Every body that gets a choice will make some bad ones. I cash my paychecks on this, but some days it's on parade. Today felt like a long French film with a single stupid point: this one. Today was long - really, it started almost exactly one year ago when some knucklehead set down a death threat on voicemail. From there, maybe a butterfly was off the beat, some dominoes fell backwards, and one day the whole show landed on my desk.
That was crap, that last paragraph. Cheap pulp novel talk, and butterflies and dominoes don't get choices, or anyway I don't think so. Am I right, am I wrong, my god what have I done? A bad choice, that's what, but that's my point. I think. I could go around again here
But no. Reset. My day was squandered on dealing with some fallout from a couple people's past bad choices. Which really meant trying to prevent future bad choices by those same people, and some others. Which really meant making sure I didn't fuck up my own choices.
I love this stuff, but I need to not get too numb to it, cocky, bottle it up and move on. So I'm writing down some of the whorls of it. Airing it out, or maybe have I driven it to the landfill? Did I? Was that a choice if I wasn't even watching? Lotta bad ones happen that way. Not all. Same damage.
(Limit's here; no edits this time.)
Friday, January 25, 2019
3,001-3,250 - "I have no idea what I am talking about"
A Dad, aged 40, will now gush about Radiohead and Miles Davis. Please ignore.
I just had one of those lightning moments that keep me listening to old flames. A dozen years of In Rainbows, Kind of Blue 4 life, but still something new. As Radiohead reached the all-the-notes climax of “All I Need,” it crossfaded in my head to “All Blues” and the warbling piano sorta clashing with, also sorta tickling, the horn line. Harmony and dissonance at once. Tingly.
Since that moment, I’m hearing Kind of Blue ghosts all over In Rainbows. The lads cop to studying Miles, but mostly people peg this to the imprint of Bitches Brew on their rhythms and their Frankenstein studio knifework. Here, it's in the notes.
I hit Google and got walloped: Dorian! Cmaj9(#11)! I think it’s all about scales and chords that are ambiguous - not major or minor, kind of both, also neither - and homeless. (No metaphor: if you hear G major then F major, they imply C major: “home.” Listen to Elvis rag on his hound dog.) Sounds right. The mood conjured is ambivalent. Let down, kind of blue, but so what? Still hanging around.
Now, bluesmen nailed down this upbeat misery way back, and their two-note chords work similar tricks, refusing to be major or minor. Metal brought these back, amped, fast, as POWER CHORDS: the ambiguity maybe “what's this pissed dude gonna do next?”
I love it all. There's only one song, Zeppelin said that. Enjoy it.
Friday, January 18, 2019
2,751-3,000: What is it?
So I have particular reason to fuss over questions of human existence - starting with the mind and brain and stumbling out from there into life and matter and creation. [See Words 2,001-2,250 and 2,501-2,750.] What is consciousness? How did we get it? What about life itself? How did it arise? Does consciousness stake a place apart from other living things? Do living things themselves stand apart from non-life in the order of things? What is the order of things?
In readings I’ve toured the boneyard where eccentric men have left relics of their tangles with these questions: Szilard’s engine, Turing’s machine, Hofstadter’s loop, Searle’s room, Dennett’s pump. Creatures lurk there: a demon conjured by Maxwell; the unfortunates gathered by Sacks.
I have drawn certain conclusions. We evolved here. It is a marvel, but one of time and matter, not of divinity. And we do not, by being here, occupy anyplace separate from all things. There is no way that consciousness stands apart from other life, and no way the living stand apart from the rest of it.
This is no diminishment. It is a unity. We are one wonder among many, stitched into the fabric of this thing. Look back on that humble hexagon: there it is. [Words 2,251-2,500] Everywhere. One spun out of the clouds by freezing water, another on a turtle shell. Here a comb of them assembled by bees, there a tile of them sketched by Escher. A few drawn by Euclid himself. So what? Try and tell me which one is most amazing.
In readings I’ve toured the boneyard where eccentric men have left relics of their tangles with these questions: Szilard’s engine, Turing’s machine, Hofstadter’s loop, Searle’s room, Dennett’s pump. Creatures lurk there: a demon conjured by Maxwell; the unfortunates gathered by Sacks.
I have drawn certain conclusions. We evolved here. It is a marvel, but one of time and matter, not of divinity. And we do not, by being here, occupy anyplace separate from all things. There is no way that consciousness stands apart from other life, and no way the living stand apart from the rest of it.
This is no diminishment. It is a unity. We are one wonder among many, stitched into the fabric of this thing. Look back on that humble hexagon: there it is. [Words 2,251-2,500] Everywhere. One spun out of the clouds by freezing water, another on a turtle shell. Here a comb of them assembled by bees, there a tile of them sketched by Escher. A few drawn by Euclid himself. So what? Try and tell me which one is most amazing.
2,501-2,750: Our house of leaves
In Mark Danielewski’s House of Leaves, a couple buys a house to raise a family. Then the impossible appears in their living room: behind a door a dark hallway extending into their yard. They react with the stages of grief and a consuming desire for comprehension. Experts are summoned. Explorations mounted. But it morphs underfoot, confounding all efforts. It expands, contracts, mutates. They can’t even map it.
In 2007, we bought a house; soon after, we had our older son. At four months old, at play in the living room, he had his first seizure. Experts were summoned and explored his brain. Their conclusion: idiopathic epilepsy. Idios pathos, “a disease unto itself,” means cause unknown. A dark hallway.
As we reeled, it morphed, metastasized, not impossibly, certainly improbably: Cortical vision impairment (1 in 1,000); West syndrome (1 in 3,500); Lennox-Gastaut (1 in 3,900); hypotonic cerebral palsy (1 in 20,000). But it remains a mystery, and a shapeshifter. Ten years on, we’re no closer to even controlling his seizures. They’re ever changing, slipping away.
We did, recently, find out the cause: one mutated gene. A name: STXBP1 encephalopathy. There are a couple hundred cases, worldwide, ever. Still not impossible, but asymptotic to it. Researchers identified this disorder just ten years ago. Meaning this, only this: it’s been seen and named. That family saw their mystery, too, and named it. What’s that do? We, and our experts, still fumble in the dark. While beneath our feet, it shifts.
In 2007, we bought a house; soon after, we had our older son. At four months old, at play in the living room, he had his first seizure. Experts were summoned and explored his brain. Their conclusion: idiopathic epilepsy. Idios pathos, “a disease unto itself,” means cause unknown. A dark hallway.
As we reeled, it morphed, metastasized, not impossibly, certainly improbably: Cortical vision impairment (1 in 1,000); West syndrome (1 in 3,500); Lennox-Gastaut (1 in 3,900); hypotonic cerebral palsy (1 in 20,000). But it remains a mystery, and a shapeshifter. Ten years on, we’re no closer to even controlling his seizures. They’re ever changing, slipping away.
We did, recently, find out the cause: one mutated gene. A name: STXBP1 encephalopathy. There are a couple hundred cases, worldwide, ever. Still not impossible, but asymptotic to it. Researchers identified this disorder just ten years ago. Meaning this, only this: it’s been seen and named. That family saw their mystery, too, and named it. What’s that do? We, and our experts, still fumble in the dark. While beneath our feet, it shifts.
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