An Odd Essay

Orbits - Departures and Decline (on Wattpad) http://my.w.tt/UiNb/ZJkh1pJXDC

I’ve got my first story up on Wattpad. Thanks to my talented wife for her work on the cover! 

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How do we change, when change is hard? What happens, when we live with the absurd for so long that it becomes commonplace? Where do we look for consistency in a world that is collapsing around us, and what happens when the one thing we cling to is the one thing we cannot explain?

Here’s an interesting article in the Atlantic explaining what happened to the Google Books project over the past ten years. 

I had mixed feelings about it at the time, and I shared the concerns of many about handing over the rights to so many “orphaned works” to one giant corporation. 

We live our lives in a series of bubbles. Our suburban homes are little fortresses. Instead of stone and timber, their walls are private property laws and convention. We have little or nothing to do with our neighbors, even if we can see their houses, just a few feet away. When we work, we go out and interact with people who have nothing to do with the place we live. This is a blessing. If our co-workers lived next door, things would be awkward. This is because we’re as ashamed of the things we have to do at work as we are of the things we do at home. Being able to separate the two is the grand defense mechanism of modern suburban living. This way, the people who watch you get rejected over 98% of your sales pitches aren’t the same people who watch you getting drunk in front of the TV or screwing when you forget to pull the curtains.

Why do we want to be so isolated from each other? There has to be some innate need for it. Otherwise we wouldn’t have worked so hard to get away from each other for the past 200 years. I mean, we spent millions of years living in tribes, working in teams to bring food back to our communal caves. This was after millions of years picking parasites off each others’ backs in the branches of trees. Our evolutionary success was built on family, cooperation, and community. Then the first thing we do when we get technological mastery over our environment is put up as many walls as possible and reconfigure the world so we can get through our days with the least possible interaction.

I’m all for this. I love that I can make my living from behind a screen. (I haven’t completely worked this out yet, but I’m determined to chase this rainbow until I reach this pot of gold.) I can order food without speaking to someone and have it delivered by a person who doesn’t want to talk any more than I do. I can pay my taxes and utilities on-line, &ct, &ct. I go out for a solitary run every day that the weather permits, and when the trash piles up I make a run to the dump. (I love going to the dump. No one at the dump talks to you because no one is trying to sell you anything.) I typically go 10-14 days without seeing the inside of my car.

I share the house with my dear wife. We amplify each other. It’s great. Together, we’re so bloody introverted that it’s borderline pathological. It’s kind of a miracle that we ever met, but thank God for that. If I settled for someone who was more fond of being around other people, we might have created a couple and ended up with kids. As it is, our interactions are more than enough to satisfy the both of us, so long as we have separate rooms to work in.

We might have company two or three times a year. It takes weeks of planning and preparation to ensure we’re both ready to entertain for a few hours. And as the date approaches we both get a little desperate, and start casting about for excuses to call things off. Usually we follow through. People arrive. We talk and have drinks and enjoy each other. A few hours later we’re glad to have had company, but there’s a relief there, too, to have it over with.

Once a year or so I start getting this strange desire to just go out and chat with other people. It’s such a strange impulse that it takes several weeks to recognize it and realize something should be done. So I’ll take a trip to this cigar shop I like in the city. It’s more than an hour away, so there will be no cross-over with other areas of my life. The same regulars have been going there for years. It’s nice to catch up with them for a few hours, and maybe meet a couple of newcomers that wander through. It’s enough.

So I can’t bemoan the isolating effects of modern technology. Rather, I’m curious: just what about it is so bloody satisfying? This desire to be alone seems like an evolutionary dead end. (In my case it is, and my sister’s too. My mother produced three children with three weirdos and only one of them could be bothered to reproduce.)

My high school health teacher, who was also the football coach, hung a banner above his blackboard. He was a terrible teacher, dull and incurious and clearly not interested in this part of his job. (Word on the field was he was a damn fine coach, though.) I’d gaze at his banner during our dreary lectures on drugs and diet and sexually transmitted disease. It said: “LEAD, FOLLOW, OR GET OUT OF THE WAY.”

It seems like the traditional publishers are destroying their back-list authors with ridiculous eBook pricing.

An independent self-published author can provide an eBook for $2.99 and receive a 70% commission on their sales. Granted, they have to do everything themselves, from editing to design to marketing. And there’s no advance to be spoken of, so they don’t get a penny until they’ve made a sale. On the other hand, they get complete creative control of their project.

As a reader, I’m happy to take a chance on something I might not like if it costs $2.99. In most cases the risk is much smaller, as most indie authors offer introductory volumes for 99 cents, if not for free. And it’s nice to know that the majority of my purchase is going to support the author.

But if I want to buy a title that’s gone the traditional publishing route, the ebook typically costs $12 or more! In many cases they’re more expensive than the paperback – a product which I can lend out, give away, or sell once I’ve finished.

Despite the advantages of paper, for the same price I’d rather have the eBook. I move around too often to be carting a library on my back.

But here’s why I end up with a paperback in the end: used copies, available through the second-hand marketplace, usually sell for a penny, plus shipping. The author gets nothing, the publisher gets nothing, and the post office gets a few bucks.

This hurts the established authors the most, since they’re the ones whose big print runs have sent surplus copies around the country to weigh down the shelves of people who are eager to de-clutter. I don’t mind having a beat-up paperback to take to the beach or throw in the boot of my car or read by candlelight if one of our New England storms knocks out the power for an evening. When I’m finished with it, I’ll pass it on.

It’s insane that the big publishers don’t want to make backlist available as ebooks that readers might buy on impulse. The work’s already been done. They could mark titles up to $4.99 if they wanted to recoup editorial, design, and marketing costs. I’d pay five dollars for a guaranteed good read by an established author. I’d pay this several times a week.

I found this book at the dump swap shop. It’s a 1969 printing of a book originally published in 1934. This is a children’s story, a bit in the nature of Wind in the Willows – you know, a children’s story that runs for 350 pages of small type with occasional line drawings. What today we’d call a book for grown-ups.

A quick search on Amazon shows the author, Arthur Ransome, is still widely read. The 2015 movie Swallows and Amazons is an adaptation of another book in this series.

My found copy has been all marked up with notes in pencil. Words are underlined next to illegible scribbles. It took me a while to work out what been done, until I realized that someone had used the book to practice their English. I can’t work out their markings, which seem Eastern-European. They made a good choice for a window into 30s British life, although I pity them working out some of the obscure river-boating terminology (reef, staithe). And from their notes it seems they really struggled with passages of exaggerated Scottish dialect.

The simple plot involves children sailing around a network of rivers and broads (lakes) in the region of Norwich, England. They check on birds’ nests (the coots) and teach a couple noobs to sail. Just enough suspense is provided by the shenanigan of some “hullabaloos” who’ve chartered a motor yacht and race around the rivers upsetting smaller boats with their wake and blasting raucous dance music from a Victrola. (I love this so much.) Oh, and there’s a bit of a chase when a pair of twins get left behind for an important voyage and then hop from vessel to vessel (a wherry, a tug, a sailing barge) relying on the kindness of strangers to catch up with their friends.

It’s refreshing to reflect on a time when kids were cut loose to row and sail and explore the countryside unattended. These kids do things we wouldn’t dream of letting kids do today. An elderly woman with a pug lets a young teen she’s just met captain a boat with her grand-niece and nephew on a significant voyage. Twin girls hop on a boat with strangers and get treated to tea by the captain’s wife. Just about everyone the kids meet are eager to show the younger generation how to enjoy life on the water.

It’s not a safe world, by any means. There’s a storm. There’s a narrow escape from some “wreckers,” who offer tourists a tow through the narrow passages in hopes of wrecking vessels and then claiming the salvage. And tying up to a dock in heavy winds without an engine on your boat is a good way to lose a hand or worse. Still, these kids are not coddled. They’re taught how to handle themselves and then sent to sail and explore, without life jackets. And the kids on bikes don’t have helmets on, either.

It’s a bit sobering to think that most of these kids would be off to the war in a few years.

A man came to the house to clean the old dreams out of my mattress.

I told him my mattress was fine. I didn’t need his services.

“Doesn’t hurt to have a look, does it?” he said.

We went to the bedroom. He lifted the mattress up and underneath there was an older mattress, compressed and sticky with a tar-like build-up. It looked like someone had hammered out a smoker’s lung into a viscous pad.

“What the hell is that?” I said.

Emma said: “What are you going to do about all these monkeys?”

She hated it, when he got like this. Ulrich, savior to the world, particularly when the world meant animals. He wasn’t a cat-hoarder, thank God, but he’d adopted his share of everything else. Dogs, fish, parrots. They “found homes” for most of the creatures. But they never found quite as many homes as they needed. And since their lease said they needed written permission for anything more than a cat or a small dog, she always felt like they were one surprise inspection away from eviction.

Ulrich was reading her mind. “The landlord can’t just come over here, you know. State law says they need to give 24 hours’ notice before inspecting a property.”

“Which means what?” she said. “You beg off from work, race home, tie all these cages to the roof of your Honda and park it out behind the liquor store until the coast is clear?”

He was smiling, thinking about it, working out a better plan. He was always planning, always happiest a couple steps into the future. Why couldn’t he be happy here and now, she wondered? He said: “I’d rent a moving van. They’re seem to stay quiet when I put them someplace dark. So I could put them in the back and park it somewhere out of the way. I could get someone to stay in back with them for a few hours. You wouldn’t mind doing that, would you?”

“I’m leaving,” she said.

She realized she meant it. It was a lot less stressful and emotional than she’d imagined. A simple choice. The monkeys were too much. “This is it.” For the moment, she meant it. She bit the inside of her cheek, determined to hold that feeling.

The most upsetting thing was his reaction. She wanted some kind of shock. An argument. Instead, he just shifted his mental-planning-gears over to work on her problem. She could see it happening, his jaw working, that pulsing in his temples that started up when he was on the trail of some new idea. And her problems were always the last thing she wanted help with. He said, “Where are you going to go?” and it made her want to spit.

“I don’t know. What do you care? You have primates to save.”

“Don’t go back to Clara, okay?” One of the monkeys sat on his shoulder, but backwards. It was looking out through the screen door, like it was calculating the odds of slashing through and running outside. The monkey held one hand on his head while the other gripped the jelly half of a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich. It turned around to look over its shoulder. Its wise-old-man face was a mockery of his concern.

“I’ll go where I want, thank you very much.”

“If you think that’s best.” A shrug.

Damn him, why couldn’t he ever tell her what to do? “I thought you liked Clara.”

“Sure I do. She’s nice enough. She’s funny. When she’s sober. Doesn’t mean she’s good for you.” Unspoken: you were living with her when you developed that little drug problem. You know, the one that set you back four years. Until I came along and rescued you. Only you’re saved, now, so I care more about these monkeys.

Two were grooming each other in a huge cage on the coffee table, scratching and nibbling on invisible parasites. Two more slept in individual cages on the floor. A third cage was open – hence the monkey on his shoulder. It kept glancing back at her, just begging her to ask him where he got them, where they came from.

“Clara’s still got the spare bedroom. It beats sleeping on a couch. Or in my car.” Honestly she hadn’t been thinking about Clara, not until he mentioned it. She’d only gotten as far as I’m leaving. But why not Clara? Now she just might.

Something wet and brown smacked against the side of her head. It stuck there for a bit, peeled, slid down. She shrieked, brushing her fingers against her cheek to wipe the filth away as she spun to see another monkey by the couch, darting behind it. It knew, apparently, that she’d kick it if she were close enough. Which cage had that one come from? “How many of these fuckers are there?” she said.

“Six,” he said. “I think. No…seven.”

Her fingers were smeared with brown and she could still feel more on her cheek. She thought, you saved me for this, did you, you big hero? She stepped towards the sink and saw the piece of bread on the ground, smeared with peanut butter. She smelled her fingers. Not shit, thank God. “This is what you’re feeding them?”

“We’re out of bananas,” he said. “You have any better ideas?”

I dreamt that my breath had synchronized with the tides.

It took me 6 1/2 hours to breathe in, and the same amount of time to breathe out again. I watched the water in the cove rise and fall with the motion of my lungs.

I looked up and saw the sun fly across the sky as I breathed, and with the next breath the moon chased behind it. The moon’s phases changed a little with each breath, and so did the extremities of the tides. The tides were strongest when the new moon came, since the Sun and the Moon and the Earth were all in a line.

I said to the sun, “You may think you’re powerful, but we’re pulling on you just as you pull on us.”

I've read that our brains respond most strongly to the instruments we've played, and it may be true. Solo piano music engages my entire mind because the piano was my first love. I know what goes on from practice to muscle memory in the production of music by a single soul sat at the keyboard.

But let's face it, solo performance can be lonely. There's only so much you can do with one set of hands. (This is why an effective piano performance is so impressive, but still...) At the other end of the spectrum, orchestral works have so many moving parts that, for me, at least, the most human element of the music is lost in the cacophony. (It doesn't help that everything from movies to commercials to video games have been scored by orchestras over the past century, so that sitting down in front of 100+ musicians just makes me feel like I'm about to consume some big-budget production.)

In my opinion, the ultimate expression of human desire and emotional depth has always been found in the string quartet. There's the elegant simplicity of the strings, instruments analagous to the human voice but stripped down to barest essence, singing without words. There's the intimate cooperation of the small group, sharing an experience so sensual that in any other context it would be obscene. And within this group there's room for the individual personalities to augment and amplify each other, creating a combined sound which creates a gestalt  more overwhelming for the fact that you can still pick out the individual lines and wonder at their multiplied brilliance.

A Bach quartet really weaves its counterpoint into your neurons in a way that explains the inevitability of polyphony. Schubert's Death and the Maiden tells a thousand stories at once, whether you know anything of the original poetry. A Hindemith quartet is a lesson in cross-tonality that'll leave you bewildered and haunted at the same time, unsettled and more awake to possibility than when you began.

The new Sherlock. I really wanted to like it. But it felt like it was written by a committee of eight-year-olds. The dialog is laughably cliched. We're treated to montages of Cumberbatch wrapping up one case after the other and hurting clients' feelings. Yeah, I get it. He's a genius and a jerk. Even if we never heard of him before, he spelled it out for us at the end of season three, when he told us for the nth time that he's a "high-functioning sociopath." It was nice for him to explain his own character, since his consistently predictable actions weren't enough for us to make our own judgement.

Then they have an extended scene where he self-parodies his social ineptitude in front of a government inquiry. Yuk-yuk, that's our Sherlock being Sherlock. Isn't he the living end?

The BBC have taken a British national treasure and turned him into a one-dimensional super-hero. Hulk gonna smash, Sherlock gonna disrespect.

Instead of detecting and then explaining things, Holmes just rattles off a bunch of rapid-fire observations while the camera wooshes around to the appropriate close-ups. This gives the audience key information like, the villain lives with cats, or his client is trying to quit smoking. It does nothing to further the plot. But he's Sherlock Fucking Holmes, so he's obliged to do this four times an episode. It's getting to be so repetitive by season four that even the writers realize it, and half the time it turns out he's "just kidding"!

The lifeblood of mystery is suspense. Arthur Conan Doyle established that definitively when he wrote the original stories. What's really disappointing about this series is that the suspense doesn't arise from Holmes' struggle to solve a mystery. He's so omnipotent that he's already got everything worked out. Instead of gradually making sense of bewildering events with the unraveling of clues, the writers amp up the audience by playing an intense strings-and-drums soundtrack and withhold our hero’s his conclusions until a few cuts later. But don't worry. Those cuts take two, three seconds tops.

Seriously, this show feels like watching kids play a video game while they talk about how awesome their characters are.There’s action and espionage and oh-so-much shooting.