Shorthand for Nothing

I have been in Seattle since Tuesday. I came to watch the final shows of Harvey Danger, the band which has long been, without a doubt or question (unlike so many other things), my favorite. Both shows were excellent, and more than excellent, in a way that words can only express inadequately. Or my words, anyway. This is usually something I never do: express freely, truly, and without reservation that something is good, really, legitimately good. I am doing it now. It alone is more than worth the flight, the time, even the frustration and the fears.

I don’t have the time now to explain how much Harvey Danger has meant to me over the years. I know I tried once before, when the band announced the breakup. It was inadequate then and it would be now. Anyway, where would I begin? No, there are things which are better left underground.

The shows had many moments both happy and sad, funny and emotional. They lasted forever, or might as well have, until at the end there was nothing but that sense that it was really complete, it was really over, that there was nothing more that could or should be added. At the final show especially, there was that sense of finality.

There’s a lot I want to say: how glad I was that Evan Sult was there, and perhaps more specifically that Sleepy Kitty was opening; how fun it was to see him and John Roderick and Evan Mosher and other guests on stage, especially towards the end; how perfect the final song was, and indeed the final part of the set. I can’t say it right, so perhaps it’s best to leave it unsaid, at least mostly.

I was fortunate indeed to live so close to such a remarkable band for so long. Some of my best memories are of Harvey Danger shows, or of acquiring Harvey Danger albums. This truly is the end of an era, and the timing is appropriate: days before I move to college for real this time, in a city which is still new to me. Even now I find myself looking for symbols and meanings to hold on to.

To the band, I have little left to say except thank you. You will be dearly missed, and you can add me to the list of strangers who have been touched by your music. I hope you had as much fun with it as I did, but at any rate let me express honestly and without reservations that you have been nothing short of wonderful and I wish you all the very best.

And one final thought: there was nothing quite so appropriate as finally hearing Sean sing the word “love” in The Same As Being In Love. That made me smile. There was nothing left incomplete.

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This installment is about the bout of insomnia that made my insomnia legendary, among certain circles. (more…)

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Tonight was going to be uneventful in every sense of the word (are there even more than one? what a weird intensifier) when I realized I hadn’t gotten to print the thing I was going to print today. So I mentioned on Twitter that I needed a printer, and had a kind gentleman DM me suggesting that, were I to come by MIT, he could print it for me. It was just shy of 11:20 at the time, in the evening.

It takes me about twenty minutes to get to the subway from here, and another twenty to get down to MIT. That would put me there at about midnight, if the trains favored me, which I couldn’t count on. I couldn’t hesitate, because if I did I’d end up stranded at MIT for the evening and have to walk home. And I couldn’t walk, because the T stops running early, and I wasn’t sure how early. No, I had to run for it. I immediately sent a DM back saying I would be right there, and locked up my computer, and ran most of the mile and a half to the subway.

The train came shortly thereafter, and I went down to MIT, found the building in which my associate was located after a brief phone call, and went inside, produced my USB key, and attempted to print from his laptop: success! We stayed to talk briefly, and, sensing time was short and this conversation could go on for hours, I said, “I should run to catch the T.” And run I did, and made my way down the stairs just as the train was arriving. I hurriedly passed through the turnstile and ducked onto the train just as the doors opened.

Then the train arrived and I made my way out, no longer hurrying, resigned to a long walk back, if not a jog. Then I looked over to see a bus parked at the busway, and to my great surprise, it was the 89, the once-every-hour bus that runs from Davis Square past my house, the bus that is entirely useless to rely upon but is a great boon when I catch it. I ran up to the bus and entered with some time to spare, and walked home, sat down, and marveled at my success, and at the lengths I went to to avoid the inconvenience of going to a store or library to get the same thing printed tomorrow.

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For some reason I have been recently explaining themes and motifs to people a fair amount. I am not going to do so here, but I have been thinking about themes and motifs, and I realized it’s generally themes that my more ambitious projects are really lacking. It’s always story first, then later on, a theme would happen. They are fun to write, and they are usually not too bad to read, but their lack of a driving purpose tends to keep me from actually finishing them.

My short stories tend to start with a theme, which is why I spend so much time hunting for a title for them: I want it to encapsulate the theme in some way. And the short stories tend to be solid, and I complete them easily and usually think they are pretty decent. Sometimes it gets lost on the way. I’ve got a theme in mind for a new one, and I will probably work on it as soon as possible. It will be called ‘Stalker.’ Isn’t that fun?

(This is true of my best very short fiction, also, though I write so much of that it’s hard to say there is a rule for it.)

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This section starts with a quote from Hunter S. Thompson. It’s about taking flight, in more ways than one. (more…)

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So, here’s something that probably won’t surprise anyone:

I don’t care what new movies are coming out.

It has nothing to do with whether or not I think they all suck these days. I don’t even know what’s coming out half the time, unless I happen to see a commercial or an ad. Sometimes I will be excited about a new movie, but it’s only because it would interest me regardless. I’d rather it be already out and something I could watch at home with a few friends.

I don’t consume all the new TV shows coming out. I have a hard time keeping up with new episodes on the very few that I do watch on TV as opposed to on Hulu or whatever. I don’t comb bestseller lists for upcoming novels, nor do I really watch new bands in the hopes of finding something to add to my collection. I try, as well as I can, to consume things which are good, whenever they were released. If it’s a band that’s releasing new material, or a movie that might be coming out in theaters soon, that’s a great bonus. But I try to focus on finding things which are good.

The weird thing, to me, is this seems to be outside of mainstream consumption habits. Most people seem to find a way to watch all the new TV series and catch all the new movies and know about all the new music (I have never met someone who knows about all the new books out there, though, which may be why print is dying). It is never so striking, to me, as looking at a music collection several times larger than my own. It is not uncommon to find that they share a few bands with me, but it is uncommon for them to be more than passingly familiar with the work of those bands. They know a song or two, usually the obvious singles, and the rest is a vague, unexplored mystery to them.

I don’t think I could live in this world of constantly being fed what is new, digesting it, and then immediately hungering for more. Does it even last? When I listen to an album enough for it to become one of my favorites, it remains there. I still go back and listen to all of them fairly regularly. I sometimes get the feeling that after someone drops ten dollars on an album, they listen to it once and then never go back again. I couldn’t do that.

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I’ve been slowly working my way back through Tolkien’s works in the past few weeks. I re-read the Hobbit, which I don’t think I’d done since middle school, and am re-reading The Lord of the Rings, which I have done more recently, but it has still been a few years. This feels like the first time I have done so since I really knew the movies well, and while for the most part I view them as different works, it is interesting to note some of the changes. In many places, the movies have taken the books and improved upon them, in terms of dramatic content and dialog; in many others, the movies have taken the books and made them significantly less awesome.

After that it will be The Silmarillion, and then, I expect, The Children of Hurin, which I actually have not yet read. This summer I’ve been craving high fantasy for some reason, and Tolkien more or less defined the genre.

From there I will probably move on to the collection of Dostoevsky I picked up in Chicago, or some of the other books I have lying around that I’ve been meaning to get to. Tolkien is almost meant to be consumed in bulk, though I wouldn’t describe it as easy reading: it’s a legendarium. It is something intended to be a lengthy period of consumption, or not at all. Dostoevsky, I’m not convinced I could consume in such enormous qualities. But we shall see!

In any case, I’ve been trying to get back on top of reading things more. It may just be a summer thing, but maybe not. It’s been nice, and I have quite the list of things I’ve been meaning to get to, both new and old. Since a lot of these are now across the country, I may have to do some exploring.

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So, maybe I mentioned that maybe I was going to this Harvey Danger concert tonight?

Yeah, I did. It was rather excellent. I am mostly writing this to remember some things, but hey, have fun: the opening bands were the Organ Beats and Magic Magic. Which I will eventually go check out later? Then Harvey Danger played a two hour setlist, featuring a new song and a bunch of other stuff, and then I walked home from Allston, and it was fucking exhausting, and that’s exactly the way a concert should be. I couldn’t ask for more.

There will be Seattle later this month, and it will be good, but tonight would be enough. Rest assured, the band is not going out without a bang, and that, sir, is good.

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The saga continues. I guess. I would tell you to enjoy it, but really, you know what you’re in for by now. (more…)

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Following is what may eventually be the opening to the thing I am working on, which will simply go by Untitled for now. After the jump, a wall of text. It appears to be a story about departures. It is unnecessarily bleak, but that’s what departures will do for you. (more…)

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