Something/Someone Old

I'm re-reading one of my favorite books ever: Charles De Lint's Memory and Dream.

It's part of Charles De Lint's Newford series. De Lint is a practitioner of urban fantasy, a genre where faerie intrudes into the modern post-industrial world. It's a bit like magical realism, but more approachable. Newford is a fictional city in which he sets many of his novels and short stories, much like Ursula Le Guin's Ekumen. It's a bit like Ottawa, but larger and with an American legal system.

In Memory and Dream, De Lint's protagonist, Isabelle Copley, is a painter who has given up making representational art. Why she has done this is the meat of the story, which ends up being a fascinating examination of mentorship, friendship, creativity and ambition--as well as examining the power of memory to reconstruct the past.

If you can find it in your local library or used book store, do so. It's well worth a read, and probably De Lint's best.

Something New

So. For once in my life, I bought stuff on Black Friday. This is a pretty big break from tradition for me, as I usually don't even buy groceries on the Friday and Saturday following Thanksgiving. I'm a contrarian, for one thing; for another, I don't appreciate the effect Black Friday has had on Thanksgiving. I've rarely seen a more insidious way of taking away people's time off.

But like everybody else, I'd like to have furniture in my house if I can. I prefer buying used off craigslist and ebay, and I prefer buying things built before the late 70s, because you have a better chance of getting a solid, well-made piece that will last. However, I draw the line at upholstered furniture. I neither want bugs nor mold nor mildew inside my furniture, and I don't want pesticide all over it either. So new it is--and new furniture is seriously expensive.

Thus, I sacrificed my principles to convenience, and was rewarded by a thousand dollars off the purchase I made. I ain't proud of it--but I am glad to have this task finally done after two years or more.

Here's what I got for the great room, the first room you see when you come in my front door, which has been standing empty except for my piano and some unpacked boxes for two years. Soon it will be a place I can invite people into, which is great.

It's an enormous room, so I got two of these, and two small chairs. A coffee table and one or two side tables and some lamps are next on the list, and then I'll be able to have a whole writing group or sewing circle over. I hope sometime I will have made enough friends to have some big parties.

I don't have pictures of the two small chairs. They were obviously made for short people, and thus are a profound relief to Kate and I. Furniture seems mostly made for tall people, or at least people 5'6 and over. As a 5'4 woman, being able to have my feet firmly on the ground and my back supported is like heaven.

When I feel guilty or anxious about spending so much money--and believe me, I do--I remember that I'm in more or less constant pain in my patookis, and sitting is difficult; so sitting on furniture that's been worn out for more than five years is not good for me.

The sciatica has led people to comment that it seems like something is always a pain in my ass.

I have a fantasy that one time or another, I'll be able to invite a lot of y'all over to sit on these couches.

Something Borrowed

I've been getting frustrated with the endless covers of the 70s and 80s tunes of my childhood (I'm more than frustrated by the endless remakes of TV shows and movies from the same period, which I actually view as a fairly sinister project--but that's a story for another time.) For instance, nobody should cover ABBA. Really. Unless it's their song "Fernando," the problem with covering ABBA is that the Swedish superband had an uncanny ability to sing songs that weren't very good, using lyrics that they didn't even understand, and still make them fun to listen to. Except for "Fernando" and possibly "Dancing Queen," none of ABBA's hits stands up very well once you separate it from its original singers and moment in time. So a cover of "SOS" playing at my gym while I'm doing bicep curls is likely to make me wince and resolve to get moving on my Analog Music Project, which will end with me having a Sony walkman attached to my pants and earphones mercifully blocking out such misguided efforts.

So it's with great pleasure that I introduce a cover that I do like. It's so wonderful watching millenials covering Thin Lizzy. Thanks guys!

I note that some people in the YouTube comments think they sound like a bad cover band in a bar. Not my opinion, obviously--the only thing I think is bad is the sound quality, and since it was probably recorded by somebody in the audience at a Japanese music festival, I'm not going to be persnickety.

Something Blue

Here's one of my favorite blues singers. I tried to search the site for him, because I'm sure Joe has featured him sometime or other, but unfortunately the words "son" and "house" turn up an awful lot. I find it sad that he gave up his music, and incredibly grateful that Alan Lomax recorded him so that the generation of white kids before me could discover him and ask him to relearn his repertoire and tour. Of course, I was too late to see any of that, and I found him through a battered cassette. Don't even remember where I got it.

So here's Son House, one of my earliest exposures to the blues:

This one is absolutely top-notch. What a singer:

How are you all today?