Wednesday 1/5/22
There’s a woman at my Starbucks who brings her dog a cup of whip cream. She crouches down with the cup and the dog goes to town. It takes him a while to lick up all of it. The woman is patient and you can tell she loves to see the dog happy. It’s one of the nicest things I see.
A rookie QB season that no one ever talks about: Dan Marino finished third in MVP voting in his rookie year of 1983.
Miles Davis plays some of his best trumpet on Cannonball Adderley’s Somethin’ Else (1958), which I recently listened to again. It’s Adderley’s date, but so much of it is Davis’s gig. He’s deeply infused in everything and takes a number of the opening solos. One of those fascinating jazz one-offs.
Sometimes I have cause to say to myself, "How much Iron Butterfly do you need to listen to, sir?" and then life goes on again.
Those were all things from my Twitter. No one hit the like button, because no one ever does. Why? For the same reason there are no followers, and there is only fear, resentment, hate, envy. Because those things were interesting. Moving. They have substance. They are well-written. That these are bad and undesirable things in our society is what has made the world what it now is. I don't see how someone can fail to see that. I am living proof. Something like the recent Wall Street Journal op-ed did not garner a single share, a single new follower, a single like. Why? Because the person who wrote that piece is smarter than the people who would like, share, or follow. No one wants that. Go through my Twitter. You see it again and again and again, and my Twitter could change your life, be a series of books, fill up your days with knowledge, wit, and entertainment. And I am completely shunned, as a result. There's the proof. There's no conjecture here. I live it. I am it. The problem is greatness. There is nothing this world discriminates against more than greatness. The greater the greatness, the greater the shunning. I am maximumly shunned.
Faith. The time will come when the opposite is true for you.
First story of 2022 is complete: "The Fight Is Real." Masterpiece. Making headway on this new Beatles essay, which is excellent. The former will be in Longer on the Inside: Very Short Fictions of Infinitely Human Lives.
Ran 3000 stairs, same as yesterday. Watched Gatiss's The Dead Room. I like Simon Callow. Further, his multi-volume Orson Welles biography--with one installment still to come--is one of the best biographies I've ever read. He is from a time when people could actually do multiple things.
Pitched something on Ornette Coleman and winter. Came up with one idea pertaining to porn and another pertaining to Nosferatu.
Saw some social media "challenge" today where people listed five subjects they could talk about for a half hour minus any prep. I laughed. How many thousands of topics could I cite? More than thousands. And yet, here I am, and this is the situation. I think about something like Downtown, and those hundreds of hours of expertise on tape. It seems simple, the way I do it. I think I'm taken for granted. "Oh, it's just him, doing what he does." I think it's easier to take it for granted than to confront 1. What that person must be and 2. How the fuck are they where they're at? Why are they paying this price when they can do what they can do, and what they do all the time? But think of how hard that must be. Week in, week out. I'm not going on for seven minutes to talk about what's on sale at my shop. Or to just talk about the Patriots last game. I supply it all. I can do it indefinitely, too. I thought maybe next week I'd do an all jazz thing.
Listened to Five Live Yardbirds and Cream's Wheels of Fire. You can dislike Clapton all you want, but it's silly to pretend he did not have it going on in 1968. As for the Yardbirds, I've always loved Keith Relf. He's just one of my favorites. Favorite singers, favorite harmonica players.
Got some no fat milk for my blood pressure.
A friend's child had a nasty sledding accident, broke her nose, and they had to go see a plastic surgeon today. My friend does not have a hard life by any means--he has what he wants--but he does not do well under pressure. I think a lot of people are this way--pressure and difficulty makes them crack. I have to operate under the most extreme, torturous forms of both constantly. Anyway, I tried to be of help. Hopefully everything went well with the doctor's visit and it was simply precautionary. I feel terrible for the child. That's an awful thing to have happen sledding. My niece was telling my sister that she didn't want to go sledding because "Colin"--titles have been dispensed with--was scared to go sledding. Someone must have told her that at some point and she remembered it. She's pretty sharp. It's true--I am scared to go sledding. I can't do anything with heights save go up and down the Blue Hills. Someone might say, "What about the Monument?" That's different, because I'm encased, and that's a Zulu thing. But I can't even go near the edges of things--like the platforms going up to the American Wing at the MFA--when any height is involved. My niece did skate for the first time the other day, though, in hockey skates, and my sister sent me photos and video.
I wonder if the Monument will ever open again. I wish I could get a private stair runner's key. I was the only one who ever used it to work out. Maybe they could let me let myself in and out.
I'll get a card for my friend's daughter tomorrow and send it to her.