Finished reading: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith (1999) by Anne Lamott. A funny, worthwhile, quotable episodic memoir. My only complaint is probably one directed at her editors: There are fewer thoughts on faith than its subtitle indicates.
A little overkill never hurt anyone
Besides, Babe, I’ve only just begun ✏️ 🎤 🎵
You mighty thing.
I’m sorry. ✏️ 🎤 🎵
I’m dining out with Charis,
Trying to find Polaris
But I can’t. ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Hypothesis: A big reason we love books, movies, and recorded music is that they offer to our lower brains a passable simulacrum of company. Inspiring, beautiful, mind-expanding they can be. But they are, at their root, an inferior substitute for basic emotional and relational goods that come from real, live, human company…
…writes the man whose wife of twenty years hasn’t been home in a week and is currently incommunicado on a sailboat in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean.
“For then will I transform peoples with a pure language for them all to call in the name of the LORD, to serve Him with single intent” (Zephaniah 3:9, Alters).
Lord, please transform Christians in this way. As it is, it seems we’re calling in the name of different lords to serve with various, opposing intents.
Just listened to: Traditional Techniques (2020) by Stephen Malkmus. My first Malkmus solo album listen. His lyrics are as weird as in the ’90s, but I had no idea he could make such pretty music. A very good late-night psych-folk stoner album. The effect is similar to hearing The Velvet Underground’s self-titled album. Also, I’m a sucker for 12-string guitar and playfulness with words.
Productivity slash peace of mind hack #372: Use a custom stylesheet to hide all but the first item in any list on the web version of the to-do list app I use. Now the endless to-do list, so important to this man’s reliable participation in modern life but sometimes so very peace-ruffling by its sheer volume, presents itself to me just one task at a time.
Guys, guys, guys, we’ve got the cross hung upside-down!
It’s not a thorn of crowns
That’s the wrong way! ✏️ 🎤 🎵
That photo is the most terrifying political photograph I think I have ever seen.
I think some people think of Carla and me as hippies because of our relative lack of ambition.
Pops got his Sunday wrong. ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Veni, vidi, vici
Sure ain’t how it goes
You gotta take your shoes off
Feel the carpet ‘tween your toes ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Your spit gets thick
And you’re not sure why you came
The players seems nice
But it’s not your game ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Just listened to: The State Of The Tenor: Live At The Village Vanguard, Vol. 2 (1985) by Joe Henderson. Heavy saxophone improvisation served over a delicious bed of bass and drums. Are there key signatures? Who cares! Free your mind. Come for the improv sax tremolos, growls, and melodic flights. Stay for the bassist.
Worse comes to worst, I can go bush hopping: where I live in a bush and when that gets compromised, I hop to the next one. I have four in mind. Though it might be hard to get to the third.
— Éa, discussing the state of politics at the dinner table
Just listened to: Puts: The Hours (2024) by Kevin Puts, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, The Metropolitan Opera, Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, Kelli O’Hara, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. I don’t know opera, so I don’t know what to say. But as a cap for all the emotional and musical color and drama that comes before, that final trio is remarkable.
Won-won-won-wonderful, even.
As a lighter aside, it is hilarious to hear Renee Fleming sing, “Maybe I should join a choir.” Yeah.
Dr. Seuss should’ve entitled it Oh, the Mistakes You’ll Make!
Just listened to: Alive in the Wilderness (2020) by Endless Field. New-age, occasionally jazzish, occasionally groovy acoustic guitar-and-bass record made outdoors in Utah using a solar-powered recording rig. Ambient if you want it to be. A fascinating, short write-up on the making of the album is available on the Bandcamp page.
Wait, is that a rule? We’re not allowed to have telepathic antecedents?
— Éa, in response to a gentle scold from Scott about a conversation he couldn’t follow
Your spit gets thick ✏️ 🎤 🎵
Today I am taking Focus up a notch: For 100% of day—morning, afternoon, evening, and night—I am allowing zero Messages and WhatsApp notifications to come through from anyone other than my immediate family, people with whom I have appointments in the next two days and, during the workday, my workmates. I am coupling this with a morning clearing and an evening clearing, rendering how I handle my instant messages more like how I handle my email. This experiment will last either forever or until I observe it’s unloving.
So folks will still get text replies from me twice a day. If that’s not fast enough and they need my attention more urgently, let them place a good, old-fashioned phone call. It’ll be like time travel back to 1993 (minus the coiled cords and dial tones)!
Note to self: When you find yourself reflecting unhappily about your job being helping make truck bed covers when you wish automobiles had never been invented, remember that these words of Paul were addressed to slaves: “Whatever you do, do your work heartily, as for the Lord” (Colossians 3:23). Whatever you do. And besides, DiamondBack is easily the best manufacturing company (and one of the best companies period) to work for in central Pennsylvania. Everything about working there pretty much couldn’t better.
Just listened to: False Lankum (2023) by Lankum. Irish folksters whelming their traditional ballads with walls of dark sound. They start off most tracks playing, singing, and often harmonizing rawly and beautifully. (The color of the harmonies sometimes gives gives a clue of what’s to come.) Then they keep singing while they bury the songs in mountains of dark, wrenching sonic peat harvested from the banks of the five rivers of Hades. They do it often and consistently enough to call it a schtick, but to call it that is to undersell its power. I can’t recommend the whole without reservation because there’s sometimes too much noise for my taste. However, the album deserves the raves it has received, as well as a good single listen from you and a place on your Halloween playlists. As for me, I’m sure as hell going to dig into their back catalog.
Just watched: The Last Stop In Yuma County (2023) written and directed by Francis Gallupi. Two and a half time shorter than Greed (1924) and three times as fun, with nods to the Coen brothers and Tarantino, in that order. Lots of craftsmanship to admire. Worthwhile, but only as a brain break.