Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

Musical Interlude: Chin Up

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The week’s been one of needing (re)encouragement — always a popular subject with writers, who can never get (or imagine they can’t get) enough of it — and of finding new reasons why maybe we don’t need as much encouragement as we thought. Coincidentally, in the last 24 hours I’ve tripped across a couple of songs that seem to fit the mood.

The first is by Mary Gauthier, from her recent album The Foundling. The album was recorded in Toronto, produced by Michael Timmins of the Cowboy Junkies (with characteristically smoky backing vocals by sister and bandmate Margo Timmins). Gautier says of the songs on the album:

[They] tell the story of a kid abandoned at birth who spent a year in an orphanage and was adopted, who ran way from the adopted home and ended up in show business, who searched for birth parents late in life and found one and was rejected, and who came through the other side of all of this still believing in love.

Here’s “Sideshow,” the opening track (lyrics below).

Lyrics:

Sideshow
(Mary Gauthier)

People stare and then they walk away
But there’s always a few who’ll stay
From the state I watch ’em close their eyes
Like a little kid trying to hide
Like they’re somewhere ain’t supposed to be
Watching something they ain’t supposed to see
Giving in to the undertow
In the dark at the sideshow

I’m the singer at the sideshow
It’s a place that orphans go
Far away from the bright lights
Hard to find on a dark night
Another truly troubled troubadour
Writing songs to even up the score
A tune for every single body flow
And I sing ’em at the sideshow

Who likes to think about their pain
Most people would avoid the rain
A sunny song will help you make it through
But constant whistling is hard to do
Too many songs about happiness
Leave me sad, lonely, and depressed
A million miles from the radio
You can find me at the side show

I make my living at the sideshow
It’s a place that orphans go
Far away from the bright lights
Hard to find on a dark night
Another truly troubled troubadour
Writing songs to even up the score
A tune for every single body blow
And I sing ’em at the side show

I make a living at the sideshow
It’s a place that the wounded go
Far away from the Bright lights
Hard to find on a dark night
You can find us
Another truly troubled troubadour
At the sideshow
Writing songs to even up the score
Yea, me
A tune for every single body blow
And the buffalo
And I sing ’em at the sideshow
You can find us
Back in the corner where the sad songs flow
At the sideshow

I’ve actually had the second song on my playlist for a few years; it’s just been a while since I last heard it. It comes from Eric Bibb, as recorded on the multi-artist album Mali to Memphis which traces the route of the blues across an ocean and from one continent to another.

Here’s “Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down” (lyrics below).

Lyrics:

Don’t Ever Let Nobody Drag Your Spirit Down
(Eric Bibb)

You might slip
You might slide
You might tumble and fall by the road side
Don’t you ever let nobody
Drag your spirit down
Remember you’re walkin’ up to heaven
Don’t let nobody turn you round

Walk with the rich
Walk with the poor
Learn from everybody that’s what life is for
Don’t you ever let nobody
Drag your spirit down
Remember you’re walkin’ up to heaven
Don’t let nobody turn you round

Some say yes
Some say no
Some wait and see which way the wind blow
Don’t you ever let nobody
Drag your spirit down
Well we’re walkin’ up to heaven
Don’t let nobody turn you round

Well I might say things
Sound strange to you
And I might preach the gospel I believe it’s true
I won’t let nobody
Drag my spirit down
Yes I’m walkin’ up to heaven
Won’t let nobody turn me round

You might slip
You might slide
You might tumble and fall by the road side
Don’t you ever let nobody
Drag your spirit down
Remember you’re walkin’ up to heaven
Don’t let nobody turn you round

What Takes You Back?

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Yesterday, Granta magazine kicked off a new collective-memory project called “Nostos Algos.” From a publicity release which just made its way to my Inbox:

The word ‘nostalgia’ comes from the Greek words nostos (‘a homecoming’) and algos (‘pain, grief, distress’). We have all known the desire to return to another place or time, and the feeling of being unable to truly go back. Nostos Algos is a collective exercise in bringing the past into the present and making it part of a shared experience with fellow users and the imaginations of Granta’s famed writers. After you post your memory, it will appear in a live feed and be matched to an extract from our Online Archive. Alongside your musings will appear words from Doris Lessing, Arthur Miller, Ryszard Kapuscinski and many other distinguished authors.

I have no idea, yet, if there’s some way to follow the project online in any ongoing way. You can pass individual posts to Twitter and Facebook; but I don’t see an RSS link there, and as far as I know the site doesn’t have its own social-networking presence. I’ll check on this and update this post as needed. (Note especially that the memories can be no longer than 500 characters; this means that for Twitter, at least — with its 140-character limit — some truncation will take place.)

Surely everyone reading this post has something to contribute. And how cool would it be to see your entry matched up with a selection from Granta‘s remarkable, wide-ranging past? Of its modern incarnation, the magazine’s “About” page says:

Since 1979, the year of its rebirth, Granta has published many of the world’s finest writers tackling some of the world’s most important subjects, from intimate human experiences to the large public and political events that have shaped our lives. Its contributors have included Martin Amis, Julian Barnes, Saul Bellow, Peter Carey, Raymond Carver, Angela Carter, Bruce Chatwin, James Fenton, Richard Ford, Martha Gellhorn, Nadine Gordimer, Milan Kundera, Doris Lessing, Ian McEwan, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jayne Anne Phillips, Salman Rushdie, George Steiner, Graham Swift, Paul Theroux, Edmund White, Jeanette Winterson and Tobias Wolff. Every issue since 1979 is still in print. In the pages of Granta, readers met for the first time the narrative prose of writers such as Bill Bryson, Romesh Gunesekera, Blake Morrison, Arundhati Roy and Zadie Smith; and have encountered events and topics as diverse as the fall of Saigon, the mythology of the Titanic, adultery, psychotherapy and Chinese cricket fighting.

Whoa, hmm?

See the dozen or so most recent entries which others have posted to Nostos Algos, and tack on your own to the stream, here.

For more details about the project, see the publicity release (139KB) itself.

Hits and Misses

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Complicated here, during the last week. Not bad, just… complicated. Thought I’d sort of summarize a couple of points of potential interest, but first, a question for regular visitors:

Have you had problems accessing RAMH recently? One of your number has reported getting repeated “the connection was reset by the server” errors. It’s prevented her from even seeing the site, apparently. (I got the information via a Facebook message.) I haven’t been able to reproduce it from any of various locations, using various browsers and operating systems. But I wanted to check before proceeding to see if anything like that has cropped up for the rest of you. (Of course — ha! — if it has, then you won’t be able to read this post.)

Okay, now onto “real” matters…

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Book Review: War, by Sebastian Junger

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Habitués of Running After My Hat know, I think, that I resist the intrusion of politics into my posts here. And although I’ve never been tested on this, I’m pretty sure that’s one area in which I would likely resort to editing (or outright banning) comments of certain kinds. If you’re after debate, even of the reasoned sort, there are plenty of other sites around the Internet whose proprietors are more than happy (and better equipped than I) to offer it.

As my newest review at The Book Book begins:

Like (probably) most Americans, I have never fought in a war, and am unlikely ever to do so. Like (probably) most Americans, I nonetheless hold plenty of opinions about war in general as well as about specific conflicts. Those opinions are important to us, and we regard holding onto them in the face of opposing views as a matter of psychological — almost theological — life and death.

But civilian opinions one way or the other about war, any war, shred like tissue paper when you try to wrap them around the hard, spiky reality of soldiers’ experiences. It simply doesn’t matter what John Q. Public (let alone his favorite talk-show host) thinks.

War, by Sebastian Junger, is all about the daily lives of soldiers on the front line in the war in Afghanistan. (He spent a year embedded with a company there, in 2007-2008.) I won’t kid you: although it is a quick read, it’s not easy reading. What these young men have to deal with, and how they deal with it, is so far from the experience of civilian life that wanting it not to exist, or pretending it doesn’t, is completely understandable. Even if you’re open to knowing about it, I likewise understand the difference between that agreeability and a willingness to spend a few days reading about it.

But I think one thing Junger says, almost in passing, strikes me as one of the main reasons to read the book:

Perfectly sane, good men have been drawn back to combat over and over again, and anyone interested in the idea of world peace would do well to know what they’re looking for. Not killing, necessarily — that couldn’t have been clearer in my mind — but the other side of the equation: protecting. The defense of the tribe is an insanely compelling idea, and once you’ve been exposed to it, there’s almost nothing you’d rather do.

What soldiers are looking for: If you think it’s a desire to win their particular war, or to “get” the “enemy,” or, simply, a desire to get home ASAP (where the “S” represents Safely as well as Soon), you might want to at least sample some of Junger’s book.

Again, though, despite the title and the above quoted passage: this isn’t a book about war, but about battle — combat — and how men adapt to it. If you undertake reading War, prepare yourself for some moments of high intensity (also some low comedy, and emotionally moving passages).

You Spoke from Midnight

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From whiskey river:

Moonrise

And who has seen the moon, who has not seen
Her rise from out the chamber of the deep,
Flushed and grand and naked, as from the chamber
Of finished bridegroom, seen her rise and throw
Confession of delight upon the wave,
Littering the waves with her own superscription
Of bliss, till all her lambent beauty shakes towards us
Spread out and known at last, and we are sure
That beauty is a thing beyond the grave,
That perfect, bright experience never falls
To nothingness, and time will dim the moon
Sooner than our full consummation here
In this odd life will tarnish or pass away.

(D. H. Lawrence [source])

…and, from whiskey river‘s archives (the commonplace book):

Our existence is finite. The self that we have created through so many years of effort and suffering will die. And sustained though we may be by the idea, the hope, the certainty that some portion of us will eternally endure, we also must acknowledge that this “I” who breathes and loves and works and knows itself will be forever and ever and ever… obliterated.

So, whether or not we live with images of continuity — of immortality — we also will have to live with a sense of transience, aware that no matter how passionately we love whatever we love, we don’t have the power to make either it, or us, stay.

(Judith Viorst, Necessary Losses [source])

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Behind the Scrim of the World

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[See the note at the end of this post for info about the above song.]

From whiskey river:

Falling

Long before daybreak
none of the birds yet awake
rain comes down with the sound
of a huge wind rushing
through the valley trees
it comes down around us
all at the same time
and beyond it there is nothing
it falls without hearing itself
without knowing
there is anyone here
without seeing where it is
or where it is going
like a moment of great
happiness of our own
that we cannot remember
coasting with the lights off

(W. S. Merwin [source])

…and:

It is this admirable, this immortal, instinctive sense of beauty that leads us to look upon the spectacle of this world as a glimpse, a correspondence with heaven. Our unquenchable thirst for all that lies beyond, and that life reveals, is the liveliest proof of our immortality. It is both by poetry and through poetry, by music and through music, that the soul dimly descries the splendors beyond the tomb; and when an exquisite poem brings tears to our eyes, those tears are not a proof of overabundant joy: they bear witness rather to an impatient melancholy, a clamant demand by our nerves, our nature, exiled in imperfection, which would fain enter into immediate possession, while still on this earth, of a revealed paradise.

(Charles Baudelaire [source; the above is the version at whiskey river, a somewhat different translation])

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Book Review: Spook, by Mary Roach

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I’ve just posted my latest review for The Book Book; it covers non-fiction author Mary Roach’s Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife.

This was Roach’s second book. The first, Stiff, was about what happens to the human body after death. You can see that she’s attracted to odd, even icky topics; and you may guess from the title, too, that she uses humor to distance the reader from the ick. She’s one of my favorite non-fiction writers, certainly among the most enjoyable.

As I say in the review, my only real reservation about her work has to do with that sense of humor. Sometimes she drops a punchline into the text just a little too insistently, and it falls flat.

Compare this approach to, say, Bill Bryson’s. He too loves to make people laugh, and he too never shies away from the humor in a situation. But the jokes are good ones, not limp asides inserted for the sake of comic timing.

But I don’t want to hammer at that point too hard; I don’t want you to think I don’t enjoy Roach’s writing. Whatever she comes up with, I expect to be among those happily reading it.

Using a Kindle: Some First Impressions

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[This is one of what will no doubt become a series on my experiences in using a Kindle 2. It’s not a drum I want to beat often — don’t want it to become one of those “I have X but you don’t, haha!” gloatfests. But it might be useful for people on the fence about the whole e-book deal.]

Frequent RAMH commenter DarcKnyt wondered recently over at his place: What are the pros and cons of e-readers? He asked for comments particularly from people who’ve used them. I probably gave him way more that he wanted/needed — it would’ve made for a long post here, and that’s saying something.

Here’s the bottom line, for me:

In general, I think the transition to e-books will resemble any other transition to a new/different technology. It will come with inconveniences and drawbacks… but ultimately people will learn to live with them (or the tech will advance to the point where they no longer apply), for the sake of the NEW conveniences and features they couldn’t even have faked the old way. (No doubt, when cavemen first started to light fires at night, a subset of them swaggered around, sniffed haughtily, and hitched up their fur loincloths, insisting that things were better when we kept watch by moonlight and the stars — and we sure didn’t have to keep getting up to dump another log on the moon every time the previous one burned down! And you couldn’t drop the moon in a river and put it out! It gave everything a much sleeker, more romantic look, than fire ever could! The moon didn’t threaten to get out of control and burn down the whole damn forest! Etc.)

(If you’d like to see the full thing, which includes more details of my experience so far, it’s resting comfortably over across the Web, at Darc’s place.)

I’ve since thought of a few other things I might have mentioned:

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Paying Attention to the Silence

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This Paying Attention to… series on writing fiction concentrates, for the most part, on what to do when writing. More exactly, it covers things I need to remind myself to pay attention to — particularly as I’ve been working on Seems to Fit.

In this post, I want to look at what to when not writing — particularly, while writing-blocked.

Ask me about my first novel, and I will invariably tell you about a mystery, Crossed Wires. In doing so, I’m not counting the book I started in the mid-1970s: a picaresque science-fiction extravaganza called As Luck Would Have It. It was humorous, or rather “humorous,” and (or so I imagined) intellectually wide-ranging, and full of all sorts of stylistic  pyrotechnics like punning character names and a portentous prologue.* While I never finished even a single draft of the book’s manuscript, and indeed the manuscript never even made it to digital form (I’d handwritten and typed it), I always liked and remembered the book’s central conceit:

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