too much NPR

I. Decent Tunes
This is the second time I've linked to St. Vincent, but she's great and the Tiny Desk concerts are fun (language warning). Also, who has time to know endlessly all the good music? I feel like every week I'm the one idiot discovering that, oh, Steve Goodman is a human who existed and wrote amazing folk ballads. 

Also, here's an Icelandic Hymn that went viral, I guess. I'd like to know more choral music, too, but again, these are hobbies that feel like extra studies. Not so much because they're onerous, but because you have to know a lot to be comfortable searching around for more. Maybe one day.

II. Alien Hand Syndrome (!)
Invisibilia is one of those very popular NPR podcasts, and NPR has given them a nice video to advertise they're upcoming spate of episodes. Uh, the clip features this story:

Karen Byrne's left hand sometimes operates on its own terms. It has unbuttoned shirts and stubbed out cigarettes, without her permission. Oh, and a few times, her own hand has slapped her across the face.. . . The condition's name? Alien hand syndrome.

I think mind-body issues are always fascinating, and that episodes like this are actually some of the clearest arguments for a soul/essential, non-physical self. Side-note: I stopped listening to Invisibilia regularly because they did a whole episode on personality and the idea of an unchangeable self and never once mentioned the soul. It was the dumbest episode, proceeding entirely on hard-line materialist assumptions that flout, you know, the major philosophies and religions of most known civilizations. In fact, it's the notion of the soul that makes a changed personality (via dementia, head trauma, etc.) all the more fascinating. That I am some essential self who's salience can be so easily manipulated is...complicated. 

III. Speaking of...
There's an old, semi-philosophical proof of the soul I like. It's not air-tight, but it is compelling: 

I am not just conscious, I am conscious I am conscious. I am also aware of a bearer of my conscious states – a self. I call it ‘me’. Yet I do not see, touch, smell, taste or hear this self, this me, of which I am aware. I would remain self-aware even if I lost entirely my sense of sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing.

"I am conscious that I am conscious." Hm. The article actually features a couple defenses of the soul, giving some rigor to the obvious subjective state basically everyone admits to in everyday language and action. I'm very boring on this front. I never stop talking about it.

IV. God Bless Denis Johnson

Yeah boy he [Satan] dragged me down to his jamboree. Dragged me down through the toilet formerly known as my life. Down through this nest of spiders known as my head. Down through the bottom of my grave with my name spelled wrong on the stone. Standing on his stump shouting jive. Jest get a whiff of sulphur and wet fear! Come breathe these rank aromas for the purposes of course of scientific inquiry alone! The mayor is inside already! Come! It's all respectable!

- "The Starlight on Idaho"

This particular passage goes on for a bit, and is from Johnson's last collection of stories, The Largesse of the Sea Maiden. Highly recommend.

V. Opinion
I've been married to my wife for over six years, known her since we were children, dated her (mostly continuously) since we were both fifteen, and tomorrow we celebrate her 30th birthday. I have some thoughts on age and identity that I might turn into an essay, so all I'll say for now is that the best parts of life get better, for a time. I'm sure at some point that turns. Not just relationships, but how I enjoy reading, drinking, hell, the moon and the stars, all of it feels more vital and fulfilling than when I first took up with this singular woman our freshmen year of high school. Some Hallmark-level opinionating, this week, but I write these things mostly off the cuff. What can I say. Free gets you what you pay for. 

Happy aging to everyone, and to my wife most especially, who remains the best and most layered person I've ever met. All that about still waters is as true a cliche as I've ever heard.

(Real opinion? Never dye your hair. Gray is best.)