xtcian

6/14/03 Columbia County, NY Hey,

6/14/03 Columbia County, NY

Hey, it's Flag Day, right???

I guess I should have known better than to drive into Hudson on Flag Day, because they take that shit real serious. They closed down the major thoroughfares and had Shriner parades, jugglers and magic - not that I would know, 'cuz I took the detour to Wal-Mart and Staples.

A part of me really did want to join in the "fun" and see what was going on, but it's the whole "flag" part of Flag Day that gives me the creeps. Even when I was a kid, it seemed utterly lame to carry around the American flag while we were still in America (I thought it was redundant) and now that the flag makes me think of John Ashcroft, I'd rather be fishing.

Unless, of course, I got to march into the Hudson with the Gay Pride flag pictured above. I'm not even gay, which makes me the perfect person for it, actually. I'd like to declare today my personal Gay Pride Flag Day, where I thank all the gay people in my life. That would include:

- pretty much everyone I grew up with whilst my dad was conducting opera
- all of my friends at Norfolk Academy (except for Marcie, but she liked Adam Ant, so she gets a tangential qualification)
- a couple of members of my fraternity
- the About Face theater in Chicago
- Morrissey
- the fabulous Pink House production designer
- Tessa's best friend
- a certain member of the downtown planning commission and a certain comic who shall both go unnamed
- Tchaikovsky, Gershwin, Poulenc, Bernstein, Saint-Saens, and Chopin (the composer) and Chopin (the dog)

June 14th is also the birthday of one of my bestest friends in the entire world: the beloved Kendall. Our history is oft-told; she was the first girl I ever met at Carolina, she was the first girl I ever kissed, she got married on my birthday, and then went into labor while we were at lunch in Paris. Tessa actually balked at getting married today (June, a full moon, etc.) because it would have been a little too obvious.

Anyway, Kendall is one of the bravest, most wonderful people I know, having raised four(!) amazing kids, forced to live in exile for her 20s in a land far, far, away - and is now going through a very difficult phase, but manages to do it with an equanimity and grace that few could carry. In 1985, I was well on my way to becoming a Forever Nebbish, wearing black corduroys and idiotic glasses, locked in my own self-loathing and addicted to my solipsistic isolation. But she, a beautiful Southern girl, walked right up to me, started talking and demanded friendship, one that has lasted eighteen years so far - and for that, I consider myself blessed.

Kendall, me and my hair in 1989

6/13/03 Columbia County, NY Due

6/13/03 Columbia County, NY

Due to our chosen "radio silence" on all American news networks (yes, you too, fuckin' turncoat CNN), pretty much the only thing we can listen to is the BBC World Service on the satellite radio. Which, as you might guess, is totally excellent, albeit quirky: sometimes you can turn it on in the middle of a busy news day, and they'll be playing an hour of Westway, their honest-to-god radio soap opera.

Another kooky thing they do is suddenly stop all programming to read a book. Usually it is some sweeping coming-of-age saga set in Hertfordshire, but this week, for no apparent reason, they have Ben Kingsley reading Orwell's "Animal Farm." Upon hearing the first words, I was going to shut it off, but then I remembered how much I was transfixed by the book in 8th grade. I was pulling for Snowball, the only pig with a heart, as he battled the Draconian swine Napoleon, over control of the farm once owned by the dreaded Farmer Jones.

And then it hit me: BBC is airing this novel by no accident. As Kingsley intoned the scene where Napoleon takes over the farm by co-opting the three ravenous dogs and banishing Snowball, I realized what was going on - the BBC thinks that the United States is the Animal Farm.

And they're totally right. Snowball would be the voice of moderate leftists trying to build a windmill so that the world would be a fair, equal place. Napoleon is America, George Bush, and his cabinet of chickenhawks who, like the pig, only have one response to plans that they don't agree with: they urinate on them.

When Bush/Napoleon doesn't get his way, he wails for the three dogs to come in: Rumsfeld, Ashcroft and Wolfowitz. They threaten to destroy any of the animals that don't see things their way. While they're off-duty, the pig Squealer goes around to the other animals and tells them why Napoleon is always right (Ari Fleischer, obviously). And any time any the animals want to have a meeting and discuss things, the Napoleon/Squealer response is "do you want to go back to the way things were with Farmer Jones?" Orwell actually writes that "the animals thought that if another discussion might bring back Farmer Jones, they better not have one."

Jones is obviously September 11, which has been the excuse for every horror perpetrated by the Bush administration since September 12th. The book is so apt, so prescient, and so, well, obvious that the BBC should be commended for such an amazing act of subversion. I wouldn't be surprised that they thought Squealer was actually Tony Blair.

Yes, yes, I know it was written in 1946 about the Russian Revolution, but I swear to god, there has to be some teacher in middle school right now, some high-minded idealist who is assigning this book to her kids right now and praying that at least one kid realizes that this story is not just allegory, not just prophecy, but a blow-by-blow description of these awful times we're in right fucking now.

6/12/03 Brooklyn, NY I know

6/12/03 Brooklyn, NY

I know it has been way worse in other parts of the country (and for much longer), but here in New York City, is that special bouillabaisse of 80 degrees, pissing down rain, and 95% humidity. If you don't have an air conditioner, which we don't, it takes about four seconds to break a sweat. Everyone flung their windows open in a desperate attempt to eke out something resembling oxygen, but there's nothing but the smell of Park Slope's finest lesbian armpits and hairy Hassidic men.

I tried getting things done today in the apartment, but just moving my eyeballs was making me drenched with sweat, so Chopin and I retired to the floor, where we did some work on the film, watched "Spirited Away," and then drifted off into a feverish dream...

6/11/03 Brooklyn, NY It's just

6/11/03 Brooklyn, NY

It's just me in the house for the next week - Tessa went to Texas to hang out with her grandmother and wrestle some demons, and I hate flying so much that I'll only do it if I absolutely have to. Besides, I think it will prove to be a good rest for her, with me out of her hair; this wedding and the movie have taken their toll on our good humor.

I haven't been alone in the city for what seems like years. It's reminding me of the vast, oceanic stretches of jail-like solitude I endured while living on Beachwood Avenue in Los Angeles - hot days taking forever to creep into night, scads of projects withering on the vine, and the persistent feeling of trance-like isolation.

One of the worst parts about depression is that the rut you create also becomes one of your few comforts. After a while, you don't want to make a move, because it would rob of your routine, which seems to be the only thing you can control. I also suspect that any deviation from your depression might temporarily awake you from the fuzzy stupor you've clung to, and that exposes you to all sorts of pain. This happens in conjunction with the thought that "there isn't anything better" on the other side of your move, making depression one of the most perfect, self-pollinating, perpetual motion machines possible. No wonder it's so popular.

It's easy to speak of such things right now, when I haven't been depressed. Wordsworth always said that poetry was calamitous events recalled in a time of tranquility, and the same holds for old emotions. Transitively, I am (and you are) living through a micro-era at this moment that we won't truly understand until 2009 or so. What might this one be called? "Post-Traumatic Stress Disord-a-Rama"? "The Latter Dark Ages"? "The Weimar Republic"? "A Return to Crapalcy"? "Hubert"?

6/10/03 Brooklyn, NY So sick

6/10/03 Brooklyn, NY

So sick today, with a stomach flu that hasn't allowed me to retain food for three days. The first day, I felt just thin, the 2nd I felt malnutritive, the third I began to get headaches like the guy in "Thinner." Now I know how those motherscratchers on cruise ships feel after a doorknob full of the Norwalk virus.

Walking to get soup today, I went into a fever. The night air had a sharp coolness that reminded me of walking to my violin lesson when we lived in London. So hurt, so miserable that my mind vacated my legs, and for a second, why wouldn't I be walking in London in 1978? I kept saying, this is not your body, these are not your legs, because they keep moving even when you have nothing left to give them.

I feel the violin in my right hand and the smell of fish and chips, and white beams are lighting up Marble Arch and for a second there is no misery, only being young and on my own, in a dark, exciting city. I am there, I am ten, and my body only knows what I tell it.

6/9/03 Brooklyn, NY A very

6/9/03 Brooklyn, NY

A very kind Alan McLeod praised the blog of your humble servant this weekend, so you should check him out tonight, as I just have. He raises the interesting (to me, at least) question of the dichotomy of blog-writing - do we do this because we are in some nature damaged, and need affirmation from the rest of the world ("look at me, ma!"), or is it intrinsically just the act of writing that is the most satisfying? Or is the boring answer "it's both"?

Lacking a "comments" button on this blog, I have to say my interest in writing here has remained pretty ensconced in the doing-it-for-the-sake-of-doing-it variety. There was a time when I would have used this thing for endless quests of romantic satisfaction, as I'm sure people from the old newsgroups would be more than happy to tell you, but those days are long gone. My own dating mishaps in the internet world taught me how little I knew about myself, and the depths of shallowness and cruelty of which I was capable. It doesn't help that half of the people on the internet in 1993 were certifiably insane, but I didn't do myself - or anyone else within email radius - any favors.

I think a lot of people have a blog for the same reason many of us look in the phone book to see our own names: proof that we actually exist. A web page is still a published thing, it is a piece of virtual paper accessible by billions, and if it is extant, than surely so are we. By the same token, it's almost impossible to explain to someone over 65 where The Blog lies in the grand scheme of things; most of them think it's a newsletter that everyone gets. You try to explain that not that many people actually read it, but anyone on Earth could do so at the click of a button. They still don't get it. To them, if you put your antidepressant habits or butt problems on the Web (like me and my sister tend to do), you might as well buy a full-page ad in the Chicago Tribune.

In the end, I think having a blog while you're trying to be a writer is like playing in a cover band while you're working on your first album. Sometimes it's enough to be out in front of people singing "Private Eyes" for a little recognition. It keeps you limber, strengthens your bar chords, and never allows you to gag on your own pretension.