“Care” vs. “Vigilance”

“Care” and “vigilance” exist on a rhetorical continuum.

“I take care to . . .”

“I am vigilant to . . .”

“We must be careful we don’t  . . .”

“We must remain vigilant that we not . . .”

One of the deep benefits of a childhood and adolescence that (ideally) subjected every decision to the question, “What would please Jesus the most?” is the understanding it gave me of the necessity, as well as the very real dangers, of Vigilance. It led me to the adult understanding that Care is what produces The Good Stuff.

Art — a vital element in The Good Stuff — exists somewhere just outside the boundaries of mere vigilance.

Another benefit of my pious childhood: I understood that every single time I turned on the radio I was enjoying the product of people who were moral midgets at best, and utter monsters at worst.

“Being a muse is a thankless job, and the pay is lousy... I suppose it could be considered unfortunate that hearing the intro to ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ come over the grocery store’s speaker system is my signal to hit the checkout counter and get out, ASAP.” Van Morrison muse Janet Planet, right.

I also understood that this stuff existed on a plane that the artists on my team simply weren’t attaining. The Good Stuff resided a little closer to the Platonic Ideal than did the Christian Stuff.

The common, if not universal, misunderstanding at the time was that artists were required to be monsters in order to produce The Good Stuff. There is a hint of truth in that sentiment, but in the '70s nobody artsy was taking the hint, EVERYBODY was behaving monstrously.

Cut to the Pandemic Present, where Vigilance is very much a necessity — a matter of life and death, in fact.

Van Morrison is set to release a set of songs protesting masks.

He is not at all alone in his sentiments — I am continuously surprised by arty types who out themselves as virulently anti-mask. It doesn’t change my admiration of their previous work, or even alter (much) my enjoyment of them as public characters. I’m disappointed certainly, but I understand I’m as capable as anyone of being gobsmackingly thick about things, particularly when it comes to matters of vigilance. To that end I hope to inform my vigilance with as much care as I can muster. One example: I mask up whenever I step out — less for my sake than for those I encounter.

Also in the news, J.K. Rowling takes a break from her Twitter-feed of clanging concerns over trans-gender politics to release a novel in which the villain is a fella wearing a dress. Hardly her finest hour, by my reckoning, but it has no bearing on the majestic empathy painstakingly woven into the Harry Potter series. My daughter self-identifies as Trans — the HP books remain the most precious in his library.

Conversely there is something a little perverse and self-defeating about re-tooling artistic works from the past to ease the social anxieties of the present. Changing the lyrics of “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down” so you can sing it with a clean conscience suggests you probably don’t appreciate what makes the song so powerful and discomfiting to begin with. Trust me — I grew up on Christian Rock. The saddest truth I finally had to acknowledge was taking an AC/DC song and replacing the word “balls” with “Jesus” was not an improvement. 

Which is not to suggest either Van or J.K. are playing their A-game right now — they’re not. Mebbe replacing the word “mask” with “Jesus” is an idea whose time has come?

All I know is when Jo and Van were playing their A-game — Harry Potter, Astral Weeks — we got work that stands just outside the merciless glare of vigilance. We got The Good Stuff.

This post is the product of vigilance. My fiction, and my bread and soup, are the product of care.

The Week, Links

Oof, brutal start to the fall — RIP: Diana Rigg, Gary Peacock, Sid McCray, Stanley Crouch, Randall Kenan.

Other matters:

• Is there a statue of Milton Friedman we can tear down?
• Justin E.H. Smith sez “The internet is not what you think it is.”
• Russell Smith, OTOH...* 
• Jodorowski reviews the Dune trailer. In fairness to Villeneuve, I’d say Villeneuve’s concept of the subversive is more in-line with Herbert’s than Jodorowski’s ever was. Which is odd, ‘cos Jodorowski remains quite the hippie.
• “People keep picking at my ‘Rise of Skywalker’ scab.” Ben Lindbergh wishes we’d just leave it alone. Me? I hereby declare Star Wars an open-source project — bring in the fans! Fan edits, fan-fic alternates, fan-based everything. We grew up with the toys in the sandbox. We can rescue this thing!

And finally: much ado this week about vinyl surpassing CD sales. Lots to love about vinyl, to be sure, but in this video a record producer sorts out what goes into each, and (spoiler) why CD is so much better. His metier is Metal, but dynamics are dynamics and the case could just as easily be made for any other musical genre.

*I enjoyed reading Russell Smith’s column, but was also unaware it had been yanked — almost a year ago. My excuse: I only read the G&M Saturday edition, in paper, never on-line. The G&M has walked in lockstep with the CBC for some decades now, and my taxes produce better online content than does a Toronto-centric commercial enterprise behind a firewall.

THE INTERESTINGS, Meg Wolitzer

The Interestings by Meg Wolitzer
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

For the first two-thirds of Meg Wolitzer’s The Interestings I was filling the margins in with such insightful commentary as “Yes!” “Perfect.” and “Wolfe attempted this, again and again, but MW nails it.”

Following a gaggle of creative-type teens just one cohort ahead of me (Nixon-era, post-hippie) into a complicated adulthood was an easy sell, and Wolitzer kept me engaged by patiently teasing apart their preoccupations as they were hit with the unexpected exigencies of lived life. I was particularly grateful for Wolitzer’s focus on sexual preoccupations — surely the single-most defining and consequential preoccupation in any individual’s life. Where other authors veer toward the prurient, Wolitzer was compassionate, humane and unblinkered.

Unfortunately, at the two-thirds mark it is revealed that one of the significant characters is keeping a HUGE secret from another, and for no good reason. Wolitzer makes this choice explicable, and the subsequent fallout believable, but it remains a narrative ploy I react badly to. Works great (<- sarcasm) for television soap operas and lesser comic book series, but I cannot stress how much I hate, hate, HATE it.

I finished the book, and am impressed enough with Wolitzer’s craft that I will seek out another of her novels. And readers for whom this particular narrative trope does not trigger anaphylactic shock should find this an excellent read.

View all my reviews

Vintage Whisky, 2019

2019 was another choppy year, bracketed by two deaths of personal significance — my mother’s, in January, and journalist Scott Timberg’s, by suicide, in December.

It seemed to be yet another year measured by headlines (or, for those held captive there, by Tweets). I expected my content to be hidebound to the news-cycle, as just about everything in life has become. But when I scrolled through the archives I was happy to find some exceptions.

"Drum-roll, puh-leeeeaze!"

In the main I devoted my energies to comprehending The Weird — which is pretty much what we’re all attempting, isn’t it? Here’s how I went about it:

• I picked up Erik Davis’ High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica and Visionary Experience In The Seventies, and commented on its pertinence to this particular cultural moment here and here.
• I bought The Book of Weirdo and commented here.
• I read a Larry Norman bio (you wanna talk “high weirdness”?) and shelved it.
• I mulled over the capers of one Dan Maloney.
• And I cast a critical eye on our nation’s election results.

Mennonite stuff, kinda:

• The Mennonites in my village have been practising social distancing long before it became mandatory for all.
• Here is how a pious Mennonite kid could be a punk in Winnipeg, circa 1981.
• In 1983, fresh outta high school, I attended a Non-Denominational Bible College, and. . .
• . . . kept exactly one textbook from that weird year. Changed my life.
• In 1985 I went winter camping with a buddy. Six years later I read Snow Crash. It fits, trust me.

Movies and Music:

• Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse — not just staggeringly good, but the best MCU movie to date, period.
• My 10 Most-Listened-To Discs of 2019, plus a surprise bonus.

And finally, my favourite post of the year:

• The Bible Story by Arthur S. Maxwell, illustrated by various artists.

Revisiting DUNE

I have modest hopes for Denis Villeneuve’s forthcoming series of Dune movies. Author Frank Herbert considered himself “The Anti-Campbell” (as in Joseph Hero-With-1G-Faces Campbell). Surveying Villeneuve’s work to date there is little doubt he fashions himself similarly.

"Could be a pip."

A passage from Dune Messiah:

“What little information we have about the old times, the pittance of data the Butlerians left us, Korba has brought it for you. Start with the Genghis Khan.”
“Genghis . . . Khan? Was he of the Sardauker, m’Lord?”
“Oh, long before that. He killed . . . perhaps four million.”
“He must’ve had formidable weaponry to kill that many, Sire. Lasbeams, perhaps, or . . .”
“He didn’t kill them himself, Sil. He killed the way I kill, by sending out his legions. There’s another emperor I want you to note in passing — a Hitler. He killed more than six million. Pretty good for those days.”
“Killed . . . by his legions?” Stilgar asked.
“Yes.”
“Not very impressive statistics, m’Lord.”

This passage brought me up short when I read it over 35 years ago. Paul Atreides — now Paul Maud’dib, benevolent overlord of the Fremen — the character I’d kinda-sorta been rooting for in the first Dune novel, compares himself favourably to Hitler because Hitler was an underachiever. Paul goes on to site his own stats the way self-satisfied gamers do: “Killed sixty-one billion, sterilized ninety planets, completely demoralized five hundred others. Wiped out the followers of forty religions . . .” Frank Herbert’s tactic, however clumsily staged, achieved its desired effect with me. I’d gone from feeling ambivalent toward this “hero” to wondering why I should trouble myself with the next (at that time) three sequels awaiting my attention.

I made it through God Emperor of Dune, but after that I was done. The prose was just too stilted, finally.

Still and all, the overall concept is remarkably ambitious. And Herbert achieved an astonishing cultural penetration for an Anti-Campbell.

This recollection was inspired by Haris Durrani’s Twitter thread: “Do you think #Dune is a white saviour narrative? Well, you’re wrong.” 

I would say that when I picked up the first novel, as a Canadian suburban adolescent in 1977, I was probably unconsciously hoping for a white saviour narrative, even if I couldn’t possibly have named it as such. I knew Dune influenced Star Wars, and I loved Star Wars. But as a sci-fi nerd I’d also read widely enough to know better than to expect a cowboy show when you crack the covers on a beloved SF classic.

Dune was finally, to my eyes, a hippie book. I bought it in a hippie used-book shop on the west coast. The only people discussing it were long-hairs who stank of patchouli and something faintly skunky. Thus: hippie book.

Twelve years later, when I put down God Emperor of Dune and picked up Leonard Cohen’s Beautiful Losers (and probably stank not a little like Calvin Klein’s Eternity For Men) I identified Herbert’s saga as post-psychedelic religious reconstruction — of a piece with Cohen’s mischief, and RAW’s, and PKD’s, and a bazillion lesser luminaries penning the freakier comic books and pulp paperbacks I was into.

To that end I wonder if Herbert would not have been best served if the studios had just left David Lynch to follow his whims. But here we are; Villeneuve should do just fine.

Wonderful news: THE GUITAR IS STILL ALIVE!

Over at NYT Alex Williams declares:

If the Grey Lady’s use of an exclamation mark strikes the reader as a touch out of character, it nevertheless does signal a story worth covering. Three years ago at WaPo Geoff Edgers outed “The slow, secret death of the six-string electric.” Fender and particularly Gibson were in very deep trouble at the time. Both companies are back in the black, as is pretty much every company making guitars, electric or not. “I’ve been through guitar booms before, but this one caught me completely by surprise,” says Chris Martin, who heads an obscure little outfit called Martin Guitars.

Since I took it upon myself to express some thoughts on the earlier sad state of The Guitar, it behooves me to comment upon its recovery. First, the mea culpa: “[Gibson and Fender have] flooded the market with garbage.” While not exactly untrue, it’s certainly an overstatement. In the last three years I’ve had opportunity to play a few Gibson/Fender entry-level axes, and I amend my initial judgment with this caveat: for what you pay, you do in fact receive an incredible value.

My first electric was an inexpensive Epiphone Les Paul (made in China). It was very playable, but plagued with gremlins that even my trusted local guitar guy could not finally exorcise until we replaced the entirety of the guitar’s guts — at which point the tone of the instrument changed dramatically in a direction I did not enjoy.

Last fall I bought a Squier Strat (made in Cambodia) for $150 CDN. The intention was to give our artist-in-residence a blank canvas to work on — something to hang on the wall, or prop up at local artist shows, with no thought given to tone or playability. Still, when I took it out of the cardboard box and plugged it in, I was gobsmacked by its speedy fretboard and outstandingly identifiable Strat tones. The five-way pickup toggle failed on the final, bridge-only notch, but that (touch wood) should be fairly easily corrected when we reassemble the newly-painted guitar.

Pending Totoro approval.

This spring I took home two Telecasters — one made in China, the other in Cambodia. I’ve kept the latter, from Squier’s Player Series, a line which has earned a reputation for bringing guitarists the most bang for their buck. If my artist progeny is up for it, we may yet disassemble it and sand it down for another customized wowie-zowie job.

Still and all, I’ll stick with my final assertion — a person who really wants to play is better served by a quality clone or a steep investment more in-line with the prices of yore.

As for the current resurgence, we’ve got COVID to “thank” for much of it. But I think the Fender Play stats are quite remarkable — firstly, the surge in user base (from 150,000 users to 930,000); secondly the nearly-level gender stats (women now account for 45%, up from 30%). I’d be curious to see more stats from Fender Play — which genres/skills are most in demand and by whom, how far are the lessons followed, etc. I imagine Fender will be keeping as tight a lid on those user stats as Netflix is on theirs.

I was initially skeptical about internet lessons, but I’ve completely come around to them. I spend more time at JustinGuitar, but am very much a fan of Fender Play as well. Fender Play is a staggering resource, but their engineers do a good job of shepherding noobs and pros alike into the system.

But finally — and I hesitate to say it for fear of jinxing it — the online lesson community is one of the rare internet enclaves that is utterly, sweetly affirming to all who enter. And who doesn’t want a bit more of that in their lives?

New wallpaper

I have an account with Heritage Auctions, mostly to keep track of comics art and the like. This cel from Star Trek: The Animated Series caught my eye and appealed to me -- not enough to place a bid on it, but I did download the image to use for my desktop wallpaper. ST:TAS was my introduction to canonical Trek, so this cel evokes some of the wonder that consumed me as a pre-teen. Also, it's aesthetically pleasing in its simplicity and direct execution.