Tyler Weaver's Blog, page 20

It’s Time (Previously: It Might Be Time)

Update, an hour later: I walked away. Cue Cream, “I Feel Free.” Below now represents the movement towards a decision.

Been here countless times before, that feeling of walking along the precipice of The Work, the razor's edge between continue on or walk away.

The pattern, recurrent, for five years running: I get to this point, where there's no light at either end of the tunnel, of not knowing what's next or even an inclination of it, and The Work says, No, wait! and something works or I think it does and I continue on in the same pattern ad infinitum.

But this time feels different.

A question explored: is this current book The Work or is The Work just my name for Sartre's "fundamental project," (a concept of which I was unaware until I came across it in Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's FLOW... note: add Sartre to to-read stack) that unifying existential thing that gives life purpose? This current book being, then, not The Work itself, but a piece of it.

Leaning, certainly, towards "just a component" now, much more so than I was even a day or so ago. Thinking of something Bowie said:

"... If you feel safe in the area that you're working in, you're not working in the right area. Always go a little further into the water than you feel you're capable of being. Go a little bit out of your depth and when you don't feel your feet are quite touching the bottom, you're just about in the right place to do something exciting.”

Maybe the current book is where I feel safe and a writing life without it, with something new, is that extra few steps into deeper water. Or maybe it's the other way 'round, staying with the current book being deeper in the water. But I've been swimming in the same depth for five years now. So maybe that answers my question. Maybe it's time to let myself drift just a little further into the unknown.

I've never met the writer that I am without the current book. Maybe that's what The Work needs right now. Maybe it's time to stop wondering and see what it's like without my feet touching bottom.

Five fucking years.

I really don't know – all I do know is that something has changed, that something has shifted. A feeling that I've given it its due?

All of this, of course, is subject to change; this ramble being simply an expression of where I am in the present moment. But present moments past have been a lot – too many – of these moments and I'm uncertain of how many more I want to allow into my life.

Streaming Marvel Mouse

Watched the 12-minute advert of Kevin Feige discussing the upcoming Disney+ Marvel serials post-ENDGAME and came away far more intrigued by the upcoming Disney+ offerings than by most of the upcoming big-screen slate (excepting DOCTOR STRANGE AND THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS – that title alone – and Mahershala Ali's BLADE).

(Yes, I'm looking forward to the BLACK WIDOW film, but would prefer a series: Nat's such a complex character that a deeper dive is warranted.)

Hopeful that the Disney+ era (Disney+ = 1970s Marvel?) will give Marvel a chance to be more flexible in their storytelling – that it not take ten years to complete a single overarching plot (I was 27 when IRON MAN came out and 38 at ENDGAME - there's a lot of water and experience under that particular bridge) and offer more character-based stuff (beyond Star-Lord being responsible for Thanos wiping out half of existence, etc. etc.) in that true Marvel fashion and, perhaps most importantly, that they avoid the pitfalls that killed the Netflix streamers – no fucking DEFENDERS, please – and let the serials each keep their own unique identity.

A request: A Namor/Original Human Torch series set in the late 30's... or even in the 50s/60s, to stave off the need for potential retcons with FIRST AVENGER continuity – wasn't there an easter egg of the original Human Torch in that flick? Maybe an adaptation of Brubaker's THE MARVELS PROJECT retrofitted to focus on what happened after Cap went into the ice? Or did AGENT CARTER cover some of that? Could THE FANTASTIC FOUR exist during that era? (Still want my 50s-60s-set FF film directed by Brad Bird – though that might work well as a series too.) Combine the FF with the original Human Torch instead of Johnny Storm? Make him a creation of Reed Richards?

Speaking of Marvel, Marc Maron's WTF interview with Ed Norton is fantastic: in addition to providing inspirational and challenging conversation, Norton gives some great backstory and insight as to his (all-too-brief) time in the MCU. It's quite frustrating to see his and Leterrier's INCREDIBLE HULK generally consigned to bastard child status within the MCU. Wish they'd gotten their chance to explore Banner more.

Life, PostThanks Edition

(Clearing the decks and the drecks to open the week – as seems to be the way Monday posts go here...)

Survived Thanksgiving, no bail required; the mashed potatoes worked out fine. Think I might add cream cheese next time (swap out half of the sour cream for cream cheese). Spud laboratory, in practice. The risotto took forfuckingever and my stirring arm will require some recovery time but still attached. Not like I could eat it anyhow (37 carbs per 1/4 cup of just the dry rice – when it's my time to shuffle off, I'm making risotto and going out in creamy style) but such is the Lego principle in practice.

Returned to Micro.Blog: found a use and a rhythm to it: all thoughtlets and sub-280 prattlings will first go through Micro.Blog then crosspost to Twitter; photos both to Twitter and private Insta. Mostly dog pictures and random shit but whatever. Content ownership and helpful contingency should I ever decide to step away from this space: my little five dollar-a-month site as backup. Next: figure out a way to merge Pinboard with Micro.Blog. (Thought will probably set up Pinboard to post public links to Twitter automatically.)

Despite Mailchimp's protestations, I turned off open tracking and click tracking in the newsletter: Who opens it and what they click isn't any of my business – after I hit send, it's out of my hands, out of my control. And, truthfully, it doesn't matter: I'm going to write what I write and that's all there is to it. Should the reader enjoy the content, we can engage via email – and that's absolutely wonderful.

Sorokin's DAY OF THE OPRICHNIK is fucking insane and terrifying (the dystopian Russian hellscape of 2028 that Sorokin envisions could easily be translated into a near-future America should its current trajectory continue) and I loved it. Also: his latest, THE BLIZZARD (my first exposure to Sorokin) offers more wonderful insanity. Ordered the NYRB edition of THE ICE TRILOGY. Should arrive this week.

Think that's it. Would seem that I'm presently capable of writing only in declarative sentences. Such are the holidaze. Go me. Onward, then, into the day: friends over for dinner tonight, making burgers with cajun sauce and toppings for a retirement celebration; culinary experiments continue.

“Stir, stir, stir.”

The last middle finger of the Thanksgiving gauntlet today before the three-week interregnum between middle finger holiday gauntlets – just get me to January, self, just get me to January. No money for bail; inner neutraility far cheaper.

Now: writing, the foundation, the anchor; later: cooking a cadre of things I can't eat – mashed potatoes, beef and noodles, risotto ("stir, stir, stir")– but I've learned to treat cooking like building LEGOS, like writing: once the act of creation/building is done, I lose interest in the thing being created/built – find contentment in the process, send the work off into the ether with its Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle backback, let it do its thing, repeat ad infinitum.

Newsletter 0078 out tomorrow/regular ramblings resume Monday/order from chaos, chaos from order, etc etc, "stir, stir, stir."

Postprandial

(The joy in vanishing into headphones)

Morning after Thanksgiving-carb stupor and the recovery therefrom (is it comfort food if it feels like being smothered with a pillow?) – but at least seasoned with a modicum of personal insight (so I've got that going for me) not worth sharing beyond the existence thereof.

Slowly adding more to this site – or slowly adding more then quickly taking away because it doesn't feel right (or I don't give it the chance to do so). Thought of a Status page, but not sure I want to do that. Brings up – for me, anyhow – a whole issue of site organization and I'd rather not make it more difficult than it has to be ('tis my one, true talent). Same issue with Micro.Blog: do I want another stream, another garden, or would I rather make it a single stream (Can I fulfill the functional ownership – if not the conversational – promise of Micro.Blog here, without the need for an in-between)? Or, is this "garden" composed of multiple flowerbeds? Maybe that's the way to look at it. Not sure yet. Have to fiddle and play around. Grateful for the freedom to explore these ideas and notions of connectivity like Goldilocks and her stupid chairs.

Add a page, delete a page. Story of (my) life – though I'd be foolish to discount the possibility that these "experiments" are little more than digital manifestations of boredom – these posts are my status updates. For better or for worse.

The day awaits.

Of Police Scanners and French Onion Soup

The wind advisory has ended and there are no trees in my office. Victory. Also: I finally beat the first GEARS OF WAR after ten years and found the appeal of the series (GEARS 2-5, here I come, thank you GamePass). Victory, part two. My sensor is coming off, peeling away not from my skin but from the adhesive itself: super-tough Band-Aid over top, readings still on. Victory, minus half. Balance.

Advisory begat some good material on the local police scanner (via 5-0 Radio Pro app). It's an oddly soothing sound – strange, I know, but my dad was a photojournalist and my childhood was one ensconced in an aural melange of Saturday morning cartoons and police scanners: I suppose the sound, the voices, the codes, the stories out there, around, somewhere – like the smell of typewriter ribbons – is just a part of my DNA, recurrent as I stumble through these gates of early middle age.

... to learn the identity of any area: local paper and police scanner, to learn what doesn’t make the paper.

Suppose I should say something about Thanksgiving because why not: I hate it and always have. There. It's Christmas without the presents and with even more crappy food that now, more than ever, wishes me a ketoacidic death while thrusting me into a suffocating environment of pretend and loneliness in the company of others. My fondest familial celebration of rock-landing religious zealots was spent alone, at a bar a few doors down from my apartment in Boston with a book, a bacon cheeseburger, French onion soup, a few (or more) pints of Guinness, and a pack of unfiltered cigarettes in tow.

Maybe that was pretend too, I don't know – maybe it was nothing more than another Saturday morning cartoon of nostalgia. But it felt more true to myself than this gauntlet of exhaustion that lies ahead. Thanksgiving goal – holiday goal, really, through January: don't end up on the police scanner.

(Dreams are important.)

BrainClearingWindTunnel

A wind advisory incoming; batten down The Morkies. Disregard yesterday’s post…

Regard: I am not the writer this book needs me to be; such is the point of writing this book – the only way to become the writer who can satisfy the existential requirements of this book is to write the book so that I might become the writer incapable of writing the next book who becomes capable by writing that book and so on and so forth; to write is a calling of perpetual evolution. It can be painful sometimes, oftentimes.

(Seems to be the theme this week.)

One more thing: fairly certain that I won't publish deeper thoughts on AVENGERS: ENDGAME. Not out of shyness or anything, but I just don't feel like taking the time to write about it. Bottom line: Cap and Mjolnir was a moment for all moments; Thor was hilarious; Captain Marvel kicked 45 forms of ass and deserved a much better movie than her solo outing; and yes, damn it, I cried at the (multiple) end(ings).

Dear Twitter, I Tried (Again)

Dentist visit complete; if Hell exists, I'm certain it's an eternity spent in a dental cleaning while Christian rock music blares through shitty speakers.

Subject at hand:

Like any good slot machine, there's a promise to Twitter. A promise that, like the first go-round that brought me my first book, it would bring me connections and challenges that this redstate hellscape (beyond dental cleanings) couldn't provide - a feeling as though I'm still a part of the world, to boot.

But, then: recognition that it's just the addiction talking, the justification of continued pulling of the arm. Truth: I'm out of coins and I'm tired of lugging the pail back and forth and back and forth and–. This space (and the newsletter, my little lifeboat/dinghy) represent all I've got to share right now and I've got to be comfortable with that; must content myself with being the guy muttering to himself in the corner (but at least it's a pretty corner), content with deriving pleasure in penning these pieces every day... which, given that I've been writing them since March, seems to indicate that I'm content with this particular iteration of my content.

(None of this is to say that social media hasn't brought me lifelong friends and collaborators; it has, and I talk to many of them to this day. If I haven't, I miss you. Again, Newsletter as lifeboat.)

And so, another period of relative isolation declared in full recognition that it is an announcement not for the sake of my followers (though I prefer Moira Rose's "disciples"), but for the beast that is the slot machine of fantasyland.

Maybe for my benefit now, too.

Note: all of this subject to change. This is just where my thinking lies – maybe in all senses of the word – at the present moment, and in the name of generating new daily content via exorcism. Tomorrow might bring something new. Or not. But at least my teeth are clean.

THIS STORM / Nominee

Dentist and new sensor and recalibration today. But first:

Fininshed Ellroy's THIS STORM and found it the least enjoyable of his works: a great story in there, somewhere, of war profiteering, greed, lust, of love unrequited – but that great story was buried under the weight of Ellroy’s unleashing a near-parody of himself across the page. A fear in getting out of his own way? An exhausting read, but not in the way that Ellroy's best – and when he's at his best, there are few who can compare – exhausts me, with ebbs and flows and adrenaline; I didn't feel exhilarated – just weary. A let-down.

++

While I'm following the Dem primaries in spite of my desire to not get sucked into the vortex of the surreality show of reality, and, while I've contributed to two candidates – and will continue to do so (and vote and volunteer for the eventual nominee) I haven't written anything about it. Mainly because – for me at least – there's nothing to write about at the moment. It is what it is.

All I know is that the eventual nominee must be of their moment, of their time – as was Obama, and as was, cringe, The Malignancy; we get the president we deserve. My current read on the moment: in order to balance the sharp right turn of the last half-decade, we need a sharp left turn. However: while half-measures won't do, a modicum of balance is still needed and could be represented on the ticket – if in the correct proportion... a brokered convention wouldn't surprise.

++

I'd written a few words about AVENGERS: ENDGAME but want to give them a bit more time to develop (short version: I dug it, but).

And so the week begins and the holiday gauntlet commences. What do you want for Christmas? January.

Mr Cohen’s Encore

Any attempt to write words of my own while listening to Mr Cohen is an attempt doomed to dangle from the precipce of lost causes: imposter syndrome pervasive, the alpha form thereof, with each useless word I write in life indelibly if unfairly compared, in real time, to each profundity Mr Cohen utters from the beyond.

Much of the credit for making THANKS FOR THE DANCE more than just another posthumous cash-in belongs to Adam Cohen and his tasteful, evocative production and arrangements: "The Goal," 1:12, instrumentation sublime; the title track; the opening number, "Happens to the Heart..." To hear him, to hear Mr Cohen one more time, with new, unheard words, three years hence, it's just ... just.

And, while YOU WANT IT DARKER is rivaled only by Bowie's BLACKSTAR in the "perfect farewell to the artist's artist and goddammit I'll cry if I want to whenever I listen to it" department, THANKS FOR THE DANCE is a welcome addition: I see him, fedora perfectly tilted, coming back on stage for just a few more songs, a raise of the hand to the audience as the lights focus just one more time, for one final encore.

Farewell, Mr Cohen – and welcome home.