Notebook

“His soul is that of a coward,” said Biden after reports that our president described dead soldiers as “suckers” and “losers.” With two months remaining until we vote, it’s tempting to howl at each outrageous statement and exploded norm—but monitoring this madness won’t do much good for my soul. Nothing I read or write will change how I vote. Beyond that, best I can do is volunteer where needed and channel my energy into my teaching, my work, and the people in my life.

I’d started this nightly journal on January 1 so I could remember the texture of this year. But in terms of politics, the shape is clear and will not be forgotten. This election will test how much cruelty Americans will tolerate, and how many of us crave it.

Damien Jurado & Richard Swift – Be Not Fearful

Other People’s Songs | Secretly Canadian, 2010 | More

What is my obsession with late-night AM radio? I started tuning into it eleven years ago while driving around the country after my mom’s death. I drove from Detroit to the Pacific Ocean with her ashes in the car, wanting to scream. As I scrolled through the radio in search of voices to keep me company, I began to understand the appeal of its doomsday preachers and fear merchants. They take personal pain and direct it outwards, pointing our private fears and failings toward the government, Marxists, or flying saucers. If that fails, you can always blame the ubiquitous they. They control the weather. They lie to you. They want to take your freedom. And so on.

Over the years, the radio became meaner and more partisan. No matter the program, the tone was the same: frightened voices indoctrinating a cult that rejected compassion and rational thought. I worried about where these energies might lead. Today the paranoid style dominates the internet and speaks from the White House. Late-night radio has lost its weird appeal for me, a dead canary in a coal mine. But sometimes, I enjoy skipping from station to station and listening to the nation babble to itself as it glides through frazzled sermons, nutritional advice, alien abductions, financial planning, and light drizzle at the airport.

Today the New York Times published at least two essays about doomsday prepping for the election and maybe a civil war. (Another unexpected iteration of those late-night shows about emergency food rations, etc.) Anxiety spreads like a virus, and perhaps these hysterical articles aren’t helpful when the election is still two months away. Our president is a grifter, a bully, and, thankfully, uniquely stupid; I don’t think he can tear civilization apart unless the media wills it into reality so it can gin up page views. Meanwhile, health officials are warning Americans not to gather in large groups this Labor Day weekend, which feels like Memorial Day again because the pandemic has stopped America’s clocks.

Lately I’ve been thinking about something I heard back in 2012 while driving along the Gulf Coast after a terrible night in Texas. Just after midnight, a metallic voice began to flicker through the radio static: “Report. Report. It is unclear if they want the invasion of Iran to commence during a U.S. presidential election year. Regardless, World War III is already upon us.”

The voice rode an uncanny line between robot and human as it delivered garbled prophecies about bombings, earthquakes, and the Rockefeller Foundation. It was the usual batshit conspiracy schtick that was fringey eight years ago but has since been mainlined into our government. On a purely tonal level, however, it was a hypnotic slurry of lurching pauses and alien cadence. Then it took a sudden turn towards the personal: “Will enough people wake up, throw away their egos, and cry for a couple of days after accepting their whole life is a lie?”

I listened to this broadcast for hours, all the way from Beaumont to Baton Rouge, where I lost the signal. I listened because I couldn’t easily categorize it as a synthetic preacher, a political crackpot, or some futuristic form of self-help. Hell, I couldn’t even categorize it as a computer or a person. The content didn’t interest me, nutty and vivid though it was. The defiance of categories kept me hooked, the strange borderland this voice had staked out between diatribe and confessional, between staccato and slang, and between artificial and human.

There’s a creative lesson here: once we can categorize something, it no longer requires our full attention. But if we can’t put it in a neatly labeled box, we’ll stare at it all night. Perhaps the best work scrambles genre and rides strange lines that might swerve at any moment.

I dredged up a short recording of some of what I heard that night. The sound quality is terrible because I forgot to roll up the windows, but maybe you’ll understand why I’ve held onto this file all these years.

Gulf Coast Radio Clip

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Speeding through dark prairie with only the pale green glow of the dashboard, I listened to a midnight preacher rattle and roar, talking about how the Apocalypse is near, how the mark of the beast is everywhere you look, and yes, these are truly the end of days.

Demons and hexes would help explain why some people behave the way they do. It would certainly account for 2020. But we’re always bracing for the end of the world. We’ve been doing it since the beginning of time. It’s an easy way to feel special, maybe even chosen.

At three in the morning, I briefly considered buying a product that converts stagnant pond water into fresh drinking water for my whole family. “The coming economic disaster will transform the globe,” said the pitchman. “Are you prepared?” A retired general talked about remote viewing, and a young man from Cleveland worried about the kill shot from the sun. I lost the signal before I could find out what he meant. Beneath the static, I swear I heard a woman whispering, “You need to hide your mind.”

Struck by this interview with the novelist Amitav Ghosh about the value of working with paper and pencil, and it’s always good for me to be reminded that writing is a physical act:

Every word I publish has been through thirty edits. My first draft I do with a pencil. I just write freehand with a pencil. I do that for quite a while, and then I write with a pen. I make a draft with a pen. And then I get onto the computer. For me, it would be really kind of crippling if I were to go straight onto a computer. I would just freeze up. I think there’s a lot to be said for trying to find ways of not freezing up, of being able to be loose . . . I think the whole editing process is essentially one of reducing your thoughts into a kind of solidity. You can’t begin with the solidity. You have to begin with a kind of liquidity, if you like. Even a kind of airiness. The whole process of distilling it down to something very solid is that gradual process of going through multiple edits and so on. I think if you were to start at the other end, trying every day to produce something that’s absolutely solid and determinant, it could have the effect of just making you freeze in anxiety.

I know the subzero temperatures of that freeze too well. So much effort goes into avoiding that chill. And there’s an interesting twist in the idea of cultivating, even practicing looseness.

Amen Dunes – Lower Mind

Through Donkey Jaw | Sacred Bones, 2011 | Bandcamp

Tonight I contemplated the animal quality of fire, the way it hunts for fuel and moves like it wants to live.

I also pondered two separate phone calls with friends on either side of the country and opposite ends of the political spectrum. They each described vivid fears of violence in the wake of the election. They both idly wondered if they should buy a gun. (And no, they shouldn’t because that’s not helpful.) But fuck. This is the mood these days. The reassurances I tried to offer in these conversations left me feeling like a Pollyanna: the fringes have hijacked our screens and the media magnifies conflict—but most of us are peaceful and kind, even when we’re incoherent and foolish and scared. This election will be ugly, but we will survive and perhaps be better for it, now that we sense how fragile things can be.

And I believe these things tonight. Or at least, I don’t see the upshot to amplifying fear. But I’m chilled by how quickly phrases like “the other side” have become so natural, even in my own thinking. Because that’s the grammar of war.

Yellow Swans – Burnt Dub

Deterioration Yellow Swans | Modern Radio, 2008 | Bandcamp

I miss the golden days of Twitter when I discovered new music, scrolled through lyrical babble, and made genuine friends. But no matter how hard I try to maintain a feed dedicated to these things, the hysteria and hate somehow still bleed through the floorboards. I don’t want to feed that machine anymore.

Is it possible to engage with social media without losing your soul? To sidestep its outrage mechanics and degrading scoreboards? With their idiot logic of hearts and retweets, these channels are fundamentally designed to advertise oneself—so perhaps using them sensibly requires stripping away the self. To quit any attempt at appearing bright and clever and instead find new ways of listening and looking that encourage imagination rather than opinion. To erase the “I” and stand outside of time, writing like a ghost.

Such were my thoughts as I wondered if I might find a way to use these spaces differently. Then I realized I should follow this advice in all areas of my life.

Labradford – Phantom Channel Crossing

Labradford | Kranky, 1996 | Bandcamp

“He understood for the first time that black-and-white was the only true medium for film as an idea, film in the mind. He almost knew why but not quite . . . it was completely necessary, black-and-white, one more neutralizing element, a way in which the action becomes something near to elemental life, a thing receding into its drugged parts.”

Don DeLillo, Point Omega

After years of primarily black-and-white photography, I’ve been drifting towards color these days. Perhaps it’s because this summer feels extra-vivid. But I’m still drawn to monochrome moods. Sometimes color gets in the way. It conjures specific memories and decades: the cool pastels of the early 1960s, the overheated textures of the 1970s. With all the filters at our disposal today, the technical constraints of color that defined a fair chunk of the twentieth century have become an aesthetic shorthand with buttons labeled retro, kitsch, purple haze, sepia, magic hour, pinhole, etc.

But whether you encounter a black-and-white photo in an old shoebox, hanging on a gallery wall, or displayed on your screen, it always looks pretty much the same. You’re not looking at the photographer’s favorite decade, you’re looking at the subject.

I wonder if there’s anything to learn from my recent drift towards color and my desire to return to monochrome. Perhaps there aren’t any lessons beyond the allure of novelty and the craving for clarity. Which brings to mind a challenging quote from Andrei Tarkovsky that I’ve been pondering:

“It is obvious that art cannot teach anyone anything, since in four thousand years humanity has learnt nothing at all. We should long ago have become angels had we been capable of paying attention to the experience of art, and allowing ourselves to be changed in accordance with the ideals it expresses. Art only has the capacity, through shock and catharsis, to make the human soul receptive to good.”

Tarkovsky, Sculpting in Time

The other day I drove past a church sign that said: What’s missing from CH__CH? UR. I keep thinking about all the interesting dots that connect this pun to a crucified man. I’ve also been contemplating my hardwired need for stimulation. Maybe it’s a law of the universe. After all, how else does an organism know it’s alive? But my craving for headlines, entertainment, and controversy needs to be unwound.

I made a vow to be better. Then I flipped on the last night of the Republican Convention while I cooked a frozen pizza. Somebody from the Ultimate Fighting Championship was singing the president’s praises because this is American now. He said, “The president recognizes the best way to restore normalcy to people’s lives is to bring back entertainment options.”

And this president slouched over a podium on the South Lawn of the White House. He slurred, perspired, and trashed his enemies as he degraded the White House, transforming it into a chintzy prop for a television demagogue. And he made it clear he intends to stay. “It’s not just a house,” he said. “It’s a home.” Fireworks spelled his name in the sky. Outside the perimeter, protestors held an illuminated sign: Trump lied. 180,000 died.

Vatican Shadow – Peace Rage

Ghosts of Chechnya | Hospital Productions, 2012/2020 | Bandcamp

In Wisconsin, the police shot a Black man in the back. Seven times. In front of his children. Protests collided with gun-wielding vigilantes. Two protestors were killed. The suspect is a white seventeen-year-old with “an intense affinity for guns, law enforcement, and President Trump,” according to the New York Times. Meanwhile, a massive hurricane named Laura churns in the Gulf of Mexico, breaking records as it aims for the Louisiana-Texas border.

This was the American weather when our synthetic Vice President solemnly told us to “never forget that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom—and that means freedom always wins.” This mind-bending statement left me making a strangled noise somewhere near the borderline of sanity. Again: there’s something very rotten in Christendom if it can be used to sanctify bigotry, pollution, corporate tax cuts, and assault weapons.

I switched the channel and a meteorologist said, “Just behind this vortex is a wall of water getting ready to surge.”

Each day the American brain becomes more scrambled. People who believe the world is governed by a secret cabal of satanic cannibals are winning elections and holding rallies. Footage circulates of protestors harassing a woman at a restaurant for not joining their chants for justice.

Cut to the Republican Convention, a hallucinatory pageant of fear-mongering in the name of the Second Amendment and Jesus Christ. Every televised speech seemed calculated to nudge its supporters toward real-life violence. “No matter where you live, your family will not be safe in the radical Democrats’ America,” they said. Then the First Lady stood in the Rose Garden and lectured us about civility while her husband smirked.

Black Sabbath – Paranoid

Paranoid | Vertigo, 1970 | More