This is from 2010. It’s kind of funny. But if you want to do almost anything well, you need healthy sleep. Knowing that is the difference between my late and early 30s.
if it’s quarter to 4, I must be writing an essay about Bob Dylan in one window and an essay about postmodern ontologies in another. check.
Not mentioned when I wrote this post originally? It was also my 30th birthday. Almost a decade later, we still have books.
In the course of looking for a cover image of They Don’t Dance Much, I came across Book Worship. You need to check that out, especially if you’re one of those people who isn’t made sick by the (looming?) death of book-as-object. I get sad about the death of cassette-tape-as-object, so you can probably figure where I come down on totally paperless publishing.
Book Worship reminded me of this awesome Flickr set I found a few months ago. There’s something about this mid-century design aesthetic that makes me want to write better.
Bkish.com no longer exists. I don’t remember anything about whatever this essay was. I’m guessing from context it had something to do with James Ross and Flannery O’Connor. I was reading a lot of Flannery then. I should read her a lot again soon.
My first contributing post is up at Bkish.com. Check it out. By the way, The Habit of Being is pretty good so far.
Dear Civil Twilight,
It’s a shame about your name.
Dear David Byrne,
You really, really do sound like Robin Williams. That’s not a critique. Just an observation. Sort of like how somewhere in my mind, Tom Hanks and Billy Joel are the same person. I don’t think that’s just because of “My Life”s role as “theme from Bosom Buddies.” You never did any work for Mork & Mindy, did you?
Isn’t it strange that Mork & Mindy was a spinoff of Happy Days? Did you know that the guy who wrote the “Happy Days” theme song (not “Rock Around The Clock”) also wrote “Killing Me Softly” and that he wrote it about Don McLean? Sort of brings everything into focus.
Dear Gorgeous Sixties Love Song,
You know who you are. Please stop.
Dear Freebird,
I want to apologize for getting out of the car before you were done this morning. I was in a hurry and wasn’t thinking. You deserve better. I can be better.
David Foster Wallace on the treatment of human subjects in writing, via John Gilmore:
From January 2010:
I mentioned a few days ago that I’m taking at class at The New School with Robert Antoni about writing in vernacular language. One of the challenges/opportunities of the course will be the chance to workshop our own vernacular stories at the end of the semester. I’ve already started brain-storming mine, which will feature Americanized San Marchese (the language of San Marco Dei Cavoti, Campania, Italy), Pennsylvania Dutch, and the hybrid of these two I heard my grandparents speak when I was growing up. It’s not the case that my grandparents spoke exclusively in these vernaculars: they both spoke standard Enlgish (more or less) with heavy regional and cultural influences and code words from their own backgrounds and each other’s. My grandfather (first generation American) could, at one time, speak fluent San Marchese and probably understood most PA Dutch (as far as I could tell) and my grandmother knows those Dutch words and many of Pop’s vernacular Italian.
Codifying the regional, non-standard pronunciations of standard English phonetically will be a little bit Alan Lomax. And then there are code words: the Italian commands and sly Dutch sneers and their interplay. You don’t usually get stories about Dagos (if Pop said it I can) in rural/urban German Pennsylvania. I’m also looking forward to breaking out heevahava. To Pop’s credit, I learned that from a bus driver. Fa nable.
I was going to write a post about what I learned by not blogging over the semester break. But you’re getting “what I did last night instead of sleep”:
1. Took the late bus back from the city, on which I read some Junot Diaz.
2. Watched “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” on PBS. I blame Ken Burns, Shawn Rosler, and Joe Calhoun for this. But it was awesome.
3. Read up on John Muir. Badass.
4. Watched a documentary on Melville Herskovits. Profoundly interesting. DVRed-it-but-watched-it-live-anyway kind of interesting. Godfather II territory.
5. Watched “Before The National Parks” documentary about First Nations today in Yellowstone and Glacier Parks.
6. Edited the CSS code for the blog.
7. Ate tomato soup.
Success.
Chris Cocca 