surprisingly, no star wars links
I. The Future is Your Block Party
G.K. Chesterton is either one of your favorite writers or an unknown entity who sometimes creeps into conversation. Choose the former. Be among the former. At the very least, create a third way of admirable appreciation. I've always been unsure what to recommend to anyone who hasn't read him before, but typically settle on The Man Who Was Thursday. That's still a good choice! But Chesterton also wrote a more thrilling 1984 dystopia than 1984 and before Orwell stole the year forever. At a time when it is impossible not to read our own political situation into virtually everything, The Napoleon of Notting Hill actually speaks to our crisis somewhat prophetically. Of course, it has broad enough themes on the nature of modernity that it speaks to any crisis with some clarity. But, I mean, guys:
Have you not noticed how continually in history democracy becomes despotism? People call it the decay of democracy. It is simply its fulfillment. Why take the trouble to number and register and enfranchise all the innumerable [John Does], when you can take one [John Doe] with the same intellect or lack of intellect as all the rest, and have done with it?
Wow. Our mass ignorance pinpointed, eventually, into one man, a man (what's more) ascendant to authoritarianism. Uh. Uh......... I mean. Chesterton treats the topic playfully, the whole book being especially comic in its serious ideas, but (ahem) - the analogy just seems too obvious.
A more general kicker to take with you:
It is too often forgotten that just as a bad man is nevertheless a man, so a bad poet is nevertheless a poet.
Keep writing, I guess?
II. Despite Climate Change, Our Earth is Cooing
I'm sorry for that header, but get a load of this:
The world hums. It shivers endlessly.
It's a low, ceaseless droning of unclear origin that rolls imperceptibly beneath our feet, impossible to hear with human ears. A researcher once described it to HuffPost as the sound of static on an old TV, slowed down 10,000 times.
It's comforting to think of Earth as solid and immovable, but that's false. The world is vibrating, stretching and compressing. We're shaking right along with it.
The world is literally cooing. I could quote so much more of this piece:
But if we could hear this music more clearly, scientists around the world say, it could reveal deep secrets about the earth beneath us, or even teach us to map out alien planets.
And the hum is getting clearer all the time.
Ah! Amazing! One more!
[Earthquakes] come randomly and briefly, like flashes of lightning on a dark night. A constant, uniform vibration could act like a floodlight into the underworld.
At some point, I think I heard either a RadioLab or a This American Life episode on the Hum; worth listening to if you can find it.
III. Even more Napoleon of Notting Hill!
For the Japanese edition, Miyazaki actually drew the cover.Yes, that Miyazaki! Please read this book.
IV. Some Star Wars Stuff After All
Just joking. Only wanted to share a few lines from Sydney's Astrophil and Stella (sonnet one), which, I mean, is very star-centric. In title, at least. For as long as people have been writing, writers have been worried about overthinking. (In the below: read some "u's" as "v's"; these idiot 16th-century guys didn't even know the difference.)
But words came halting forth, wanting Inuentions stay;
Inuention, Natures childe, fledde step-dame Studies blowes;
And others feet still seemde but strangers in my way.
Thus, great with childe to speak, and helplesse in my throwes,
Biting my trewand pen, beating myselfe for spite,
Fool, said my Muse to me, looke in thy heart, and write.
Look in thy heart and write, y'all. Heard it here first.
V. Opinion
Han shot first.