On the red carpet, Spike Lee busted out a good “it wasn’t for me” variant when asked by some BBC commentators what he thought about Green Book: “Are you British? Are you British? Well, let me give you a very British answer: ‘It’s not my cup of tea!’”
“The winter sun shows how soon the light fades from the ash, how soon night enfolds us.” —W.B. Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
In Herzog’s Nosferatu, Count Dracula says, “I don’t attach importance to sunshine anymore.” That’s me now. The sun up here in The North, if it comes out at all, it lights up your eyeballs, maybe, gives your spirit a moment of novelty, but it doesn’t warm you in your core. I ask the locals some more polite version of, “How do you people live like this?” and they answer, “Large doses of Vitamin D.” (And plane tickets to sunny places like the one I left behind.)
On Twitter yesterday I came across the trailer for Harry Dean Stanton: Partly Fiction, and I noticed this poster of the Milky Way with the caption “YOU ARE HERE” tacked to his wall. It reminded me of the Hubble photograph in the Seinfeld writer’s room and the astronomer’s perspective. Later in the trailer:
DAVID LYNCH: How would you describe yourself?
HARRY DEAN STANTON: There’s nothing. There is no self.
LYNCH: How would you like to be remembered?
STANTON: It doesn’t matter.
The significant detail the transcript doesn’t show you: He was smiling when he said it.
The great Jackie Shane died yesterday. I highly recommend the Numero Group’s collection of her work, Any Other Way. The liner notes are terrific (great stories about her upbringing and how her mother helped her figure things out when she was young), and there’s a live cover of Barrett Strong’s “Money” on there in which she breaks into one of her wonderful monologues:
You know, when I’m walking down Yonge Street, you won’t believe this, but you know some of them funny people have the nerve to point the finger at me and grin and smile and whisper. But you know that don’t worry Jackie because I know I look good, and every Monday morning, I laugh and grin on the way to the bank because I got mine. I look good, I got money and everything else that I need. You know what my slogan is? Baby, do what you want, just know what you’re doing. As long as you don’t force your will and way on anybody else, live your life because ain’t nobody sanctified and holy. Because when we leave here we don’t know where we’re going… I’m gonna live while I’m here.
What a legend. She gave one of her last interviews not too long ago. Here’s my favorite song of hers, the first one I ever heard, called “Any Other Way”:
I think I could tell my boss to go to hell and quit my job and just construct elaborate marble runs for the rest of my life. (Although, now that I’m thinking about it, a book is kind of like a marble run — if you assemble it right, the reader drops in and flies through it…and maybe wants to go again at the end?)
This site participates in the Amazon Affiliates program, the proceeds of which keep it free for anyone to read.