Category: ultrapersonal

Sparky’s World Tour 2001, possibly coming to your town soon:

Aug. 17–20 Washington, D.C.
Sep. 1–2 Goshen, NY
Sep. 12–16 Denver, CO
Sep. 22–30 San Francisco, CA
Oct. 18–22 Reykjavik, Iceland
Nov. 16–26 London and Lancaster, England

In order to facilitate all this travel, I will not be spending money or eating during the interim. Please be advised and adjust plans for our social engagements accordingly.

We’ll start with a quick quote from a towering literary figure:

But it’s not me so much as my brain. My brain just sits up there, reporting back to me, clicking on and on like ticker tape. Sometimes it feels like my brain is smarter than I am. It doesn’t seem to matter what I want. My brain just goes on and on relentlessly, expanding to space.

Carrie Fisher, Surrender the Pink

I’ve been a little down on myself, berating myself for not writing much here that showed any insight or revelation. It dawned on me, though, that I just take stuff like that for granted, so I just don’t think to share once I sit down to post. My brain, fidgety thing that it is, is constantly processing what I read and watch and do and remember, and constantly spitting out minor revelations, or at least the raw material for them, which usually take shape the moment I turn my attention back toward a particular subject. I’m often surprised when I start to talk about some damn thing or another, and discover that I seem to be able to piece together a reasonable opinion. (Except when asked about any or all of those things that have never crossed my mind, which usually prompt me to raise my eyebrows quizzically and exclaim, “Hmmm, I have no idea at all.” I don’t like to fake opinions.)

Here are a few recycled thoughts, then — ideas usually shared in conversation or pondered during heat-crazed walks around town:

• • Exhausting as my social calendar has been, I still really like the idea that the widespread Homo Blog Clique has forged so many links here in the analog world. Getting to know the people behind the blogs adds new and exciting dimension to what they write, just as familiarity with their writing makes getting to know the people easier once you meet them. It is a clique, of course, the natural result of a filtering process we all go through as we browse around and link and bookmark and then weed out all the sites that don’t hold our interest after a while. Just like in the normal world, we formed a big clique based on shared obsessions, experiences, respect, or circumstances. The thing is, an internet clique casts a wider net, catching a wider variety of fish. Clique we may be, of some kind or another, but it’s certainly one made up of an extraordinary variety of interesting people. It’s incredibly self-indulgent, though, to keep writing about meeting each other. It’s OK. I guess, but still self-indulgent.
  • I’m perfectly willing to let run-of-the-mill Hollywood movies play me like a fiddle, but I can only take so much. I love action movies and period movies and all that stuff that is so emotionally manipulative, that practically writes itself after the initial exposition. Doesn’t bug me — I’m sometimes there just to have entertainment spoon-fed to me, and that’s fine. They’re so easy, though, that they set me up for the thrill of seeing films that catch me off-guard and really make me think, laugh, or gasp in sublime shock. that’s a lot of added value, baby. Ghost World, for instance, was so brilliant because I found myself laughing moments later, once the dark and sublime jokes had a chance to sink in and stew. And it ended without any real resolution, an honest and courageous way to end a movie that more Hollywood movies should be willing to try. Things in life don’t always end in nicely resolved circumstances. It’s a lazy convention of theater and film and literature to tidy up everything that’s been written, instead of ending on a note of an unkown, unknowable future to come. Sometime a pat ending is right for the story, sometimes (and I’m thinking especially of A.I. here) it’s an enormous effort spent to do what’s expected when ending the story without wrapping it all up would have been more thought-provoking and more satisfying.
  • It’s been a wild since I’ve really had a crush on someone. I miss those. I miss that feeling of desperate lust and fascination, that kind of primal longing and fluttering of the heart. A good crush is bittersweet. It’s also good copy. I like to think the drought has nothing to do with my getting old and jaded, and just more to do with me not meeting anyone that extraordinary recently.

The amazing thing about gay bars, at least for me, is that I somehow feel self-conscious and invisible all at the same time. A brilliant combo, which does nothing but encourage my tendency to fidget (and I’m not much of a drinker, so the caffeine and sugar in the endless 3-dollar Cokes don’t help much, either) and get distracted easily. What’s worse is that I lose any skill I have to make idle or funny conversation, even with people I already know, let alone with anyone new. Sure, a lifetime of supressing wallflower tendencies has given me some ability to conduct myself with some composure, but basically I still fold under the pressure to be casual about hanging out in a bar. I should probably just get drunk once and for all. (That’s another bit of trivia for you: I’ve never gotten drunk, because I never really liked anything that would get me there.) Of course, I’m totally jaded about being around flogging demos or public sex or tranny whores or anything like that, it’s just the social graces of being a barfly that escape me.

I am such a city kid. Really, I’m just beyond hope. I’ve always lived in big cities: I grew up in New York Fuckin’ City, and spent eight years in Boston, which seemed like a charming hamlet by comparison, but an overwhelming urban nightmare to people who’d come there from the sticks. It’s the only way of life I know, really. Everything else just seems like…well, television.

A friend/former squeeze of mine has been forced by circumstance to take a break from the big city for a while and go back to stay with his folks in Nebraska for a bit. He sent me a postcard from his hometown of Billings, Montana, where he went for a brief visit last week. The image on the card — downtown Billings surrounded by vast, hilly open space — is a curious, alien landscape to me. Weird, open, desolate, sleepy. I shudder to think of it. A teeny little burg surrounded by emptiness like that just gives me chills. Of course, when I get e-mails like this I know that my reliance on city life is cheating me from some of the truly American, rock-n-roll experiences that can be found out in the heartland:

I forget that the Montana highways make up for a lot of the other faults with this state. Nothing really beats the escape of slipping into leather pants, a muscle tee, aviators, a cowboy hat, and a pick-up truck and hitting the highway. Heavy metal is the only choice for music [well maybe some sleater-Kinney is ok]. You kind of forget where you are, who you are. Is it the speed? You can drive so fast here…but I think it’s the truck.

That just sounds so cathartic to me. Maybe I should get that driver’s license once and for all. (I say this willfully ignoring the horror I felt the one time I did a road trip to the Midwest and was confronted for the first time with a completely blank horizon, devoid of mountains, skyscrapers, or oceans and filled with more corn and soy than I care to remember.)

I found out this morning that a very dear friend died yesterday. Although Gina had been having an ugly, all-out battle with breast cancer for the last two years, and knew her days were running out, I don’t think she was prepared for the sudden liver failure that claimed her yesterday morning. I know I wasn’t. Gina, who I worked with for years, moved to California a few months ago, planning to start a new life in the wake of the cancer that she fought so aggressively. Her doctors discovered more cancer, though, burrowed further into her chest and lungs where they couldn’t get to it without major surgery that would have left Gina in excruciating pain for her last months. She opted for more chemotherapy instead, so she could have a few good weeks out of each of those last months — time to enjoy the sun, to be with her friends, to be able to pull together the fragments of the wonderful book she had been working on for so long. Even during her illness, Gina was incredibly vibrant, emotionally and intellectually engaged, empathic, thoughtful, insightful. Gone, just like that.

Gina and I took to one another immediately went I first interviewed with her for some freelance typesetting work four-and-a-half years ago. From the very first day, I was taken by her enthusiasm, humor, and quick mind as our conversation went from typesetting to typography to books to literature to life. I learned an incredible amount of new things from her, and I was actively encouraged by her to take those new ideas to new levels, and to always leave myself the energy to do what I love. And I laughed with her. God, how we laughed when we were together! Even when we started out bitching and moaning about the workplace and the larger world, we were able to put things in perspective and mix joy in with the righteous indignation. She was not only a friend and a colleague and a teacher, but also an inspiration. that’s cliché, I know, but true: I aspire to her level of passionate interest in life.

There are so many stories to tell about the many chapters of Gina’s incredible life, but I don’t think I can reminisce just now. I’m tired, my feelings are spent. I just want to wash away the sting in my eyes from all the crying.

I forgot how good it feels to just dance for a while. I mean, I know in my head that I have fun when I go out and shake a tail feather, but my body tends to forget after a while. I’ve been so tense lately, like a tightly coiled spring, so it was becoming something of a medical necessity that I unwind a bit. I coaxed Tom into going with me to Body & Soul, which is still my favorite party, still kicking after all this time. It’s the right thing at the right time: a good vibe on sunday afternoons, a spectacular way to unwind before the work week kicks in again.

The point is, though, that it worked tonight. The activity, the sweat, the pounding noise all helped me shake the tension out of my shoulders and rattle my head back into some semblance of order for a little while. It gave me a way to just give in to the stimulus and pull myself out of my own crap for a bit. Afterward, I took advantage of a nice night to walk all the way back to 14th street and just…be. I even had me some ice cream.