Thursday 1/20/22
Underwhelming performance of late. Will not get this done. Have to do better.
Wrote a story yesterday. Don't know what it is yet.
Came up with an idea for a longer one over the weekend.
Have formally started the assembly of There Is No Doubt: Storied Humanness and Longer on the Inside: Very Short Fictions of Infinitely Human Lives. The Word documents. Two trains running.
Got an assignment with JazzTimes for what I think will be a feature in the April issue on the 1986 film, 'Round Midnight with Dexter Gordon.
Changed the wallpaper on my phone from Rudolph and Hermey's first meeting to a John Clare poem in his own handwriting.
Ron Cey is closer to belonging in the Hall of Fame than one would think. Part of that has to do with his position as a third baseman, but still, he's borderline.
One of the more remarkable Wayne Gretzky stats: in 1985-86, he had twenty-one games with 4 or more points. He had three games with 0.
Going to watch Feuillade's Les Vampires again. May write something on it.
There are about 100 film links to get up in the Film writings section of the site. When I can do this, I don't know. There's so much other stuff to take care of right now. Also time to be putting together a book of my film criticism, or at least giving hard thought to what should be in that first one. So, that would be collections of my jazz writings, rock writings, film writings.
I should try again to get something going on that book about the artistry of hockey, as evidenced by ten of the most visually pleasing--even artistic--games ever played.
Take no bait. People will want you to take it. Their actions towards you, and especially their words, are often an attempt to get you to take it. There are a lot of unstable people. I will take no bait. It's a rule I have. I will know what you are up to, why you are up to it, and I will not give you what you want, and I will not be entrapped.
Few people are less emotionally, psychologically, and mentally stable than the average person in publishing. Always on the brink. Were it possible to be in the brink, they'd be in it. Anything knocks them over. Upends them. Wrecks them. The faintest puff of wind. Academics are similar. They are as easily threatened. But it's still a special case, that would-be writer, or the editor who is a bad editor who also pretends to be a writer and publishes what they do because of favor trades, because it's a self-esteem issue. (Obviously an academic can fit into this category as well.) Neither has any real self-esteem, nor should they. Why would they? But the academic who doesn't write can lie to him or herself more easily, because they're shut away in academia, they have tenure, there's no attempt to interface with the world. The writer wishes to, but the writer has nothing that anyone could ever want, and the writer knows this. Knows it's all a mirage. Knows it is just cronies and people like them who pretend to feel a certain way. There is the same amount of lies to self, but with the writer, that lie to the self has come through the surface. The academic can sometimes keep it an inch below ground. But it's also really the same. Say any small amount of truth, even in polite and professional terms, to these people, after they mistreat you, abuse you, steal from you, and lie to you for years, and it's a full-on attack. Atom bombs raining from the sky. They put it in the most overdramatic terms. (I'll put up an example/email from Sven Birkerts of AGNI on here shortly. Raging instability.) There's no perspective, because there's no life experience, no self, and often no sanity, which sounds like hyperbole, but is not.
Watched 1976's The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane with Jodie Foster. She was quite good. A flawed film, but worth seeing. There is not enough sense in various plot points. The motivations don't work. The believability factor is low--not just with what we see onscreen, but what we're told is the backstory. But the film has a certain look, a tone, as do the performances. Naturally I'm inclined to like the Maine coastal setting, and the time of year, Halloween to Christmas.
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