Radio Archaeology

After a little while Bill said: "Well, it was a swell fiesta."
"Yes," I said; "something doing all the time."
"You wouldn't believe it. It's like a wonderful nightmare."
"Sure," I said. "I'd believe anything. Including nightmares."
--Ernest Hemingway, The Sun Also Rises

'Oh, I've had such a curious dream!' said Alice...
--Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

Reality, reality, whatcha ever done for me...
--Albert and Gage, Like a River Loves a Waterfall

***
Edna was very fortunate to have Eugen, someone who loved her and understood her and gave her support and space and what she needed, psychically.

I don't believe anymore. He isn't coming.

***
Wasn't my beautiful correspondence worth anything, artistically?
The songs are just songs. The page hits are just page hits.
My mind, in a vacuum, was desperate to make connections.
And in part I was on the receiving end of a mind game.

***
I didn't make it all up.
But emissary mind has taken over.
This part I did make up. I thought he was coming.
I wanted to believe that. The narrative was too compelling.
Like Bob Schneider's 40 Dogs (Romeo and Juliet).
I talked myself out of it last fall (or tried) but when I discovered dozens of daily page hits from Denver for a week or more
at Christmas - it gave me hope.
The page hits stopped. I've heard of "blocking cookies."
Or maybe he had left town.

***
Page Views
Maspeth, 8 March 2010

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***
I wasn't an English major for nothing. Kitty & Levin. The answer is "in the beginnings." I always thought I would make a pretty good code-breaker, if there was ever that Nimrodian need again. But to be a code-maker - that's where it's at.

***
A quote I read a while ago and was very struck by:

The aide said that guys like me were ''in what we call the reality-based community,'' which he defined as people who ''believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.'' I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. ''That's not the way the world really works anymore,'' he continued. ''We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.''

***
"In the final chapter [he] speculates on the possibility of artificial intelligence and a mind without biology."

I'm walkin' through heaven with you.
--Loudon Wainwright III, Fresh Fossils

***
Am I envious of his forthcoming book? Yes, maybe a little.
Because I really think I have my moments in my writing.

***
Which would (or might) people want to read 50 or 100 or 1000 years from now, his book, or our correspondence?

***
I don't mean to sound mean-spirited. I hope his book is good, and does well, and has legs in a philosophical way, and lives. It's not an either/or.

***
(I'm not a self-promoter. I couldn't stand to be _________. There's a difference between the commercial and art - though an artist needs to make a living, and eat.)

***
David Gray is in Providence tonight (what a beautiful night!) and is sold out Monday night at the Egg.

***
Ah, to have been in Nome last Sunday, or to be in Seattle on April 30, with my afternoon at the dispersal...












image by William McLaren, 1923-1987 [source]