Notes of A Novelist in Progress

My mom only had me for my money

[iamseamus]

Observed Changes on The You Tubes

I’ve been thinking a lot about YouTube recently--both its history and its present and how vastly different it is from even, say, four years ago. More specifically the types of channels and people that get attention. I don’t mean just the Ricegums and Paul Brothers--who are, as I saw it put recently, a mix of cheesy gameshow hosts and wedding crashers. A spot where I feel YouTube has exploded, and where I feel its in a golden age at the moment, is in educational videos. Any number of well-liked channels that you find being talked about in any number of reddit threads includes a great amount of channels who are focused on the educational and the novel. Channels like minutephysics, VSauce, and Crash Course have been around for a while, but other things like Historia Civilis, OverSimplified, Wendover Productions, nerdwriter, Lindsey Ellis, and ContraPoints, cover a range of topics that are thoughtful, lengthy and original across things as diverse as military history, the logistics of F1 Forumla racing, and feminism in pop culture. 

Certainly for myself I notice that I’m watching fewer “vlog” type channels. I think that’s partially because the genre has been taken over by that methamphetamined millionaire host of a life spent traveling to a different country every month. Vlogging is a kind of glamor sport now. Which kind of sucks. Because it was nice when, at least in my memory, vloggers seemed like pretty normal people. Their dispatches felt like dispatches from a slightly different normality than I had. You’d sprinkle in an occasional educational musing or discovery with some light travel, mix those in with whatever behind the scenes of some other creative endeavor (music, writing, second channel etc.) you might have, and try to charisma the rest of your way through it. It’s likely I have rose colored glasses about this stuff, but I seem to remember there were more people I’d want to have a conversation with on YouTube. These days, I feel like I’m stealing conversations from the educational videos. And while their content is phenomenal, I miss that fleeting promise I got when I was younger (I’m old, that must be what this is about) that I could feel a little closer with the people on the other side of the screen. 

[iamseamus]

It strikes me that what we are currently seeing in American culture is the lack of shame. And we are seeing this lack because it is something that is rewarded. There is no need to feel or have access to shame over filming and hyping the death of a person in the Aokigahara when you will be rewarded financially and your millions of fans will come to defend you. There’s no need to feel remorse over public policies of separating children from parents, bragging about sexually assaulting women, or finding yourself on the side of white supremacists. Because if you’re charming enough, and, at the very least can show you don’t feel shame, then you will always have your legions of fans. 

In fact, through this lack of shame people many times over have branded themselves as a “man of the people.” They “tell it like it is,” or “keep it real.” And I think that’s backed up by the false American belief that “we don’t *really* have a class system in our society.” Everyone is seen as a potential rich person or president. But it has everything to do with class. We give our rich permission to be more awful because, well, they’re rich and that must mean they’re talented and talent comes at the price of being a little out of the box, so go ahead and keep “telling it like it is.” 

[iamseamus]

I have a feeling this .gif will be useful to me in a few years.

[iamseamus]

“I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.

To Kill A Mockingbird. Harper Lee. 

“True heroism is minutes, hours, weeks, year upon year of the quiet, precise, judicious exercise of probity and care—with no one there to see or cheer. This is the world.”

The Pale King. David Foster Wallace

These two passages are my top two ranked quotes on my Goodreads profile. They’ve been ranked this high for many years, probably since around the time I read The Pale King. I think that if you looked at any person’s ranking of quotes they could probably tell you something a lot more honest or authentic about that person than anything the person could tell you in a cover letter or a brief biography of their life. The quotes that we cherish say a lot about not just who we are, but perhaps who we hope to be, how we see the world, what we are afraid--in short they allow us to talk about deeper things inside of ourselves that we probably don’t have our own words for. 

What these two quotes in particular have in common is a certain notion of heroism. A yeoman type of heroism that is performed because it is the right thing to do and not because it will ever be praised or even seen. In our world it feels that everything we do is somehow monitored or recorded and then offered up for immediate evaluation. I can’t be the only one that constantly feels the paranoia that everything I’ve ever said, even in private conversation, could be exposed by the sprawling eyes of technology and the global surveillance state. Because of that it feels that everything I do is being performed, and if it is being performed it engenders the fearful feeling of being an imposter. I guess what I like about these quotes is that they both acknowledge that there are still cases where it will be necessary to do the right thing and your rightness will go unacknowledged. And that’s comforting for me. Being a hero is being honest with yourself. You cannot be heroic and be having a crisis of identity anymore than you can be afraid while you laugh. 

[iamseamus]

I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye

Kanye West wants freedom—white freedom.

But for black artists who rise to the heights of Jackson and West, the weight is more, because they come from communities in desperate need of champions. Kurt Cobain’s death was a great tragedy for his legions of fans. Tupac’s was a tragedy for an entire people. 

[iamseamus]

An extended news report on Thomas Pynchon on the eve of the publication of Vineland in 1990. 

[iamseamus]

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,   Asleep on the black trunk, Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.   Down the ravine behind the empty house,   The cowbells follow one another   Into the distances of the afternoon.   To my right, In a field of sunlight between two pines,   The droppings of last year’s horses   Blaze up into golden stones. I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.   A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home. I have wasted my life.

-James Wright

[iamseamus]

Four Not-Terrible Ideas For the New LOTR TV show

So now that we know Amazon’s gonna put a billion dollars a half-decade into some new Lord Of The Rings series, I think it’s time we speculate on all the good stuff that can come out of it, before they ultimately fuck it up and give us The Hobbit Part IV: The Desolation of Tolkien’s World feat. CGI Legolas and Dwarf Sex. 

The Fellowship of the Ring Prologue:

This is the obvious play to my mind. Let’s get the story of the Ring’s creation, corruption of the Men to Nazgul, the Battle of Mount Doom and a subsequent Isildur narrative and his corruption before he’s ultimately killed/deposed and the Ring goes into hiding. It’s got several seasons worth of material and character arc and has a sensible ending. It’s all new characters basically, but it’s familiar enough that audiences will build hype around it. 

Aragorn origin story. 

This has the appeal of referencing characters we know and building on safe and familiar territory. You can do a lot of conflict with Aragorn about not wanting to be a King, his general outcastness, expand on the love story between he and Arwen and drop a million and a half cameos and side stories. 

Gandalf early years

Since Gandalf’s older we can go even further back and deeper into the third age. Trouble with this would be that you have a completely different actor than McKellen in all likelihood and really no familiar characters except some elves who would also likely need to be new actors. As awful as the Hobbit movies were you could most directly use this as a lead-in and maybe with a lot of makeup get some Martin Freeman in on the last seasons. Basically it would be a period of political unrest among the races and Gandalf going around and helping to heal divides. 

Silmarillion Stuff

This could be really interesting but now we’re way out of familiarity. The obvious central story to Tolkienheads would be the Beren and Luthien love story. That’s got the right amount of love and war that can hit on all cylinders and you’ve got lots of family lineage, going back to Feanor and the creation of the Silmarils. It may feel a little disconnected from the movies but there are lots of epic battles and really similar themes. 

[iamseamus]

President Mujica of Uruguay

[iamseamus]

“I hereby declare you Generation A, as much at the beginning of a series of astonishing triumphs and failures as Adam and Eve were so long ago” 

-Kurt Vonnegut

[iamseamus]

Courtesty of (where else) reddit

[iamseamus]

There's scientific consensus on guns -- and the NRA won't like it

[iamseamus]

History says, don't hope On this side of the grave. But then, once in a lifetime The longed-for tidal wave Of justice can rise up, And hope and history rhyme. So hope for a great sea-change On the far side of revenge. Believe that further shore Is reachable from here. Believe in miracle And cures and healing wells. Call miracle self-healing: The utter, self-revealing Double-take of feeling. If there's fire on the mountain Or lightning and storm And a god speaks from the sky That means someone is hearing The outcry and the birth-cry Of new life at its term.

Seamus Heaney

Because I needed to read this tonight and I needed to believe that it is true

[iamseamus]

Donald Trump is the Same Thing As Logan & Jake Paul

As Logan and Jake are pretty much indistinguishable in purpose at this point, I’m going to refer to them as one unit. I could, given recent events, just refer to Logan Paul and the point would be perfectly salient. But Jake is a shithead to and just because he’s ever so briefly out of the picture, shouldn’t mean he gets a pass. 

1. They’re both just in it for the attention. 

The Pauls vlog every fucking day so they can be on the top of the trending list on YouTube. Trump tweets nonsense so that the news, good or bad, is always about him.

2. And obviously, the money. 

Curiously they always need to make the argument that they’re “not in it for the money.” This boosts their authenticity, which in turn boosts their REALNESS (TM) rating and supplies them with a bunch of dumb as shit people to allow them to make money in gross and unethical ways. 

3. Their fanbases are a cult. 

They defend everything no matter how ridiculous it is, they like the most superficial things about them, Superfandom (TM) is achieved by sinking money into shitty merch.

4. Their audiences both have the emotional intellect of 12 year olds. 

In one case this is more acceptable than the other. 

5. They co-opt important moral conversations to make it about themselves. 

Logan Paul with his “suicide is not a joke, you guyz” and Trump with his, “congratulations to me for making commercial airlines better by having no accidents this year.” 

6. Too many adults are far too uneducated about who they are and what they really stand for. 

Parents in the case of the Pauls, have no idea what their kids are watching on YouTube nor how they’re communicating with or interacting with other people. Trump’s a bit different because he’s Rorshach’s President. If you want to find something redeemable about him, you probably can. 

[iamseamus]

Having Watched the New Chappelle Stuff...

I’m struck at how in both incarnations of his career he has always depended upon one thing that he can’t lie about. In the early career he could not deny his blackness. The center of his early work was focused on the fact that he was black in a white man’s world. His very first joke in Killing Them Softly is just an observation that there are a lot more white people in D.C. (where he’s performing) than when he left (in the 80s). He couldn’t go up on stage and not talk about being black. 

Now, with the four specials on Netflix, the one thing he can’t lie to the audience about is being Dave Chappelle. Part of being Dave Chappelle is being black and there’s still plenty of comedy he mines from the black experience. But perhaps just as big is the absence of Dave Chapelle. That nearly decade long tour he took out of our lives. His celebrity identity is built in part on that absence. He can’t go up on stage and not talk about being Dave Chappelle (and eventually about his absence). 

Chappelle lies about a lot of stuff. And you can’t always tell until the punchline and even then you’re cocking all sorts of eyebrows in retrospect. But a comedian knows what truths he needs to bring to the stage. Because even comedy audiences have bullshit detectors. 

[iamseamus]

Tracking Trump's Conflicts of Interest

TRUMP'S CONFLICTS OF INTEREST Our questions about what open government would mean in the White House of President Donald J. Trump have been answered: this is a secretive administration, allergic to transparency and hostile to the essential role journalism plays in a democracy. In the days an

Sweet baby Jesus thank you for letting me discover this before Thanksgiving. 

[iamseamus]

Desert by Adunis

The cities dissolve, and the earth is a cart loaded with dust Only poetry knows how to pair itself to this space. No road to this house, a siege, and his house is graveyard.               From a distance, above his house               a perplexed moon dangles               from threads of dust. I said: this is the way home, he said: No               you can’t pass, and aimed his bullet at me. Very well then, friends and their homes                in all of Beirut’s are my companions. Road for blood now—               Blood about which a boy talked               whispered to his friends:                              nothing remains in the sky now                              except holes called “stars.” The city’s voice was too tender, even the winds would not tune its strings— The city’s face beamed like a child arranging his dreams for nightfall bidding the morning to sit beside him on his chair. They found people in bags:              a person                                                 without a head              a person                                                 without hands, or tongue              a person                                                 choked to death              and the rest had no shapes and no names.                             —Are you mad? Please                                                             don’t write about these things. A page in a book              bombs mirror themselves inside of it              prophecies and dust-proverbs mirror themselves inside of it              cloisters mirror themselves inside of it, a carpet made of the alphabet                             disentangles thread by thread falls on the face of the city, slipping out of the needles of memory. A murderer in the city’s air, swimming through its wound— its wound is a fall that trembled to its name—to the hemorrhage of its name and all that surrounds us— houses left their walls behind                                               and I am no longer I. Maybe there will come a time in which you’ll accept     to live deaf and mute, maybe they’ll allow you to mumble: death                                                and life                                                resurrection                                                and peace unto you. From the wine of the palms to the quiet of the desert . . . et cetera from a morning that smuggles its own intestines               and sleeps on the corpses of the rebels . . . et cetera from streets, to trucks               from soldiers, armies . . . et cetera from the shadows of men and women . . . et cetera from bombs hidden in the prayers of monotheists and infidels . . . et cetera from iron that oozes iron and bleeds flesh . . . et cetera from fields that long for wheat, and grass and working hands . . . et cetera from forts that wall our bodies               and heap darkness upon us . . . et cetera from legends of the dead who pronounce life, who steer our life . . . et cetera from talk that is slaughter           and slaughter         and slitters of throats . . . et cetera from darkness to darkness to darkness I breathe, touch my body, search for myself               and for you, and for him, and for the others and I hang my death between my face and this hemorrhage of talk . . . et cetera You will see—                say his name                say you drew his face                reach out your hand toward him                or smile                or say I was happy once                or say I was sad once                you will see:                                 there is no country there. Murder has changed the city’s shape—this stone                                                                 is a child’s head— and this smoke is exhaled from human lungs. Each thing recites its exile . . .                a sea                                              of blood—and what do you expect on these mornings except their arteries set to sail into the darkness, into the tidal wave of slaughter? Stay up with her, don’t let up— she sits death in her embrace and turns over her days                                              tattered sheets of paper. Guard the last pictures of her topography— she is tossing and turning in the sand in an ocean of sparks— on her bodies are the spots of human moans. Seed after seed are cast into our earth— fields feeding on our legends, guard the secret of these bloods.                               I am talking about a flavor to the seasons                               and a flash of lightning in the sky. Tower Square—(an engraving whispers its secrets                                                               to bombed-out bridges . . . ) Tower Square—(a memory seeks its shape                                                               among dust and fire . . . ) Tower Square—(an open desert                                                               chosen by winds and vomited  . . . by them . . . ) Tower Square—(It’s magical                                              to see corpses move/their limbs                                                  in one alleyway, and their ghosts                                                  in another/and to hear their sighs . . . ) Tower Square—(West and East                                and gallows are set up—                                martyrs, commands . . . ) Tower Square—(a throng                of caravans: myrrh                                               and gum Arabica and musk                                                              and spices that launch the festival . . . ) Tower Square—(let go of time . . .                                              in the name of place) —Corpses or destruction,                  is this the face of Beirut? —and this                a bell, or a scream? —A friend? —You? Welcome.               Did you travel? Have you returned? What’s new with you? —A neighbor got killed . . . / . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . A game / —Your dice are on a streak. —Oh, just a coincidence /