One of these days

Tuesday 5/13/25

Now do the push-ups properly. That's a lot harder, isn't it?

The average Sherlock Holmes story is 8000 words long.

John Clare's final words in the asylum that was so far--though he once escaped and walked all the way there--from the place he longed to be: "I want to go home."

I think about that a lot. I'm living it. I don't want to die in this horrible apartment.

The new title of that story is "That's What We Call a Good Day." This would be the story that was excerpted on 5/7. Normally I'll leave a thing like that up as is, as part of the documentation of a process.

Someone told me I look very tired. But also that my face looked long and thin. I think I have puffiness under the eyes. Maybe there's something I can apply.

I'll get up to do something at the desk when I am otherwise done at the desk though that's never for certain. The plan is to be there for a few seconds or minutes, but then I'll often press play on a version of the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" and then I sit there for forty minutes mesmerized, and it is like time doesn't exist. When the performance is done, it might as well be the exact same time at which it started. I feel no passage of time.

Downloaded various Mississippi John Hurt sets--his 1928 Okeh recordings in best sound, the Library of Congress sessions for Alan Lomax, his complete studio output after his "rediscovery," and a gig he played at Oberlin in 1965.

I wrote about the 1928 Okeh sides in my college thesis. That's what I was doing in college. Listening to Mississippi John Hurt at night. No one else knew him. But I was always like that. The environment never changed it. To me it was normal.

I love "Nobody's Dirty Business."

Some of these mornings gonna wake up crazy

Gonna grab my gun gonna kill my baby...

The riff--and the tone he gets--is just so beautiful. And some of these mornings--not just one of them.

Then he continues

Some of these mornings gonna wake up boozy

Gonna grab my gun gonna kill old Susie...

"Some" again. We suppose that "baby" and "Susie" could refer to a mule or a chicken. A spavined horse. In a pinch. Not the person lately sleeping beside the singer.

"Wake up boozy" is a top phrase. You know exactly what he means. That's a sign of a good writer. They make you think, "I know exactly what is meant by this," but you hadn't thought of that yourself until just then, and you do this crawl of your memories and experiences and they join with your present. Great writers connect us to the parts of ourselves. The writing is both a finding and a binding agent. Write that down, you people in MFA programs. There's more value in what I just told you than you will ever get in any of them. But you're not really there to learn such things though, are you? No one likes an honest man. Speaking of the present. In the year of our Lord 2025, an honest man isn't just the enemy of the state. He is an enemy of our whole way of being. But how is this really working out for anyone?

Mississippi John Hurt recorded that song on Valentine's Day 1928.

Whether I'm listening to Josquin's masses now, or when I was in high school playing the Yardbirds at the Crawdaddy in 1963 in the car. When "Smokestack Lightning" started up--with that enveloping bass tone, that huge groove-that-is-about-to-be starting to come from all sides, and then Keith Relf laying into the thing--that was just normal to me.

Why wouldn't you listen to the likes of this? We're talking before the internet. Now, with the internet, no one knows anything, and you're free to know so much by just moving your fingers. How would anyone who can't know anything now have known anything either when it wasn't this way? It's like people are incapable of knowing things or finding ways to know things.

Then again, I read a part of a discussion this morning about when Brian Wilson lost his falsetto with the Beach Boys. And people were citing evidence like a demo from 1975 as a kind of falsetto last stand, and that was somewhat heartening. Not the loss of the falsetto, but the awareness of.

Won't speculate about the extent of the Tatum injury last night. The Celtics' title defense ends here in round two against the Knicks. I had written in these pages a number of times throughout the year that I didn't think the Knicks were a dangerous team. Are they? Well, they're going to beat the Celtics. What does that really mean? I think the Celtics were overrated. You could see the problems that could ultimately result in their ouster throughout the year. But I was wrong--I didn't think the Knicks had much of a chance to win this series. And it's not over yet, but if Tatum is out, it is all for all intents and purposes.

And if Tatum is out for next season? You might never see Tatum and Brown on the same floor as teammates again. Jaylen Brown isn't going to lead you back from down 3-1. A big story of this Celtics season is how he regressed. He was a second-level star, and now he's more like a fourth. I don't think he's the Celtics second best player at this point.

Last night, Tanner Houck became the first pitcher in baseball history to give up 11 runs in less than three innings in two starts of the same season. And this he accomplished by May 12. He's also the twelfth pitcher in MLB history to allow 11 or more runs in multiple games of the same season.

I don't know what to say about this. Obviously he has to come out of the rotation now. He hasn't been the same since giving it up in the All-Star Game last year (though he was losing it before that, to be fair). I don't really want him in the bullpen either. I think you have to send him down to the minors. His ERA is over 8.

I had another nightmare--several--about Molly last night. I know this is a result of the trauma. What I don't know is if it will ever go away. Maybe things would have to change a lot for me overall. But I can't count on that, and try as I do--and try as no one ever has at anything--I have been unable to make them change. I change. But that's it.

I listened to the second series of The Lovecraft Investigations, which is based on The Whisper in the Darkness. Ropey. Silly at spots. I'll keep going through the other two seasons, because I tend to do that--finish whatever. I don't know what might cause me to think something, so there's always that, but I'd say this isn't very good.

There's such a dramatic difference between what's touted as the best audio plays today and the likes of Gunsmoke, Tales of the Texas Rangers, and the Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar five-parters from the 1950s. The gap in quality is sizable. The writing, the drama, the acting, the sound design, the effects, the overall dramatic presentation, the humor. The humanness.

You'll see people give a lot of advice--and it can be well-intentioned advice--and much of it will come down to how they'll look; that is, how someone else will perceive them. This becomes a power thing, in essence. Where scores are kept. You look like you want them more than they want you. And that's thought of as power today--being that person who wants something less.

None of this means anything to me. I care about who and what I am. If I send something kind to someone I once knew, because I am kind, and they want to think that they "won" or they have some power after the fact like I am pining for them or want them in my life--and it need not be a romantic thing or between opposite sexes--that troubles me not a wit. I don't care what that person thinks in this regard, because I know who and what I am, and that's what matters. I am completely secure in myself. At this point. Because of that knowledge of who and what I am. Someone can think whatever they wish to think. It changes nothing.