Talking about places between destinations. Customs, ways of talk and instruments that your early ancestors gave up in their lifetimes are alive here. Songs and dances and foods long dead exist here without much context or explanation. Mixed memories and cultures exist among sentimental old people, annoyed children and interested outsiders. Things our great-great grandparents did a hundred years ago out of necessity are forcibly pantomimed by mutinous fourteen year-olds today, without their knowing why.
You can brew coffee in an early 19th century German cabin with a grinder that still works the best. You can try to make sense of a cemetery hidden in the woods, low stones like stumbling blocks with bits of fading cursive script in the shattered pieces. Chimes hanging in the trees. You can learn to play a violin and call it a fiddle when you get good. You can cut wood and winnow things down. You can splash in clear fresh water and identify a cardinal's call in the winter. Men in cowboy hats and women in formal attire, with napkins and propriety, custom, identity, age and tenure, with no irony. Museums full of stuffed animals long since culled from the field, who never should have been observed. Long tracts of generational green growth and lonely medians filled with wildflowers, indian blankets and sunflowers in late summer. Lazy rivers winding beside railroad tracks. Empty roads buzzing with insects in the sunshine. Paved but covered with dirt.
Deep suntans and craggy faces, people wiping sweat from hat bands, and accents. Dropped t's and g's, ways of talk more endangered than the warblers. People swimming topless in nameless creeks right next to the road, barns and cattle and sometimes horses. Columns and regalia across the street from roadhouses, no signs, no comments. Differing lifestyles blending together, ancient homes with satellite dishes, electric fences and chunks of stolen limestone marking every drive. Leaning heritage oaks with crackling branches and Spanish moss, nailed bits of iron rotting away, noting something. Try to import modernity. It'll probably work. They always say it won't, but it does. You can make homage to the parts that you cherish, and hate the things you want to.
Maybe it's time we got back. You'll never understand it until you're in it, invited or not.
People I know are starting to die. I sense this is going to become a trend. Based on what I've seen among my family, I'm approaching "that age".
My dad's been claiming for years that all of his friends are dying. They aren't all dying, but a lot have. Seems to be a mixture of old age, motorcycles and cancer. And some of the oldtime friends who aren't dead yet seem like they already kinda are. My favorites among his old contacts seem gone before their days. Hard for me to accept.
But now it's my friends who are dying!
I found out someone I used to know died during the first flush of Covid in another fucked up, tragic situation. Another bike accident, though he 1000% should never have been on one or frankly ever driven any vehicle in his life, he was so chaotic. He was forever distracted and so much more confident than reason would indicate. I remember him roaring around Phoenix with an 8-track on the floor of what had to be an early 70s blue Cutlass but I can't quite remember. We picked a friend up in his car one night and she shrieked, "IS THIS A MOVIE?" He just grinned into the dark like a vampire had a baby with Johnny Depp, snarling, "Get in!" Everything was hilarious back then. Even to him. The tape in his 8-track was Blue Oyster Cult and he wasn't even playacting at the dream of 70s America like so many kids do, because he wasn't a kid. It was just the only track he had on hand that he liked. He was 20 years older than us.
I hadn't realized how much older he was until one night when his wallet fell open on the bar at Bikini. I glanced down and boggled, decided to say nothing. I remember joking with friends later, making fun of the situation. He was so old, I said, that JFK was still alive when he was born. The Beatles were still together. History burns from a 20-something: unimaginable, but everything was a larf then. I felt like he should have more in common with my parents, but he didn't, besides being mad at me. He had lived multiple lives already, different existences in Brooklyn, San Francisco, Vegas. But remember - the 80s and 90s versions of those cities. Touring bands, heroin, women and jobs in bars - that had been his life. I couldn't believe the photos he showed me from those times, because he looked about 35 for most of his late life. What a bizarre, strange person; why the hell would he have ended up in Phoenix, of all places? And how the hell did I meet him?
Surprised it took me so long to find out that he died, but that happens when you move or grow up, you just never talk to certain people again. And I hadn't talked to him in so long, on purpose. We had dated for a few moments once, after which he harassed me regularly for around two years, which embittered me, made me angry and dismissive. Calling, texting all the time, once or twice even showing up at my house in the middle of the night. I didn't appreciate the theatrical gestures and never let him in, wanted nothing to do with it. He wasn't a bad person, just wild and unpredictable in ways that I didn't find amusing, even at that age. Originally, he behaved in a retreating and quiet way, and the limited time we spent together was because I could never figure out which person was the real one. Damn it, Jack.
With the distance I have now, I think the quieter version was the real person, but I felt too harassed by his other side to care. He didn't have boundaries with women, and as an attractive man, he wasn't accustomed to rebuffs. It spooked me and I had no idea how to handle it then other than avoidance and ghosting, the execution of which would get ruined when I'd show up somewhere and he'd be there. For such a big city, Phoenix is an annoyingly small town in many ways. Still feels that way. I still manage to run into people I don't want to see almost ten years later.
I used to remember him with a resentful shiver, but now that he's dead, I feel reflective and a little sad. Maybe even more than sad, I feel shocked. His personality, his ego, the way that he carried himself seemed eternal. It's hard for me to understand that someone like that could actually die. I began to wonder if I was harder on him than I needed to be. Did I understand enough to judge? I just had no patience for his insult-flirtations and low-level negging, even at that inexperienced age. There was a different person in there that he couldn't, or wouldn't be all the time, but I couldn't care about that at the time. I'm sorry that he had to be alone in a hospital when he died because he got into a grievous accident during a pandemic. Only he would die at a time like that, needless and solitary, but I think he might be one of few well-equipped to handle such a thing given the life he lived, and the person he was.
I'm fortunate that none of my close friends have died. Yet. It's a strange thing. I don't know how I'll react, but I would guess "badly". There are certain people I know whose deaths will impact me heavily and I just hope we have another couple of decades before that becomes anything I need to think about. And I suspect the world as we know it may end before many of us have to deal with it.
And there are the others who just fall away somehow or get lost to the churn of life. Usually it's right, eventually, when you think about it. I tend to be rejecting when a relationship has gone off; once in a while I'm wrong about it, but that's increasingly rare these days. And it's something that's difficult to even think about until one of them eventually dies too. Mortality makes people change, but it hasn't changed my feelings about this yet. I guess I'll revisit it in another decade.
I always loved this song by The Searchers until I found a version by throwaway Rod Stewart ripoff Smokie, which was oddly satisfying.
I love it enough that I hate to share it for fear that others won't appreciate the awkward hairspray 70s pop, because I was once someone who wouldn't either.
This song would have enraged me once. Not only because the version by the Searchers is better, but because everything about Smokie would have pissed me off. His face, his hair, he's like a caricature of a 70s pop star. But now I love it! And why? Who knows, but he gives it his everything, and succeeds. He knows how to sing it, and so does his band.
The barrier is that I was historically disgusted by men my mom would have been attracted to in the 70s. It's a form of rebellion, an onslaught I'm still taking against. In the 90s, she was buying ELO tapes for funsies to listen to on our home stereo, while I lurked in the dark corners of the house like GOD, MOM. Knowing I'd love them later was too much for my childish soul to bear at the time.
We could fast-forward past the part where my mom bought Black Sabbath - Paranoid on cassette in the mid-90s, because it reminded her of her old friends and teen moments, but I won't. I took that tape. I also took her Bowie: The Singles double album on tape for myself and I'm low-level mad today realizing that that's how I found both bands. Through my mom: the least cool person alive!
But the Sabbath and Bowie tapes both changed my life. I went crazy for both of them, walking to school listening to War Pigs and Boys Keep Swinging. That was when I stopped actively seeking contemporary music. I didn't need it anymore. Yanno, "because of all my pride!"
After actually looking into the song, I see it was written by Sonny Bono in the early 60s. Cher's version was fine. It was covered by a diverse group of greats, from Jackie DeShannon, decent but unremarkable, to Petula Clark in French to my favorite guy, Gene Clark! All of their versions were just ok. I look forward to finding the random French ye-ye versions as I have time. Those covers are a whole other post because there are so many greats.
A later cover that did actually deserve mention was the Ramones, 1977. I'll put that here because you can tell they actually loved the song. Among the above, it best captures the sound and the vibe of the song.
But this is the best version (1964) of all time, by far:
And then Tom Petty covered it with Stevie Nicks in '81. It's cool that they did it, and I would have died to have seen it in person, but it ain't gonna change your life.
I don't understand why the internet shows me so much of the wooniverse, even though I know I'm only getting the tip of the iceberg here. I mean, I do know why: because people I know actively engage in this, and their algorithms influence mine, or however the dastardly social media works.
I have my theories about why this preoccupation is growing so quickly among the Gen Z set, or even among people my own age, but whatever the reason, it's gone too far. I'm so tired of people creating their own set of bugaboos and then grappling with them publicly using fake solutions, as though they're doing something.
It's called conspirituality, the seeming unlikely convergence of spiritual/woo/yoga/holistic culture with antivax beliefs that belong more in Q-territory than anywhere else. On one hand, it seems interesting that that yogini crowd proved so susceptible to toxic, idiotic beliefs, but...isthat interesting? It was cute when they were were sageing their houses and drinking tea made from dandelions found in their yards, but of course it couldn't stop there. Now they're refusing to vaccinate their children against anything and using essential oils to deter diseases. People I know are doing this. Just hearing about it is detrimental to my life.
I've always been semi-familiar with this stuff because of my grandmothers' search for meaning in the 70s and 80s. They would attend lectures about everything from Buddhism to Feng Shui and ESP. They followed various gurus, passively, and their bookshelves were packed with yellowing, dusty guides to harnessing your inner spirit, telling the future, embracing the divine within. And, of course, there was some woo Christian-lite in there too, because that's how they got in. Most of their interests were on the deeper side, though - they were more into "exploring the meaning of being" than telling the future or gaining the upper hand on other people through supernatural means.
I'd probably accuse them of toxic positivity today, one buzz phrase that I do embrace. I could never complain or tantrum without being asked to investigate myself, or without being challenged to find something sympathetic about the person who had made me mad. I would be admonished to not say "hate," to imagine "love," and to send good thoughts to anyone who upset me. Obviously this made me totally crazy, because my instincts have always tended towards vengeance or at least unfettered expression of my natural (hateful) feelings. Send love to my mean 5th grade teacher? I don't think so, Grammy.
My grandma still has a room full of kooky books, and my mom is always harping on her to get rid of them. "Not so fast," I say, from 1,000 miles away. "Don't get rid of anything old before I see it first (including Gram haha)." Those dusty old books called things like "Edgar Cayce Speaks," and tomes about past lives are valuable now! As much as I hate the inheritors of this shit, the vintage books are, yanno, cool, and certainly fun to peruse. This whack shit is my heritage and those books are mine. They still got rid of them, though. :(
Growing up adjacent to that environment had made me pretty complacent with it all. I didn't believe, but it didn't bother me. I remember watching some documentary with a friend that mentioned this bullshit guru named Braco who supposedly heals people by standing in front of rooms full of people and gazing spiritually at them. I remembered with a start: "I've seen him. LIVE!" I had forgotten all about it. "WHAAT?" Yeah, I've been healed by Braco (pronounced Brrrat-so), it's no big deal. My Gram asked me to go with her, so I did. I went in totally blind, had not bothered to check into this "phenomenon" beforehand. So he came out, stood on a stage and stared at the room in a knowing and sympathetic way for 5 minutes (long time in this context), then quietly existed stage left. People cried! $40 a head. Gram knew enough to elbow me at lunch afterwards and ask slyly, "So, are you healed or...?" Yep, all set. She's not a full crazy, just interested in it on the side. By the way, people think Braco murdered his mentor to take his following. Probably not the people who go see him, though.
This new generation of woo is too much to take, though. The antivax Earth mother raising filthy longhaired forest children on diets of bone broth and bitter wild strawberries or whatever. Get out of here with that self-aggrandizing navel-gazing I-apparently-have-nothing-better-to-do bullshit. Please leave the grid! The arrogance of some fool with a trust fund who thinks her own body can heal cancer by itself is just, the way it pisses me off is almost indescribable, even though I will try. This person thinks sage can cure disease, and that positive thinking and a root tea is all you need. Positive thinking along with some crystals probably mined by slaves from the darkest corners of South America. There's something so out of touch and oddly snide and mindless about it all, to reject western medicine after benefiting from it for your entire life, including the crucial years in which you were vaccinated against the diseases that brought prior versions of the world to its knees. And then to be evangelical about shitting on it. I've been exposed to a lot of people like this, and summarizing them is like trying to pull individual pieces of broken furniture out of a tornado, it's all just so wildly bad that you barely know where to start.
And maybe it's the familiarity with the originating philosophies that makes me hate them so much. I expected them to stay in the lane where I first found them. I don't get as angry at the country dwelling, Jesus-loving, hunting, monster truck Trump-supporting element because I've rarely even known anyone like that, or not intimately. But the know-nothing arrogant earth witch/love priest who thinks there's an oil for every problem and who constantly tries to bestow their wisdom upon others despite rarely living by their own beliefs just burns me up.
MY problem is that I love wacky witchy stuff here and there, when it's done right. Obviously I accept that western medicine doesn't know everything and, less seriously, that straight white conservative American culture is lame as hell! I just wish we didn't have to jump every single shark. Especially as someone who formerly felt like they could be into weird shit without having to make a disclaimer that they're not patently insane.
In the less questioning bud of youth, I watched all those movies made in the 60s about witchcraft, which, according to some 1960s publications, was taking over America. After my Grammy died (I don't expect one to follow the baby names, but differentiating between Grammy and Gram, two different grandmas), I went through trunks in her storage room, and found an issue of LOOK with Anton LaVey on the cover, fingers splayed around a yellowed human skull. I couldn't believe she had kept it all those years, but it was in a lot of old stuff that I know she never looked at. There were papers from the day Kennedy was shot, from the moon landing, from other events. I wish I could have asked her about this issue of LOOK, because it is pretty fucking odd that she would have kept such a thing. But I must realistically assume there was probably something else in the magazine that she was actually interested in keeping. Or was there!
Look how young he is tho
She died when I was in my teens, at a time when I was most interested in the Church of Satan, because it flew in the face of everything I had ever been made to respect, and I wasn't aware of anything better that was as transgressing but maybe less old-mannish. I bought all of LaVey's books, which is why it didn't go much farther. They were the expected amount of shocking, but not exactly inspiring for a person like me. In reality, the books proved to be underwhelming and disappointing. I had already absorbed the whole Ragnar Redbeard thing already, and there was nothing else of substance to LaVey beyond that philosophy. If you don't know what RR said, then look it up yourself, and don't blame me if it's offensive now. I haven't revisited it since 1999.
But, I still liked the kicky dark vibes. Who wouldn't? Psychedelic swinging 60s Satanism, with knives and jeweled goblets and go go dancers in body paint. Pet lions, black walls, red carpet, big jeweled rings, snakes with glinting ruby eyes. I wanted it to be cool and it was, but passingly because it was all built on one person who was just good at cultivating a vibe and cast of characters. And I had beyond missed it all anyway. It's always influenced my home decor, long before this post but still.
And, of course, when you dig deeper into Anton's life, there's a lot of buzzkillery about abuse of romantic partners, children and animals. Yes, I'm aware that he was a complete asshole and yes, it did ruin it and completely killed any further interest, but did I visit the Black House when I visited San Francisco in the extra-early aughts? Of course I did! It's gone now, razed as late as possible after the family held out against condos for years. It was still there when we visited though, partially hidden behind razor wire. However crappy he was, it was history, and the house should have been preserved for the iconic and ironic American history that was in it. It was a shocking piece of pop culture once, and perhaps even a bit of a antisocial revolution.
Anyway, I'll take good old time mid 20th century witchcraft and stone amulets and smoky rituals long before I'll take wildflower tea and the belief that rarely bathing steels your body against disease. I'd rather imagine the blood of a baby born on Walpurgisnacht is more powerful than yoga and green juice, but maybe that's just a matter of taste. One's no more real than the other, but one is definitely cooler. Anyway, If you love Alan Alda, which you should, watch Mephisto Waltz. It's not perfect, but the imagery is on point, as is Alan's stupid villain character.
In conclusion, draw your own conclusions. But generally, just stop it.
I've finally decided to give in and engage in my interest in Buffalo China. Who says we don't have fun!
But imagine my surprise and irritation when I came to find out how generally undocumented this quintessential American brand is. Like what the fuck, I can't even find a reliable resource for all of the pattern names. Not even close!
If you wanted to collect pottery by other early-mid American brands (McCoy, Shawnee, Homer Laughlin), you'd be overwhelmed with exhaustive publications and message boards full of people fighting about real vs. repro or fake, and the various types of stamps used to identify the pieces over the years.
I'm starting to realize that Buffalo China's problem is it's too common to care about for most, with some exceptions. They started production around 1908, and all of those early century patterns through the 1920s are predictably rare, documented and expensive. They're also ugly. Back then, they were called Buffalo Pottery, and after WWI, they became one of the most prolific modern pottery distributors in the world. In addition to their retail output, they made dishes for the the armed forces before pivoting to creating custom china for hotels, restaurants and steamships in the 1920s. That's where I get interested.
My favorite Buffalo China is from the 1930s-1960s because it's heavy, thick utilitarian ware with unexpected, interesting patterns - sometimes. It's common enough that it's not expensive and I just want one piece of every pattern that I like.
Being an adult is everything I thought it would be.
The problem is, I don't know what my selection is due to the lack of documentation. I learn pattern names and histories from eBay or Etsy, from the sellers who bother to know what they're selling. I've learned enough to bitterly lament not purchasing the cheap set of multifleure that I saw on eBay a couple of years ago. There isn't a single piece of this weird midcentury psychedelic pastel pattern on the internet right now, which has made it all the more precious to me. I just want one piece. Actually, I'd take a few of that one. And a few of the masonic "Eastern Star" pieces while I'm at it, but those are around. Don't get me started on Rebekah Lodge flags. Ever wanted to blow a bunch of money on a rotten piece of silk? Me too.
I don't mind how common the Buffalo pieces are. I just want #basic things that regular people used as long as I find them attractive too. They're regular enough to find everywhere, and affordable if you're cool paying offensively varying prices for a single dinner plate, which I am.
I'm not a collector, never have been. It's not in me. After decades of acquiring various antiques and vintage pieces of varying quality and importance, I don't want to be burdened by any more miscellaneous stuff unless it's special and in small quantity. Pieces need to be interesting and usable. Items are meant to be used. What else is all this for? The animals eat off of broken expensive china and sometimes, so do I.
This hasn't prevented me from being burdened by inheriting the collections of others. And by "inheriting," I mean taking so they don't end up in the trash. That's how I ended up with my grandmother's collection of ugly 70s and 80s rocking horse figurines. They've lived in a box for 20 years, and although I think they're generally unsightly, they are mine now and I have to keep them until I die, so perhaps I'll put them on a shelf instead of asking my cousins every two years, "Would you like me to send you some horses?" Why is the answer always no?
I want a couple of pieces of shitty Corelle now. Collections (er I said I have none!) don't always have to be precious. I see my grandma's pattern, Butterfly Gold, every so often in thrifts. Seems like it came out in 1970 and was discontinued in 1981, so I don't know when she got it, but I think it was on the earlier side. The pattern looks like Spaghettios to me, served up to kids in the teacups. I snapped a pic of it and sent it to my cousin recently. Power punch to the childhood. Pic not available but:
No problem adding cheap china to the collection, that's the best part of it all.
I might even add one piece of Callaway to my hoard, just for funsies, because that was my mom's pattern in the 90s. Hardly rare and practically still in production, it came about in 1995 and ended in 2015. A nod to the old Irish heritage, Sean-o Parsons style. Kerry and Derry and Monaghan counties representing in a common piece of shitty American china.
Andrei Codrescu wrote a book called The Blood Countess in the 90s. Pretty sure I found it in a remainder pile at Barnes & Noble, attracted by the spooky cover. It was a piece of fiction that claimed to weave fact into its narrative, blurring the lines between reality and story. The whole point of the book was to make those borders confusing and permeable, and for him to try to deal with being Hungarian, but of course I chose to treat it as nonfiction because I loved it. I think I even cited it in a high school presentation I wrote about her, and never got busted because Arizona.
The book added juice to the story of Elizabeth Bathory, the evil 16th century Hungarian bitch countess who (allegedly!) tortured her maids for fun before she drained their bodies of blood for her bath. In the story, her equally perverse husband gifted her a witchy maid from foreign lands, Darvulia, who shared all of her strange cures, potions and beliefs with Elizabeth (er, Erzsebet as she was called then). One of those cures was that to bathe in virgin girl blood would reverse the aging process, something the vain Countess was obsessed with.
In the accepted history, the local townspeople started to protest that their daughters never returned from the castle, so Elizabeth was put on trial by the horrified magistrates and found guilty, then imprisoned for life. She wasn't put to death in the usual European public BDSM display because of her high status; the other titled people wouldn't want to create a precedent.
She lived another 40 years in incarceration before dying an ignominious death in a dank cell.
Except she apparently didn't do it. Or not like we think. As historians have combed through the law records of the time, there isn't a recorded incident of her crimes. Obviously there wouldn't be perfect documentation, but it's considered suspect that there's none when she allegedly killed hundreds of people, while there was plenty of documentation of other crimes by others from the day.
As we look back on the story with modern eyes, an emerging narrative is that this kind of treatment and conspiracy was typical when it came to women in power. Think of the shocking and unfounded rumors that still cling to Catherine the Great of Russia to present day. No horse! (By the way, the show "The Great" is a hilarious and delightfully ahistorical show about Catherine available on Hulu now. One of the Fanning children plays Catherine and she is as etherial and pretty as you'd expect a little 16th c Polish princess to be.) When Elizabeth's status as controller of her castle and desirable lands, as the sole inheriting child of her family, is considered in the context of the time, you realize how incentivized the local relatives and powers that be may have been to jailing her and taking her property.
But that's guessing! There's no way to prove her innocent today, but it is interesting to think about now. There's no reason to think she wouldn't have been as brutal toward her servants as any Countess of the time was, but stories like Codrescu's only help to perpetuate the myths of spinning iron-spiked cages, torture parties and a practice of using a pair of massive scissors to slap young girls in the face. What mind comes up with these punishments? I guess any mind that's read history and knows what people were doing to their enemies then. It was a troubled time. All times were troubled times.
I'd love to hear what Codrescu would think with this new information. I can't find any evidence that he's revisited the topic in the last 20 years. Not that I hold it against him. But what if she was innocent? A then middle-aged woman being saddled with the most hysterical and extreme accusations imaginable, branded as a sick and perverted sadist, and taken away to live in the dark for the rest of her life. Except they wouldn't have called her sadist, as de Sade wasn't even born for a hundred years. Did he read about her as a young man? Those French elites loved a nasty story. Speaking of historical pieces that play with fact, watch Quills! As much as I want to edit the bad writing in that 2010 post, I won't. Seems like cheating (myself, out of seeing what a badly-written wang I was).
We know now that she was put on trial and imprisoned in her early 30s, by the way. 30 was a much harder age in 1590 than it is now, but come on y'all. Labeled as a disgusting old witch thirsting after the flowing blood of pretty young things, hoping to turn herself into a sexy baby nymphet because she was a wretched 32? I'm offended for her.
For reasons totally unrelated to my own life, I've becoming increasingly aware of Woman's (capital W Woman the Legion) inability to accept aging. I know exactly why it happens and I am not surprised by the outcomes it creates, but I am forever shocked by the ease with which humans acquire dysmorphia. It's not just for trans kids and eating disorders!
I spent half a morning drinking coffee in bed and looking at pictures of Madonna the other weekend, shocked by how swollen and distorted her face has become. Is looking like a drag version of yourself and inciting uncanny valley really better than having a few lines on your face? Madonna is a naturally beautiful person and you know she would have aged gracefully had she allowed herself to.
I take no issue with her continued presentation of herself as a sex cat. Madge can keep wearing pleather bodysuits forever, but I wish she knew that her frozen Priscilla Presley face contrasts less than she thinks with her body, which is becoming taughtly old ladyish in subtle ways that wouldn't be an issue if she wasn't trying to hide it. See: Angelina Jolie. Something about working out too much and becoming ropey. It even affects younger women when they do too much.
I watched The Unforgivable with Sandra Bullock recently. I don't recommend it (there is an unseen twist, though), but all I could focus on were her Real Housewives slightly overfilled duck lips. I'm supposed to believe this woman just got out of a 20 year prison stint? They have that shit in the joint? Her case isn't even extreme, but it's still immediately recognizable and made her unbelievable as her character. It's all I could see.
And there are a million other examples, far more extreme than the two I mention. Even Tori Amos has greatly changed her face to the point that it instantly stands out to me, but I do enjoy that she has somehow become more elfin than ever before. Was that intentional, or just the result of inflating her cheeks, forehead and chin (filler, filler everywhere)? We'll never know. But she has pointy ears and crazy red hair still and I guess that's something. Last person I expected, though. Look at her in 1992. No one expected that person to stay forever, but come on. I also prefer when she let her hair be a wild frazzled mess. As long as we're "normalizing" everything, normalize banshee hair.
Speaking of Tori, check out videos of her recording songs from Boys for Pele in ancient Anglo churches in 1994 (you could start at 10:30 if you care about harpsichord). She was literally high AF and it shows, and it may help to explain why that album was so brain-melting and etherial. Tori talking about the ancient grounds that exist below churches, oh, fucking a. Get me a harpsichord at once. Also, google her Cielo Drive story with Trent Reznor.
I think the toxic trends will change eventually, especially with the great wokening happening in western culture. Talk of beauty standards is still localized and kind of quiet, but all sands are shifting and that'll come up eventually. Ok, last last thing I'll say about Tori is remember all of the edgy photoshoots she took for Pele, like suckling a pig on a lonely splintered cabin porch? Ugh, she was cool and weird.
I was concerned about buying a new house because it's not my aesthetic. I don't hate all new architecture, but I'm definitely not a fan of anything I can afford. I rued this situation for months, literally troubled by the thought of living in a tidy modern house. Nobody understands. "Oh, you're mad that it's not...old and shitty?" unsympathetic friends ask. Yes, bro. Jesus christ.
I joked that this "setback" would inevitably result in my overcompensating by moving to Providence to live in a 250 year old house in a few years. If Abigail Adams wasn't alive when it was built, then I don't want it! ...is what I'd tell my local realtor, who would then roll their eyes and mentally note this for their real estate tik tok about asshole clients.
Surprisingly, I am amused by my new hood after all, because it reminds me of the suburban neighborhood from Edward Scissorhands. Pathologically uniform, tidy and simple, with houses only distinguished from each other by colors or subtle variations in size. The house colors here are kind of jazzy, as they are in the movie, and you can see six other neighbors' yards from over the fence from your own. Starter house, as I still expect to die in a mouldering Queen Anne.
It also made me think of the neighborhood from Poltergeist, and I thought it was funny that this freshly scrubbed, manufactured bit of new Americana just reminded me of horror movies. I hope I won't need Tangina. I'm getting the impression that this association is not usual or expected when I share it, but this is one place where I have experience: If you didn't grow up in a psychotically-landscaped new build community, then you won't get it.
I have 1980s photos of my parents standing on the vast concrete foundation that eventually became our house in north Phoenix. When I look at later photos, inevitably taken during family parties, I can't believe how perfectly manicured and deep green our lawn is, or how tidy the house in its peach color scheme. How tall the piles of birthday presents, how round the grandmas' bouffants.
The parallels between this house and our old new house of the 80s are something I hadn't realized before. Having grown up in new construction is why I dislike it, and why I can feel comfortable in it. I remember the feeling of living in a place where no one had lived before, of being the first to make the door dent in the wall, the first to make a mess, a permanent stain. The first to infuse their petty human foibles and thoughts into the air, even though I was too young to appreciate a place with no "vibes" until we had created plenty of our own. After an adulthood of living in the mustiest, oldest, least updated places I could find, filled with weird traces of peoples' lives, I had forgotten about that.
Anyway, this little Cuesta Verde is in an area that's still half country, and driving around, I see old farmhouses partially shrouded in stands of trees, led to by dirt roads with tall grass between the tracks. These were once the most remote homes in the county, unimaginably isolated even 5 years ago, and now they're slowly becoming surrounded on all sides. I'm sad for it, sad to see wide open slopes of native grass as far as the eye can see and know they're going to turn into stupid houses, everyone building and then frantically buying to fill the rooms. I'm surrounded by wild empty land on three sides and I love it. It's that strange, hybrid hill country, dry and yellow in some areas and tangled and green with big, ancient oaks in others, viney thickets where the creeks are, full of fish and screaming birds.
There are no birds in my fake neighborhood, because all the trees are short and spindly and held up by stakes. I put my feeders up and looked at the horizon, squinting quizzically under my shielding hand, where are those dang bluejays anyway? They're raising hell all over central Austin right now but there's not one here. Also: not a squirrel. Unbelievable.
The dirt roads and rolling grass around here make it feel like no surprise that this particular swath of east-of-35 was once cut through by the Chisholm Trail, one of the big cattle trails of the late 19th century, that stretched from the Rio Grande to Kansas City. Naturally, local podcasts say (ok the ghost podcast says) the trail is haunted by native and settler ghosts. Guys out walking around looking like humans and then disappearing, the sound of invisible hooves, and other fodder from the elementary school book fair.
It's haunting, at least, to think that all this land stayed raw up until right about now. There's a place not far away that's been converted to a living history community, full of 500 year old legacy oaks, old green trails first tramped by native feet and a pristine creek where those same bluejays like to wing around like crazy, because this preserve, continually occupied by different people for hundreds of years, is now in the middle of a neighborhood. Some of the city's earliest cabins have been moved there to create a walking tour. House after empty house, staged for the 1840s, 60s, 80s. Disturbing places in their emptiness, depicting activity halted over 150 years ago. I thought about the occupants of those places, before they were moved. Looking out of rare glass windows over Congress, Red River, forever transferred to different views.
So I'm saying I probably will need Tangina when I accidentally dig up some artifact while installing my pocket prairie and set loose an ancient curse etc.
Here I was trying to write about liking something new and I'm back on my bullshit.
We know that dreams are just the brain working its own shit out in weird, surreal, misfiring ways. Like the brain is throwing anything from paint to mustard at a canvas and then pinching its chin like, Is this art? If that's not an accurate summary of dreams, it's because I haven't researched it since 2009 and/or I never fucking knew in the first place, but that's what I think. I've often had "problem" dreams about things I'm dealing with at the time. Sometimes they're resolved tidily and I wake up disappointed that the tidy resolution wasn't real, and other times, situations go entirely out of control and I wake relieved by reality. Usually, though, my dreams feel relevant to nothing, just a series of images foreign and familiar, soon forgotten.
But ever since my grandma died in 2003, I've dreamt she's alive. It used to be all the time, but now it's once or twice a year. Infrequent but reliable, and never gone even this many years later. Some losses never dull, never stop being shocking. She was 82 and I still feel like she was torn away unexpectedly. It happened so fast with her, in exactly the way we all want it to happen after a long life.
In the dreams, I'll be at her house, in the now-times, and she'll appear in the picture with no fanfare. I'll puzzle, wondering how the hell she's alive and if she has been this whole time and I just didn't know, and each time she blows me off like, "What, honey?" quizzical look while she does something else. This isn't interesting, but the last one was.
She was swimming in a pool with some girlfriends, and they were all drinking tequila cocktails. Laughing and splashing around, with their hair tied up, arcing their heads like cantering ponies, trying to keep their hair out of the water. She got out of the pool, and I went to her and hugged her. She was younger than I ever knew her in life, looked like late 50s, the age she was when I was born. When I wrapped my arms around her, she felt firm and strong and her body was deeply warm the way people feel when they've been lying in the sun all day. It was such a full body physical experience, to feel the warmth of her back and sides through my arms, and to hug her, both of us adult women, like friends. Something I never experienced with her. She was happy and social and busy. She always was. Such an outgoing woman, so different from me.
I joked with her that I heard she'd been drinking and she laughed a little, looked off over the crowd, listening to something someone else was saying. The house was full of people. "I always liked a crowd," she used to say in life, child #9 out of 11. I walked back to her kitchen sink where my mom was talking to my dead uncle and his wife and we resumed chatting about nothing.
Other peoples' dreams aren't interesting, so yanno, suck it up.
It's disorienting when you realize that you like the things you like not because they are inherently compatible with your soul (if you're under 30, read: vibe), but because they were fed to you or shown to you during your most impressionable years.
It's no coincidence that many people identify the music of their youth as the best of whatever that genre is. Especially dumb people, who don't know/care that better things probably came earlier - but there I go! Why do I think that? When I was in late grade school, my mom's then-boyfriend tried a few times to draw me into arguments, saying that the music of his youth (he claimed the Beatles, but he was born in '62 or something so it's not like he was "there") was better than mine. I liked the Beatles too, so I remember shrugging like, yeah, you're probably right, but more importantly, no one here cares what you think Joel.
You get this from boomers all the time, the obsession with their youth and the way the world was then. Just being 60 or older is a part time job in itself because you're obliged to wax poetic about your home and school and the country and the food and the music and cars and what the girls looked like and how tough the men were and how great the movies were. Even if your home life sucked and you're not lying around sucking your thumb about how unwholesome everyone is now, there's definitely a major part of midcentury culture that you're unhealthily obsessed with. If you're over 60.
And here's the problem: US, TOO.
I finally, finally realized that the only reason I think that time was such a big deal, other than being a remarkably prosperous time in US history (which boomers can stop taking credit for because you don't influence the economy when you're fucking five, Jerry) is because all the boomers were in maximum creative mode when I was a kid. All of these nostalgic period movies from the 80s and 90s, anything from Stand by Me to My Girl reinforced to me over and over that those days were the golden hour of the United States and life in general.
This is an unfair thing to do to kids, because by implying that there was a time that was better, you begin to take away THEIR ability to be annoying in the future by moaning about their own childhoods. And, ironically, so much of the quirky uniqueness that I recall from the early 90s of my childhood is because it was retro. Pee Wee's Playhouse, the B52s (yes I realize they were cool in the 70s but I'm talking Love Shack on MTV 65 times per weekend), the clothes, the stylization was all some kind of distorted day-glo homage to the 50s and 60s. Edward Scissorhands, Hairspray, even mainstream weird was all over it. My fashion inspiration in middle school was Hayley Mills in the Parent Trap. Do you see why it's unkind to make children live in the daydreams of middle aged people? Do you realize that none of the other kids thought that look was cool?
Realizing that many of my aesthetic preferences and interests were only due to my environment as a child was interesting. What would I have liked if I had grown up somewhere else? Truly, who even am I? Is this the root of my incompatibility with mainstream culture? Because I didn't just get it from my dad bitching about what he paid for his first house or how actresses don't look anything like they used to, I was also raised by old women. Multiple old women. So not only am I part Ron Howard, I'm part Nana.
How DARE they do this to me.
In which I rebel:
Once, I dated someone briefly who, upon coming to my house, arrived at the slow realization that everything was "old". "The furniture," he said. "The pictures." He shrugged awkwardly and pointed. "Even the blanket on your bed! It's weird!" I looked around and was like, "Literally what are you talking about/what is wrong with you." At the time, I was still so entangled in my own tastes that I felt like the only reason other people didn't have the sort of belongings I did was because they just had no style or ability to source things. Because who wouldn't have a Joan Crawford Hollywood Regency bedroom if they could? Like what's your preference, Sears? TJ Maxx? Fucking dead souls, bro. You want a blanket that's made of plastic and an art piece over the bed that looks like it was mass produced for hotels? Cheap hotels? If that's what people want, then their very lives are their punishment and I don't need to say a word. That was my view then, anyway.
But realizing that so many of my tastes were prescribed to me has punctured the spell a bit. Or my tastes have changed, at least such that I'm no longer obsessive about them. I no longer want everything in my house to be from the same time period. I don't want my living room to look like a display in an antique store. Perhaps my tastes are adjusting to what they would have been organically. That doesn't mean I want contemporary stuff, which is still just garbage. My interests are in the process of reorienting, all just because I realized that a bunch of other people had too much hand in forging my tastes. I say that, then spend 30 minutes browsing the Instagram entitled "Vintage Wilton Cakes". And I still unironically listen to the Hollies and Chad & Jeremy, so I guess I'm still a weird old boomer and fine with that. I say boomer because I'm mad when my friends don't agree.
I used to be so interested in 19th century American Victoriana that I was convinced that I had lived a past life then. While I thought midcentury America was a template to aspire to (and I think we can still agree that the objet are better and more attractive and made to last), I felt a deep longing when it came to thinking about the prior century. I was fascinated, truly ga-ga about 19th century homes and clothes and things and cemeteries. What the fuck was that about? I still feel that way. There was a lot of history in my house growing up, artifacts, photos, talk. It was shared with me in an almost reverential way, but is that enough to make a 12 year old sit around drawing Gibson girls all night and collect hundred year old toys and tchotchkes? I still have so much of that stuff and I don't know what to do with it, but I have to keep it. Old black walnut hand mirrors and tea sets and art and portraits and clothes. Much of this was given to me, but still. Like talk about Nana. I need a black scarf for my head so I can finally achieve my dream of dressing like a 75 year old rural Italian peasant. Think widow, but make it Sofia Loren.
I have a deep cynicism about things that are supposed to be cool, and also now about things I used to think were cool, so that I'm essentially Rob from High Fidelity now. Brooding and bitchy but still into it. The only things I enjoy are things that people must, ironically, be uncynical about. Selena, Lil Nas X, British doom metal written by dads about medieval agricultural superstition. If it's not any of that, then get it away from me. Like, the fuck away. Because extremes forever.
Over time, my desire to record my observations has waxed and waned. I've come to a point where I genuinely wonder what the point is, and I have an increasing sense that exposing my opinions is actually somewhat hazardous. The feverish appetite for bad faith takes is epidemic in our culture, and I think it's going to get worse before it gets better. It's also just a sad fact that unfamiliar people receive hostile opinions (you know, good-naturedly hostile opinions) in ways that are worse than one would typically imagine. In fact, the number of people who appreciate good-natured hostility are almost definitely lower than I thought they were earlier in life. Is everyone just inappropriately sincere, "goofy" and possessed of an unnuanced and uncreative sense of humor? Pretty much!
Still, writing things out is how I like to process information, and it's my preferred method of communication. Verbal communication is something I only like to do with people inside my world, at which point the situation usually inverts and the higher quality is found in the verbal while the written gets reduced to familiar shorthand. I don't like talking to people I don't know well or trust, and that is probably apparent from my silence, halting sentences or unfortunate word choices. I'd rather avoid it, for everyone's benefit. The only bad part is that written things last for a long time. Long after you've changed.
There are lots of places this exploration can go: the social contagion of bad faith "gotcha" interactions, the mistrust between extroverts and introverts, the intentional concealment of one's true personality from certain types of people, and the originating causes for that.
The bad faith thing is such a serious problem, and it needs to be argued like a legal case (apparently). I can't tell you how many people pooh-pooh the existence of this, like it's only being perpetuated by a few bad actors. That's how it spreads, my friend. Even my closest ideological allies take this view right now, creating recurrent arguments between us. The description of this phenomenon requires the compilation of thousands of literal, real-life examples that happen every year, and that is just not my job. Even though I have all the capacity for such a painful passion project, the brain-atrophying effects of (I guess) social media and our anti-intellectual culture, plus the unending quantity of information to process, have made me apathetic and lazy when it comes to info gathering. Plus, better people are already on the job. A smart friend with mutual interests recently suggested we start a podcast together, and I stopped him immediately: "Do you realize the amount of research and vetting we'd have to do about every single thing we said?" When you're creating an artifact like that, you can't just bullshit, especially if you're talking about something like the topics we were discussing, which are all enmeshed with culture and history. I can't just talk about things the way I remember them, the way we do for fun in person. "Oh, shit, that's true..." he said. Hasn't come up again. Unfortunate, but that's the way it's gotta be. I wouldn't have said that five or ten years ago, but I also would have been more willing to wing facts and manipulate information to make my points, and after seeing what happens when journalists do that, I just can't. I'm not a journalist and no one is informing their choices by what I say, but the disingenuous ones have ruined everything for everyone. Like I said: bad faith. I can't stand myself if I misrepresent facts even if all we're talking about is Ann Richards' favorite restaurant. Or maybe that is something I could talk about...
The mistrust between introverts/extroverts is a flawed conversation too, because these descriptions are now being used with such authority, like either group is a known quantity with all of the same characteristics. They're not, but you know what I mean when I describe that poor communication. Everyone does, on both sides of the coin. I've experienced it many times in my life, and I usually feel totally disconnected from the unfolding situation, watching like an observer. Before I learned to pantomime a kind of breezy good-naturedness in unknown situations, like a psychopath, my demeanor was usually interpreted as a rude attempt at superiority. This shocked me, shocked me, because it happened when I was a kid, a teen at my first job even, and often it was grown adults who interpreted my behavior that way. That says more about them than anything, because I was just shy and awkward and they were seeing all of their prior negative experiences with other people in our innocuous exchanges. And although I am much more comfortable with people now, and the fake sophisticated good-natured presentation is often even sincere, I am so tired of this type of conflict now. For a long time, I've seen it as something that can't be helped. If I care, I'll try to fix it if I've been misinterpreted, but I usually just leave it.
There are so many reasons why communicating thoughts and opinions is risky. I've come to accept and believe that I'll be misunderstood at least as much as I'm understood, and that is something that matters less and less to me with each year. The only part of that dynamic that I'm interested in is how differently the same person can interpret you before they know you, and after they know you. In my experience, I've been treated with so much suspicion followed with overwhelming enthusiasm after someone has accepted my personality that I've stopped overthinking it all. If it takes, it does, and if it doesn't, who can care? There's a risk inherent in all interactions that will always exist. Let it go is the mantra of life.
The real challenge is letting go with people who are inextricably in your life, like family. I used to require that my extended family didn't misinterpret or judge me, because they actually are superior assholes, and predisposed to seeing other people in remarkably uncharitable ways. This goes for the sweetest aunt all the way down to the drug addict cousin. Once upon a time, I couldn't have that - couldn't have it recorded in anyone's social family memory that I wasn't as smart or formidable as they were. Of course, now that I've experienced them all on the flattened playing field of adulthood, I'm no longer worried about it. As time passes and dynamics change, I'm finding myself transferred to a more authoritative role, which feels weird yet appropriate. I see the old family bosses defer decisions to me, even the scariest non-parental members, and I'm finally old enough to accept that. It is the way of time. Plus I do know more.
And in work situations, I've learned to handle this scenario down when it comes to direct reports who have to deal with me whether they want to or not. I've tried to make those interactions as transparent and pleasurable as they can be, knowing that the true opinions of people subject to my decisions are likely to be forever unknown to me. Managing other people is the hardest part of any job and despite my initial protestations, I've found myself to be surprisingly up to the task. The best thing you can do in that role is to allow people to manage up, and influence you by creating a, dare I say it, safe space for them to be honest with you. "Let me be frank." "No, I want to be Frank." Terrible 90s goth joke.
One of the few ways I've been able to remain on good terms with people in my life who have radically differing views is by identifying the things we agree on. It's so simple, but feels like a revelation every time it happens. Usually those things are totally apolitical, which is fine, but it's felt something like a cop out on my part. It's the only option, though. And I can feel closer to those people than I do with the ideologically-aligned who happen to live their lives in ways that I don't understand. I'm capable of resenting those people in ways I never could a similar person with wildly different views. What did Chaucer say?
Any opportunity to share Rowland.
Ultimately, I'd prefer to create a well resourced and fenced enough status for myself in which the honest transmission of hot takes and opinions is safe, no matter how evolving or formative (antisocial) those views are. We're not there yet, though, and in the meantime, I'll keep deciding if the sharing of any opinions continues to be valuable. It's going to be a while before that feels fruitful again. I feel like I'm perceiving this society's next storm before/as it hits, and as much as I'd hate to be right, I think there's a good chance of it.
