Politics Vs. Art
Jul. 16th, 2019 08:22 amIt’s really hard for me to give a shit that Trump told Ilhan Omar to go back to where she came from (Sudan) given her history of anti-Semitic snark and cat-footed apology.
There. I said it!
I know this officially makes me a Bad Human Being.
###
Alpha Male asked me to take over the Sooper-Sekrit Political Group while he’s on sabbatical.
The Sooper-Sekrit Political Group is much diminished from days of yore when it was a hot bed of flame wars and rants. The Group sprang up in the wake of Boy Genius’s provocative analysis of Blue Church versus Red Religion.
The essay is pretty amazing because it highlights something progressives don’t want to hear but my gut tells me is true: Namely, that if this were the French Revolution, we (progressives) would be the aristocrats and they (deplorables) would be the virtuous revolutionaries. This distinction has very little to do with superficial platform yammer about policies; it arises solely as an organic distinction based on communication technologies. It’s deeper than policies, in other words.
Interestingly enough,![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
asakiyume came up with this same distinction a couple of days ago in private conversation, and she said it much more eloquently and succinctly than Boy Genius—a reelingly terrible writer—was able to say it. Kudos, asakiyume!
Hard to imagine that a mere two years ago, I cared about shit like this!
Now, of course, I only care about lama manure, white rabbits, and the imaginary misadventures of the former Mrs. Henry Miller.
I cannot imagine a worst person to take over the day-to-day management of the Sooper-Sekrit Political Group than io veramonte. But I like Alpha Male a great deal, so I will do what I can in terms of provocative comments that will keep the conversations rolling.
Which means I will have to start reading political analyses again. I am much too ignorant and superficial to have any strong opinions of my own.
###
In other news, Robicheaux continues to delight because James Lee Burke continues to violate every rule beaten into us writerly wannabes. By Chapter 20, he has five (count ‘em!) plot strands dangling, which cannot possibly be tied up in the 120 pages left. (Commercial novel lengths are strictly dictated by publishers’ marketing departments.) So Burkes introduces a new character and makes this character his Peking Man, his transitional fossil between the chaos at the beginning of the book and the neat and tidy conclusion with which the book ends.
I am blown away by the sheer, audacious WTF-ness of this solution!
Also, whenever Burke gets bored with describing action, he writes, Three month passed… And, lo! During that three months, whatever it was whose minutiae he has become too bored with the damn bookk to write out in detail comes to pass.
So, why read Burke at all?
Because his descriptions are so atmospheric and so deeply, deeply beautiful:
On a particularly cold and gray January morning, I saw him hunched on an iron bench inside the fog by St. Louis Cathedral, like an unevolved creature from an earlier time. He was not wearing a coat and his sleeves were rolled high up on his arms, as though in defiance of the weather. He seemed melancholy, his insouciance a pretense for his loneliness, and I sat down beside him without being invited. The air smelled of the river, dead beetles in a storm sewer, the wine and beer cups in the gutters, damp soil and night-blooming flowers and lichen on stone. It was a smell like a Caribbean city rather than America. He told me he was going to Hollywood so he could become a film director.
“Don’t you have to study to do that?” I said.
“I already have,” he replied.
“Where?”
He pointed a finger to his head. “In here.”
I grinned good-naturedly but didn’t speak.
“Don’t believe me, huh?” he said.
“What do I know?”
“You still go to Mass?” he said.
“Sure.”
“That means you believe in the things that are on the other side of the physical world. That’s what painting is. That’s what making movies is. You enter a magical world others have no knowledge of.”
I got up from the bench. I felt old. My war wounds ached. The hardness of the bench was printed on my buttocks. I heard the Angelus ringing in the cathedral’s tower, perhaps as a reminder of our mutability and ultimate fate.
“Good luck,” I said. “Kick some butt in California.”
There was a smear of powdered sugar on his cheek. For just a moment I thought of a pauper child who might have ferreted his way into a bakery. He was smiling when he looked up at me.
“What’s the joke?” I asked.
“Anything you get with luck isn’t worth owning, Dave. I thought you knew that.”
There. I said it!
I know this officially makes me a Bad Human Being.
###
Alpha Male asked me to take over the Sooper-Sekrit Political Group while he’s on sabbatical.
The Sooper-Sekrit Political Group is much diminished from days of yore when it was a hot bed of flame wars and rants. The Group sprang up in the wake of Boy Genius’s provocative analysis of Blue Church versus Red Religion.
The essay is pretty amazing because it highlights something progressives don’t want to hear but my gut tells me is true: Namely, that if this were the French Revolution, we (progressives) would be the aristocrats and they (deplorables) would be the virtuous revolutionaries. This distinction has very little to do with superficial platform yammer about policies; it arises solely as an organic distinction based on communication technologies. It’s deeper than policies, in other words.
Interestingly enough,
asakiyume came up with this same distinction a couple of days ago in private conversation, and she said it much more eloquently and succinctly than Boy Genius—a reelingly terrible writer—was able to say it. Kudos, asakiyume!Hard to imagine that a mere two years ago, I cared about shit like this!
Now, of course, I only care about lama manure, white rabbits, and the imaginary misadventures of the former Mrs. Henry Miller.
I cannot imagine a worst person to take over the day-to-day management of the Sooper-Sekrit Political Group than io veramonte. But I like Alpha Male a great deal, so I will do what I can in terms of provocative comments that will keep the conversations rolling.
Which means I will have to start reading political analyses again. I am much too ignorant and superficial to have any strong opinions of my own.
###
In other news, Robicheaux continues to delight because James Lee Burke continues to violate every rule beaten into us writerly wannabes. By Chapter 20, he has five (count ‘em!) plot strands dangling, which cannot possibly be tied up in the 120 pages left. (Commercial novel lengths are strictly dictated by publishers’ marketing departments.) So Burkes introduces a new character and makes this character his Peking Man, his transitional fossil between the chaos at the beginning of the book and the neat and tidy conclusion with which the book ends.
I am blown away by the sheer, audacious WTF-ness of this solution!
Also, whenever Burke gets bored with describing action, he writes, Three month passed… And, lo! During that three months, whatever it was whose minutiae he has become too bored with the damn bookk to write out in detail comes to pass.
So, why read Burke at all?
Because his descriptions are so atmospheric and so deeply, deeply beautiful:
On a particularly cold and gray January morning, I saw him hunched on an iron bench inside the fog by St. Louis Cathedral, like an unevolved creature from an earlier time. He was not wearing a coat and his sleeves were rolled high up on his arms, as though in defiance of the weather. He seemed melancholy, his insouciance a pretense for his loneliness, and I sat down beside him without being invited. The air smelled of the river, dead beetles in a storm sewer, the wine and beer cups in the gutters, damp soil and night-blooming flowers and lichen on stone. It was a smell like a Caribbean city rather than America. He told me he was going to Hollywood so he could become a film director.
“Don’t you have to study to do that?” I said.
“I already have,” he replied.
“Where?”
He pointed a finger to his head. “In here.”
I grinned good-naturedly but didn’t speak.
“Don’t believe me, huh?” he said.
“What do I know?”
“You still go to Mass?” he said.
“Sure.”
“That means you believe in the things that are on the other side of the physical world. That’s what painting is. That’s what making movies is. You enter a magical world others have no knowledge of.”
I got up from the bench. I felt old. My war wounds ached. The hardness of the bench was printed on my buttocks. I heard the Angelus ringing in the cathedral’s tower, perhaps as a reminder of our mutability and ultimate fate.
“Good luck,” I said. “Kick some butt in California.”
There was a smear of powdered sugar on his cheek. For just a moment I thought of a pauper child who might have ferreted his way into a bakery. He was smiling when he looked up at me.
“What’s the joke?” I asked.
“Anything you get with luck isn’t worth owning, Dave. I thought you knew that.”
