don’t want to write
about politics. It’s not a topic I enjoy, but it is a topic I can’t get away
from. Right now, what with the Dopey Don and his gang of goons hacking the
nation apart and selling off chunks at bargain-basement prices it feels
irrelevant to write about the historical puzzles and acts of contemporary
lunacy that actually interest me—rather like writing a nice letter home about
the interesting people I’ve met on the Lusitania
while ignoring those pesky U-Boats.
But I am getting old. The friends of my youth have died in the
fullness of their years without anybody remarking how they were taken from us
too soon, and I do have things I want to get done before I shuffle off to
oblivion. So, in this spirit, I am going to start writing again about things
that actually interest me, and write about the ongoing international disaster
only when the spirit actually moves me.
Since nobody reads what I write anyway, as a rule, take these meanderings
as notes to myself. I hope (intend is too strong a word) to get started on some
planned multi-part pieces on canon (looking at Conan, Sherlock Holmes,
Shakespeare, the Beatles, and the New Testament for grist); on fake history (I
have material on some of the works Goodspeed called “Modern Apocrypha” I haven’t
seen gathered together at any rate, as well as stuff related to Empedocles,
Jesus, Paul of Tarsus, Edward de Vere, and others); on The Gospel According to Mark (I’m really hoping to get my online
informal commentary launched before hell freezes over); on the history of
English-language parody (I’ve got half-jelled pieces on Swift’s “Meditation on
a Broom-stick,” J.K.S.’s “The Last Ride Together,” and Kingsmill’s retelling of
Othello as a Jeeves and Wooster story);
and I have some Vinyl Memories about records like Columbia-Princeton Electronic Music Center (1964), That's The Way It's Gonna Be (1965), Moldy Goldies (1966), “Horror Asparagus
Stories” (1967), Touch (1969), The Naked Carmen (1970), Atom Heart Mother (1970), Short Circuits (1970), Good-Bye Pop (1976), Boulez Conducts Zappa (1984), and others.
Will I do any of these things? I don’t want to tempt the gods
by making rash promises, but I’d like to get at least some of this material out
in a form where that rare person who actually is interested in the topics I
like to ramble through can access it, so I’m going to make an effort. At least,
I’m going to think about trying to make some kind of effort in that direction.
Just take it as understood that I am concerned, nay appalled,
at America’s current obsession with destroying itself and its future, with the
rise of criminal thugs to power (think Erdoğan, Duterte, and Kim Jong-un as
well as Vlad the Appalling and his little friend the Dopey Don), and with the
wanton destruction of this fragile liferaft we call home. But I can’t do jack
about these particular long-gone goblins looming ahead, and I can give anybody
who is interested the benefits of my insights (valuable or not) about subjects
that interest me. So—at least for this moment—that’s what I intend to do.
And good luck, everybody. Hope to see you all on the other
side of the Catastrophe.
