{"id":431,"date":"2024-08-18T15:32:07","date_gmt":"2024-08-18T15:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/?p=431"},"modified":"2024-08-18T17:54:40","modified_gmt":"2024-08-18T17:54:40","slug":"what-ive-been-up-to-what-ive-been-reading-lately","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/2024\/08\/18\/what-ive-been-up-to-what-ive-been-reading-lately\/","title":{"rendered":"What I’ve been up to, what I’ve been reading lately"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n

So you might have thought I died or something. In all truthfulness, I have, many times over. And each time I woke up I\u2019d look around and say, \u201cWhere was I?\u201d Not receiving any response, I\u2019d ask again, \u201cWhere am I?\u201d But I never heard the answer, because some imperative would impose\u2014say, an approaching deadline for a tax form, or the unexpected failure of the starter of my car\u2014and addressing that issue meant to give up listening and plug my semi-compatible wires into a vast, diesel-scented system of habits and reflexes. I\u2019ve already died again, by this point, without realizing it. It takes a while to realize you\u2019ve died, which is simply another way of saying, it takes a while to come back to life. \u2028\u2028I\u2019ve passed through that cycle countless times since my tour. So many times that the tour days seem completely foreign and even the lyrics to my newest songs, that I knew back & forthwards only three months ago are now hard to remember\u2026<\/p>\n

I think I forgot 1) I can write here anytime – it is my website after all ; and 2) I don\u2019t have to labor the structure as if I were in school, and can write conversationally.<\/p>\n

In fact, I\u2019ve been sick, with the flu, or something else horrible. Decommissioned for a few days\u2014aching body, alternating between fever and shivers, sweating buckets, coughing up blobs. With sickness, though, comes the benefit of being forced to slow down. The psychological changes allow a different sort of perspective, similar to a small dose of mushrooms. And there\u2019s a closeness to death that makes life seem more precious. Even when healthy, I\u2019m an easy cryer, tearing up every couple of days (almost always when alone, usually a sense of wistfulness, especially when listening to music, watching movies, or reading). When I\u2019m sick, this multiplies by about ten.<\/p>\n

So this is the part I really wanted to get to: books, movies, and music that I\u2019ve been into lately.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve had a long-distance relationship with reading in the last few years, meaning \u201cwe don\u2019t see each other so often,\u201d mostly because I feel like I\u2019m not \u201cworking\u201d while doing it, so I leave books until bed, always surprised at how quickly I\u2019d fall asleep. Drinking at night adds another distance. Reading while drinking is just impossible for me, though I have never ceased to try. This state of affairs led to me not reading much at all, which is the flipside of when I was younger and would spend long stretches of time just reading and feeling a book, in the middle of the day, outside or inside. I loved that and have missed it for years. But I\u2019ve only done it twice, when the book wouldn\u2019t let me do otherwise (Overstory<\/em> by Richard Powers and Ferrante\u2019s My Brilliant Friend<\/em>). Other than that, I\u2019ve felt obligated to do other things. When people have given me books as gifts, while thanking them, I\u2019ve thought, with considerable sadness, “I\u2019ll never have time to read this.”<\/p>\n

This was especially true between 2021 and 2023 when I was doing a master\u2019s thesis on Samuel Beckett. My advisor was Lydie Parisse, a brilliant & eccentric writer and artist whose goal in teaching seemed to be to remain as detached as possible from the whole process and concentrate on her real work, which was writing fiction, theater, and criticism, directing plays, and making visual art. I genuinely liked her a lot, and though at first I think she was skeptical, in the end she seemed to like me too. At the first meeting between Madame Parisse, myself, and the two other students she was mentoring, she told us to read everything ever written by the author we were studying. So for two years I was reading Beckett and little else (I actually had to read novels for other classes, too, much of which I just couldn\u2019t finish in time) I mostly just made it through the \u201cgreatest hits\u201d of Beckett (I recommend Molloy<\/em>). As I was writing the 100+ page essay in French on Beckett, I remember thinking, what is all this work for, when it seems like once it\u2019s written, it will only serve to get a grade, and then very likely never be re-read again? And now, that exact thing has happened. That\u2019s fairly sad, as I could have spent that time working on something that would actually make a difference in the world\u2014some music or anything. But, if you want, go ahead and read my Beckett paper. I\u2019ll put it here for you.<\/a><\/p>\n

Back when I was on the tour, I was listening to a lot of audiobooks while driving, and I found one with an exciting idea: The Dawn of Everything<\/em> by David Graeber and David Wengrow. That book critiques the general accepted story of the inevitable progressive development of human society, from hunter-gatherers to agriculturalists to capitalists. I love critiques that show that the way the world is assumed to be, is not how it has to be. I guess I\u2019ve always been bewildered to see how people walk around thinking everything is normal\u2014it is in fact, extremely weird. Everything that happens is a one in a billion chance\u2014we\u2019re riding a never ending wave of unlikeliness that is constantly happening, and when we reach our foot out, away from the wave, the wave moves where we step. Well, I\u2019m getting very far away from the subject of this book, which is a critique of received ideas of anthropology, which primarily elevate european views at the expense of indigenous ones, when, in fact, the book argues, much of the innovation in european enlightenment thought\u2014scientific truth\u2019s basis in physical proof, the importance of deliberation to arrive at truth\u2014comes from observation of cultures encountered in colonial projects.<\/p>\n

I loved that book so I read (these are all audiobooks, by the way\u2014I listen to them with Libby, the library app. If you\u2019ve never heard of it, see if your library has it) Pirate Enlightenment<\/em><\/strong>, and then Bullshit Jobs<\/em><\/strong>, both also by David Graeber<\/strong> (writing solo this time). This last one is the most impactful book I\u2019ve read in the last few years. It actually made me feel much better about myself, almost like you would expect a self-help book, though it\u2019s actually a very scathing critique of our current economy and its effects on culture and people. I\u2019ll not explain the whole thing, because it\u2019s a popular book and a lot of people know about it, but  this short essay<\/a> sets out the basic idea that he went on to expand in the book. One of the ideas that Graeber attacks is a sort of default attribution of moral goodness to working. I\u2019ve wondered about this question for a while: why would someone who stays home, and does, say, nothing at all, in the most extreme version of sloth imaginable, be considered morally inferior to someone who works for an oil company spreading disinformation about climate change in order to maintain their company’s dominance ? The first does no harm by not working, the second works towards planetary death.  How about workers at an advertising firm that work to make people feel unattractive if they don’t purchase some beauty product placebo? How about someone running a chain of payday loan offices? They’re all “hard workers” that make life worse for everybody.<\/p>\n

Bullshit Jobs<\/em> outlines the resentment felt towards those who work jobs that we as a society deem to be \u201crewarding in themselves.\u201d These would include artistic pursuits, anything with clear ethical goodness (teaching, caregiving, charitable work, etc). This resentment results in relatively lower pay (doctors are an exception) than jobs that have no redeeming value (i.e. corporate lawyer, financial sector), which are rewarded with the highest salaries. Outlining and ridiculing all this resentment made me realize I\u2019ve felt ashamed of things, for years, that I had no need to be ashamed of, that I have no need to feel \u201cless than\u201d for never having built much of a career, and also that I regretted having felt that way, which definitely dampened by artistic pursuits over the years. I also often felt resentment\u2014from the outside, but also a deeply internalized resentment\u2014against myself as one trying to make beauty in the world, and I\u2019m sorry to admit that much of the time I buckled under those feelings.<\/p>\n

This is all to say, though, that, after reading Bullshit Jobs<\/em>, I felt a huge weight lifting off me. I feel much more justified in my own \u201chates\u201d about the way the world works and more resolute in defying that, in my own way, which is imagination-driven. The final chapter of the book suggested, with some reservation, a policy that could attenuate the situation, which is universal basic income, an idea that now sounds pretty appealing to me\u2014but the more important idea I want to communicate is the power of imagination. This quote was brought up probably more than once in the book: \u201cIt is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism\u201d (this seems to be attributed both to Slavoj Zizek and Fredric Jameson), and that highlights a need for imagination and for art in this world. And yet, it is very hard to be paid for art, so people use most of their energy working and have just a little left over for art. That energy often gets taken up with other things\u2014family, alcohol\/drugs, sports, social media, health problems\u2026 Most artists are those who come from the well-to-do, who of course are much less likely to want to imagine things differently than they are\u2014so we get a lot of boring stories about people in New York who are studying writing, going out to eat and sleeping around, etc. Haha! I\u2019m showing my grouchiness\u2014but how often do I start to read New Yorker<\/em> or Harper\u2019s<\/em> fiction and find another story like that\u2014brilliantly written always but that leaves you with a sick feeling that a person from a wealthy background is trying to show how sick the culture is, in a decadent way, as though the aim is just to sicken and die rather than fight for life. That\u2019s kind of at the heart of what I feel when I sing, because I feel something so beautiful and so strong, and it\u2019s life that bursts through that mire, whether the life is explosive or gentle. To sum up, this has just amplified and made real the desperate need for more art-making all across society.<\/p>\n

I barely have gotten to the part I wrote earlier that I was hoping to get to\u2014and the post has gotten a bit long. If you\u2019ve read this far, I couldn\u2019t ask for any more, so I\u2019m just going to very briefly list the things I read\/watched\/listened to while sick this week. It would be ridiculous to claim it\u2019s very original, I just was inspired by one of the things I read, the Steal like an Artist<\/em> audio trilogy by Austin Kleon, to do it. This book has a lot of short takes on different ideas about making art, and it\u2019s kind of like a free book shelf, you just take what interests you and leave behind the rest. There was plenty I found helpful in there\u2014including the idea of using the internet to be open about what you\u2019re up to, what you\u2019re reading, etc., as a way of being part of a community. That struck me as a great idea, because I\u2019m always curious about what other people are into and especially artists I like, and so I\u2019m going to start this and hopefully be able to connect with people more through it. It would be great to keep up the bonds of friendship that were rekindled on my tour with some people that I rarely get to see, since I live in rural France\u2026<\/p>\n

Murakami Manga Stories<\/em> – I\u2019d never read Murakami before but Yuri\u2019s dad gave her this book, and when I was feeling very feverish and tired, reading a comic book seemed like the way to go. I read mountains of comics when I was a kid, and a few graphic novels like Watchmen<\/em>, Maus<\/em> (this was actually assigned reading) and Jimmy Corrigan<\/em> in college, but comics are a pleasure I often deny myself. I really really enjoyed this and it made me want to read more of this very well-known author that I\u2019d always avoided, I guess because he seemed \u201ctoo popular\u201d (I can be stupid like that, usually ends up with me missing out on good things). That is definitely the case with Murakami, because I feel like he\u2019s a kindred spirit. I\u2019m reading The Disappearing Elephant<\/em>, a short story collection, and also listening to, concurrently, his other short story collection First Person Singular<\/em>, and his nonfiction collection Novelist as a Vocation<\/em>. I was especially crazy about the stories \u201cThe Second Bakery Attack\u201d and \u201cCharlie Parker Plays Bossa Nova.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Rediscovery of America<\/em> by Ned Blackhawk, which tells the history of the colonization of the Americas with emphasis on indigenous peoples. This is another audiobook\u2014I can\u2019t say I\u2019m remembering all the many details by any stretch, but definitely seeing the grand contours of Indian life in America. It\u2019s around the mid-1700s right now, and I\u2019m very eager to hear about the early 1800s when my ancestors, extremely shamefully fought, Creek\/Muscogee indians in South Alabama.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Pleasure of a Working Life\u201d by Michael Deagler, Harper\u2019s<\/em>, June 2024. This is a beautiful story that I loved so much I wrote the author fan mail at the end. I recommend it so much, a really strong vision of an everyday, pass-the-time kind of middle class existence (the lead character is a postal worker).<\/p>\n

Dune<\/em> – I had never read Dune<\/em>, but I woke up about a month ago, also very sick (I think this is the third time I\u2019ve gotten sick this summer), not having been able to sleep for a runny nose, and I woke up at dawn, took Patti the dog for a walk with my brain in the tremblingest lucidity, and decided, fuck it, I\u2019m gonna find out what Dune\u2019s all about. I started it and was slowly walking around, staring at trees in the gentlest light of morning, and that was a beautiful experience. The book ended up surprising me constantly and I loved being in the huge whirling fantasy-world and got really inspired by the tight-rope walk of heroism that Paul Atreides was doing. I also loved all the built in axioms and lore. Now that I think about it, I was also inspired to read Dune<\/em> by an article in Harper\u2019s<\/em> called \u201cThe Gods of Logic\u201d that mentioned how Dune<\/em>\u2019s society is based on an ancient (in the timeline of the novel) rejection of artificial intelligence. Also, when I was little, my older brothers were fans of David Lynch\u2019s Dune<\/em> (there was a poster on the wall by our Apple IIc computer), and I remember seeing it at way too young of an age and it was, of course, fascinating and scary. I need to rewatch that now, because I\u2019m sure there are some deeply-buried psychological images in there.<\/p>\n

I watched The Creeping Terror<\/em>, which was recommended by Lux Interior in an interview cited in article I read about the Cramps and horror. I checked the trailer out and had to watch the movie. It violates the \u201cscariest monster is the one you never see\u201d rule to the extreme – the monster is right there basking in the light of day within the first five minutes. It\u2019s a flabby, formless, enormous thing. Almost every bit of dialogue in the movie is inaudible and explained by a voiceover saying, \u201cBarney said\u2026 and Martin reacted with disbelief.\u201d There are very long dance sequences with very little action. Really muted reactions to horrible screaming deaths. This was a very, very cool movie.<\/p>\n

Ikiru<\/em> – amazing vision of 1950s Tokyo. I cried a few oceans of tears. A good one to watch while sick as those \u201ccould it be cancer\u201d thoughts start banging around, and the lead character has stomach cancer. (this is the first thing you know about him, so no spoiler here). Many parallels between this movie and Bullshit Jobs<\/em>\u2014the main character has worked his whole life in a soulless, bureaucratic position, and when he learns he\u2019ll die soon, he tries to change his life and the way his work functions.<\/p>\n

Vivre sa vie<\/em>, this a Godard film, and it actually made me cry as well. I still haven\u2019t seen lots of Godard movies and feel like I don\u2019t understand him, he\u2019s so loved by academic types and, though I am kind of like that, I also have to say, I can hardly stand a lot of academic writing on literature and stuff\u2014I don\u2019t understand it and don\u2019t understand the point of it. Occasionally it seems to cut to the quick, but often it just seems beyond me, with all the jargon and stuff. But whenever I read quotes by Godard, I think Yes, I\u2019m going to love this guy\u2026 I think he\u2019s an intellectual who cuts to the quick, who is human, fleshbound, and I think, after seeing this movie, I could kind of see why, but I don\u2019t think I\u2019m quite smart enough to explain why.<\/p>\n

That was a bit long so I\u2019ll stop here. I could add other stuff but we\u2019ll save that for another day. Thank you for being here, and leave a comment if you like. I don\u2019t think anyone has done that so far on this web site.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So you might have thought I died or something. In all truthfulness, I have, many times over. And each time […]<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"bgseo_title":"","bgseo_description":"","bgseo_robots_index":"index","bgseo_robots_follow":"follow","site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=431"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":442,"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/431\/revisions\/442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=431"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=431"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.alegendinthefieldofentertainment.com\/fr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=431"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}