Time for some optimism, I think.
“Maybe there’ll be an open door/Maybe the star that shone before/Will shine once more…”
366 Songs 350: Blue Christmas
366 Songs 349: Hwiangerdd Mair
This song matches my mood today, both in the beautifully melancholic way it sounds (The instrumental break at 1:53 just breaks my heart every single time, I don’t know why), and the lyrics; the end of which roughly translate as “Sleep, you shall be awake soon enough/Sleep, before going into your cross/Sleep, sleep little dear/Sleep until the morning.” Which… you know.
Sad day. A sad song feels right.
Heartsick and Rambling
I could try to explain it, but I’m sure I would fail. There’s no words that I could come up with that would even come close to describing the sheer terror of hearing that your son is in a place, or your child’s in a place, where there’s been violence. You don’t know the details of that violence, you don’t know the condition of your child and you can’t do anything to immediately help them or protect them. It is a powerless and terrifying experience.
From here, a parent of a student at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT talking about hearing about the shooting this morning.
News like this just derails everything else; I find it hard to think about other things, to care about what I’m supposed to write about, and so on. It’s exhausting, horrible, unthinkable; describing it as “powerless and terrifying” is something that fits most people’s experience with the news, I suspect. I think that’s why the response on social media that I’ve been tracking has been do… vitriolic, for want of a better word. We don’t want to accept our powerlessness, so we’ll rail loudly about gun control and the lack of mental health care and other (important, worthy) issues, because at least then it feels like we’re doing something.
(That said, to everyone who says things like “Now is not the time to talk about gun control”: No, now is exactly the time. There have been two mass shootings in a week. What other sign do you need that this needs to be addressed?)
(Also, I feel simultaneously aghast at, and jealous of, those who seem to be perfectly capable of having a normal day on Twitter today, making jokes and going “Woo!” about things. Would that I could do the same.)
He’s The Non-Entity With All The Toys
I was 8 the first—and only—time I spoiled Santa for a believer. My parents had come clean about the Santa myth to me a year or two earlier because I was offended that the jolly geezer didn’t care about me, a Christmas carol-singing Jew from the northern Chicago suburbs. Why did he only leap down the chimneys of my Christian friends? What had I done to deserve this prejudicial treatment? My parents finally cracked, and I was relieved. My friends weren’t more special than me after all!
I knew, of course, that most kids my age were not privy to this knowledge. Possessing the secret made me feel deliciously superior. I understood the cruel, complicated world a little better than my third-grade buddies. Unfortunately, my newfound sophistication didn’t enhance my secret-keeping abilities.
From here.
I had Santa ruined for me when I was… Five? Four, maybe? Young, I remember; a friend came over on Christmas Day to show off his toy haul, and when I attempted to show him what Santa had brought me, he laughed at me for even mentioning Old Saint Nick. “There isn’t a Santa! It’s just your mum and dad pretending!” he told me. On Christmas Day.
Ah, the casual cruelty of youth.
Go To Sleep And Dream Of
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
Snow covers the ‘Piazza Duomo’ square in Milan, on December 14, 2012. AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABITIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images
I admit it: I am dreaming of a White Christmas this year, even though it’s apparently unlikely to happen here in Portland.
366 Songs 348: Get Down For The Holidays
It’s one of those days when I don’t have the time that I really would like to, so instead of me writing a lot, you get this lovely little song by Jenny O about being busy at this time of year. With multi-tracked vocals, and such a wonderful finger-picking style of playing, it’s like a female, non-depressive Elliott Smith. I believe that should always be considered a win.
“I’m not trying to eat and run, but I can’t stay…”
Outsider Art
Think of it this way. These non-fans, the ones who haven’t decided whether they’re going to see your sequel. What if Regular Joe Non-nerd comes up to me and says, “I liked the first Trek movie all right. What’s this new one about?” I DON’T KNOW, REGULAR JOE NON-NERD, BECAUSE J.J. ABRAMS WON’T FUCKING TELL US. This is not something that will tantalize Joe into pre-ordering tickets. He’s just going to wait until someone can tell him what the premise is.
We can’t do that without a name, and here’s the crazy part — the name barely matters! If I could tell Joe “The Enterprise crew fights Gary Mitchell/Harry Mudd/The Mugatu/Whoever” — the actual name barely matters. The names won’t mean anything to regular people anyway. But it’ll still be a hell of a lot more interesting than “The Enterprise crew fights… somebody.”
From here.
I am becoming oddly obsessed with the sense of entitlement and indignation that’s becoming more and more apparent in nerd culture. There is so much to unpick from this above quote, whether it’s the panic at the idea that – by not confirming fan speculation that the bad guy in a movie is someone familiar to the nerd audience – JJ Abrams is somehow preventing them from looking forward to the movie, the notion that not revealing the entire plot of a movie that doesn’t even come out for half a year is somehow selfish, or my favorite, the anger at being removed from the position of information gatekeeper for the non-nerd audience. “Regular Joe Non-Nerd” along is just amazing. Talk about self-otherization.
This is from a piece called “Dear JJ Abrams, Just @#$%ing Tell Us Who Benedict Cumberbatch Is Playing In Star Trek 2 Already,” by the way.
I’ve pitched something to Time about this; it might not be all there yet, but I’m hoping it’s something I can pull together nonetheless.
I Always Feel Like Somebody’s Watching
From the Guardian’s Photo Blog:
A tray of glass eyes are pictured at the medical equipment shop of optician Gerhard Greiner in Munich. Greiner produces individual hand glass-blown human eye prostheses for people who have lost an eye or eyes due to a trauma, illness or accident. Photograph: Michaela Rehle/Reuters
I love that this is immediately both horrific and oddly amusing to look at.
366 Songs 347: It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
Ignore, for a second, the fact that Bing Crosby’s voice is actually kind of spectacular (It really is, though; I don’t know why its greatness always surprises me, but it does. It’s so individual and musical, in a way that most voices aren’t), and just luxuriate in the arrangement of his version of this song. It’s a thing of beauty, delicately balanced and just a joy to listen to. Other people have done this song (very often, it seems), but none of them sound as good as this version.