Still Thinking

Dear Senior Burns, I just now "finished reading" what surely will be the best book I read in 2021, unless I manage to read the entire Bible or the Oxford English Dictionary by December 31. Much could and should be said about Jenny Odell's How To Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy , and much will be written to you in future letters. But, for now, I want to appreciate it, to let Odell seep into my sponginess and solidify something that's long hoped for such resistance.  Simply disengaging from the attention economy proves insufficient -- to self or beyond. Another action must take its place. In this way, Odell's resistance mirrors the difference between abstinence and sobriety: abstinence suggests a stretch of intentional dryness, but sobriety reveals a redirecting and repurposing of the very thirst -- reasons for thirst? -- that eroded a life of its meaning. So Odell calls to more than disengagement, which I can dig. (Again, more on this later.) I should ...

Dear Senior Burns, As my age increases, my hierarchy of needs appears to decrease. The only exceptions to this being length of sleep and tasks for bodily maintenance: this old boat feels brittle at best, chipped and taking on water as the horizon rises evermore above my line of sight. But that's Brother Ass talking.  The body -- its span resembling a singular natural rotation: sun-pulled orbit, lunar year, bloom to bake to bushel and back to barren beds -- rises and sets. We know this, cognitively, but each body shocks to the sensation of its own setting. Perhaps God graces us with contentment for less as our energy also lessens.  Ironically, as my requirements of contentment decrease, curiosity grows. The great curse of youth is its lack of recognition -- youth cannot recognize itself. One can only appreciate certain lights as they fade. So it goes. So it ever shall.  While walking my pugs tonight (a routine I take for granted), I counted the matters that give me the mos...

After success with The French Connection (1971) and The Exorcist (1973), William Friedkin coolly requested $15 million (over the $2.5 million offered) to film two trucks hauling dynamite across a South American jungle. Friedkin’s problem was that this pitch -- truck, dynamite, jungle -- provided his entire plot. Whereas The French Connection offered a gritty crime-thriller with epic car chases, and The Exorcist argued for Christian faith over scientific reasoning (with pea-soup projectiles to spare), Friedkin’s poorly titled Sorcerer (1977) explored little more than classic man-in-conflict scenarios. He eventually won (and exceeded) his budget for a project that failed to earn $6 million in box offices and panned in the press. Friedkin contends that Star Wars’ premiere a month prior overshadowed Sorcerer, making it the flop that nearly ended his career. However, Sorcerer recently garnered praise as an overlooked masterpiece. Surely, Friedkin captured viscerally intense naturalis...

  " Sometimes I am two people. Johnny is the nice one. Cash causes all the trouble. They fight." -- Johnny Cash Happy birthday today to the Man In Black -- Mr. Johnny Cash (1932). Admittedly, my all-time favorite Cash record is  Unchained , his second installment of the Rick Rubin helmed American Recordings. I love this record because Cash sounds strong and happy and mean on these tracks. Also, you've got Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers as the backing band, which brings a tinge of sweaty swaggered rock-n-raw to Cash's gruff vocal performance.  Unchained  feels like the apex of America's musical evolution -- a signal of what's still possible when experience and expertise and patience collide sonically. It's encouraging to consider that the best music these men made -- arguably -- was in their latter years. While the industry exalts youth and the next flash-pan fad of aural anesthesia, on  Unchained  the old guard redefined greatness through the simplicity o...

Dear Senior Burns, My brain pan is full. Total bottle-necked. Words and tunes and even the color palettes from Archie comic books. Jack White said his brain was "pancake batter". Mine feels like something that needs a good wringing. And that's what I'm doing here: wringing for the spending. You might hear more from me in the weeks to come. I'm working on a thing -- or half a dozen things -- but I'm too mentally impacted to whittle down the particular notions. Thanks for the space, Burns.  NIKKI AND ALICE Imagine my shame yesterday upon realizing I am reading Alice Walker and Nikki Giovanni in the month of February. Not planned! No calendar agenda! After reading three of Giovanni's poetry collections last year,  Gemini: An Extended Autobiographical Statement on My First Twenty-Five Years of Being a Black Poet  (1971) -- an actual prose anthology -- hit the top of my 2021 list. And then, to celebrate Alice Walker's birthday on February 9, I went to my sh...