Very hot, Friends.
I’m sort of waiting for the power to crap out but it hasn’t. Yet. Knock on wood. I’m trying to limit my usage. Then I think, 'Am I going to make the difference?' That’s the slippery slope. ‘I’m not really the one causing the problem.’ It’s the flip side of ‘My vote doesn’t matter.’ Both have dire consequences if everyone started to think that way. It’s an easy way to think. Selfish. Selfish seems pretty easy for most of us.
So, I’m sitting here in the dark with all the blinds closed listening to an old Robyn Hitchcock record. It’s working. I’m going to run upstairs and turn off the AC. I’m not up there. See, I’m sacrificing for the good of everyone. Small sacrifice. Waaaah, I’m a little hot and uncomfortable. This shit species is hitting the cosmic fan.
Just remember, people: A ‘businessman’ is the only one who can run a business into the ground. Now we’re living in it. Good job.
I’m trying to pull out of the invisible weight of grief to try to read, listen, watch more. Grief or no grief, sometimes I don’t understand what the point is as we hurtle toward all kinds of disasters on all levels—political, existential, spiritual, psychological, scientific, religious, economic, etc. You get it. All of it. Why should I try to plod my way through a complicated book on Rainer Werner Fassbinder that takes me a half hour to unpack a paragraph of the dense critical writing of the author? It is worth the work. I mean, I get it. What is the point of making cultural and art criticism so dense? WHY ARE YOU TRYING TO KEEP ME OUT? WHY CAN'T YOU SPEAK PLAINLY? TIGHTEN IT UP! Oh, that’s my job.
The point is, I’m loading up my head and heart with the good shit. The love and the art. All the Criterion Channel stuff I needed to catch up on like ‘Women Under the Influence’ for a third time. I’m reading the poems. I’m listening to Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler and Mingus and the rest. I’m taking in the paintings. I’m reading select paragraphs from dense books about politics and art and science. FOR WHAT?
I know! When the big frequency buckles and the cataclysmic catharsis is upon us and we all look up into the sky and then at each other as we simultaneously experience out last moments alive, because of the homework we did out of boredom, in that moment we will all understand Charlie Kaufman’s ‘I’m Thinking of Ending Things.’ All those who didn’t load up will die peacefully and perhaps be saved. The rest of us go in a grand epiphany of ‘I told you so.’
Today I talk to director Arthur Jones and artist Matt Furie about their documentary ‘Feels Good Man’ which is about the evolution of the alt-right online and the appropriation of Matt’s creation, Pepe the Frog. Also on today’s show I talk to New Yorker writer Andrew Marantz about QAnon and related horrors. On Thursday I lighten things up with Martin Short. Great talks.
Enjoy!
Boomer, Monkey and LaFonda live!
Love,
Maron
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