Culturewatch
This Heat: You Are Not Dead Until You Are Warm and Dead
Dashiel Tao Harris writes about the first time she kissed a boy in this valedictory to childhood, but what may be most striking about her post is its focus on her friendship with another girl who’s becoming a woman too. American lit has often been stuck on amity between boys-to-men. It’s past time for young women to take their friendships to the page…
Going Down (Again) (Wednesday April 21, Trip #21)
Question: How can I mourn the life of Joel?
I am in Joel’s hospital room at Alta Bates, where I visited him so many times I lost track. That brutal winter of 2018. His heart is failing. He always looks happy to see me. I bring him Carl’s Jr. even though the doctor says sodium could kill him. Joel knows better than to believe her. There are certain pleasures we hang onto, a savor to life, that medical science doesn’t know.
Going Down (Wednesday April 14, Trip #19)
Question: How can I live a “legendary” life?
I’m Not Looking for Trouble But…
On the day Stanford beat Arizona for the Women’s NCAA Basketball Championship, its coach, Tara Vanderveer defended women’s basketball in the New York Times. “I don’t think anyone says, ‘Well, professional basketball, they’re bigger and stronger, so I’ll just want to watch professional basketball.”
Actually, I say that.
It’s Tricky: Thinking Through “Dear Comrades”
When Putin was re-elected in 2018, Andrei Konchalovsky, director of Dear Comrades—the acclaimed historical drama about an atrocity erased from history during the Soviet era—spoke on RT of his “extraordinary joy” (though he sounded dutiful rather than giddy). Putin’s win, per Konchalovsky, was proof Russia was “going the right way.” I didn’t see his election spin on RT until after I’d watched Dear Comrades so it was a shock to hear him express disdain for the “fuss” made by Putin’s “paranoiac” critics since his film about the 1962 Novocherkassk massacre limns what happens in a country where no-one’s allowed to disturb powers-that-be.
Late Bouquet: Pansies from “Easily Pleased”
The book’s title, Easily Pleased, comes from an interview with Louie Bashell in Polka Happiness by Charles and Angeliki Keil (Philadelphia, Temple University Press, 1992), 141. Bashell muses:
It’s a very melodious music. Simple music and melodious; you don’t have to be a genius to play it, you know, or have good technique, or anything like that. It’s just a flowing music. Polish music has various frills and trills in it, a very distinct flavor, while Slovenian music is plain, simple notes that just move–nothing fancy. I’ve never come across a piece of Slovenian music that was difficult. The Slovenians are so easily pleased. They don’t have to have nothing special.
Express Yourself (Redux)
The great African-American preacher C.L Franklin is caricatured in Genius – the new mini-series about his daughter Aretha’s life and times. Genius’s traduction sent us back to this post by Nick Salvatore, author of Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America, who meditated on the patriarch’s singular contribution to the tradition of “black and more than black” expression.
A View of Resistance from a Detroit Record Shop Life: James Brown (and ’67 Sounds) to Now!
Marsha Music née Battle hears the music of Detroit as the soundtrack of struggle in her hometown and she’s aware (as one of her neighbors once declared) “the city is the black man’s land.”
March of Time (Morris Dickstein R.I.P.)
I am thinking about Morris Dickstein, who died a few days ago, and who in 1968 taught a seminar on Blake at Columbia University that was so alive with the love Morris felt for the great poet of freedom and sex and with the love Morris felt for the students who came each week to watch his face light up as he spoke about Orc, Blake’s avatar of rebellion, we would never forget the feeling of being there.
Travels With Mary Jane (A Pot Memoir)
In his book Boxing Babylon, Nigel Collins used a quote of mine from a magazine story I wrote on the late Philadelphia boxer, Tyrone Everett, who was shot to death by his girlfriend when she found him in bed with a transvestite.
French Kiss
In an episode of Call My Agent, the French TV series streaming on Netflix, Andréa, who is gay, winds up having angry, hot sex with a man she detests and who has bought the talent agency at which she is a partner.
Off the Wall
“Is that a fucking thumbtack?” Fritz said to the Skeleton-and-Roses poster behind me. Some of us regulars from the café were zooming. “It ought to be behind glass. In a vault.”
Too Black, Too Strong: Henry Aaron R.I.P.
I am a third-generation baseball player. My grandfather, Robert McInnis, was an outfielder and catcher who barnstormed with Negro League players.