The Bronze Medal

I hate a song that makes you think that you are not any good. I hate a song that makes you think that you are just born to lose. Bound to lose. No good to nobody. No good for nothing. Because you are too old or too young or too fat or too slim too ugly or too this or too that. Songs that run you down or poke fun at you on account of your bad luck or hard traveling. … I am out to fight those songs to my very last breath of air and my last drop of blood. I am out to sing songs that will prove to you that this is your world and that if it has hit you pretty hard and knocked you for a dozen loops, no matter what color, what size you are, how you are built, I am out to sing the songs that make you take pride in yourself and in your work.

— 

Woody Guthrie

Last night we were out pretty late at a bar that had latin dancing, and at around 1 in the morning the DJ suddenly cut off the salsa and the merengue and galvanized the audience with a 45 minute uninterrupted procession of Michael Jackson hits. Every single track during that span was greeted with joyous recognition, from Rock with You to Billie Jean to Bad to I Want You Back (cleverly played last with ABC, so that you could be reminded after all the hits of where they first began), and every one of them was the kind of song Guthrie might have approved of, one that brought joy and happiness to people’s lives, and that “proved to them this was their world”.

There’s a Josh Ritter lyrics that I love:

Radio waves are coming miles and miles /
Bringing only empty boats

If for no other reason, Jackson deserves the outpouring of grief of the past week for giving the world so many recordings that were not simply empty vessels, but were ships carrying a sort of joyful goodwill and hope about life that we barely find on the radio these days. He surely was a badly troubled man who made many terrible mistakes in his life, but to judge his art only on that basis seems to neglect the very real effect his music had on millions of listeners.

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Simon has said that the reason his father has no time for poetry is that he is afraid of the messiness of life. Poetry feeds on all that spills over the boundaries of the usual things, the everyday things with which most people are obsessed, so William has no time for it. He cannot think of anything more unnecessary. What about you? What’s your excuse?

— Elliot Perlman, Seven Types of Ambiguity. (via jennabee)

It is as painful perhaps to be awakened from a vision as to be born.

— 

James Joyce, Ulysses

This quote is from the Oxen of the Sun section of the novel, which I read through twice and yet still feel as if much of its meaning has escaped me.

John Wayne’s controversial pro-war vehicle “The Green Berets” was one of only a handful of popular films produced during the Vietnam war. When it was released in 1968 Roger Ebert, a film critic, gave it zero stars, and eviscerated it for being “offensive” and “dishonest.” More nuanced efforts, such as “The Deer Hunter” and “Apocalypse Now,” came ten years later.

Like Vietnam, Iraq is a complicated and unpopular conflict, and few seem to be ready to see it dramatised on screen. Back in early 2005, Stephen Boccho, a vaunted television producer (“NYPD Blue”, “LA Law”), released “Over There”, billing it as the first serial television drama about an ongoing conflict. It earned some fanfare but little critical acclaim. No one watched it: the show was cancelled after only 13 episodes.

Supposedly there are only two types of stories: a stranger comes to town, and a man goes on a journey. The Iraq war is both, but everyone hates the stranger, and the journey was a dumb idea to begin with. Do you want to see that film? American audiences don’t—at least not yet—and for good reason.

— Benjamin Pauker, from The Trouble with War Games, which is worth adding to your instapaper queue.

Bird above the 3rd rail.

Hem, Jackson

Book cover designer extraordinaire Chip Kidd lists his favorite covers over at Newsweek, and points out how the name of Joan Didion’s late husband was subtly highlighted on the cover of her 2005 memoir. I can’t believe I never noticed that!

Is it possible to wake up more tired than when you went to sleep? Ugh.

Let the credulous and the vulgar continue to believe that all mental woes can be cured by a daily application of old Greek myths to their private parts.

— Nabokov on Freud

Some more photos from the Pride Parade on Sunday.

No longer throne of a goddess to whom we pray,
no longer the bubble house of childhood’s
tumbling Mother Goose man,

The emphatic moon ascends—
the brilliant challenger of rocket experts,
the white hope of communications men.

Some I love who are dead
were watchers of the moon and knew its lore;
planted seeds, trimmed their hair,

Pierced their ears for gold hoop earrings
as it waxed or waned.
It shines tonight upon their graves.

And burned in the garden of Gethsemane,
its light made holy by the dazzling tears
with which it mingled.

And spread its radiance on the exile’s path
of Him who was The Glorious One,
its light made holy by His holiness.

Already a mooted goal and tomorrow perhaps
an arms base, a livid sector,
the full moon dominates the dark.

— Robert Hayden, The Full Moon

Ani Difranco, Overlap