Sounds, words, perspective

Saturday 2/3/24

Been listening today to Pink Floyd at the Fillmore West in April 1970, Captain Beefheart at Avalon in 1966, the Vaccines' new one again, the Seeds' A Web of Sound, and the Grateful Dead at the Fillmore West on 8/21/68. These guys, man. What artists. Best American band regardless of idiom there has ever been. They were all of these diverse, but blended, things every night.

I'm so aware of every second of time, it's as if I consciously note those seconds as they pass. Never am I not thinking about time. I have to lose myself within time so that I'm freer and there's a calm within the eye of this storm in hell. I must get improve in this regard.

More work on "Why I Hate My Friends." I think it will probably be for Become Your Own Superhero. There's a friendship shortage in this world. People tend not to have a single real friend. This story is about the the death of male friendship--death by its absence, especially with men of a certain age. Call it the dearth death. Tomorrow I'll get back to working on "Friendship Bracelet," which is about two middle school girls, one who isn't alive because of something the other one did. Thinking of it for The Ghost Grew Legs. Head work on "Eye of Green" for The Solution. Need to write this piece on the 1948 film version of The Woman in White and something on a Beatles cover of a Chuck Berry number. Plus Valentine's op-ed.

The fifteenth century painter Paolo Uccello would stay up all night trying to determine the exact vanishing points in paintings as part of his effort to master perspective. That's the kind of focus and dedication one needs.