The drive south at Christmas took a few hours longer than usual. There was lots of road work and impatient drivers hitting into each other and blocking the road, which made for more travelers getting impatient and doing things that caused them to hit into others and block more road. The silver lining was discovering the short run podcast, Ways of Hearing:
Ways of Hearing is a six-part series, originally heard on Showcase, hosted by musician Damon Krukowski (Galaxie 500, Damon & Naomi), exploring the nature of listening in our digital world. Each episode looks at a different way that the switch from analog to digital audio is influencing our perceptions, changing our ideas of Time, Space, Love, Money, Power and Noise. This is about sound, and the ways we are using it to share information in the world right now. Our voices carry further than they ever did before, thanks to digital media. But how are they being heard?
Episode one is embedded above as part of KALW's The Spot program and all of the podcast's 6.5 episodes are available at Radiotopia.
I am enjoying an early morning vigor that is rare for me when calendar driven forces pair the moment with a specific measurement of time and space whose namesake is Monday. Unsupervised sunbeams promise a cozy morning and lure me from the soft polyester safety and blunt grays of my lover’s hybrid vehicle. I stand in the dusty driveway, still in sneakers and the throes of a mixtape and cardio-induced flashback. I am here and this is now and I shall express my solidarity with an at times foul and unpredictable universe with a dark breath bestowed upon me by Saturday night’s pot of black beans.
78/52: Hitchcock's Shower Scene. Dir. Alexandre O. Philippe. 2017
I did not know that before Psycho was released in 1960, movie audiences were in the habit of coming and going throughout a film. Since Hitchcock kills off one of his films' leads early on in the picture (and perhaps to market intrigue), he required that no one would be seated once the movie had begun to be certain viewers wouldn't miss the film's most memorable scene.
As someone who has always been annoyed by vagabond theater audiences, I was fascinated to learn that. Even though it's probably just about the most mundane thing you can take away from 78/52, which is filled with lots more interesting facts and analysis.
It's a documentary about a movie scene everyone knows — even people who have never seen it.
In Kingman, Arizona there is a man who looks much older than he is. His skin smells like beer and his clothes smell like the tar they treat railroad ties with. He picks a tiny music box up off a yellowed doily on a dresser and opens it. Sad music comes out and he smiles like he is happy.
I wanted to see this film based on the cinematography in the trailer. I wasn't disappointed. The way the story blurs the line between dreams and waking life was a bonus.
Hiram and I found this out on Saturday when we stopped in on our way to the John Waters Christmas show at the Rialto. There were plates of cookies and a big thermos of lemonade. It was around 7:00 I think — practically past our bedtime — which made the eating and drinking all the more delicious.
I remembered all the hours I spent at the store when I was in high school and decided to re-read something I would have been reading then, but there was no Richard Brautigan or Kurt Vonnegut available. We've been reading Oliver Sacks's autobiography, On The Move, and in it he's mentioned plenty of authors I've never read but have this idea I should — W.H. Auden, for example. I asked the owner for a recommendation of something by Auden and she said she'd never read him either, so I know I'm in good company. I bought a hardback of his collected works printed the year I was born a couple years before the Book Stop opened.
Happy Anniversary, Book Stop. We have always been close, but I didn't realize we were contemporaries.
Plates of cookies sit on the counter at the Book Stop, which is celebrating its 50th anniversary.
