Cutting in All Directions

I'm thinking about Cut by Catherine Lacey again (If you haven’t read it, just go read it, really, and if you stop halfway, text me and I’ll come talk about exactly how you could stop reading, and where, because I have 63 short stories to read, but I couldn’t stop reading hers, if you can’t use the New Yorker’s website walk down to the library, it’s in the periodicals on the right before you get to the Solarium, don’t waste another second here, go find it) I thought about the drapes of her labia, and the “general region of her asshole.” I thought about her dream and I thought about how her city-half moves. I thought about her friend, and her student, and the sanitizing effect of chlorine.

It occurred to me that I was moving through Cut the way Alice Munro describes:

I can start by reading them anywhere; from beginning to end, from end to beginning, from any point in between in either direction...It’s more like a house….I want to make a certain kind of structure, and I know the feeling I want to get from being inside that structure… I’ve got to build up, a house, a story, to fit around the indescribable “feeling” that is like the soul of the story.

Well, maybe I’m just too legalistic? Always starting at the beginning, but my memory of stories can work this way. I do get a certain feeling from Cut, and I can explore it in any direction, every sentence is so rich and connected. This is why I’m curious if you, or anyone, stopped reading, because where? Let’s pick that sentence and move in any direction, it’s interesting, no matter how you explore that house every step is interesting. 

To the Lovely Dark and the Lovely White

John Keats:

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-browed Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific — and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise —
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

      I can only read Fagles myself… The Wikipedia entry for Darien, at this time 4/17/19 anyways, suggests Darien is a province in Panama from where you can apparently see the Valley of Mexico but not the Pacific, and that Keats conflates Cortes’s viewing of the valley with Balboa’s finding of the Pacific.  Maybe then, just as he is mistaken in the poem, he is mistaken in his reading of Chapman? If he reads Chapman as carefully as he reads William Robertson’s History of America, we may well offer a different interpretation.
      So like stout Cortez, when with eagle eyes he stared at the Pacific (he never did) and all his men looked at each other with a wild surmise (perhaps bewildered at what Cortez thought he saw) silent upon a peak in Darien.  So… delirious, on a mountaintop.   Reading Chapman’s Homer is like hallucinating, while your followers look at you in shock, on a peak overlooking Mexico City.

New words: ken

SONNET: KEEN, FITFUL GUSTS ARE WHISP'RING.

KEEN, fitful gusts are whisp'ring here and there
    Among the bushes half leafless, and dry;
    The stars look very cold about the sky,
And I have many miles on foot to fare.
Yet feel I little of the cool bleak air,
    Or of the dead leaves rustling drearily,
    Or of those silver lamps that burn on high,
Or of the distance from home's pleasant lair:
For I am brimfull of the friendliness
    That in a little cottage I have found;
Of fair-hair'd Milton's eloquent distress,
    And all his love for gentle Lycid drown'd;
Of lovely Laura in her light green dress,
    And faithful Petrarch gloriously crown'd.

     So many false trails online (if only a respectable corporation with a search engine algorithm could find a way to bring the best information to the top...) Look here, for a brilliant resource on Keats, Adilegian by James Howell, who explains Lycid drowned, go look there if you’re interested, and Laura in her light green dress, who interests me more than dead college roommates, led me down a path I didn’t want to explore, which is apparently what she does; because having read the line “as beautifully as she who robs me of my will,” I found my loose will restrained by Petrarch language, I want to stop reading #29, but humbly, can not.
      Laura is an uncommon dominatrix, not a boring leather-clad pretender whipping others for payment, she is a real tyrant. Petrarch “cannot even tolerate a lighter yoke,” only her cruelty will do, she makes “all disdain sweet,” and “humiliates” him.  He’s bleeding, with arrow tips piercing his chest, but he won’t cry because it would show he regrets his submission, so his soul sighs, he contemplates suicide but doesn’t want freedom.  He remains shackled, she remains chaste.
      Laurels are an uncommon reward. Petrarch “cannot even tolerate a lighter yoke,” only the ultimate (will to) power of language will do, language makes “all disdain sweet,” and “humiliates” him. He’s bleeding with arrow tips piercing his heart, but he won’t cry because it would show he regrets his submission, so his soul sighs, he contemplates suicide but doesn’t want freedom. He continues writing, writing remains unconquered.

The Hunger Games

A teasing flirt of a read.

A fast-paced, easy to read, "can't put it down" type of a novel.  Simple and well-crafted, it's a teasing glimpse of the first confusing moments we imagine a more naive prettier version of a next door neighbor's daughter's friend might have when discovering what it is to be loved.

Some ways we might describe the Hunger Games

The start of a feeling.  The tip of a feeling.  Learning love.  What is love?  A juvenile romance.

The second book is a B+ bridge book, I didn't get the same satisfaction as from the first in any aspect.

In Mockingjay, I find myself bored with this world, with the war, with the romance, or lack thereof.  I put it down, and have to force myself to pick it up and keep reading.

My favorite part in Mockingjay, by far, is the start of chapter 25: "...knows only a single sensation.... unrelenting burning of flesh.... can't find refuge... I am Cinna's bird, ignited, ... feathers of flame... I consume myself, but to no end"

I read, and reread, and reread again the brilliant first nine paragraphs of chapter 25.

A mental image

Suzanne Collins tells a story to a group of young adults, seated cross-legged in a semi-circle, fidgeting with the carpet or wondering about reaching for cell phones. Self-aware and anxious about keeping her audience, she describes the world at our level, unchallenged and accepting we sit, distracted and amused when she loses herself in the moment. Immediately elevating her form, we glimpse real talent; blissfully unaware and present in her narration, her creativity rises to the luminous.  Metaphor, narration, symbolism, depth, and layers of meaning emerge in a beautiful blend of description and poetry that reminds me of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita after atomic bomb tests, and of a Buddhist monk seated, in lotus pose, burning.

Challenged, her audience now shuffles and reconsiders themselves, some mouths open in awe, some brows furrow with confusion, some glance furtively at their peers wondering how they should react, and some protest by redirecting their attention to other fruitless, mind-numbing and unchallenging distractions.  But beauty has been created, thank you, Suzanne Collins.

Marshmello Fortnite Concert Review - Marshmello Rocks An Absolutely Awesome Show @ Fortnite's Pleasant Park.

At 2 PM 2/2/2018 Marshmello played the largest live music event ever from a stage set up inside the popular game Fortnite.  It will go down in history as the first ever virtual live concert with over 10 million in-game characters in attendance.  Streamers and gamers were blown away by the interactive fan participation in the concert.  Marshmello asked them to jump and on the beat the game switched to low gravity letting millions jump 30 feet into the air, high above the stage and holographic characters dancing on and on top of the stage where Marshmello continued to play. Right on queue with the lyrics "I can Fly" the dance floor and area all around the stage instantly let all the players skydive as if being dropped from the bus.  For 10 minutes the most popular game in the world was Marshmello's personal dance party.

Marshmello, Fortnite and the team at Epic flawlessly delivered a new mixed-medium artform, an in-game virtual concert performed live with interactive fan participation.

You can easily find the show on YouTube but the in-game experience was completely mind-blowing, there is a huge future in virtual music concerts and festivals, whether it takes place within a massively popular game like Fortnite or if artists begin finding ways and locations to host their own shows, there is no denying the fun of attending and participating in a live event from your living room instead of just watching it like a spectator.

When God created Pedro the Lion

When God created Pedro the Lion

From a commiserating fan

Then the Lord God formed Pedro the Lion from the evangelical dust of Phoenix, Arizona, and blessed Pedro the Lion and said, “Create beautiful songs. Your music will move the hearts of thousands, they will hear you sing of your love for the Lord God, and they will know of your relationship with Christ”  And Pedro the Lion performed ‘Lullaby’ at Cornerstone Festival 1999 and God listened and heard that it was good.

Following his purpose, Pedro played his heart out, expressing his doubts, his anger, his logic, his frustration, all the compartments of love scattered on the highway.  And it brought satisfaction and connection to thousands of fans who rejoiced in Control and simultaneously wondered if Pedro the Lion was saved or lost. So Pedro lived, and drove, and drank, and sang.  And many fans said, “but Pedro, he just says it like it is you know, nobody does that like Pedro, and Nick ‘the Greek’ Kashairis  said, “that’s just Pedro.”

I froze as I saw the notification on my phone, “New Album: Phoenix by Pedro the Lion.” Can’t be!? But yes, there it is, released as Pedro the Lion, not Bazan, not Headphones, not some other moniker I won’t remember but will always call Pedro, No, he’s Pedro the Lion again!

And here we go, Bazan and his ‘Yellow Bike,’ right off the bat, conjuring memories of my own first two-wheel bicycle standing by the Christmas tree, drums thumping in my chest, guitar riffs rushing past my cheeks as I remember what it was like, speeding downhill, my own memories blurring in between Bazan’s words, then comes the lonely heartache he knows so well.  Hoping for that astonishing, blatant, emotional scalping of Christianity I’ve come to expect from Pedro I listen to him admonish us to ‘Clean Up’ and wonder if I’ll ever feel the same way I felt when I first heard ‘Rapture’ and ‘Magazine.’ Wonderfully throwing me from ‘Yellow Bike’ into reminiscence, and keeping me there, in that thoughtful, reflective frame of mind, I hear him sing “grown-up mess, I wish I’d….” and I smile at the best line on the album: “I tried eternity and a couple of other drugs."



In ‘Powerful Taboo,’ the ex-Evangelical Christian now turned agnostic listening to, and traveling on a similar path to Bazan’s can thoughtfully nod along, nursing the anger fueled by past repression of “wits” and “good vibrations,” reminding ourselves not to bow in ignorance or fear, that we can accept ourselves for who we are, what we think, and what we do. Reminding ourselves that the painful self-repression suffered for the sake of vicious evangelical dogma is man-made taboo, not eternal, not flawless, but banned by miscalculating simpletons sacrificing logic for the perception of unity with the divine.

A glimmer of oppositional hope rises in the lyrics of ‘Model Homes,’ looking forward, hoping if, not when, and then Pedro invites us to sit with him on the Church pew, in this row of reluctant attendee’s  and consider the beauty on that Piano Bench, try to appreciate the good, quietly listen to a hymn and find that meditative mood before moving on.

Deep slow tones continue to hold childhood in mind and sadden us as we discover with Bazan that it was all spent at ‘Circle K,’ and still, then as now, and when our sons had their jail shoes on, the good Lord smiles and looks the other way.

I haven’t grasped the characters in the ‘Quietest Friend,’ but am quite leery of this “listening.”  Are you wavering Pedro the Lion? I wonder if Bazan wanders back to his Christianity will I watch and feel the same as those Christians who watched him wander this way with us?

Another way home? Where are you going Bazan, the album now turns ominous.  This mysterious “another way” home with someone calling, following and listening scares the calm reflective atheist.

Black Canyon is the standout song on the album, it has humor, depth of meaning, layered meanings and is open for interpretation. My take? The truck is my relationship with God, it killed me and compartmentalized me and through the entire struggle the gory details isolate me further and further, my feelings spread out here on this Hellish road, dead inside but still living alone with this on my back.

‘My Phoenix’ is a terrifying teaser.  Will Bazan try his own version of Christianity?  Does he really now think a Phoenix lies in those evangelical ashes? The dust of Phoenix whipped up inside of him, rising for another shot at love, Bazan teases us, just like the rumor of 5 albums, it piques curiosity.  Are you emotionally prepared for another attempt my good singer friend? If so, let’s hear it.  Good luck to you. Stay honest. Stay true.