Goodbye-ing
One night in August, while I was watching Cavani’s The Skin, I learned that Jay had died.
Politics of Local People
C. Liegh McIness and Benj DeMott discuss the demise of SNCC, the nature of grassroots organizations, and the character of people who end up in them in the thread below.
Fact-Check
Writing in the socialist journal Jacobin, a Mr. Savage mocked “today’s liberals” whose “default approach to combating the Right is to fact-check the Right.” Savage insists facts are stupid things outside of “narratives.” He urges liberals to stop worrying about the Right’s “malign information system.” There’s no point in calling our lies or exposing traitors or following the money. What liberals must do is ape conservatives’ “willingness to embrace populist storytelling.” No doubt Savage believes in History (and means to be on the left side of it), but his pitch for radical fabulism seems incredibly impertinent now.
Papi Don’t Preach: Pedro Lemebel’s Anti-Macho Metaphysics of Love
Pedro Lemebel, queer artist and radical provocateur, was acknowledged to be an “essential figure of Chile” in his own country when he died in 2015. His work and life–“more than a writer; he was a free man” (per Wikipedia!)–are now becoming better known in El Norte. A documentary film, Lemebel, came out last year and Lemebel’s book Loco afán: crónicas de sidario (Crazy Desire: chronicles of the AIDS ward) has just been translated into English. What follows is a swatch from that report on gay life and death in a Latin American city of night.
Tactile Ghazal
Locked down with family, I’m blessed with touch.
People-heavy days, pets give the best touch.
The Snake in the Garden
This is not the old misogynistic story of
the mythic expulsion from the perfect garden
because we know that where knowledge is
forbidden to women there will be no perfection.
On Verra Ca: Balla Sidibe R.I.P. & Orchestra Baobab’s Legacy
Balla Sidibe—one of the original front men of the legendary afro-pop band Orchestra Baobab—has gone to see what’s coming for all of us. You can watch the late Sidibe sing lead (and dance) here as Baobab does a charming version of a song that dates back to the 70s, “On Verra Ca.” 2020 is the 50th anniversary year of the band’s founding.
This next song is another Baobab classic. It’s the track that got me on board their train to heaven.
Paul’s Epistle on “Key West”
Your editor asked Wallace Stevens’ biographer, Paul Mariani, to comment on Bob Dylan’s new song “Key West”…
I Will Never Be
xxxxxOld white woman in the woods—could go at a POP!
But this I know—I will never…be shot by a cop.
The Old Ball Game
Maybe the game you play first is the one that memory coats with the richest patina.
For me it is baseball…
