I had a bad night. I don’t mean because the Dodgers lost, though that made me unhappy. Rebecca Loebe gave an extra-long online concert and that made up for the loss. I was feeling good then. The dark clouds rolled in later. A friend asked how I was doing and I said, “Meh.” When she asked what was wrong I said, “Like Bart and Lisa, ‘We already said meh.’” I planned a melancholy edition of Wise Madness. When I wasn’t looking I fell into the vortex of despair. It wasn’t all bad, It inspired some creativity. I worked on a literary idea I’ve had for 35 years, but it still wasn’t good for my mental health. I finally grabbed control of the helm and steered out of the vortex; I meditated. Meditation is unreasonably effective, at least for me. I love that I can feel my pulse slowing and my muscles relaxing. After that I was able to fall asleep.
This leaves me with a problem, what am I going to write about? I could tell you the outlines of the story of the Last Elf but that might make me sad. One of these days when I’m feeling very good I should work on it for real; not blog about it.
Once again there are hours have lapsed while I’m writing Wise Madness; part of this is me falling asleep but more of it because I didn’t know what to write. I took a break to eat, and inspiration came.
The last time I was at Rockwood Music Hall I wanted ice cream after the show. I decided to walk to Broadway Lafayette for the D train and stop at Oddfellow’s on the way. When Oddfellow’s first opened in Williamsburg I loved it. It perhaps surpassed Ample Hills as my favorite ice cream in Brooklyn. Then something happened, they got infected by frou-frou. They always had frou-frou flavors but they also had chocolate. I almost always get some variation of chocolate. I went to their store in the East Village and they didn’t. They only had things on the order of green tea ice cream. I thought that might be a fluke and I tried to Soho store. They had one flavor that excited me, something akin to chocolate peanut butter. I waited online to get it. It was the flavor everyone on the line wanted. They were out by the time I reached the front. They had plenty of every other flavor, I looked at the buckets. Clearly there is a demand for old fashioned ice cream, but they didn’t want to cater to that.
I’m not here to talk about ice cream but about my need to tell you about this. This is part of my evangelism. But I like to accentuate the positive and I’m more driven to tell My Gentle Readers, and anyone without the sound of my voice, about the great things in the world. If it comes to ice cream that means, Cones on Bleecker St, Davey’s in the East Village, Eddie’s Sweet Shop in Forest Hills, and Ample Hill at several locations in Brooklyn. Remind me to write a full entry on ice cream and ices in New York come summer. I have yet to discover a place to love in the Bronx.
The reason I didn’t write about my experience at Oddfellow’s is that I was too busy writing about the glory of Emily Elbert. I have evangelized more about music than anything on these pages. It’s something I consume huge quantities of in search of the gems. When I find the gems I want the world to know. This is where being a curmudgeon comes in. By definition most music is mediocre. By market forces too much of the music that is popular is mediocre. I am with Beethoven; “When I open my eyes I must sigh, for what I see is contrary to my religion, and I must despise the world which does not know that Jean Rohe is a higher revelation than Dawes and Jackson Browne.” That’s a slightly different translation than you’ll usually find.
I want the entire world to know the joys of Tolkien, Cabell, and Terry Pratchett. Fuzzy slipper socks will make you happy. A cup of No Chewing Allowed hot chocolate is a cup of orgasm. The original Doctor Who is better than the new series and better than 99% of what passes for great TV. Silk long underwear is the key to keeping comfortable in winter. Oakland Lake is the forest primeval caught in a time bubble in Bayside. If dinosaurs didn’t exist then man would have been forced to create them. There’s as much beauty in the General Theory of Relativity and the proof of Gödel’s Incompleteness Theory as there is in the Mona Lisa.
You’re just lucky that the one thing I’m not an evangelical for is religion. If I were I’d be insufferable. I am a prophet of rationalism, I resist writing about it as much as it comes to the forefront of my mind as I don’t want to be insufferable. I will sing the praises of peace, love, and understanding, and preach nonviolent resistance till the cows come home. When one person’s rights are violated all people’s rights are violated. The rights belong to humanity, not individuals; there are no special rights, there are only those whose possession of the rights of humanity are questioned and must be defended.
My gospel is that all morality is the Golden Rule. Choosing ourselves, our tribe, our country above others, gives license to others to put their interests at the expense of ours.
I love other sports but baseball is not a sport, it’s an idea in the mind of god. It’s Zen; It is most exciting when nothing happens, a perfect game. The heart of baseball is not the pitch and swing but the time between pitches when all hangs in the balance.
I could go on forever. I’ve gone on for almost 18 years and will keep going on as long as I have a place to blog. I have adopted, at least in part, the Chivalrous Attitude towards life.
The cornerstone of Chivalry I take to be the idea of vicarship: for the chivalrous person is, in his own eyes at least, the child of God, and goes about this world as his Father’s representative in an alien country – James Branch Cabell: Beyond Life
Wise Madness 