So, J. D. Salinger died four days ago, and the long-held unrealistic hopes of millions were simultaneously dashed: we will never see another Catcher in the Rye, or even another Seymour: An Introduction. Unrealistic hopes are usually the hardest ones to let go of, so it's no surprise to hear rumours that Salinger maintained a safeful of unfinished novels — as many as fifteen of them. Less hopeful are the further rumours that he intended them all to be destroyed.
Me, I'm just relieved he made it to the natural end of his life. For some reason I was always convinced he would one day be found dead by his own hand. I guess because suicide came up quite a bit in his stories, but he also just seemed like one of those guys... the kind who seem to understand everything, and are therefore not generally understood themselves.
I always end up admiring those guys. In fact, I've lately been compiling a list of people whom I greatly admire who also happen to be suicides. Seems morbid, I guess, and maybe it is. But don't worry — this is not some kind of really crappily veiled cry for help. Please, I am definitely an extra-thick-or-no-veil-at-all kind of metaphorical bride. I just find it interesting and, yes, sad that so many of those whom I would consider the great ones seem, like Seymour Glass, not to have been made for this world. Here's the list which J. D. so deftly evaded for 91 years, to which I say congratulations.
Diane Arbus
Albert Ayler
Vic Chesnutt (probably)
Kurt Cobain
Hart Crane
Ian Curtis
Nick Drake
Sigmund Freud
Kurt Gödel
Vincent Van Gogh
Ernest Hemingway
Spalding Gray
Primo Levi
Joe Meek
Phil Ochs
Sylvia Plath
Elliott Smith (possible homicide, I guess)
Hunter S. Thompson
John Kennedy Toole
Alan Turing
David Foster Wallace
Virginia Woolf
Plus possibly Frida Kahlo, Malcom Lowry, Marilyn Monroe, and Peter Tchaikovsky. Best dinner party guest list ever, IMHO.
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Friday, January 15, 2010
Bees Knees
Just working away over here. When I'm not working, I'm thinking about work. So this is what it's like to be The Man. Maybe if I got some minions it wouldn't feel so weird. Or maybe that would be the last nail in the coffin containing my formerly bohemian existence.
Business cards are being printed. They look like this.
They're expensive, but I got a ridiculous deal from my old boss at the print shop where I worked for nine years.
My website is almost finished. You'll be the first to know the minute it's up. Web design is hard! Did I already tell you that? Actually, it's the combination of web design and web programming that's hard, because they are about as well suited as print design and Microsoft Word. Or Microsoft anything, really. The left and right sides of my brain are constantly at war. I guess that explains why I keep punching myself in the head.
I'm rambling here because I have nothing new to tell you. Here, watch this. It's weird and beautiful and I miss it.
Business cards are being printed. They look like this.
They're expensive, but I got a ridiculous deal from my old boss at the print shop where I worked for nine years.
My website is almost finished. You'll be the first to know the minute it's up. Web design is hard! Did I already tell you that? Actually, it's the combination of web design and web programming that's hard, because they are about as well suited as print design and Microsoft Word. Or Microsoft anything, really. The left and right sides of my brain are constantly at war. I guess that explains why I keep punching myself in the head.
I'm rambling here because I have nothing new to tell you. Here, watch this. It's weird and beautiful and I miss it.
Friday, January 01, 2010
Jan Won, Twenty-Ten
Happy new year, folks! I predict it's going to be a good one. Cultural trends this year:
• Fantastic Mr. Fox provokes a huge slump in Pixar box office sales, as people remember the pleasures of animation produced by actual artists.
• More generally, a popular resentment builds against the time-wasting role of technology in our lives. In particular, people become angry about the hours they have been forced to spend keeping up superficial and vacuous relationships through the aid of high-tech gadgetry. Facebook and Twitter memberships plummet. "Hello? I'm on the bus," is an overheard conversation of the past when the most popular cellphone plan becomes "outgoing only." No one remembers what "apps" were.
• Homosexuality in Hollywood is finally accepted as a prevalent and unremarkable reality when A-list celebrities come out of the closet and virtually dare the world to stop loving them. Think Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, and Sacha Baron Cohen.
My resolutions this year are:
1. To tell the people I love how great they are.
2. To finish creative projects I start as quickly as possible, before they can lose what initially excited me about them.
3. To take more hikes in the woods.
4. To embrace my inner nerd.
5. 72 dpi
And you?
• Fantastic Mr. Fox provokes a huge slump in Pixar box office sales, as people remember the pleasures of animation produced by actual artists.
• More generally, a popular resentment builds against the time-wasting role of technology in our lives. In particular, people become angry about the hours they have been forced to spend keeping up superficial and vacuous relationships through the aid of high-tech gadgetry. Facebook and Twitter memberships plummet. "Hello? I'm on the bus," is an overheard conversation of the past when the most popular cellphone plan becomes "outgoing only." No one remembers what "apps" were.
• Homosexuality in Hollywood is finally accepted as a prevalent and unremarkable reality when A-list celebrities come out of the closet and virtually dare the world to stop loving them. Think Tom Cruise, Oprah Winfrey, and Sacha Baron Cohen.
My resolutions this year are:
1. To tell the people I love how great they are.2. To finish creative projects I start as quickly as possible, before they can lose what initially excited me about them.
3. To take more hikes in the woods.
4. To embrace my inner nerd.
5. 72 dpi
And you?
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