Friday 7/10/20
Sports need to give up on the ghosts that are their 2020 seasons. Not going to happen. Move on. Take the time to grow as a person. Read some Flaubert. Listen to all the Motown singles from the 1960s (focus on bassist James Jamerson). Try some Billie Holiday. Read Shelby Foote's Civil War history. Watch all of Buster Keaton's pictures. Learn how to garden. Learn about nature. These seasons are not going to occur. It's sad and pathetic that people just can't move on. You miss sports? Read a Ted Williams biography. Learn about Josh Gibson. Watch a load of Wayne Gretzky games on YouTube. Get in bed at night, close your eyes, and listen to recording of an old baseball game on the radio and use your imagination, something people used to use all the time.
I see that Buster Posey is not going to play. Not long after Molly did what she did in 2012, I flew to San Francisco for ESPN to meet with Posey for a feature I was writing on catchers. A few hours after talking to him and watching the Giants game that day vs. the Dodgers, I had a stroke because of what the person who had been my wife did, with her calculated plan of evil, dispossessing me of everything in my life, without a word of warning, and vanishing, because she was having an affair. Posey was nice. That day will feature in a memoir of that period in my life and what happened during it and in the months after. Quite a day. Later that day, I was on a plane back to Boston. Same day. Because I was more than ready to die. That's what I think of when I see a Buster Posey news item. Also, he played in the Cape Cod League. He was a shortstop there, actually, not a catcher. The memoir will be called Many Moments More: A Story About the Art of Endurance. For the newcomers to this journal, you may have wondered why it's called the Many Moments More blog. The title comes from the lines, "Heroism is endurance for one moment more."
So. Makes sense, doesn't it?
Moving on. Here is the second of the five hour-long episodes we're doing this month on the Songs of Note podcast on the Beatles. This one is on the long medley from Abbey Road. Quick note of clarification--I know it says here that the focus is one big eight-song medley, but there are two medleys on side two of Abbey Road, the so-called short one, and the so-called long one. The focus here is on the latter, though I do touch on parts of the former (the guitar playing in "Polythene Pam," for instance). This is quite good, I think, and a lot is covered, including a thorough breakdown of the individual styles of the Beatles' three guitarists, and I also hit on what is my all-time favorite guitar solo by anyone. Have a guess what it is? I know I've said it somewhere else at some point. I didn't get into "Golden Slumbers" that much, but I will on the fifth of these episodes which is on "Hey Jude." What's happening is besides each episode being self-contained, there's dialogue from one to another, these crossover points, which is kind of cool. You just have to make it clear to people as you're doing that kind of thing what you're referencing, so they don't feel lost, and also so they can go back to an earlier episode if they wish.
Today I walked twelve miles and ran the Boston College stairs ten more times. So, for the week, that was seventy miles on foot, and 10,400 stairs ran. I took this photo of a sun-burnt sunflower on that road above the Chestnut Hill Reservoir.
My sister coincidentally sent me a photo of a sunflower that my niece Lilah picked out today at a farmer's market. She also likes Zorro, and I like Zorro, so it's obvious we're related. (A little joke in my family, as I am not actually related to anyone in my family.) I texted Kara back a photo of one of Van Gogh's paintings of sunflowers, and said she should should that to Lilah and ask her what she thought.
What I am going to have to do for the rest of July, really, is go into mad scientist mode. I won't say some of the things I have to do--the amount is so daunting that people wouldn't believe me, I suspect, anyway (though, then again, you'd be pretty foolish and blind not to at this juncture, and you readers are not that way, so my bad), and I don't want to freak myself out with how much I do, because I know if I put the time in, and I perform as I can perform and do it consistently, it will all get done. And probably more. But I must become like Henry in James Whale's 1931 Frankenstein. And yes, it's Henry there--he's Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's novel. (But eh, no one knows anything anymore. I could say he's Clitus Frankenstein and people would be like "yep.") He's up at all hours, he's doing what he has to do. That needs to be me, denizen of the the night. I'll fit in some runs, because I have to keep my heart strong, but I need to work until I fall asleep at the desk, and I take my meals by going to the all-night bakery at 2 in the AM for a couple slices of pizza after having composed many thousands of words. These are big, important projects, and time is burning away under my feet.
You are the only person who can save you. You, and your work. Total focus, no mercy, matchless art.