Art at the Thanksgiving/start-of-the-Christmas season nexus

Friday 11/28/25

This entry will pertain to what I've done lately, thoughts of now, a lot of what I did yesterday on Thanksgiving, and items and ideas and aims as the Christmas season gets underway.

I can't believe the things that people choose to focus on and partake of. I mean, I can. But they all think alike, and they all do the same things. They can't find anything on their own. They have no curiosity. You look at social media. The endless posts about nothing but Stranger Things, NFL Thanksgiving football, the Beatles' Anthology, bitching about the Macy's parade. It's a parade--it doesn't matter. That parade mattered the most it's ever going to when it was depicted in Miracle on 34th Street. That's all the parade you'll ever need.

Simple, simple, simple, incurious creatures, dependent on what is spoon fed to them. And that's enough. They want of nothing else. They will explore nothing else. It all comes down to what has been determined will be spoon fed to them. You can't tell them apart. They talk the same, too. We can be all of these things, be all of these things to each other, learn all of these things, experience all of these things, grow in so many ways, and we elect not to do any of it. Just open the mouth for the baby food.

You'd have to teach someone how to be curious now. They're require a class to "learn" the skill. It shouldn't be a skill. But now it is; as well as something that never occurs to anyone to be. People don't even know what curiosity is. When you don't know what curiosity is, you also don't know what wonder is. When you don't know what wonder is, you're someone who has never experienced wonder. When you are someone who hasn't experienced wonder, are you even human? Beyond that being your species, I mean. Are you truly alive?

People would need YouTube videos where someone teaches them how to be curious. But they wouldn't remember an hour later. They don't retain. They certainly don't retain and then put into practice. They most definitely don't retain, put into practice, and do so consistently or the long term. Now you're subjected to every last thought of these people. People. Because there aren't really "these people." It's how almost everyone is. And these people share every last thought they have on places like social media. And you know what might be the most terrifying thing of all here?

Never--never, never, never, never, never--is one of these thoughts vaguely interesting. Like we are incapable as a species in producing one single interesting thought between the billions of us. Not literally--but it isn't far enough off that you can't say what I've just said and have it be essentially true.

Things like the Beatles' Anthology video series are more for people who want to have parasocial relationships than they are people who care about music and art. There is little to these videos. They're visual surface-scrapers. They mean almost nothing to me. How a person feels about them will tell you all you'll ever need to know about that person, chances are. If you yourself are someone who cares about art, substance, insight.

Look at this:

Just finished Death by Lightening on Netflix. Really great. Garfield, had he lived, might have been one of the most important presidents in American history.

Social media post, of course. You can't even spell "lightning," Jack. You had never heard of Garfield until a Netflix series came out. But this guy--this uneducated boob--not only knows enough about American history and the presidency and all of the presidents of the United States to say Garfield may have been one of the most important, but he says this as if there can be no way he doesn't know. This idiot.

That's America. That's the world. Overconfident, clueless, brainless, arrogant simpletons.

I can't imagine carrying myself like this. Just saying that I know, like I've spent my life studying this particular subject, put in all of the long hours, the decades, here's a huge statement, the actual knowing of which would require so much, you know, actual knowledge, when I know nothing and didn't even know the name of whatever I'm talking out of my ass about the day before I watched a Netflix show pertaining to that thing.

This is also why people watch Ken Burns' formulaic airport-bookstore-approach-to-history documentaries and say they're amazing. That would be the same people standing outside of the Bunker Hill Monument with me who read the plaque at the base and say, "Damn, did you know they had a battle here?"

I just cannot imagine being like that and going around like that. I'd remove myself from the world to spare others from me. I just can't wrap my mind around the idea of being okay with being this way.

I would never act like I knew if I didn't know that I did. I'd feel so ashamed, like such a loser, a pathetic imposter, a shameless poseur. I wouldn't be able to live with myself. The thing for these people, though--which is to say everyone--is that they don't have to worry about someone coming along and exposing and embarrassing them by actually knowing, because no one knows anything. That's what people want: A world where no one knows better than they do.

Can you really not understand that that's the basis of everything now? That's the basis of having a large following. It's many, many, many people looking at you and recognizing you as someone who knows no more than they do.

How can people not get this? If you can't see it for yourself, how can you not understand once it's pointed out? How can you not see what is in front of your eyes even then?

And when someone does know, people don't like it or that person, because a halt has been put to their fun. They can't say whatever they want now, which is all people want to do, and feel like they're getting attention for what they're saying, because the person who knows may cause others to laugh at them. This is why we hate the person who does know. And the person who is the expert in god knows how many different things?

That is the person we want less than anyone else in our society. That person could save the world. But the world is going to do what it can not to let them.

Finished rereading William Sloane's The Edge of Running Water. Eighty percent of the novel takes place in about a day.

A new (partial) tape of a Joy Division show from St. George's Hall in Bradford on October 25, 1979 recently surfaced. Someone put out a call asking if anyone had anything from a private collection, and this guy who had made a recording that night came forward. Was really glad to land a file.

Need to write pieces on the Beatles' Anthology 4 and the Who's first album and what had stood to be the Who's first album, which would have been rather different.

Finished film pieces on The Wolf Man, The Most Dangerous Game, and The Brain from Planet Arous. This is from that last one, and, lo and behold, is actually funny, something writers are now incapable of:

Find a less-than-fun John Agar film and here’s betting you could also pull a four-leaf clover out of your ear whenever you wished. He plays scientist (because you always need scientists in these types of films) Steve Marsh. Sally (Joyce Meadows) is his girl and he has a friend named Dan (Robert Fuller) who likes to explore caves with him and life is pretty fine with plenty of beer and backyard cookouts and this sweet work/life balance until this psycho brain the size of a stubby cactus shows up and murders his pal in their favorite cave, then enters Steve’s own body and takes it over, and if that weren’t bad enough, starts making it with the delectable Sally.

Thankfully, there’s Vol, who talks in a soothing, AI-cadenced voice and is committed to pumping you up. “You got this, champ. No one could do it better than you.” The kind of thing that should especially appeal to those of you currently in a romance with a form of technology. Part of his plan—which Sally and her dad (Thomas Browne Henry) are on board with—involves hopping into the body of Sally’s faithful dog George and shadowing Gor/possessed Steve, waiting for the perfect time when they separate for a few seconds to then strike Darth Lobes here dead square through his fissure of Rolando, which sounds like a perineum type of deal, but isn’t.

Agar gets quite sweaty with the extra brain inside of him. His eyes blacken, which helps them shoot hot rays of death that bring down planes from out of the sky and scares even the leader of the big bad Soviet Union shitless. This is also a brain that has a hard time keeping it in its pants, so to speak. The comments that Gor makes regarding Sally, who he describes as a “very exciting female,” are equal parts “What is wrong with you?” and “Okay, that’s pretty funny.” As when he tells Steve (before, ironically, inserting himself into Steve), “I will enjoy being you tonight” because Sally gives him a very strange and new…elation.

I've conceivably been doing more of what I call "head work"--which is integral to my art--than at any time previously. I sit or lay there and I create, develop, hold that work there to grow some more on its own--which is what will happen with or without me now that it exists--and move along to another. I will hold and have six new works in my head thusly. I'll not forget anything about any of them, because it isn't possible for me to do so once they are there. I will be made aware of all. The characters make everything known to me. It's their show. Their beach, their ocean. In some ways, I am a ghostwriter. They are more real than me because they are more real than anything.

Much of this head work has pertained to Christmas stories. I'm thinking I may go on an epic run in December, and do what would seem like an impossible amount of creating in such and such a time. A run for history.

I had said that "You Write a Story" is done. Got that covered. You write a story, yes, and you write a story of your life. So many of us write the wrong story, and instead of writing the real story, what ought to be the story, we spend our time and energy trying to make the wrong story fly/work.

The work progresses on "You're Probably Just Tired," "Boom the Ball," and "Dead Thomas." I've been working on that last one on this Thanksgiving morning. The first sentence was tweaked again. More words were excised--it's under 6000 words now. This is all fine work.

Still need to officially determine that I am done with "Love, Your Mouse" and "Still Good," which will be when I think there isn't any way whatsoever that they can be made better. A half dozen finish lines/end points are right there, though. As more such journeys are being undertaken and are undertaken. Things happen at once here; that is part of how each thing itself happens.

The Thanksgiving op-ed on The Bob Newhart Show's "Over the River and Through the Trees" episode didn't run.

I watched 1979's Phantasm. A film of its own self-contained world. It's interesting. Doesn't make a lot of sense but also does within the context of itself. I've been considering writing a longer piece about it.

Reading Rhoda Broughton's Tales for Christmas Eve (1872). Going to read a bunch of Christmas mysteries this year after this one.

Listened to a modern radio adaptation of A.M. Burrage's 1931 Christmas story, "Smee." Wasn't very good, but tolerable. I like the story a lot. It's surprising that it's been attempted so few times on radio. You'd think it would have been trotted out a bunch in the 1940s especially.

Also listened to a 1957 recording of Emelyn Williams performing Charles Dickens' "The Signal-Man," that was broadcast on the BBC in 1958, making it the oldest surviving broadcast of the story. Well done by Williams. The recording runs a quarter of an hour.

Spent some time with the Grateful Dead's 11/15/71 version of "Dark Star" from the Austin Municipal Auditorium in Texas, a rare first set "Dark Star." The Dark Stars of each year are different than the Dark Stars of every other year. I'm talking about 1967-1974 now, and yes, I count 1967 because even though a work might not be formally called "Dark Star" within the live context, it is a form of "Dark Star."

1971 Dark Stars are misunderstood, I feel. And overlooked. That year is seen as the Dead's garage band year, rather than a grandeur year, and it's human nature in following to ascribe--perhaps without meaning to--certain predetermined limitations to the Dark Stars of that year. The year's reputation precedes the Dark Stars of it, if you follow me, and alters how one might have otherwise come to those Dark Stars. The splendor is there, though. It's just different. But no less rich. This particular version possesses a celestial elegance. Sometimes it can feel like the Dead have pulled something out of the grand cosmic design and "Dark Star" is a musical version of a part of that coding.

I read this review that Art Farmer wrote about Ornette Coleman's Something Else!!!! in The Jazz Review, which was a compelling little piece, both for what it said in terms of analysis, and as a snapshot from history with Farmer attempting to square just what it was he had heard. He was trying to be fair and open-minded, and thought his effort admirable. I also understand why Coleman would give someone like Farmer real pause. I like this line: "Coleman doesn't know his instrument in the ordinary sense, but then, most of the alto players I know don't know their instruments in the way he does."

Downloaded Hank Snow's The Thesaurus Sessions, 500 vintage Christmas radio programs that cover an amazing gamut--a remarkable trove; Ella Fitzgerald's The Concert Years, the complete correspondence between Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thomas Carlyle, the Deluxe Edition of the Replacements' Let It Be, several Wilf Carter packages, many Jeff Beck bootlegs, a fifty-one disc rockabilly box set, all of the David Suchet Hercule Poirot TV adaptations, what I believe--I need to double check--is the whole of the John Moffatt Poirot BBC radio adaptations, a plethora of off-air audio recordings of Doctor Who with William Hartnell, Gene Vincent's final radio session from 1971, Blind Blake's complete remastered output on JSP, a newly discovered Charlatans show from 1990.

Emailed a pdf of that book about Solomon Willard--the architect of the Bunker Hill Monument--to one of the rangers I'd been talking to about it.

Watched the 1971 film, Vermont People: Chester Grimes, which was an entry in a PBS series about working lives in Vermont. Grimes was a seventy-one-year-old active logger who worked by himself in the forest with his two horses. It's a film of real beauty, reminding me in some ways of Frederick Wiseman's Belfast, Maine. It was shot in autumn--it looks to be late November--and there's this transfixing poetical rhythm to the crane picking up birch tree logs against a backdrop of slope-shouldered, rolling hills, the leaves in their various end-of-autumn states, that is soothing and impetus and reason for contemplation.

I found a way to download a copy of the film this morning for when it's pulled down from the site that has made it available currently. The accents of Grimes and the people he interacts with are something else. That is the quintessence of the Yankee accent. Can't imagine you can find many examples of it now in this, its purest form. You'd probably have to venture into those same hills. This film could play on a loop on a screen in a room and you could enter and watch, and leave and come back and watch. Have it just be there. I would do that if I was in my house in Rockport. And though I may never be, that's also why I wanted to download it, in case I am ever out of this hell and I am back there.

Two other entries in the series are available right now. There are others, but try as I have, I can't locate them. Someone like Van Gogh would love this film. It's honest. The work is honest. The soul of the worker doing this work is honest.

Went to the Brattle yesterday on Thanksgiving to see Home Alone. I'd never seen it all the way through. My sister has recommended that I should. But every time I have started watching it, I think, "This is stupid," and I do something else. Well, now I can say that I've watched the whole thing, and yes, it is stupid.

I think the people who like it do so because of "nostalgia"--which I hate--and because they grew up watching it, or watched it at a certain time in their lives and they're going back to that moment, or they're just not very bright and are easily amused. The kid's acting is horrible. The writing is horrible. The scenarios just stupid. Nothing is convincing. There are no funny lines. You can tell when they're trying for a funny line, but they all fall flat.

It's aged poorly. This isn't something that feels fresh and new. It feels like a movie that was in a can in the basement. Reminded me of National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation in that regard. People talk about how they love these films, but I think if you actually sat down with them as adults and put these films on, and it was the two of you sitting there, watching them together, that that would be an awkward experience and not one they'd wish to repeat. There's a single sort of decent scene, that being the one in the church. Both Home Alone and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation are the opposite of something like 1949's Holiday Affair, a Christmas film that has aged wonderfully and feels fresher by the year.

Being out yesterday on Thanksgiving afternoon, you get a deeper sense of how hard holidays are for people. There's more mental illness on display. More people who just broke, and are alone on the subway, or wandering the streets, talking to themselves. There was a man on the T having conversations to the air with friends he doesn't have. I didn't hear from my own mother yesterday. She went to a gathering with my sister and my sister's kids. She didn't even send me a text. She knows where it's at. But she hit the like button on an Instagram post containing some incomparable, and incomparably human, beautiful, and miraculous words from "Dead Thomas." She hits the like button for anything. She won't say a word to me about those words, though.

If my sister was in some bad situation and alone, there's no earthly way she wouldn't have reached out. Let alone this situation. Let alone clinging to life, which is what I'm doing now. To get to tomorrow is becoming harder and harder. Not even a text. Not even, "I love you, I'm here, take yourself of yourself today." One person said something to me yesterday. It was a man in a wheelchair coming around the corner at Government Center on the side where The Friends of Eddie Coyle ends, but down closer to where there's now a playground for kids. He was rolling fast. And he said, "Happy Thanksgiving, brother." I said it back very sincerely, too. That was Thanksgiving here. That, and a lot of this.

A lot of pain. The thing about pain is, when you speak up to those who are a source, they get angry. They're hurt. Or, they feel like they've failed. Let you down. Now they are the aggrieved party. With the burden. Of suffering. That's both how they frame it, and how it actually feels to them, because people can't rise up. They are so weak. Frail. And they have an attitude that feeds frailty. On the day I die--if things don't improve as I so desperately need them to--there could well be a moment when I tell myself not to give in, that I try to rally. That I intend to. And it wasn't enough. Too much had happened to me. Too much pain. I've already endured more than anyone could. Heroism really is endurance for one moment more. But other people? They won't even try to rally. To rise up. To say to themselves, "So what are you going do to about it? Do something, you bitch. Rise up." They're not. And they're helping usher me out of this world. It's a lot of things.

That rumble of low chords at the beginning of 1951's Scrooge--courtesy of Richard Addinsell--is so disconcerting. Does any film have a more ominous aural beginning? You feel the discomfort in these chords deep in your chest.

Got tickets to Boston Camerata's Sing We Noel: Christmas Music from England and Early America and The Midnight Cry: An American Christmas, at Old South Church on Boylston Street on December 7 and at First Church in Cambridge on December 21 respectively. I love the Boston Camerata and listen to their albums often. Their Sing We Noel LP is one I think about playing in my house in Rockport should I ever get it back and what that would be like.

Their performance of "Gloucestershire Wassail" numbers among my favorite works of musical Christmas art. I hope to be able to hear it "live" in a couple weeks. This will be good for me. To work hard, to keep fighting, and to walk to the church on Boylston feeling tired but knowing I am doing my best, and then to come out afterwards in the dark and the cold and pass through the Public Garden and over the bridge into the Common with the Christmas lights and me and my thoughts and nothing else.