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- Weekly Zephyr #27: THIS MUST GO
Weekly Zephyr #27: THIS MUST GO
Weekly Zephyr #27: November 30th, 2017
Hayv Kahraman, Heads on Plate, 2008 Weinstein, C.K., Rose, Spacey, and whoever this morning will bring
I hadn't planned on talking today about
The Great Abrupt Sea of Accountability that the Men are Falling Into
(it was a plate with heads on it up there and now it's a sea; things change quickly these days, that's how it is)
(also a rich man being fired from a job is not a head on a plate or a person being burned at a real live stake; it's just a rich man being fired from a job, tragedy-wise)
but my mind is on these fresh Keillors and Lauers so I have to stop and say no, this is not a McCarthyism type moment we are experiencing. We're unused to seeing even sporadic justice in this realm so it makes sense that a feeling of disorientation is upon us and we're asking questions. I'm not shocked when I see some of our gentlemen out there worrying about this—though I don't enjoy it, in that familiar way—but I do feel a special kind of dejection when I see women out there worrying about it, as I have in my feeds and such. Could we maybe just for a few minutes longer be worrying about the people who have been harassed/assaulted/derailed from their careers/robbed of sleep and well-being, etc. and worse before we rush back to worrying about the men
I love the men, yes? Is it important that I say so? I have a vested interest in the well-being of men both inside and outside my house
BUT/AND
We aren't done with that bit Also it's not a "bit" It's basically a planet We will be at it a while
OKAY THEN ***SIGH/STRETCH***
WHERE WAS I
WHAT HAD I BEEN PLANNING ON TALKING 'BOUT
I remember! Yes. Last week the rest of the world and I all linked to Claire Dederer's piece What Do We Do with the Art of Monstrous Men and I've been thinking about it so much ever since. Been thinking particularly about what she said about the (relative) monstrousness of finishing work. I'm in awe of finishers. Finishers of large things like books are miraculous. Finishers of great books? BYAH, HOW, WHAT.
And I thought back to a time back in the 1990s when I was a young, carefree actor here in Seattle.
* THOSE HALCYON DAYS OF MINIMAL RESPONSIBILITY AND MAXIMUM COMEDY *
I was in a sketch comedy group called Bald Faced Lie, and we started out at a theater in Belltown called AHA! (RIP/bless), which was next door to a bar/jazz club called Tula's (which is still there 20 years later! in Seattle! everybody go there right now and keep it there!), where we would go and drink after practically every rehearsal/performance.
We made a lot of shows so we had a lot of rehearsals/performances and so we were at Tula's drinking a l o t , to the point where we had tabs, the long-standing kind, "Put it on my tab, Mac!" (HIS NAME WAS MAC) and we even had a special round table in the back that they would save for us with a little "Reserved" sign. So fancy, so cozy.
One of our tiny bar games was to take, oh, anything small—paperclip, sugar packet, matchbook—and alter it in some way until it became a handcrafted product.
bent, doodled-upon matchbook: ooh crumpled sugar packet sculpture: ahh
And then we'd put the product/products on the table and yell
THIS MUST GO
or
THESE MUST GO
or
EVERYTHING MUST GO
and maybe write a little sign on a scrap of paper that said "95% off" and stick it near the products.
MY POINT:
A WHOLE BOOK A HAIKU A CRUMPLED SUGAR PACKET SCULPTURE ON CLEARANCE A WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
Just a whole bunch of finished products.
They differ in scale, sure, sure SURE but they all have at least one drop of eau de finishing in them and until I have the will/the vision/the necessary monstrousness to finish something bigger, I rely hard on that drop.
Related to all of the above:
I never thought I'd say that I'm dying, DYIN', to read the Odyssey but here we are. The straight-ahead opening shot in Emily Wilson's translation: Have you ever watched Mark Rylance act? (I've only ever seen him on TV or in the movies.) So often he seems to be doing almost nothing, he's so unforced, but you can't take your eyes off of him for a second. Never not thrilling. That's how this translation is grabbing me. CANNOT WAIT.