, that’s not the worst thing going on in the world this week, is it?

Writer Harvey Pekar narrating a comic panel from a piece called "The Terminal Years" (c) 1999 Harvey Pekar Art by Gary Dumm Maybe holding on to my remaining spoons would’ve been a better idea. On the other hand, maybe fellow Clevelander Harvey Pekar has it right.

Fuck it, here’s one skirmish. Now, what’s my next one gonna be?

Weeknotes S05 E02: Carnival Like No One’s Watching

It’ll be a short one today. I’m tired, my family’s tired, it’s been A Week. While the world is on fire, our home had a couple of plumbing-related mishaps that had to be dealt with along with everything else. Still, we found the time and a little bit of energy to enjoy a tiny little pop-up carnival held for the second year in a row in the parking lot of the local almost-dead mall.

Elevated shot of a pop-up carnival in a mall parking lot in front of an abandoned Dick's Sporting Goods

When you think about it, it really is our way of protesting. The Fam is actually a perfect intersection of about 99% of everything the current regime hates. ICE has already been through here once and they’d probably still be here if they weren’t busy handcuffing US Senators in California while “liberating” Los Angeles.

WRITING
I was only 3 days out of 7 trying to keep The Chain going. Like I said, it’s been A Week.

But I did have a couple of bright spots.

LISTENING
Last fall’s release of DANCE, NO ONE’S WATCHING by Ezra Collective got by me, but I rectified that this week!

READING

I had a chance to pick up THE ASK by Sam Lipsyte on the cheap and the discovery of this passage made it worthwhile, hitting me in a personal way that I haven’t been since Etgar Keret’s “What Do We Have In Our Pockets.”

I’d had a hard time deciding whether to carry a knapsack, a messenger bag, a canvas book bag, or a briefcase. Each seemed to embody a particular kind of confusion and loss.

Weeknotes S05 E01: Return of the Mack

Watch my flow.

WRITING:
Feels like the time of year where I feel I have the space and the spoons to start reconnecting with the writing world again. If past is prologue, it may not last long. But if I’m not here for a long time this yeear, let’s make it a good time!

It’s been a minute since I put up one of these. It’s also been a minute that I’ve been this consistent, with short fiction at least.

Screen shot of a Google calendar showing red banners on dates in June when I met a writing goal.

LISTENING:
It was also a week to splurge on music, apparently.

Why did I not know that one of my favorite trumpet players has been part of an all-star jazz band that’s put out 3 albums on Blue Note in the past 5 years until I saw this Tiny Desk Concert? You know I picked up their latest album ARBORESQUE the microsecond after I watched.

ARBORESQUE by Artemis on Blue Note Records

I’ll also throw my money at The Budos Band and their brand of Psych Funk for the End Times. BUDOS VII is not one to sleep on, folks!

I swear, you look at the tracklist for their last 2 or 3 records, and it reads like the table of contents of someone’s Weird Fiction story collection.

READING:
Came across this article on The 1970s “Filipino Invasion” of Comics, and it reminded me of a relative who was an artist himself with “I could’ve been a contender” stories about the days when he hung out with Romeo Tanghal and Whilce Portacio. But, as is typical, the good old days weren’t always good…

The Filipino Invasion has a complicated history: there’s the implied union busting and opportunistic underpayment, plus allegations that DeZuñiga, who served as a go-between for DC and the Philippines-based artists, skimmed a percentage off the top without DC’s knowledge. But none of that negates the beauty of the work that Filipino artists did in comics during this period (and continue to do!), or the importance of recognizing and celebrating their contributions.

If nothing else, I’ve kept a full book-reading dance card. On tap right now:

That’s all I’ve got right now.

2024 Reading

2024 was a “good enough” year for reading, but this was definitely the best year I’ve had actually documenting it, at least the book-length stuff. I even managed to finish some things (in bold). Pen and paper saves the day!

The Little Green God of the Library Slip. Poster by Magazine & Book Co., 1910. Prints & Photographs Division

THE LONELINESS FILES by Athena Dixon

THE BODY KEEPS THE SCORE by Bessel A. van der Kolk

1000 WORDS by Jami Attenberg

PLACES WE LEFT BEHIND by Jennifer Yang

BODY WORK by Melissa Febos

THE SITUATION AND THE STORY by Vivian Gornick (reread)

UPRIGHT BONDS by Lincoln Michel

FUGUE STATE by Brian Evenson

LOVE & INDUSTRY by Sonia Huber

TRUTH IS THE ARROW, MERCY IS THE BOW by Steve Almond

FARAWAY PLACES by Tom Spanbauer

PERCHANCE TO DREAM by Charles Beaumont

CREATIVITY by John Cleese

SCRATCHED by Elizabeth Tallent

A COLLAPSE OF HORSES by Brian Evenson

WRITING ON EMPTY by Natalie Goldberg (reread)

BLOOD, BONES & BUTTER by Gabrielle Hamilton (reread)

VERGE by Lidia Yuknavitch

RIVETHEAD: TALES FROM THE ASSEMBLY LINE by Ben Hamper (reread)

MURDER AND MAMON by Mia P. Manansala

QUIET: THE POWER OF INTROVERTS IN A WORLD THAT CAN’T STOP TALKING by Susan Cain

I sandbagged on documenting the short fiction and non-fiction I’ve read, but maybe that’s a target for next year.

Weird Nonfiction? Why Not?

You all know I love Weird Fiction, so I couldn’t help but click on this article title from the LARB. I honestly can’t tell whether or not this is a put on. And that maybe tells me this piece is actually doing the genre’s work.

More often than not, weird nonfiction is intended as either comedy or horror—sometimes both. Its natural home is the internet, where disinformation and pissant humor are architectural principles. The element of unreality in all of the titles listed above is not just a fib or a joke but also an outright structural provocation, daring the audience to follow it into an abyss. Like weird fiction, weird nonfiction is built around some unknowable terror, replacing the tentacled horrors of H. P. Lovecraft with the many-tentacled horrors of being online and alive in the 21st century. It also suggests, in the process, that there is something unfathomable at the heart of reality itself, and that it is the duty of journalism to circumnavigate this terror if never speak it aloud. I humbly submit that weird nonfiction seems particularly well suited to reporting on climate change, but have not seen it done with the vigor that subject deserves.

—“Weird Nonfiction” by Clayton Purdom

Benny Golson, 1929-2024

Benny Golson, a preeminent tenor saxophonist who was also the composer of such elegant jazz standards as “I Remember Clifford,” “Along Came Betty” and “Whisper Not,” died Sept. 21 at his home in Manhattan. He was 95.

Benny Golson, jazz saxophonist and composer of surpassing grace, dies at 95

The Art Farmer/Benny Golson Jazztet was my first real reference point for the performance and, really, the culture of jazz music outside of anyone named Davis, Coltrane, or Monk.

The first track I ever heard from their 1960 MEET THE JAZZTET album was “Killer Joe.” Golson’s narration at the beginning of the tune is just as important to me as Art Farmer’s trumpet solo.

Don’t we all know a Killer Joe as described by Benny Golson?

Ruby

I don’t own this yet, but as I liken listening to Dave Guy’s RUBY to hearing Herb Alpert playing with the Stax records house band instead of the TJB, it’ll be in my downloads when I get home.

Unless you are the type to read album credits you may never have heard his name, but you have heard him play. In fact, you have likely seen him play. Whether in person at a show or on national television he has lent his talents to a who’s who list of world famous artists both in the recording studio and on stage.

I do read album credits, I had heard his name, I have seen him play live (with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, the Menahan Street Band), on TV with The Roots, and he’s definitely popped up in my playlists randomly–like, for instance, on my favorite cover of “Valerie” by the Zoutons–and other places.

You know, why wait? I’ma buy this now.

Lost in the Translation

Today I learned that Richard Matheson didn’t like an episode of THE TWILIGHT ZONE that he wrote, “The Invaders.”

“I never liked it,” Matheson said. “I don’t like it today. For one thing, I think it’s incredibly slow-moving. My script had twice as much incident as they used in the final version; it moved like a shot. The teaser alone, of the woman cutting vegetables and then hearing the noise, it seems like it takes her forever to get up to the roof.”

Sounds like his nits were more to do with how his script was translated to screen, which is not an uncommon sentiment among screenwriters, playwrights, etc. The criticisms aren’t invalid, though. Still, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. My treasure, anyway. One that I once memorialized in my dayjob office.

How “The Invaders” taught me at a young age how point of view could be leveraged (even before I had the language to really describe it) is priceless.