Underpaid subscription servants of the culture wars

[sovay]

Because it is lashing rain against our windows even as we speak, the contractors have not been drilling and hammering our porch since daybreak and in consequence I slept and dreamed of the late discovery of an extra novel in Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain, newly published and illustrated in the style of Evaline Ness. (I had no idea she had taken her surname from her second marriage, to Eliot Ness.) In the way of dreams, it melted into a kind of AU remix by the time I was a few chapters in. The WWII echoes are always easier to see in Westmark, but they're all throughout Prydain far beyond the inspiring geography of Wales where Alexander was briefly stationed on his way to France; I assume someone has mapped them like the ghosts of the Western Front through Middle-Earth. There is presumably a larger project here about fantasy and war literature, crystallizing and changing shape throughout the twentieth century. Query: Susan Cooper and the childhood imprint of WWII, but also the cold white flame of the Light whose calculations and sacrifices would not turn a hair in John le Carré? "It is a cold world you live in, bachgen . . . I would take the one human being over the principle, all the time."

I feel as though I have stopped writing about almost anything that matters: I know that part of it is that the move and then injury and illness ate the month and concomitantly my concentration and my physical health is ground down beyond the question of reserves and has been since well before this time last year, but some of it is also feeling that there is nothing I should be talking about. I had a terrible time walking around Davis Square last night and feeling that I was surrounded by people playacting at 2019. As far as I know, I will never eat inside a restaurant again. I can't hang out all night in movie theaters or all afternoon in museums and I interact with bookstores in quick careful dives and it's no one's problem but mine, why can't I get with the program and pretend I have no medical factors that did not just evaporate when the economy needed to get back on track and ignore how much of the infrastructure around me has disintegrated in the last three years and everyone I know has been scraped past the bone. I don't think this country I live in understands grief.

On the other hand, I just fixed my twenty-six-year-old sound system by stripping and re-cutting the wires of the leads so that the speakers plug in more cleanly than their previous frazzled state and now it makes noise again and I feel a lot more competent than I did an hour ago when I had unscrewed everything and dust was obviously not the issue.

Comments

[boxofdelights]

We definitely don't understand grief. Our cultural practice is to dodge coping with it, and then try to forget all about it.

[phi]

100% this

[sovay]

100% this

No wonder we have ghost stories like we do.

[sovay]

Our cultural practice is to dodge coping with it, and then try to forget all about it.

I'm really not even saying it as a question: most of the time when I write about 9/11, I write about how I watched in real time and in front of my eyes the impossibility of mourning unless it was going to become part of the righteous cycle of America fuck yeah and that was no mourning at all. It's just that now I feel I am watching it all over again—expected to play along—and I hated it the first time and it isn't any more attractive now. It's lying. So much was lost. Is still being lost. And we're just supposed to pretend, as always, the dead aren't under our feet.

[dewline]

I think both the States and Canada are afflicted with this.

[thistleingrey]

Yes, the continual nagging to move on is a blockage against grief.

I wonder what kinds of fiction and poetry and essays Reason's half-generation will write from this--old enough to be bone-certain that there was a before, but perhaps not to understand it very clearly. Seems a bit like the Pew divide between Xers and older millennials, which meanders due to Cold War or no--perhaps family history and awareness more than age (a bunch of my classmates didn't care when the Berlin Wall came down, but I sure did, in high school).

[sovay]

Yes, the continual nagging to move on is a blockage against grief.

It falls into the category of behaviors whose existence I acknowledge and whose roots I am versed in and which otherwise make so little sense to me that I can't talk about them without sounding willfully naive. I mean, I object to the fact that it is causing me emotional damage as well as physical hazard and is obviously not serving the country well as a whole, but also just what the fuck.

I wonder what kinds of fiction and poetry and essays Reason's half-generation will write from this--old enough to be bone-certain that there was a before, but perhaps not to understand it very clearly.

I don't know. I feel like there's been such a whiplash already in the kinds of art coming out between last year and now, I have no way of estimating.

Seems a bit like the Pew divide between Xers and older millennials, which meanders due to Cold War or no--perhaps family history and awareness more than age (a bunch of my classmates didn't care when the Berlin Wall came down, but I sure did, in high school).

That is an interesting factor to consider. I assumed it was culturally ubiquitous so long as one was sentient, but I gather not? I was in elementary school at the time, but I watched with my parents and it was so clear it was important.

"I assumed it was culturally ubiquitous so long as one was sentient, but I gather not? "

[kathmandu]

I was talking with my brother a year or so back--we were both feeling the weight of so long into what was supposed to be a brief and solvable crisis--and I said, "Well, at least we have the training for it."

He said, "I feel like I don't have the training for it," so I reminded him of the AIDS crisis and living under the Doomsday Clock.

It turned out that being six years younger than me meant he was just young enough to *not* hear about the Doomsday Clock until *after* its hands had been set back.

Re: "I assumed it was culturally ubiquitous so long as one was sentient, but I gather not? "

[sovay]

It turned out that being six years younger than me meant he was just young enough to *not* hear about the Doomsday Clock until *after* its hands had been set back.

My father and I were literally talking about the Doomsday Clock this evening, right after I fixed the sound system.

Re: "I assumed it was culturally ubiquitous so long as one was sentient, but I gather not? "

[thistleingrey]

Yes, the AIDS crisis is a reference point for me as well--I never expected covid to be brief, but I didn't expect people to be quite so self-centered, either. Ah well.

[thistleingrey]

but also just what the fuck

*nods*

I have no way of estimating

I hope that some amount of self-pub continues--seems to me that "multitude of voices" and "diverse" whatever are only going to splinter further, which isn't bad at all yet may complicate how people find audiences in and after the influencer era.

[radiantfracture]

Me, I have never had much to say at the best of times, but I have faith that you will.

I am so impressed by the speaker re-wiring.

(May it be emblematic, or something.)

(You call up what I keep folded in my pocket like a moth, quietly chewing holes.)

[eta]

*I want to say something lucider than this, though it's my end of day -- but I think this is the reason this has been the hardest term for so many students and instructors where I am -- no transition, no acknowledgement, no genuine recovery.

Everyone you see on campus is either ill or drifting like an eager ghost, earnest and hapless.

[sovay]

(You call up what I keep folded in my pocket like a moth, quietly chewing holes.)

I am glad it responds to me. I like what it says with its wings when they unfurl.

-- no transition, no acknowledgement, no genuine recovery.
Everyone you see on campus is either ill or drifting like an eager ghost, earnest and hapless.

I can't figure out where the people who are packing the bars are coming from. Everyone I know looks more like you describe: haunting between times.

(I hadn't thought of the sound system as sympathetic magic. I like that. Thank you.)

[asakiyume]

either ill or drifting like an eager ghostearnest and hapless --yes, perfect description

[gwynnega]

Today someone on NPR was going on about how important it is that people go see films in movie theaters, and I kept yelling "Covid!" at the radio. The way so many people willfully pretend things have gone back to normal feels like a horror movie.

[sovay]

The way so many people willfully pretend things have gone back to normal feels like a horror movie.

Yes. Exactly that.

*hugs*

[aurumcalendula]

The way so many people willfully pretend things have gone back to normal feels like a horror movie.

This so much.

[kathmandu]

Congratulations on the re-wiring and on having written up some movies recently, in the face of everything else going on. Moving house is frequently known to eat people's energy for multiple months, even if there are no other big problems at the time.

"As far as I know, I will never eat inside a restaurant again. I can't hang out all night in movie theaters or all afternoon in museums and I interact with bookstores in quick careful dives and it's no one's problem but mine, why can't I get with the program and pretend I have no medical factors that did not just evaporate when the economy needed to get back on track and ignore how much of the infrastructure around me has disintegrated in the last three years and everyone I know has been scraped past the bone."

I'm with you on all of that, except I do hold out hope that in a decade or two the need for drastically improved indoor-air hygiene will have reached public consciousness, and some buildings will start being safe again. I was hoping it would happen a lot sooner, but here we are.

It is indeed hard and sad and disheartening and alienating. And a secondary effect of being scraped bare / sucked dry is that many of us with good hearts have no spare energy / time /resources to band together to oppose the oppressor. But we're not alone.

[sovay]

Congratulations on the re-wiring and on having written up some movies recently, in the face of everything else going on. Moving house is frequently known to eat people's energy for multiple months, even if there are no other big problems at the time.

Thank you. I hadn't thought of that angle: my last move was in 2016 and this was a particularly stressful one, being protracted over a span of slightly more than four months. Just making the house look like only a semi-wilderness of boxes takes work every day.

I'm with you on all of that, except I do hold out hope that in a decade or two the need for drastically improved indoor-air hygiene will have reached public consciousness, and some buildings will start being safe again. I was hoping it would happen a lot sooner, but here we are.

I would also enjoy really comprehensive vaccines, but we're not there yet, either. I just really don't like the fact that the collective response to a national-global rupture is to make like it never happened. I don't know how anyone can, even the ones still alive.

But we're not alone.

*hugs*

[aurumcalendula]

feeling that I was surrounded by people playacting at 2019.

It's so disheartening.

*hugs*

Yay for fixing the sound system!

[sovay]

Yay for fixing the sound system!

Thank you! Fragments of tikkun olam.

[rachelmanija]

Avoiding grief, yes, but even more so avoiding fear (for oneself) and compassion (for others).

[sovay]

Avoiding grief, yes, but even more so avoiding fear (for oneself) and compassion (for others).

I fully believe that people have given up on compassion. I have a much harder time believing that anyone practices it anymore.

[mrissa]

Honestly this is part of what volunteering with the immigrant rights group does for me, aside from what it does for, you know, the actual immigrants in my community it is aimed at serving: it gives me regular check-ins with a group of people who have set aside time to practice specific acts of compassion for people they have never met before. The other people in this group are not "my people" in the sense of having common hobbies or professional interests, and that makes it better, because it's a reminder that we're out there in all sorts of different places.

I think we all desperately need that reminder in various forms right now.

[sovay]

aside from what it does for, you know, the actual immigrants in my community it is aimed at serving: it gives me regular check-ins with a group of people who have set aside time to practice specific acts of compassion for people they have never met before

I am glad that is what your work, and the work of other people, is doing. It's useful to know it is still done.

[minoanmiss]

The US has a horrific time with grief. But it means something that your competence brought back your music.

Also you write so meaningfully all the time omg.

[sovay]

The US has a horrific time with grief. But it means something that your competence brought back your music.

Thank you. I was really stressed by not being able to listen properly!

Also you write so meaningfully all the time omg.

*hugs*

[asakiyume]

That lashing rain was really something.

You say that you feel as if you have stopped writing about anything that matters, but I'm thinking I need to read behind those words to understand that you're talking about grief and fury at the current reality--the general one, but also your particular one. And man, I stand in wordless agreement with you on that.

... But I want to say that you never have stopped writing about things that matter. Sometimes you write about yourself, your anguish. This matters. You matter. When you write these things, you're writing about things that matter. And maybe you say, Okay, fine, but I mean--- and then in that space you have other topics you'd put in ... but really I want to politely suggest that you continue to write those things too. Poems, reviews, reflections, stories. You've never stopped. Don't let Little Wittgenstein start saying things about optimal levels of production or "but fanfiction doesn't count." Art is art, Little Witt!

But anger and grief over your situation, our nation's situation, the world's situation. That I assent to.

And way to go on stripping and recutting those wires! Practical skills like that, used to revivify something that was apparently dead? THE BEST.

[sovay]

That lashing rain was really something.

I kept hearing it rattle in gusts. Today it has just been gusting, with the clouds blowing on and off. There were dust devils in the dry leaves.

grief and fury at the current reality--the general one, but also your particular one. And man, I stand in wordless agreement with you on that.

I feel like I just stopped talking about the current reality, period. I wanted to mention when enough days had elapsed since the midterms that it begun to feel a little safer to breathe, instead of the conviction of oncoming apocalypse and it was far too late to get out. And I'm not sure why I didn't, except that we were moving and I was tired. And I wish I were writing about more movies and I wish I were writing poetry. But you are probably right that the rest of it is Tiny Wittgenstein and he shouldn't even listen to himself.

*hugs*

And way to go on stripping and recutting those wires! Practical skills like that, used to revivify something that was apparently dead? THE BEST.

Thank you.

[jreynoldsward]

I have been grieving the reality that I will probably never be able to go to an in-person convention again. My doctor has told me to avoid indoor large gatherings--over 65, asthmatic, couple of other health conditions.

But of course, the vast majority of people MUST larp that it's 2019....

[sovay]

I have been grieving the reality that I will probably never be able to go to an in-person convention again.

You have all my sympathies. I don't know, either. I've had to turn down two so far this year and my home convention next summer isn't looking good.

[thisbluespirit]

Aw, well done on fixing the sound system! It sounds very impressive to me. <3

For the rest - barring of course the interesting dreams and some sleep for a change - I am sorry. <3

[sovay]

Aw, well done on fixing the sound system! It sounds very impressive to me.

Thank you! I was glad I finally thought of the wires!

*hugs*