Week/Weekend Newsletter is Out! (Sorry about the Delay)

Strange week, it all feels…a little too easy. Privileged thing to say obviously…but I am in a privileged place seeing I’m in the Bay Area where the weather, most of the time, is nice; supportive family and relatively supportive friends (they are, really), with a roof and a job that doesn’t break my back and books to read and of course this body of mine that still works with fingers that still type, right here, on this keyboard right now.

Then why does it feel like there should be more friction…to justify the day to day….like I said, strange week. Don’t get me wrong…there definitely have been and will continue to be plenty of hurdles hour to hour, minute to minute, day to day: wedding planning (I’m getting married to my beautiful fiancé in a couple of weeks), and of course work which is a lot of writing, thinking, and connecting the dots of subjects (finance, corporate news, economic data, Bitcoin/crypto) that feels, most of the time, endless. There is exercise and yes, the news, the horrible news plaguing me (us) every minute of every day but then, come to think of it, there is that privilege again, as I’m not directly effected by any of it really, not yet at least. Not like so many others.

Strange week…strange week…almost feels like I’m waiting for something. Does that ever happen to you? Like you have the sensation of waiting for the bus or a movie to start or your kettle to boil over but you’re in the act of waiting at all? Reading this over after some time away, it reads like I’m copying Louis-Ferdinand Céline, the controversial French novelist. Ever read him? He’s great. Make sure to read "Journey to the End of the Night" and “Death on Credit” and really anything else. Quote below.

"To hell with reality! I want to die in music, not in reason or in prose. People don't deserve the restraint we show by not going into delirium in front of them. To hell with them!"

This weeks newsletter includes:

Go Where You Think You Can’t

More Thoughts on the Dylan Movie

Musings on Sticky Notes

Brief intro to my story, “Checking In”

Go Where You Think You Can’t

There’s a weird fable I came across in a library somewhere or actually some turnstile in Chicago that claimed, you can be wherever you put your ass. Brash but true and in the eyes of physics, it’s actually true. Mass and energy are equivalent—if you apply enough energy (yes, even mental energy transformed into real physical effort), you can alter states of matter or motion in ways that change your trajectory in life. It’s not simple to do (or understand (I’m just spitballing here)) but sometimes the most seemingly complicated things are that simple. And being a procrastinator since probably the day I was born, I’m very good at judging things and overthinking things to keep myself from doing anything. And still, all that energy into what isn’t yet falls on the wayside or is entirely forgotten when, if one is lucky, it actually becomes.

But having the capacity to direct energy toward a goal doesn't always mean it's always the right thing to do. Energy and effort can be squandered (should be squandered), misapplied (and mismanaged), or even used destructively because, like deconstruction, the stripping down of everything may get you to find what is at its core to be then blessed with the ability to move in a direction unsullied or perhaps pure. Without a guiding sense, one might end up pushing and trying only to end up being (after years and years) something they never wanted or can relate to with no one to blame but themselves. I saw a clip (I can't find it now) with famous chef Marco Pierre White saying something like this where he was pushing, pushing, pushing relentlessly toward something that undermined his well-being and the ones he loved for something he didn't necessarily want, which is the rub. Just as physics tells us we can transform and influence our world, it doesn't provide a moral compass to ensure we're steering ourselves in a direction worth pursuing. This clip from “Pig” below kind of reminds me of that thought. You should watch the whole thing (and the movie)

More Thoughts on the Dylan Movie

What’s at the core of my anger at this whole thing, this whole movie and not at all mind you with the actor Timothée Chalamet (I think he’s great) is that Dylan, as a cultural icon that embodies artistry, rebellion, and not conforming feels, viewing the trailers, etc. of this movie, the exact opposite. Deeper than that though Dylan, in many ways, sacrificed his own identity, his own life, to perhaps be a projection of multitudes of wonder and chaos. So seeing James Mangold’s singular presentation of this movie does not only a disservice to this sacrifice (I have no proof this is true, just my theory) but also defines a relationship with an artist everyone who takes the time to spend with inevitably comes out differently. To make a singular movie like this creates a kind of tunnel vision of a once infinite relationship with Dylan where, when simply spending time with the breadth of his music, is much more vast and takes much more time and a much more expansive, much more human, relationship.

And yes I see the argument of, but this will bring young people to Dylan now! Ok, sure, but my rub there is that the medium at which people - especially young people - are getting to Dylan (via movie with one of the most popular actors in the world right now) is the problem. It’s easy and feels cheapened in a way. Like the difference between a tiny can of Coke and legit, real-deal Mexican Coke in a glass bottle. It’s the same way I felt seeing the Vincent van Gogh exhibit with all these goofy projections, this pseudo tech optimization of an art that shouldn’t need optimizing or upgrading or tricks to attract and hook the young. If anything, the medium of the hook is the problem, leading me to a more nihilistic take: if art no longer affects, if Dylan no longer needs to matter to youth unless shown on screen by major studios with the hottest actor of the day, need it still be part of the conversation? Dylan wrote famously in "Farewell Angelina":

The camouflaged parrot, he flutters from fear

When something he doesn't know about suddenly appears

What cannot be imitated perfect must die

Farewell Angelina, the sky is flooding over and I must go where it is dry

Was Mangold’s "A Complete Unknown" some final death throe for the studios to make a little money before the cost of Dylan faded away? It’s obviously a very negative viewpoint but as I’ve written before, one of the safest way for these studios to make money is to have a IP (intellectual property) lined up before to ensure there will be at least some butts in the seats. If that’s the case, I wish they left the myth of Dylan be like the man himself, who said he wanted in 1975 to be buried in an unmarked grave, a sentiment he shared during a poignant moment with poet Allen Ginsberg while visiting Jack Kerouac’s grave in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Sticky Notes of Remembrance

When you have a second, you should write yourself a sticky note. It doesn’t have to be anything in particular. I wrote one the other day that asked, BORED? TAKE A CLASS? I do it to remind myself of things but to also motivate myself when say, a day drags on and I get lost in the minutes and hours and days of the week within work and life itself appears to be steering me in a direction/way I don’t actually want to go.

I see these little stickies as mild slaps in the face to wake me up and remind me, Mitchell! Dammit! Success is a Maze! And even if you get to the end, is it even real?!? That’s actually one I have on the left side of my monitor now, though a bit shorter. Place it wherever you want but I prefer the side of my coffee mug sometimes. No motivation or reason need be burdened on it though. No designated color unless you are organized that way. If you need guidance, write a little hallelujah, a little thank you, or maybe just goddamn, goddamn, goddamn because here we are, breathing and laughing and being us and you and also me because one day, we won’t be. We won’t be. We won’t be, really. And, over the years, that’s actually been a spur of motivation in me to do things, to try things, to poke my head out the window or hand into the fire or feet on the street in the middle of the night just to do it because one day, I won’t be able to.

What a projection we are, what a malleable projection we can be. What a pure case of writing and narrative and character we can mold day to day, where each action, each sticky note, can lead you to the next blank page.

Checking In

On Thursday nights, he headed down to his usual bar where he wasn't known by his name, but by his drink. Same old, same old, the locals always joked with him. And they joked with him a lot, calling him the recluse or the Hunchback of Norte Dame . Obviously it didn't bother him. Pain - teasing pain - was more of a right of passage. If he couldn't take it, he shouldn't be in a bar. Taking a seat, he waved them off like the bar flys they w, buzzing wildly and misdirected around tight bottlenecks and wide low balls, the same as their ancient ancestors, the fruit fly.

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