Wear a ripped shirt like no one is watching

Friday 7/18/25

"Comes a Day, Comes a Man" was completed today. Doesn't get better.

Thus began a day that was more than a day and came a man more than a man who was also a woman and a child and a person and a people.

And ever since that day the parting words of that roadside conversation have hung in the mist above the very spot where they were spoken.

From there, I went right back into working on "Still Good." Changes. Nailing it. Move this paragraph up to here after knocking out the lead-in clause, create this thematic bridge between these two paragraphs down here, turn this phrase in a line that will reduce any person with a heart to a puddle. Quite a bit of laughing and audibly expressed statements of "You have to be fucking kidding me" this AM. It's just better than anything should be able to be.

There's this increasing tendency to turn writing into following a recipe. Makes sense, right? With how we are now. We're not critical thinkers. We're not nuanced thinkers. Everything becomes prescriptive. Plug this in and out this comes.

This morning I created a line in this story that's part of this part where the narrator says that the woman--whose videos he watches--always refers to herself as a girl. There were two quoted examples prior to today, which ended a paragraph. The paragraph that followed was about this man and his possible motives when he approaches this woman in her car. A second man--not the narrator. The narrator doesn't know either of these people.

And yet, the story is also largely about him. Otherwise, he wouldn't be the one telling us this story. He doesn't have to know it's about him. But we bear witness to his own realizations. We come to see what he knows. What he's finding out. Some of which he found out before. That's complicated, right? Highly complicated to do. More so because you can't leave the reader behind. This has to be inclusive. They need to be able to see, think, and feel these things for themselves.

I wanted the paragraph that followed to be about her. For their to be this natural bridge--which has to do with how you use pronouns, shifts that are also deepenings, you might say, in which we stick and stay with a character but on a different level.

I took most of the paragraph about the man and moved that up, where it became part of another paragraph, with the final sentence of that paragraph remaining the final sentence, and I didn't want to have just the two examples. It should have been three. And the length for this third example ought to have been greater, and it really had to knock someone for a loop. Almost punish them in its savage beauty and sadness. But not bad punishment.

And I came up with something that is devastating in part because of context. How it plays off what we already know, how this character speaks and thinks and, more importantly, how she tries to get herself to think and subsequently speak. She talks in these cliches. They can be a bit soppy. But she's trying to buoy herself up. She doesn't have anything else, or doesn't feel like she does. What is something elsewhere--the same language--is something different here. It can be the apex of poignancy. Because of what we know about this character. Her communication (to self) style. The ache and the hurt in these words, which are also like wishes...an attempt to make something true that isn't.

What I'm saying is that context is going to change everything. How you work in concert with context. Which also means that you can't just say, as some pretend, would-be writing expert, "Do this." There's a jazz element here. You're reacting to and coming up with what you come up with in response to what you've heard, if you want to put it in musical terms. This is one way in which a story comes by its unique depth. The depth endemic to it. Then you have the wellspring of life. Of truth. Of meaning. Of the why we're hear. You have the answers to it all.

This isn't what Laura Van Den Berg does. Or what any of these people do.

I look like a mess. Need to shave. I've been wearing this old Bruins shirt when I'm in for the day that is ripped on both sides under the arms, with the rips separated by about eight inches in the middle of the shirt. You know how Bruce Banner, after he was done being the Hulk, would just be this guy in these ripped clothes? It's kind of like that. I could have sworn on that show in the 1970s that he'd be shirtless when he was the Hulk, but then he'd have a tattered shirt on again afterwards and he was in some roadside ditch. I liked that show. I think I probably like most late 1970s shows, but few, if any, late 1960s shows. Most late 1950s shows I like, too. Things got broad and stupid in late 1960s television. And mid-1960s television.

The Monument should be open today. Temperature index won't be close enough to the limit to fudge a closure like yesterday. Woke up with the cough still. Productive cough, as in bringing stuff up. Thought it likely--though not certain--I'd be cough-free today. I'm going to need to put some time in today with the stairs. I don't feel right when I don't run stairs. I must write and I must run stairs each day.

When the weather cools, the plan is to work more activities and places into the mix. Not because I enjoy them; it's impossible to enjoy anything with life as it is at present for me. But to keep going better. Make sure I don't get lost in the wheel marks of my own life. This means Cape Ann, Salem, the Blue Hills, Concord, Castle Island, more museums, more concerts, more films (and not just at the Brattle), the ballet, plays, college football, hockey, and basketball.

I'm someone who can do more, work-wise, the more I do other things-wise, allowing that I am in rhythm. The summer heat and this Monument project--for that's what it's become tantamount to--is limiting me for the moment in this other area, and I've not made a strong enough effort anyway. My goal with the Monument will be the same if and once I reach this goal, but reaching it shouldn't be the mad dash it's been this time because there were just so many days where I ran the City Hall stairs instead of the stairs in the Monument when I could have done the latter on those days.

I suspect that today will be a grind in the Monument, between this lingering cold, the humidity, and me wanting to make up for the lost two days.

The Red Sox' next three series will say a lot about the team they have and their postseason chances. Starting today, they have the Cubs, then the Phillies, then the Dodgers; three games against each squad. To emerge 6-3 would really be something. 5-4 would also cut it.

The ideal deadline addition for the 2025 Boston Red Sox: Nathan Eovaldi. Do you see the year this guy is having? He has a 1.58 ERA! That's in sixteen starts. Wouldn't expect the Rangers to be sellers anyway; in today's MLB, everyone is an eight-game win streak away from being in hailing distance of that third Wild Card.

People are such passive, but gluttonous, consumers that they'll sit there voluntarily and watch the ESPYs? I don't know how anyone watches ESPN, unless that's the only outlet carrying your team's game. I say "voluntarily," but it's like we have no will now. We're just pack animals shepherded by overlords and our own lack of interests, of passions, of thoughts, into our latest pen. Then out we come and go with the pack into the next pen. And so forth.

ESPN follows trends. They identify the worst tropes of society and go in their direction. To me, it's truly gross, manipulative, avaricious (which registers as "low-key" avarice; that is, not so far to the fore that people pick up on it enough to really know what's what and why), soul-bereft.

They had Pat McAfee on for the Home Run Derby. This red-faced, sweaty, loud, dumb guy with last night's alcohol still in his veins just doing the babble. It's the latest dance craze, kids. Do the babble.

But, that's most people: red-faced, sweaty, loud, dumb, etc. Certainly most sports fans.

Again: achievable. Hell, most of them are already there. "Mission accomplished."

An important moment for me: I'd written a paper once with the words "pivotal link" in it. Fine, right? Wasn't fine. A teacher pointed out to me that "pivotal link" was a mixed metaphor. Links don't pivot. This became massive. Something clicked regarding how I looked at every last word, began to see the meaning all the way through--to the bottom, as I've put it in these pages.

There isn't a single other writer in the world who looks at their work that way. It wouldn't occur to them. It's not enough to have it occur; it has to become your way of seeing. The lens through which all is viewed. Becomes part of who you are such that if you weren't this way you'd be someone else, certainly as a writer and, allowing that you are one, an artist.

I'm reading this Beach Boys book by David Leaf, and it's really bad. He can't write. Doesn't know what words mean. Has no ability to write analytically about music. Can't tell you what's happening, why it's happening, what the sounds are, how they work or don't. Instead you get terms such as "fugue-like organ."

Um...that's not how that works. He obviously has no idea what a fugue is. Maybe...look that up? Check? But it's not like the editor knew either or bothered to check. There's no quality control because it's never about the quality of the work. It's about, "You're the right kind of person." Everything else becomes a matter of "Eh, fuck it." And the shit is slapped in, and slapped out.

But yeah--that's akin to saying a sonata-like guitar.

One thing I can say for AI: It's helpful in cleaning up audio recordings of a historical nature that can then become--or more easily become--a part of one's life in the present tense and moving forward into the future.

There are some people out there doing yeoman's work in this regard, providing a real service for free with their passions and expertise and technical know-how; their respect and regard for works of value.

I'll read through the technical notes they often provide of what they've done, and I do a lot of comparing of what the prior alternatives were, if there were any. The difference--and sometimes it's with Beatles material that I've lived with and listened to for decades--can be as stunning as it is rewarding.

Today I downloaded a newly posted compilation from one of these people of Jimi Hendrix concerts in bolstered sound from 1967. Elsewhere: a Connie Francis Bear Family box, a Frank Hutchison package, two Fourmost sets, a comp from a garage band called We the People, and a Johnny Horton Bear Family box.

It occurs to me that Louis Armstrong could have done a memorable job scatting the beginning of Cream's "Steppin' Out."

My sports Substack that no one has been to and which doesn't have a single follower looked different this morning--the Reggie Jackson photo I had used as a profile picture (it's from Topps' 1983 sticker book) was now also the background photo and it looked silly being there twice, so I replaced that second instance of it with a photo of Grant Fuhr making one of his patented glove saves where he went down into a split. It's like the coolest looking save ever in my view. He did it a lot.