I’m thinking about narrative.

One of the reasons I’ll never be a fiction writer is that I can’t do narrative, or when I do, I have to fill in the gaps with cardboard cutout characters, and really… Who needs to read that?

But I’m thinking about the narrative of my own life. I’m thinking about it in terms of some usenet discussions I’ve had recently.

See, someone said that the US allied itself with Hussein early on because Iran was worse than Iraq. And now we’ve swapped sides because Iraq is worse than Iran.

Now, the veracity of such a statement aside, I extended it to present my point: That just as we had to choose between worse and worst, the world will have to figure out who to support in the upcoming restructuring of the world’s political boundaries. Will it be the US who is worst, or someone else? I think the answer is that it will be the US, if Bush is in charge for any continued length of time.

And this was, of course, spun into outrage that I could say that the US was the worst nation on earth, an accusation which is impossible to refute in the realm of usenet, once it’s been made.

I bring this up because it’s about narrative. Not just the differing narratives being told about countries in the mideast, and about the US, but the narrative of the accusation against me.

It says that the characters are established such that the plot will go a certain way. And to participate as a character is to advance the plot. I’ve read where authors say that they make up characters and then write down what they do, and this is exactly what I’m talking about.

So we know that Homer will say something considered and thorough, and the other characters will throw tomatoes. That’s just how the plot happens. So one is left wondering why Homer participates at all.

A narrative one can write says that Homer’s a fool for wasting his energy in that way. Another narrative has Homer educating the savages. Still another has Homer scoring a direct hit, politically-speaking, which is why reprisal came from partisan quarters.

Now, I have to choose which of these plots to put in my book. And it’s a real pain in the ass, because I’m a good enough writer to know that each of those narratives, and the infinite others which could also be, all carry a sort of karmic weight, a certain poetic balance of light and dark. If I scored a direct hit, so what? If I’m a hopeless loser who likes to argue, who cares?

The real question is one of relevance. Writing a book that’s relevant is a far more difficult task than just writing a book, it seems to me. Should I expect my book, my life, to mean anything to you? Or will you look at it through partisan lenses and scoff with outrage at the standard to which I hold myself and my world, and thus by extension, you?

Can I live my life with the goal of writing a good obituary?

Ok, it’s a little after 6pm and I need to pee.

What happened?

I’m not sure how this is happening, but every night, the hours between 6pm and 11pm just seem to vanish.

It’s 6, and I’ll think something like, “Hey, I should go downstairs and pee.” Then it’s 11, and I go down and pee.

You didn’t know beetles could be so beautiful, did you?

“I am a beetle from the future. We have taken over the planet. Resistance is futile.”

The latest thing to come down the alt.binaries.sounds.78rpm-era pipeline is a collection of WWII swing band music produced by German forces and broadcast to England from France.

The music swings, obviously, and then there’s a singer with a somewhat stilted American accent, and mid-song he’ll start talking about how England is doomed.

Quite amusing, from my position in history at the beginning of the twenty-first century. I mean.. Nazi swing bands? Too bad Mel Brooks hadn’t written ‘Springtime for Hitler’ at that point…

I can’t imagine how these songs played on the offensive vs. laughable spectrum in blitz-era England, though.

underheart ‘blogs about a guy who wrote a treatise (in Latin, no less) which attempted to use math to predict all possible combinations of notes which would be pleasing to the human ear.

With that in mind, I present today’s music:

‘Music Is Math‘ from Boards of Canada

Boards of Canada seems to have a math theme going. They have songs with titles like: ‘The Smallest Weird Number,’ ‘Triangles & Rhombuses,’ and ‘Turquoise Hexagon Sun.’

This leads me to ask myself: Is there a name for an art movement that could include Boards of Canada, and their geeky appeal? And it turns out…

There is.

* * *

It turns out I should have gone to the Boards of Canada web site before posting this. Their site is one big experiment in process music, done in Shockwave.

The monochrome dusk, near Leavenworth, WA.

Which is more useful:

VersionTracker

or…

PerversionTracker

?

Two nights ago, my friend John helped me get some momentum about finishing the move to the new place.

Everything’s either in storage or at the new place, except much of my room, which is still here because there’s still no phone or cable internet at the new place.

So John, dutiful friend, went over there with me and helped me make space in all of my landlord’s stuff. The landlord, who we’ll call C, because his name starts with ‘C,’ after all, seems to have been a packrat with no organizational sense. So just before he left his house, he pushed all the stuff into the closets haphazardly.

The house itself was relatively neat and tidy, but the closets were hell. The garage was also full of piles of empty boxes and packing material.

So John and I fixed those things. Now there’s space for me to, you know.. hang up my clothes. And store stuff in the garage.

Thanks, John!