"That's your groove": Writing changes, Orson Welles on Duffy's Tavern, the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" from 5/31/69, Fats Waller, pedestrian Monument performance, can't win .5-0

Sunday 7/20/25

I like finding solutions in writing because it is a given I will find them. I don't really have to do anything save allow them to occur.

I've been working hard on "Still Good" this weekend. This will be a part of There Is No Doubt: Story Girls. The idea that a man could write this book is basically inconceivable, but so is the idea that anyone could write it.

There's this paragraph I could put up on here that has more within it than what you'll find in the whole of a career by any of these people that the publishing system lauds--lauds because the people in that system are lying about these writers. They no more believe what they say about these writers to be true than I do. That's the only thing we have in common. But they make the lie--and being this kind of liar--the whole of their lives which are, of course, pointless as a result. Unless you count the doing of ill deeds, the promotion of falsehoods, and the killing off of reasons to read and caring about writing and literature as forming the worthwhile basis of a life.

But I wasn't completely satisfied with the paragraph. Two sentences, with one sentence between them, began "It was." This is not third person narration, but rather first. A person could very well fall into such a speech pattern and is very likely to; it's not even a pattern.

But I didn't want the double "It was." The first instance is talking about snow. "It was that wet snow that..."

The sentence could have began, "The snow was that wet type that..." but that would have changed the meaning. It's less "you know what I mean" that way, because there's more spelling out, more formality, less short-handing, if you will, and that changes the immediacy, and the connection between narrator and reader and story and reader.

Then there's that other sentence, and the final one of the paragraph that also starts "It was," which leads into this metaphor that will knock you off your seat and have you on the floor. And it's so beautiful.

I kept looking at the paragraph, determining that the final sentence can't change. There's not a way to do that. And I didn't want to compromise the first sentence in the manner described above. Nor did I wish to have the definite article in front of "snow" twice. Snow is very important in this story thematically and as a motif, as is the sun and the sky pertaining the protagonist, who is a woman that we only see in her parked car.

But the fix will always come to me, and it always makes the thing better. I changed the pronoun ("I") that is the first word of the paragraph in the sentence before the first usage of "It was" to "You," and made "could" into "can." Now you have this really interesting stuff happening with tenses, that opens up this entire other level of meaning.

The narrator is talking about a video he's watched, and with this change we can infer that he's maybe watched it a number of times, and that bears real meaning in this story. You have a thing within a thing. When you have a thing within a thing, you also have tenses within tenses.

You see how this is opening up for me? The first "It was" now becomes "It's." The immediacy is boosted. There's this extra-connectivity. Other things can stay in the past tense, and they'd have to. The story has gained in dimensionality, while also gaining in realness.

And really what was the change? A pronoun, a tense, a conjunction. But there's so much more to it than that, as well as with the payoff.

No one else could have written that paragraph in the first place. No one else would have thought to try and improve it. None of these things would have occurred to anyone else. They don't think this way. They don't see this way. But there it now is.

I've also been revising an important story that would hold an important place in a book that I'll talk more about later. This was a story I had thought was finished. Had even sent it to my niece Lilah a year or two ago. I printed it out last weekend to mail to someone, and in glancing down at it, I thought, "You know, you can make this better."

That's what I set about doing last weekend. I let it sit over the week, before going back in yesterday and continuing to make changes.

Downloaded all of JSP's Fats Waller sets. They're a British label that puts out music of this vintage in the best sound to date. They also have some of the best Judy Garland packages. I'd been keeping an eye peeled for these Waller boxes.

Listened to the episode of Duffy's Tavern with Orson Welles. He could be a funny guy, but it was rare for him to feature in a straight-up comedic venture. His humor tended to come out in his interviews, discourse, and addresses. I'm sure he enjoyed this appearance because he got to play a magician while also playing himself--and Orson Welles loved magic and was quite good at it--who essentially gets thrown out of the bar for his bad jokes.

Spent the evening listening to the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star" from 5/31/69 at the University of Oregon's McArthur Court. This is a spellbinding show. They're bringing it. Many people who are into the Dead will stop and cluster around certain recordings, and can miss out on others. For instance, the Veneta 1972 "Dark Star" is a place where listeners gather and gawk. But that "Dark Star" isn't doing what this one is. It doesn't move through modules. You could say it's largely module-free. It's more like straight playing than what "Dark Star" could be. It's not as exploratory. But it's commonly touted as the best "Dark Star" there is, when it's not the best "Dark Star" from its own week.

The Oregon McArthur Court "Dark Star" is one of those pieces of music you can sit there and listen to for hours on end. What a journey we go off on. The range of emotions you feel. A "Dark Star" like this is Homeric and astral. Of and beyond the earth. The best versions of "Dark Star" situate us in multiple worlds. In doing so, they move us closer to what I think of as the answers. The answers to the all of it, you could say, and the why of it.

The Dead finish this show with "And We Bid You Good Night," which is a generally reliable indicator that they thought the evening had been special. Normally after this number, the Dead wordlessly left the stage. But end of this version features one of my favorite lines that anyone has ever said on a stage. The band finishes, you can tell--I mean, you can feel it from listening to the tape--that the audience is blown away, and Jerry Garcia (who is blazing away on guitar throughout the night) just says, "That's your groove." And it's like, yeah, that is your groove.

Wasn't exactly a performance for the ages inside of the Monument yesterday: Five circuits of stairs, executed at a less-than-brisk clip. Kept moving the whole time, at least. Didn't have it in the legs--the calves, specifically--on account of the day before. Today is almost certain to be the same. Still coughing. Need that to go away. Today marks 3290 days, or 470 weeks, without a drink.

The Red Sox were overmatched by the Cubs last night, losing 6-0. Bello was okay. Three runs in six innings. Technically a quality start. The Sox have scored a single run in their two games after the All-Star break. Even if you're shutting out the opposition, it's not like you can cut that run in half and win each game by a score of .5-0. Cora not having someone pinch hit for Wong in the Sox' lone big spot--when there were viable options--was typical Cora density. I dislike being correct about this team and would much rather they were a squad that's going to play well into October.