Eileen and I finished sorting and filing music in the choir room yesterday. It was quite a relief. I went to the organ area and checked for stuff I might be leaving behind. I believe my replacement begins this weekend, so it’s nice to gather up everything I’m planning to take with me and get out of the way as much as possible. I found some Bach that I definitely wanted. I also brought home my harpsichord toolkit and a gong.

Now all that’s left to bring home is my harpsichord and my marimba.

I celebrated with a real gin martini (and several more drinks) and put a few more items on my Friday night pizza.

Earlier I had a good meeting with my therapist. I found myself struggling to come up with a clear short description of the book Gods before Men. This is ironic because I have read it twice and Kunzru’s ideas are having an impact on me.

I’m referring to more than just that book. I plan to read all his novels but I’m also working my way through his 2020 podcast season of Into the Zone and following him on Twitter. It’s hard to define my attraction but I am enjoying learning about his take on many subjects.

I chatted with Dr. Birky (my therapist) about being an outsider. This is not the first time I have talked to him about this idea.

It occurred to me this morning that so far in his book, The Outsider, Colin Wilson has not used a musician as an example of an outsider. The section I read this morning was about Van Gogh. Previously he has used characters in fiction by Hemingway, Sartre, H. G. Wells, Camus and other real life people like T. E. Lawrence. Wilson was writing in the 50s and his thinking about this stuff would probably be different if he was writing in this century.

Either way, what’s important to me is not his ideas about being an outsider but my own evolving notion. Maybe “outsider” is the wrong word. But there is a pattern in my life and the life of my Father and his Father of not quite fitting in or meeting expectations of our chosen fields.

In my own case I feel like this stance has a strong redemptive side. I am a sort of outsider because the better colleagues and friends perceive me the less likely they are to invite me into their lives and circles. This feels redemptive because I’m pretty certain they (and I ) would benefit. But I need the invitation before this would be appropriate.

Plus I definitely do not see myself as an outsider in the arts.

I am drawn to beauty especially in music, poetry, and ideas. But, my experience has been that people in these areas usually have a prior criterion before granting credibility. This criterion boils down to fitting in and often, in my case, appearance.

I find this hilarious. In the age of the internet, I still have tons of access not only to works of art but information and discussion about them. This is despite not approaching my life work in a way that is obvious and acceptable to many if not most others who share my interests.

My eclecticism probably works against me. But of course it’s as aspect of myself that I value and enjoy. When I was young someone cautioned me about being a “jack of all trades and master of none.” Thankfully I didn’t take this little bit of advice. I think a good solid intellectual curiosity combined with an interest in craft and analysis has served me pretty well up this point. I’m certainly not a “jack of all trades,” but I do have a wide range of tastes and interests, often wider than other people I have met who also like music, poetry, and ideas.

If this isn’t correct, it is at least the way it seems to me. In addition I find that when humans are excluded from inner circles of art something in me questions it. I think this is because when I find art (music, poetry, and the like) successful and most beautiful there is a basic connection to what it means for anyone to be a human.

This is what I like Christopher Small’s concept of musicking: music as a verb which incudes many human activities that contribute to it.

So it doesn’t exactly feel like being an outsider when I find the things that give my life meaning are basically inclusive instead of exclusive. In fact it feels redemptive and rewarding.

I finished Kunzru’s Red Pill night before last.

It’s a not a long novel but I found myself sucked into reading it nonstop. Yesterday I put a synopsis in the blog and then decided to wait until today to write about it.

It was published in 2020 and was Kunzru’s sixth novel. It takes place a few years ago. The first person unnamed narrator resembles Kunzru. He’s a writer. He’s interested in philosophy and poetry. He’s married with a kid. I don’t know if this is the case with Kunzru but it probably is judging from his other novel I recently read, Gods Without Men.

I like learning about real historical people that authors find so important as to include in their novel. In this case, Heinrich Von Kleist (1777-1881) and Comte de Maistre (1753-1821).

While it’s clear that Kunzru doesn’t condone these two guys, especially in the case of the latter man, he knows enough about them to make them important to his plot.

Heinrich Von Kleist is a romantic German poet. It turns out that his grave is near the writer’s colony where much of the novel takes place. Von Kleist suicide figures into the overall plot of the book.

Comte de Maistre is a weird historical figure who was a “philosopher, writer, lawyer and diplomat who advocated social hierarchy and monarchy in the period immediately following the French Revolution” (Wikipedia).

So Red Pill is a blend of a very up-to-date understanding of life with some historical sophistication. I think it is ultimately a bit of a pessimistic book. I would hesitate to recommend it to people struggling with the madness in the world right now. I was drawn to it because of its title which is just what you think it is, a reference to the Matrix and the mad world of the Alt-Right at this point in time.

The settings interest me as well. New York City, a suburb of Berlin, East Germany during the fall of the Berlin Wall, Paris, and Scotland.

I continue to work my way through Kunzru’s old podcast, Into the Zone. Eileen gave me Red Pill and White Tears for my birthday I look forward to reading more by this guy. I think Kunzru might be my new flavor of the month if not year.

I continue plugging through Colin Wilson’s The Outsider. The more I read it the more I think that my ideas and his are very different about the idea of being an outsider. I approach the concept trying to understand myself. However, Wilson’s Outsiders are miserable and critical of what they are on the outside of.

I’m not miserable. I could come up with criticisms of people I see on the “inside,” but I’m more interested in understanding those I don’t agree with or even just don’t make sense to me.

I’ll probably finish the book. I’ve always wondered about it especially in relationship to my understanding of myself. it looks like it’s not going to be that helpful but I feel like I want to follow through to the end.

I’m also struggling with The Vorrh. Yesterday I went back and outlined what I have read in it. The story jumps around. There are a lot of characters and Brian Catling, the author, is fond of writing about them without clearly identifying them. This can be a strength, but in this case, it’s beginning to wear on me.

Also, the entire metaphor of the fantasy is that Essenwald is an English type city transferred whole cloth outside the mysterious, forbidding forest area in Africa, Vorrh. It looks like a perfect opportunity to write a story critical of colonialism. At least this could be a background notion. however, Catling doesn’t seem to be doing that. There is a flavor that if there are good guys in the book, they are colonizers. Yech. Maybe if I read all three volumes he will pull it together in a satisfyingly scathing way. But I’m losing motivation. I’ll finish this one but I’m not sure I want to read more of the trilogy.

My daughter Sarah in England seems to think I need more birthday gifts. Yesterday evening i received a book and a CD from her in the mail.

These are definitely to my taste and I thanked her online. I listened to some of Bjork this morning while exercising. I love finding new music.

I don’t know if anyone who reads this blog clicks on my links to poems, but I persist in linking poems I like and have read recently. Here are a few.

Luanne by Ashley August

A couple of these links are to Google Books rendering right from the source, Latinext. This poem is where I got the title for today’s blogpost.

Luanne is special
Tantrum on a pretty day
Wreck, quiet, scream a room still
Cackle when something funny
Run when it scare her
Stay when it feel good
Say nothing when she ain’t got nothing to say
Don’t fake the funk
She don’t be polite for nobody’s feelings
Tell you she want it, tell you to take it back
Tell you you stupid when you is stupid

Isa Guzman, Night, for Samuel Cruz

And here’s the poem Guzman had in mind

Night, for Henry Dumas | Fishouse