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It’s been a while since I’ve posted here. Every time I felt the urge, something tremendously awful would emerge in the news and I didn’t have it in me to add another post commenting on our social and political myopia. The news on this first day of 2025 is no different, but I figured I’d give it a go.
As I write this, my daughter sings in the next room. It’s one of my favorite experiences: eavesdropping on the talents, voices, and laughter of my daughters. My older has been cast as the lead in her school’s musical—Once Upon a Mattress—so I’m listening to these strange songs I’ve never heard before. I’m embarrassed to admit that, to me, Once Upon a Mattress is a complete unknown. Like many, I started checking out musicals around the time of Hamilton, but this one was a complete mystery to me when announced. “Once Upon a Mattress? Is this appropriate for children?” Now she’s singing a song about being shy—she is not at all shy—but I sense that is the point. And she’s studious. I hear her listen to clips from various Broadway productions, trying to get a sense of different ways to approach the song. But now she’s moved on to practicing the saxophone, so this New Year’s Day is one where all of my little secret pleasures are being honored.
In truth, over the last few months I’ve been writing a lot, just not here. I finally got some poems taken (suckers!), finished a play, and have started a screenplay (I’m about 50 pages in). Regardless of their quality, it feels restorative to be making things. That’s what I hope for myself in the new year, and that’s what I hope for all of you as well—that you can make the things you dream of, whether they be art, friendships, your body, your mind, adventures, love, or a struggle for something better. If there’s anything we need now it’s people who choose to create rather than destroy. (I believe it was Ezra Pound who wrote, “To be men, not destroyers.”) You can do it. If there’s anything 2024 taught me, it’s that 99% of success is simply the showing up and the doing. Again: the doing. Today, tomorrow, the next day, the day after that…bit by bit all that you seek to create in those days will add up to something and you will arrive at a moment of achievement and you will say to yourself, “I am never going back. Ever.”
I am remarkably average. If I can publish, you can publish. If I can be physically active for three days in a row, you can be active for four days, easy. Maybe you’ve made a resolution or two from this year. If so, I bet in you can connect that resolution to the themes of making and creation. Don’t think about those commitments; do them. Above all, I hope to hold onto my goals and creativity through what will surely be a challenging year.
With that, here’s a small edition of something we all need: Gun-Free Entertainment
I am not much of a country music listener, but I am if it sounds more like alt-country (like Son Volt or Jason Isbell). In that spirit, Waxahatchee’s new album, Tigers Blood, is a revelation. Every song is great. Or, as the kids say, “they’re all bangers!” And it just gets better as it goes along. I haven’t been possessed by new music in a long time, but I have listened to this album 10 times in the last two days alone. There’s something spiritual about it. You can tell that when Katie Crutchfield set out to do this album that she just had “it.” My favorite “bangers” right now are “Right Back to It” and “Crowbar.” Listen to the whole album once before making any decisions. Trust me, it will start to sink into your pores. Another album that has possessed me… The Cure’s new album, Songs of a Lost World. They still got it and then some.
You know what’s really cool when it comes to gun-free entertainment? War films without guns! Yes, it’s possible! (We just haven’t learned that in America.) Steve McQueen’s new film Blitz feels like a bigger-budget art film. There are no guns because the setting is constructed around the German air raids of London in World War II. But here’s the cool thing: McQueen low-key uses this film to tell the story of the Odyssey flipped on its head. It’s brilliant! No spoilers: instead of a king trying to return home from war, Blitz focuses on an average boy trying to return home to war, all because he misses his mother. Instead of the greedy suitors waiting at home, the horrors of war themselves are cast as the metaphorical suitors, rendering everyone’s homes (not just the king’s) empty and broken. But again, a war film without guns—yes please! Now all we need are police/assassin/serial killer/sniper films without guns.
Happy New Year to you all. I will do my best to keep posting in 2025.
So good you chose to write here again. Envy you your daughter''s entertaining endeavours, (though I know I shouldn't envy), and the pleasure you obviously get both from what they produce and the beauty of them doing so.
I'm sure that you have it right when you promote doing / creating but I have to admit that I find it difficult now for many reasons which are irrelevant. Your words are supportively inspiring and ring true - I know I must simply *start*, rather than give in to those things that stop me. I know, because when I do, I feel a satisfaction afterwards that lifts me, as opposed to the ever more downward spiral when I *don't*.
So, thank you - a great message for the start of a new year - though I'm not really one in favour of artificial divisions in the continuity of time - I am now motivated to start and will do so.
That you can write so well and evidently in myriad forms, I envy too. I struggle to do more than comment ....
I will you more strength to your arm and, as someone who has enjoyed the saxophone, (played by others), for around 50 + years, More strength to your daughter's fingers and lips, too - I tried for some time to play one but as much as I value what music has brought to my life, I can't play it.
Take care. Stay safe.