Category: Commentary

Hitting a moving target.

A few weeks ago, I began work on another edition of my newsletter. I usually start with some subject headers I want to talk about, then come back to them and fill them out as I’m thinking of them and thinking what to write. Rough outline, then more specific, you understand.

Of course, I wrote about the very large effect our political reality is having on our lives right now.

I went back to it last night, and those concerns I so lightly touched on, so delicately brushed over…are now moot. We are in a fresh NEW hell compared to just two or three weeks ago. That I was concerned about in the last of March now is cookie dough ice cream compared to now in the first weeks of April.

This is untenable.

Posted on by ~tbg~

Joy of Art, part one.

Recently, I was in Miami, and I got a hankering to go do art stuff. There is a Museum of Graffiti in the Wynwood neighborhood, and a Taschen book store.

I’ve been to Miami just once before, and we didn’t stay long enough to really do much. This time, we had a couple of days, and so I was relaxed in figuring out how I wanted to move and what. wanted to see.

First off, I was amazed by the vibe in Wynwood. The vibe was great, and the amount of street art everywhere was unlike anywhere else I’d been. The colors, the variety, the sheer volume of it all! I was snapping pictures out the car consistently.

The Museum of Graffiti is small but mighty. A relatively small space, given it’s expansive subject matter, but it is a must for fans of the art. Graffit has expanded past the aerosol on the walls; now we’re doing corporate disruption, billboard “adjustment”, and spotlighting writers from oppressive regimes around the world. We suffer from a sense of the art world (among other things) revolving around us as Americans, and graffiti is truly a worldwide expression. I dropped some good money in the gift shop.

In the same block is the Art of Hip Hop museum, and it is also small, but the exhibit on view was one that opened my eyes. Cey Adams was the art director for Def Jam Records in their Golden Age, when they were making serious cultural inroads from Run DMC and the Beastie Boys to the ascendancy of Jay-Z and 50 Cent. I had no idea who he was, but I knew his work, and they had a collection of work he’d done, along with videos, shirts, and other designs he was responsible for. Illuminating, and a great use of time.

I was asked, as I was walking out, if I’d been to the art gallery which handles the works by both museums. The two spaces have a cooperative set up, and I was very interested in the work at that intersection of graffiti and hip-hop. The gallery was situated between the two; I had walked by and missed it. So I stopped in.

I spect the next two hours in that gallery.

Thing is, I don’t get to talk art a lot. My friend group and I look at art, and I talk about particular pieces with others, but I got to sit and talk about art, specifically modern art. Where is it going, who are the main players, what we really thought of their work and their reach.

While having these talks, I was able to look at works from a Graf artist I’ve been knowing about since my beginnings. To be in the room with works that were selling for six figures were….not humbling, but definitely an eye-opener. There is room to talk about art as a vehicle for money laundering, and room to talk about art as a function of a soiety beset by AI and work demands and growing poverty, but right then? I was immersed in what I saw and what I felt and dusting off the vocabulary to describe it all.

Afer I left without buying anything, I made my way back to the hotel, snapping pictures as I went. Murals, bright colored characters, wall burners – I was amazed at the work it took not only to make them, but the efforts the city put into maintaining it.

It was a great trip, and I came back energized and ready to make things. Which is the point, right?

Posted on by ~tbg~

After.

In my planner, I called it “After”.

That’s it.

I’ve written about the stuff we’ve been going through, and I am constantly amazed and grateful for the kind words and extra-squeezy hugs that have come my way. Over the past year, I’ve lost my father- and mother-in-law and two uncles, so Death and I are quite familiar.

But now, is the After.

Now we’re trying to see what is normal, what will not trigger those memories which make us pause and tear up. All of those home projects we had on the docket, which were on hold while we watched this all play out, have to be done.

Or do they?

The normal winter urge to nest, to make the house as comfy as possible, is starting to recede as spring and summer approach, even in the Upper Midwest. Change is happening.

We’ve had too much change here lately.

Posted on by ~tbg~

The places you’ll go.

I went to the library today and I got a couple of books that were on my to-read list. One was by Larry McMurtry, noted author a quite a few books about the Wild West and cowboys and such, called “Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen.” It’s a book of his recollections of his growing up in the context of storytelling; where he grew up, everyone was working, and there was very little time to sit around and tell stories. Part of his point (I’m on page 70 at the moment) is that storytelling loses a lot in a society where everyone is either too busy to listen or have nowhere to go to laze around and listen.

When I started the book, I was put off a bit. Here was this white dude, speaking of a country long gone, of a people who inevitably vote Republican and proudly don’t go more than 20 miles from where they’re born. The kind of people for whom work is a currency, and social issues boil down to “I have it bad, and no one else should really have it better than me.”

Anyway, what drew me in was our community. He spoke about the stories of his childhood, and I saw a ton of parallels. He was made to do the manual work of a rural life, but everyone sensed that he just wasn’t good at it. He got ahold of some books and was sold; these Anglophile writers wowed him with their language and their storytelling. He saw how he could apply those lessons to the stories he wanted to tell.

The difference, which became glaring to me, is that he wanted to immerse himself in that Anglophile world. The world of European writers, who he was introduced to and were soon lifted up as examples and roadmaps to follow. I’m a bit different, and I hope others are, too. The key is a saying that I’ve heard over and over – “if you know better, do better.”

I cannot imagine a list of inspirations that doesn’t include James Baldwin or Audre Lorde. Pablo Neruda and Amy Tan. Alexander Chee and Ta-Nehisi. And I mourn the people who look to Europe for these classic writers but don’t see the talent under their regional noses because “woke” or “diversity writer”. What treasures he missed!

The book was published in 1999, and now I have to wonder if he didn’t read the older writers because he didn’t know about them, or they weren’t “as good” as the people he names as influences. And that’s the rub with being a non-white person consuming media; you are surrounded by such great talents, see them every day, seek them out, read them, wonder at the sentence structure and ways to turn a phrase…and find out that there are people who are so hung up on the European artists that were allowed to publish and be lionized those many years ago.

But at the end of the day, the urge to read, to consume, to be influenced by all that the world has to offer is its own reward. I grew up in a different Wild West, but while I can struggle with questions of representation and who gets to be the big name and who can’t, I can connect with him on essential questions of environment and telling stories. You know, human traits and qualities that can shine in my writing just as they do with his.

Posted on by ~tbg~

“Fan” short for “fanatic”.

So, college football is upon us, but I don’t think that this is confined to just this sport. I’m sure people worldwide go nuts over their local sports teams. College sports are special in that you don’t necessarily even have to have attended the school in question to feel this level of belonging. And that’s what it is, right? Belonging. Anyway, this dude posted this on Twitter:

A little backstory. Florida State had very high hopes this year after doing very well last year , but they lost their first game to a team they were supposed to beat handily. Florida State fans felt some kind of way about it.

So, second game of the season, against Boston College, another team who, on paper, they were better than. The above fan posted this announcement a few days before the game.

It was Boston College 14, FSU 6 at halftime. This guy deleted his Twitter account completely before the second half started. Florida State ended up losing, 28-13.

It wasn’t even the lengths to which this fan felt he needed to go to get across that his team would definitely, for sure, completely win this game that kinda caught my attention. Hell, in this age of “engagement” and “content”, someone eating dog shit out of a cup is, um, not the content I want to see, but I know it exists somewhere. What gets me is the level to which this person is engaged on a level that, logically, makes no damned sense.

This person doesn’t play for Florida State. Isn’t a referee. Isn’t a coach. In no way, shape, or form can this person affect FSU’s chances to win said game. But that will to win is so in them that they offer to make a public display if what they want does not come to pass. And it didn’t.

I think I’d like to read more about the psychological perks of fandom; why do we do what we do for organizations we’re not part of, for schools we didn’t go to, amongst others who feel the same way? Because this shit able? That borders on psychosis. But that’s part of what “fanaticism” is.

Posted on by ~tbg~

Words of venom.

Note: this was written in response to a thing I saw on FB. Now, I’ve taken to not engaging and trying to be right online, but this tickled me AND aroused my need to defend summer as a season, especially since all of the fall aficionados can’t hide their glee for much longer. Thing is, I wrote this…and then proceeded to dip below 80. So my wrath was…late? Betrayed by Mother Nature proving her point herself. Ah, well. I had fun writing it.

Ray Bradbury, in his excellent book “Zen: The Art of Writing” asks the reader “How long has it been since you wrote a story where your real love or real hatred somehow got onto the paper?” That emotion shows through the writing, and I think this did too. Only thing was, my timing was off. Or Mother Nature’s. SOMEBODY was off.

Anyway…

I will not harsh your mellow; time passes, and soon it will be Spooky Szn and the reign of pumpkin and turkey, and you will find abject joy. Meanwhile we, the children of Summer, dread the coming of our mortal enemy. You bemoan Mother Nature’s Broil setting, but act like she doesn’t have a Flash Freeze button, too.

We wouldn’t have minded the three day stretch of days below 75 if you’d have simply shut up about it. Instead, we got wishes and dreams and pronouncements about how you simply cannot WAIT for fall. You got caught out there, twisting in a cooler, drier wind, wishing for something that has yet to come. Meanwhile, the force of corporations loom behind you, eager to restock store shelves in aisles labeled HOLIDAY and introducing orange products where there were none before. Do you really want that?

You say we have fooled ourselves, that just because we had summers off as kids, that we still hold a childish affinity for these warmer months. If you were an adult living in cooler climes, though, you recognize summer for what it is; an answer and a rebuttal of these days where Mother Nature wants you frozen. Where that wintry bitch wants your skin scraped away by snow blowing sideways at high velocities, where any weak point in your fur and leather armor will expose you to hypothermia and the very real feeling of impending death, frozen in place and peed on by dogs in fuzzy, handmade sweaters who think you’re a lamppost.

Can you just allow us the mirth of a Slurpee? Of napping in front of a fan? Wearing novelty T-shirts for as long as we can? Or do you just hate those of us who make Summer our business? Shut yo ass up and wait your turn, and after we get done with fall, you better not say a gotdamned thing about it being too cold.

Posted on by ~tbg~

Political leanings.

I believe that the law should apply to everyone.

If your crime is payable by a fine, then that’s just the going rate for doing a bad thing.

I believe that we are not put on this earth to work.

I believe that those without still deserve a place to live, food to eat, and all of their human rights met, and not at their minimum.

If more police is the answer, then the question is stupid.

Racism is stupid logically, in theory, and in practice. All the isms, actually, are roadblocks to a better society.

Real change isn’t comfortable, and a lot of people have found comfort in the status quo.

Travel is the number one thing in realizing that you are a citizen of the world.

Old people need to be taken care of.

Young people deserve a chance.

Fear is a helluva motivator and plot point.

A twitch of your right index finger can kill multitudes of people, and I don’t think that’s a good thing.

Let’s start where we are. We may not have much time left.

Posted on by ~tbg~