The Trump/Jesus Death Cult has grown to such a size that they’ve won a national election in a landslide. As of this writing, this information has been hanging in the air for a week. My assessment is that some are greiving, some are beginning to bargain, some are in acceptance.
I’m angry: at the Republicans, yes – I have family members in the Cult, and a few that aren’t. I think I’m more angry at the Democrats for not having a primary. They’ve behaved like absolute fools this election, playing the palooka to a “T” again.
In 2019, Kamala went from being the top-rated Dem in the primary to having to drop out before Iowa to save herself from embarrassment. Why does nobody remember this? Soon as it became clear that she was the candidate, I knew she would lose.
One of the things that’s drawing me to this particular style of music is that I have no interest in playing it. It’s just music I can listen to and appreciate without feeling the urge to pull out my guitar and start learning it, because I am otherwise focused creatively and learning prog songs would take up far more free time than I have. So I’m free to just appreciate it.
I admire the amount of effort that goes into making good prog rock. The rap on prog is that it is full of tuneless, mindless noodling. I strongly disagree. I find prog music — the best stuff, at least — to be inventively melodic, passionate, intelligent music.
Genesishas been the greatest surprise of this phase of my music listening. I have never really “gotten” Genesis. The closest I have until recently has been a sincere appreciation for Peter Gabriel’s first for solo albums and a passing interest in The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. At this point, I’d say my favorite Genesis album is Selling England by the Pound, although I really have a great fondness for Trespass, Nyrsery Cryme, and Foxtrot as well. I love Peter’s voice, but I have to say that though he has a timbre very similar to Peter’s I seem to have some resistance to Phil Collins’s voice. He was too prevalent in the pop culture at a certain point, and I can’t get past the annoyance I felt at his ubiquitousness. Even Trick of the Tail, which I can hear is musically on a par with Selling England, leaves me somewhat cold. I think of Trick of the Tail is the trio doing the quintet’s sound. I know Steve Hacket was there, but he was a player much more than he was a composer on that record. The vast majority of the material came from Collins, Banks, and Rutherford.
Other older bands have made their way back into my current rotation. In the past I’d stopped with Moving Pictures by Rush, Drama by Yes, and The Wall by Pink Floyd. I haven’t gotten any farther with Floyd, but I have spent a fair amound ot time with a few later albums by each of the other two. I have a new copy of Signals by Rush in my CD player right now, but I have also recently picked up Roll the Bones and Presto. None of the three quite compares with the first eight albums, although none of them are bad, by any means. I hope to spend more time with them. Yes, on the other hand, has given me a late-period album to compare with their earlier catalobue in Magnification, which I’ve been quite impressed with. In the matter of later-period Floyd or Roger Waters solo, let’s just say I haven’t been motivated to seek them out, really. If I want something newer that hits those Pink Floyd buttons, I am much more likely to go to Porcupine Tree.
A few years ago, I started a series of posts where I would listen to Porcupine Tree’s albums chronologically and write about each next album on Facebook. I never made it past Signify, but not because of the quality of the music. It was more a matter of my wandering mind. I actually quite like Signify, as a representative that early part of their catalogue. It’s transitional: they started to have their own sound on it. I might have been excited if I’d continued through to some truly great albums like Fear of a Blank Planet and In Absentia. I also have The Incident, which is a fascinating record. I love that it’s a long CD and an ep. The 4-song ep is particularly good. The hour-long “main” CD is some sort of concept album or other, very distinctively structured.
Two other more “modern” prog bands I’ve taken a liking to are Transatlantic and Wobbler. Transatlantic is a modern-prog “supergroup” with members of Marillion, Spock’s Beard, the Flower Kings, and Dream Theater. I’m currently trying to sort out whether or not I think Transatlantic is too squeaky-kleen for me, but I think the answer to that dilemma is probably “no, they are not too squeaky-kleen for me.” They’re very sincere and very good. Their playing is super clean, but doesn’t squeak. I have three of their albums: SMPTe, Whirlwind, and two verions of their last one, The Absolute Universe.
My friend Butch, when I introduced him to Wobbler, said “Oh, yeah, kinda like Yes meets Gentle Giant.” and that’s accurate. Absolutely ferocious playing throughout the two CDs of theirs that I own, Dwellers of the Deep and From Silence to Somewhere.
It’s been great to hook my ears into this music. I’ve found that music which doesn’t require my full attention isn’t really worth my time, and I’ve found all of the above music to reward deeper listening, to not have truck with anything resembling “postmodern irony,” — I am SO done with irony for irony’s sake — and that it requires so much dedication to play prog well that there is no way to fake it.
I’ll have more to say on this subject in the future.
I’ve called these thingies writing updates in the past, but I do have other stuff going on, so I’ll include some of that here as well. I’ll try not to wander too much!
State of the World. Not good, really. I think there is a LOT of cultish and ideological thinking going on about things that are essentially distractions. The war in Ukraine was a distraction as much as it was a cash cow, but this Palestine thing is So Much Better. We are draining our coffers on genocide, and in a totally contradictory way to what we were doing in Ukraine. Which doesn’t matter, because they’re distractions. Things to keep our minds occupied while they rob us blind. But the Israel one is extra cool, because it’s one of the ones where dissent from it is a big offense. People are losing their jobs over it.
Also, There were two consecutive November days that were the hottest November days on record, and the month as a whole was 2°C above pre-industrial levels! That’s supposed to be the Line That Must Not Be Crossed.
Well, we done crossed it. Go Progress, Go.
State of Massachusetts. I live in the Western part of the state now, and my connection to what’s going on in Boston is really different from what it was when I was in Watertown. Of course.
Where I live now is so bucolic, quiet, beautiful, old school, elevated, and both the same and very different from where I lived before. There are definitely Trumpers in the area, for instance. I’m friends with some Trumpers. This does not in any way freak me out, even thought I am about as far from being a Trumper as it is possible to be… But we’ve veered into the previous heading’s territory, haven’t we, so maybe we should stick to the subjet. At least those of us who are me should.
But I still have 3 major connections to the city, and I need to honor those. Lesley, Fenway, and Wicked Queer. Once a week, I drive down Route 2 into Cambridge, up Fresh Pond Parkway, to Mass Ave, and then over to Porter Square. If’n I was rich, I’d have a pied-à-terre in Belmont.
State of Mind. Weirdly OK, considering. I have a lot of rage about how things are in this world, and I think I always will, but it is really sad and distressing watching things look so much like they’re falling apart. I look at the world and wonder how anybody thinks the state of things is sustainable. But you know what? It’s OK. I’m in the place where The Coming Doom will come to last. If I can see it coming, I can make peace with it.
People on an individual are OK. On a mass level, we’re a mess. I’m kind of a mess, but I’m a mess in an exceptionally beautiful place, far from the madding crowd, and that makes a difference.
Also, I think critical thinking can help with a lot of things that people aren’t applying it to. The facts are the same for all of us. I know Marjorie Taylor Greene and Kelly Anne Conway think there is such a thing as “alternate facts,” but you know what? There kind of are. The center-left corporate media spins as much of a fake narrative as the right does, it’s just not quite as nefarious. But there are things that lib friends of mine believe that are definitely untrue.
Writing Life. Currently caught in the middle of two tasks. I’m working on a revision of the Ghost Story, and I need to be working on The Faerie Pirate Thingie. Also need to be watching movies for Wicked Queer. Eep.
Read a couple of brief sections of The Faerie Pirate Thingie at Paul Richmond‘s Word open mike over at the LAVA Center. That went OK, but for this work, I need to read for longer than a five-minute open mike slot. I’m still looking for that opportunity.
I’m working with a book coach on The Faerie Pirate Thingie, and our back and forth has been very helpful. I’m seeing the shape and size of the work before me, and.. it’s a lot, but it’s doable. I need to devote more time to it, so I may be stopping in the middle of this current draft of the Ghost Story for a bit while I address the Faerie Pirate Thingie.
I am not working with the book coach on the Ghost Story, but I am attempting to apply what I’m learning.
Current Listening. Pocupine Tree’s Signify is on the box at the moment.
I’ve heard back from more than one editor, and a couple of agents as well, that a story about my childhood that I’ve been sending around is “just a chapter” because it includes a scene of me directly trying to deal with my gender issues: they all seem to want to make the whole 6,000 word story I’ve submitted about that one page-long scene. I don’t have the opportunity to explain that the story I’ve sent them doesn’t really have anything to do with “transition” per sé, because cover letters need to be brief and professional. If I did take the space to try to explain this, it would feel like I’m apologizing for my work if I were to drill down into aspects of my story in a preface that only the editor will ever see. A story needs to stand on its own.
So I’m writing this post.
I’ve been told to just leave that part of the story out, but that seems just as unreasonable. Physically, it would be possible to do that, and while that would certainly bypass the issue of my “problematic” identity, to leave that important part of myself out of my story would feel like I’m retreating into the closet that I’ve fought so hard not to be trapped in. From my point of view, the choice I’m being presented with is either to leave out this important aspect of who I am or focus my story on the expected trope of transition.
Imagine requiring a story about a black kid to include some kind of resolution to the “problem” of their blackness, or else leave that out of the story entirely. Such an expectation from an editor would immediately brand them as racist. And yet, any time I have heard an actual critique of the piece I’m discussing, this is what I hear back.
I’m trans every day. Getting my hormone prescription was only one day, one story. There have been so many stories in my life: I was trans in all of them. My being trans is just a trait, not my whole identity. I am not my transition. That’s not the only story I have to tell. Surprisingly, the vast majority of what’s happened in the time I’ve been walking the Earth has nothing to do with a particular course of medical treatment.
I refuse to accept that any memoir I write needs to either deny who I am or be about the gatekeepers who OK’ed my medical transition. I am grateful to them, but at least one of these people has had me sign an NDA. They don’t want the publicity, and I’m OK with that.
This particular memoir piece is a story about a kid who is being bullied. The fact that the main character is trans is important, but not central, and the resolution to the story is not going to come from waiting the thirty seven years it took me to get my medical transition started: the situation is much more immediate than that, so the resolution must be, too. That resolution must be about being bullied and how the central character, who happens to be trans, deals with it.
By the logic of these literary gatekeepers, no story can be self-contained, because there is always some central issue in a person’s life that won’t resolve into a nice little package with a ribbon and a bow on it. Requiring a self-contained solution to such a global problem as gender incongruence is unreasonable. Conversely, you can live with such an unresolved issue for a very long time, while many other things happen. I can tell you that this is so from personal experience.
Unfortunately, it’s been a major obstacle to getting my work published. It’s quite frustrating.
Broadcast From the Brain Radio 
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