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Sometimes you take a photo and the result looks precisely as you saw the subject in question, precisely as you saw it with your mind’s eye, precisely as you might have hoped to describe it to, or show it to, someone else. No edit, no filter, one take.
Not bad, San Francisco, not bad
I don’t think I have the correct cable to connect this library branch with my home stereo system.
I write on occasion for hilobrow.com, and it’s always a treat, in part because the topics are something to really spend time pondering, and in part because my little essays end up in good company. The latest Hilobrow series, edited by Josh Glenn, is about “analyzing and celebrating our favorite… anti-fascist art.” Contributors include Heather Kapplow, Mandy Keifetz, Tom Nealon, Lucy Sante, Nikhil Singh, and Mike Watt, among others.
When Josh first invited me to participate, I had various thoughts about things I might focus on: any one from a number of works by Gerhard Richter or Anselm Kiefer, or entries in the long-running World War 3 Illustrated, or a Billy Bragg song. By the time I weighed in, Matthew Battles had already claimed Woody Guthrie’s guitar.
Tons of examples came to mind, but throughout my consideration, I kept humming the same tune: Nick Lowe’s (What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding.” It just so happens I saw both Lowe and Elvis Costello, who helped make the song famous, in concert separately last year, so it was especially fresh on my mind.
As I continued to nudge ideas forward with little snippets of exploratory writing, I happened to have lunch with a college friend, one I’d bonded with over Nick Lowe all those years ago. I mentioned this endeavor to him, and how it felt odd to worry a bit about a song as well-intentioned as this one. My friend, who is wise, said that feeling is what I should lead with. And so I did.
The essay begins:
Just imagine for a moment having second thoughts about praising a song as pure as Nick Lowe’s 1974 pop classic, “(What’s So Funny ’Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding,” a jukebox favorite all the more famous thanks to Elvis Costello having popularized it.
Read the full piece, and all the other entries, at hilobrow.com.
At the end of each week, I usually collate a lightly edited collection of recent comments I’ve made on social media, which I think of as my public scratch pad. I tag on what books I may have finished reading. Knowing I’ll revisit my social media posts, I’ve found, serves as a positive and mellowing influence on my online activity. I mostly hang out on Mastodon (at post.lurk.org/@disquiet), and I’m also trying out a few others. And I generally take weekends off social media.
▰ You think it’s a really quiet day in the park and then you recognize that your earbuds have been in noise cancellation mode for a couple hours and it’s actually really loud in the park
▰ There is light construction going on a few buildings away and rather than be annoyed by the intermittent metallic hammering, I’m imagining a behemoth Transformers woodpecker at work
▰ Weirdest thing about the heat spell is how walking around your neighborhood doesn’t feel like your neighborhood. Not just the heat but the air is alien. Walking home from dinner out, I saw more stars than I’m used to. I’ve been through blackouts, neighborhood and city-wide, with fewer visible stars.
▰ The Vivaldi browser just added UI auto-hide and it is quite nice. I feel like I spend 90% of my worktime in Vivaldi and Obsidian.
▰ We live in the golden age of future abandonware.
Peter Kirn replied: That was a Star Trek episode title, no? “All Our Updates Are Tomorrow’s Yesterdays.”
And I, in turn: “For the Ethos Is Hollow and I Have Touched AI”
▰ It’s a nice touch in the first episode of the second season of Monarch: Legacy of Monsters that Mari Yamamoto’s character, a 1950s scientist who ends up in our time, uses Arthur C. Clarke’s original term, “artificial satellites,” when first encountering modern satellite data.
▰ Read a lot, finished nothing. Sorta like life.
