Cocktail Hour
“Love and Mercy” Rocks
categories: Cocktail Hour / Jukebox / Movies
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I cried through most of “Love and Mercy” a film about the incredible Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys. Partly the tears were for my own youth, but this is a sad tale–of misunderstood genius, of mental illness, of abuse. The directer is Bill Pohlad, who produced the enigmatic Bob Dylan biopic “I’m Not There” in 2007. That film used a number of actors to portray Dylan, including Kate Blanchett. This film uses two actors to portray Brian Wilson, and lets us see the actual man during the credits. And it works beautifully, an embodiment of the changes the man went through, the eras of his life. We’re all played by different actors as we grow older, aren’t we. Continue reading →
Bad Advice Wednesday: Get Up The Wall
categories: Cocktail Hour
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I’ve written in this space before about how long, steep bike rides are good metaphors for writing a book. But yesterday, as I pushed and slogged up a ride that once seemed everyday but is now monumental, I thought that what I was doing was also a fairly apt metaphor for a writing career.
It seems to me important to make a clear distinction between the writing itself and the attempt to get the writing out in the world. Obviously, both skill sets are needed to become a published writer in the first place, and also needed to publish books over the course of a career. The writing itself is what we usually talk about here, but for today let’s stick to this other thing. Unless you are insanely lucky, the getting of the work into the world takes almost as much persistence and commitment as the work itself. This is understandably frustrating to a young writer—“But my writing is good”—and remains to some degree frustrating to many published and not-so-young writers. I will not go as far as to say I am in control when I am at my writing desk,but I almost never feel as out of control as I do when I try to negotiate the world of publishing.
Of course the hill seems steepest from the bottom. I am full of admiration for the young writers I know who have been trying for years to get published, working at it every day despite the world’s indifference. By extension this Continue reading →
Getting Outside Saturday: Sparkler Time (a photo haiku)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Getting Outside / Photo Haiku
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Guy at the Bar: Vince Passaro on Post-Racial Life
categories: Cocktail Hour / Don't Talk About Politics / Guest Columns
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It now seems undeniable to me that we have been living in a 50 year semi-coordinated backlash against the civil rights movement. There is no other way to explain how the conditions of economic and political life of African-Americans gets worse, while “racism” putatively wears away, and we become (laughs here) post-racial. I remember my working class white relations (largely but not entirely the males), furious throughout my childhood at the claims of African-Americans, the demands for equality. I remember the combined total of votes for Richard Nixon and George Wallace in 1968: 60 percent — even McGovern did better than Humphrey did that year, only four years after Lyndon Johnson’s landslide. Continue reading →
Bad Advice Wednesday: A Lot at a Time
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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Okay, this one is the opposite of last week’s Bad Advice, “A Little at a Time,” in which I suggested celebrating incremental writing, since that’s mostly what we get time for. “We” being we humans… But let’s say you’ve got a novel started, or other book (or really any project humans get involved in, though hold off on the mass killings, please)… At some point, it’s going to be time to blast out a rough draft. So accrete as you will, but when you’re well in, I suggest a draft vacation. Continue reading →
Bad Advice Wednesday: A Little at a Time
categories: Bad Advice / Cocktail Hour
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A few years back–can we do it again? Yes.
Every year it’s the same–I look out over my garden and wonder how on earth I’m going to get it ready and then planted in time to have any chance of food from it at all. And every year, an hour here and five minutes there, a morning next week and an hour last week, the thing gets done. And all the other things. Including, like, parenting. And novels. Continue reading →
A Reading with Ed and Wally
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Been a packed month of readings–one almost every other day. The most recent was a great event at Between the Covers in Telluride with Ed and Wally in the flesh. Thanks Daiva Chesonis. And special thanks to Terry Tice as Ed and Ashley Boling as Wallace Stegner. Next up is the Bookworm in Edwards, Colorado on Thursday the 18th.
Getting Outside Saturday: A Few Maine Flowers (a photo haiku)
categories: Cocktail Hour / Photo Haiku
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Lundgren’s Lounge: “H is for Hawk,” by Helen Macdonald
categories: Cocktail Hour / Guest Columns / Reading Under the Influence
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Helen Macdonald
Living with a bird is an education. I recently heard an ornithologist point out that, regardless of how long a bird has been a member of your household, that bird will always remain a wild animal. I was reminded of this one Sunday last winter when our morning coffee was interrupted by a wild cacophony of screams and shrieks from Ruby’s cage in the kitchen (Ruby is an umbrella cockatoo that we adopted years ago); rushing out we were astonished to come face to face with a hawk, perched on the railing of our deck peering in at Ruby. The hawk was magnificent–breathtakingly majestic and with both talons firmly planted in a world of unfettered wildness far beyond our limited and merely human comprehension.
A Talk with Jack Loeffler (And Another Talk this Coming Wednesday)
categories: Cocktail Hour
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Next Wednesday night I’ll be at Collected Works in Santa Fe at 6pm. It’s a long drive so we are starting tomorrow (Sunday) morning so we get there on time!
I will be introduced by, and in conversation with, Jack Loeffler, one of Edward Abbey’s closest friends. Loeffler lives in the hills outside of Santa Fe,and when I was traveling for the book my friend Mark Honerkamp and I dropped by and spoke with Loeffler in the open, book-filled study of his single-story adobe home. (These are the pictures Mark took while we spoke.)
“What Ed and I knew, on some fundamental level, is that once you’ve been out in it long enough, it becomes the top priority,” he told us as we settled into the study. “When you’re out in it fully, you recognize it’s where you belong. We concluded that it took a good ten days in the wilderness. Until you began to change. You need to live in the spirit of nature, so that it’s totally and intuitively in your system. Then you don’t have any choice but to defend it.”
A handsome, fit 74 year old man with a big smile and white beard, Loeffler was innately theatrical. He wore an open Western shirt, kerchief and khaki shorts. His whole demeanor was what I can only describe as oddly joyful.
