I’m struggling to memorize a few songs (rather than rely on the iPad for lyrics and chords). I seem to be able to remember one or the other, but not both. This recording is as close as I’ve gotten. I find the pain more bearable if we all share it. One day I’ll post a version in one take. But not today.
Author Archives: Steve Mays
Five things you notice when you quit the news
I’ve been trying to kick the “TV news” habit for a while. I knew it wasn’t good for me but just couldn’t turn it off. If you’d asked me why I’d have been hard-pressed to tell you. But, once again, David Cain does a nice job of explaining things I cannot. He stopped watching for 30 days and shares some insights:
“If you quit, even for just a month or so, the news-watching habit might start to look quite ugly and unnecessary to you, not unlike how a smoker only notices how bad tobacco makes things smell once he stops lighting up. […] What you can glean about the world from the news isn’t even close to a representative sample of what is happening in the world. […] Once you’ve quit watching, it becomes obvious that it is a primary aim of news reports—not an incidental side-effect—to agitate and dismay the viewer.”
And this little gem: “As it turns out, your hobby of monitoring the “state of the world” did not actually affect the world.”
This Friday will be 30 days since I watched TV news (or listened to NPR news). No Twitter and I never did Facebook. I still post a few things to Google+ (where I have some folks I like chatting with) but don’t get much “news” there and have muted all politics. I’ve never felt better.
Patterns and nodal points
“Speaking of nodal points in history, of some emerging pattern in the texture of things. Of everything changing. Laney is a sport, a mutant, the accidental product of covert clinical trials of a drug that induced something oddly akin to psychic abilities in a small percentage of test subjects. But Laney isn’t psychic in any non-rational sense; rather he is able, through the organic changes wrought long ago by 5-SB, this drug, to somehow perceive change emerging from vast flows of data.”
—All Tomorrow’s Parties (William Gibson)
Patterns (and nodal points) in “vast flows of data” is a recurring theme in Gibson’s stories, going back to a time before the Big Data we hear so much about these days. If we had all the data (whatever that might mean) and the horsepower to process it, could we know where we are and, perhaps, where we’re headed? As I said to the cute TSA agent, search me. A few passing references to the Tao (in the book above) suggests that Gibson sees this ocean of data as something we live in, that we are part of, waves we can ride but not steer.
We think we can see the patterns but it’s just the motion of change we feel.
“In constant motion we no longer notice the motion. […] We are constantly surprised by things that have been happening for 20 years or longer. […] Sometimes we didn’t see what was becoming because we didn’t want it to happen that way.” The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly (PDF)
Tough Guys
After repeated (and increasingly severe) purges of my library, I’m down to a couple of medium-size bookcases. A few hundred books at most. To keep a spot a book has to be one I can read over and over. Mostly crime fiction with a recurring character(s). In no particular order:
- Harry Bosch (Michael Connelly)
- Lucas Davenport (John Sandford)
- John Corey (Nelson DeMille)
- Matt Scudder (Lawrence Block)
- Travis McGee (John D. MacDonald)
That would be my starting bench but there’s some good folks on the bench:
- “Mac” McCorkle and Michael Paillo (Ross Thomas)
- Artie Wu and Quincy Durant (Ross Thomas)
- Spenser & Hawk (Robert B. Parker)
- Almost any protagonist in an Elmore Leonard novel
Footnote: I do NOT count any novel published after the author’s death (written by someone else). Don’t read them, don’t count them. Sacrilege.
Reflecting on the characters above, I’m reminded that I like a ruthless streak in my protagonists. In one of the Matthew Scudder novels, some guy jumped Scudder in an ally with the intention of killing him. While the bad guy was unconscious, Matt positioned his leg on a curb and fucked up his knee so the guy would never walk right again. Almost too painful to read.
Review: Wrong Side of Goodbye
“Each of Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch books has a way of referring to earlier ones in the series, as when his latest, “The Wrong Side of Goodbye,” brings up something about a plastic surgeon. That surgeon figured in “The Crossing,” one of the series’s better recent installments. And it came out only a year ago. Still, I had to look it up, because the characters aren’t what make Mr. Connelly’s books worthwhile. The classic mystery plotting and streamlined storytelling are what render him so readable.”
Review of latest Harry Bosch novel (Wrong Side of Goodbye)
“No one can deliberately do it”
After years of reading and thinking about Zen (and, more recently, Taoism) a common theme seems to be if you’re reading and thinking about Zen, you’re missing the point. And there is is no point. If you’re looking for “it” you won’t find “it.” The quotes below (by Alan Watts and Ray Grigg) are just a few of hundreds that express this idea (not a popular word in Zen and Taoism). I’m terrible with puzzles so it’s a bit surprising I’ve given so much time to this consideration. But I really don’t have anything better to do, so…
I think it was Mr. Grigg who wrote, “Taoism and Zen cannot properly be understood, but they can be experienced.” I like that. And every now and then I get what feels like a brief glimpse. Splitting logs for firewood gives me a little zen tingle (until I catch myself thinking that while I’m doing it). Same for stacking up a bunch of rocks. Oh, and the Cdim chord on the uke.
Strictly speaking, there are no Zen masters because Zen has nothing to teach. […] the experience of awakening (satori) is not to be found by seeking.
The only purpose of any consideration of Zen is eventually to be freed of that consideration.
The process of searching for Zen seems at first to be a further violation of Zen.
When stripped of formality and returned to its natural shape, Zen is earthy and ordinary. Nothing special.
The deliberate, conscious practice of Zen is a self-defeating process, an exercise in futility.
Most people have no conceptual grasp of Zen, which is the best approach to it.
When (Zen) is itself, it is so uncontrived and subtle that it goes nearly unnoticed. And no one can deliberately do it.
Anything that can be said about (Zen and Taoism) is incomplete, misleading, and largely wrong.
Taoism and Zen cannot properly be understood, but they can be experienced.
The Way can be recognized but not explained.
The essence of Taoism and Zen is the art of living rather than the philosophy of life.
When all doing is happening with the spontaneity of just being ordinary, this is living the practice of Taoism and Zen. The simplicity of this process becomes difficult only when considered.
The Last Cigarette
“I’ve smoked well over a hundred thousand cigarettes in my life, and each one of those cigarettes meant something to me. I even enjoyed a few of them.”
Smokers will get this essay (an excerpt from an upcoming book: “Nicotine,” by Gregor Hens). Not sure the rest of will/can.
The Hard Stuff
I never developed a taste for “spirits” but have a hard-to-explain fascination with the endless variety of hooch I see in supermarkets and convenience stores. If there’s no one in line behind me I will sometimes quiz the clerk.
Q: Do all of these sell?
A: Yes. This is primo, point-of-purchase shelf space so they wouldn’t stock it if it didn’t sell. (Even Fireball?!)
Q: Who buys those little “airplane” bottles? And why?
A: Lots of folks. For the drive home. One clerk said she’s seen customers drink on on the way out the door.
In my naive, never-been-a-drinker way, these suggest a “lower class” of drinker than the guy with a bottle of single malt in his wet bar in the den. Maybe there’s danger implicit in this photo that holds my gaze.
Prison Radio
This might be an over-simplification but Prison Radio appears to be short (2-3 minutes) recordings made by prison inmates. I’m assuming these are made from phone calls the prisoners are allowed to make. That’s make take on the what, your guess is as good as mine on the ‘why’ but I’m assuming the idea is to give a voice to the incarcerated.
One of the prisoners recording these commentaries is James Keown. Mr. Keown is from Jefferson City, MO, the town where I live. In 2008 he was convicted of murder for poisoning his wife with Gatorade spiked with antifreeze. He’s serving a life prison sentence in Massachusetts.
In one of his three commentaries (Who Are You?) he describes being on the air at one of our local radio stations when, during a commercial break, he was arrested. I briefly met Keown a couple of times but didn’t know him.
I find these commentaries bizarre in a way I can’t quite put into words. Perhaps it’s the distinctive “announcer voice” Keown uses when making the recordings.
UPDATE (1/9/18): Keown has stopped updating his Prison Radio page. Just those three posts back in 2016. His appeal to the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court was rejected on October 23, 2017.
A Future with Intelligent Machines
Kevin Kelly and Jerry Kaplan discuss an AI future at the 2016 Machine Learning and Market for Intelligence Conference.