Boredom

I remembered Roger Ebert saying this about The Age of Innocence. I was right about the topic; wrong about where. It’s in his review of The Remains of the Day.

“I got some letters from readers who complained (Innocence) was boring, that “nothing happens in it.” To which I was tempted to reply: If you had understood what happened in it, it would not have been boring.

Bedford Quarry House

The Bedford Quarry House, by architect Steven Harris:

(If that’s blurry, it’s probably because it’s a screen capture.)

Overall — and I know this is very much a science fiction reader’s observation — the house reminds me of the one in City, by Clifford Simak. On the edge of a quarry that’s been allowed to start filling with water, benevolent noise provided by a waterfall.

Here’s a video with an interview featuring Mr. Harris

Trump worth what he feels

Long before the current fraud trial in New York state, Donald Trump was known to play shenanigans with his net worth. Notably, he said in a legal deposition his net worth changes depending on how he feels. Call me old fashioned, but I believe your net worth varies on your liquid assets.

Anyway. I’m posting this so I can easily find it, in case it disappears elsewhere.


NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Below are excerpts from Donald Trump’s deposition conducted on Dec. 19-20, 2007, in his lawsuit against author Timothy O’Brien and Warner Books, then owned by Time Warner, CNN’s parent company. 

Andrew Ceresney served as the attorney for the defense.

On the damage the book did:

Ceresney: Mr. Trump, you also claim that the book damaged your reputation, correct?

Trump: Yes.

Trump: I’m worth whatever I feel

Ceresney: And that’s because you are perceived publicly, you believe, as a billionaire, correct?

Trump: That’s correct.

Ceresney: And the book —

Trump: I am a billionaire. I’m not perceived. I mean, I am a billionaire. Of course, if you read Tim O’Brien’s writings and what was then transposed into the The New York Times, you would certainly not think that. But I am a billionaire, many times over, on a conservative basis.

Ceresney: And you believe that because the book, at least according to you, suggested that you were not a billionaire that damaged your reputation, correct?

Trump: Yes.

Ceresney: And you think that that has hurt you in your business dealings? Is that what you’ve said?

Trump: Well, I’ve lost deals. I’ve lost specific deals because of it.

On calculating his own net worth:

Ceresney: Mr. Trump, have you always been completely truthful in your public statements about your net worth of properties?

Trump: I try.

Ceresney: Have you ever not been truthful?

Trump: My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with the markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings, but I try.

Ceresney: Let me just understand that a little. You said your net worth goes up and down based upon your own feelings?

Trump: Yes, even my own feelings, as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day…

Ceresney: When you publicly state a net worth number, what do you base that number on?

Trump: I would say it’s my general attitude at the time that the question may be asked. And as I say, it varies.

On having a thin skin:

Trump: I’m very thick-skinned if they tell the truth. In other words, I’ve had many bad articles over the years, and if they’re accurately bad — I mean, some things are bad, some things are good — I can really handle it well … Where I do become thin-skinned is when somebody writes bad things that are untrue.”

On his valuations of his properties:

Ceresney: Have you ever done an analysis to determine whether the amount that you have contributed in cash to these golf courses is more or less than the amount that you have made from these golf courses?

Trump: It will be. They will all be very good investments in the future. This is … this is a business that you start off slow, and then you get more and more members, and all of a sudden it becomes extremely profitable.

Ceresney: Mr. Trump, I asked you have you ever done an analysis?

Trump: No, I have never done an analysis.

Ceresney: Have you ever done a projection as to how much you anticipate you will profit on these courses over time in light of the contributions that you’re making in cash?

Trump: Yes, I’ve done mental projections.

Ceresney: Mental projections?

Trump: Yes.

Ceresney: These are projections that you’ve done in your head?

Trump: Yes. 

Melodious

(First off: I’m going to be making some big claims here. I don’t have documentation. These are just the ramblings of a bedridden 60-year-old man. Perhaps if I had grad students to send out in search of footnotes things would be different. But I don’t. Everyone clear? OK. Play ball!)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately of the relationship between music, language, and memory.

These things are all intertwined. Consider Socrates’ objections to books.

The story goes that Thamus said much to Theuth, both for and against each art, which it would take too long to repeat. But when they came to writing, Theuth said: “O King, here is something that, once learned, will make the Egyptians wiser and will improve their memory; I have discovered a potion for memory and for wisdom.” Thamus, however, replied: “O most expert Theuth, one man can give birth to the elements of an art, but only another can judge how they can benefit or harm those who will use them. And now, since you are the father of writing, your affection for it has made you describe its effects as the opposite of what they really are. In fact, it will introduce forgetfulness into the soul of those who learn it: they will not practice using their memory because they will put their trust in writing, which is external and depends on signs that belong to others, instead of trying to remember from the inside, completely on their own. You have not discovered a potion for remembering, but for reminding; you provide your students with the appearance of wisdom, not with its reality. Your invention will enable them to hear many things without being properly taught, and they will imagine that they have come to know much while for the most part they will know nothing. And they will be difficult to get along with, since they will merely appear to be wise instead of really being so.” (Phaedrus, Pp. 551-552 in Compete Works, edited by J. M. Cooper. Indianapolis IN: Hackett.)

Socrates (or Plato) is on to something here. To use contemporary phrasing, writing is a way to outsource memory. And this applies to all media. Illich talked about how he was of the generation that moved from in-person, unamplified speaking and musical performance, to not only amplification, but recording. Someone could have the voice of Churchill, or Caruso, in their library, in addition to their books.

Our time has taken this yet further. I am in my bed after a stroke. My room, while comfortable enough, has very few things of mine. But through my iPad tablet, I have access to my Kindle library (and others), my Spotify music (and others), my Paramount+ videos (and others).

Which is how this all started. Paramount+ has (or had) a series on the making of the movie The Godfather I enjoy a great deal, The Offer. Being recent, and their own production, I assumed it would be available for years. I outsourced my memory Paramount.

Then, one day, Paramount took it away. I don’t know when. I just know I went to Paramount+ and The Offer wasn’t there anymore. In the implicit contract between Paramount and myself to be my memory, Paramount proved to be an unreliable partner. So I have canceled my subscription.

I now have my own copy of The Offer, technically pirated. Which goes to show how piracy is an archival project. But it reminded me of why I buy so many of my books, at great cost, and don’t use the library as often as I might. When I was a boy in California I used libraries a great deal. Then along came Howard Jarvis and Proposition 13. Libraries largely lost their funding. I could no longer trust libraries to have the books I wanted. So I hung out at used bookstores the way others would lurk at pool halls. (To use Joseph Epstein’s image.) My bookshelves began a lifetime of groaning.

But roll back to Socrates, above. Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey were epic poems. How did Homer remember them, at such length? Or the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Vedas, the Icelandic sagas, or any other oral work of great length?

Why, they were sung, of course.

What were Homer’s melodies? I really wish I knew. But here is someone’s version of Gilgamesh.

Here is the Hurrian Hymn #6, the oldest song where we have both the lyrics and what we believe are the original notes:

Pound talks about how great poetry should not stray too far from the dance. But this, too, implies melody.

Music. Memory. How many of us have songs we remember and recognize as soon as the first chord plays? What else is Name That Tune but a memory game? How many songs do we remember from the crib?

This came up through an internet meme (of all things):

The point, that women need to know (or at least, greatly want to know) when the blood will come is a strong reason for inventing a calendar. So is the snow. Or the baby. Or the migratory birds, or animals.

Does it make sense such a calendar would be sung?

How did h. sap. come up with music in the first place? What music touches us most deeply?

A woman needing to calm a baby, and so a lullaby.

A man seeing his partner die in childbirth, and so a dirge.

A group wanting to express joy, and so the dance.

Music evokes memory. Language evokes memory. Writing evokes memory. Recording evokes memory.

It’s a long march from the general (birth/death) to the specific (your favorite singer, doing your favorite song, during your favorite performance).

I currently believe language evolved to fill in that specificity. To increase the bandwidth. How do you keep that baby alive? Where do we go to follow the beasts and sun? Which mushrooms do we avoid?

Maybe this is all rehashed Jean Auel. I’ve never read her, so cannot say.

But I still think it’s all been to remember more and more, in greater detail, across generations.

Lost apples

This sounds like a very interesting project:

“If you have old apple trees in Washington, Idaho, or Oregon, we want your apples! We look for apple trees planted prior to 1920 and the older the better. If you mail us your apples we will try to identify what varieties you send us. Send an email to rebeccajmcgee@icloud.com or dbens23@gmail.com and we can send you instructions on picking and mailing the apples. Thank you!”

There’s both a Wikipedia page and a Facebook page, but, oddly, no page of their own.

Old tin boxes

One of the most lovely pieces of snark, and/or early example of an Easter egg on an album cover. This is TUBULAR BELLS by Mike Oldfield (1973), and faintly printed in the lower left corner we find:

“This stereo record cannot be played on old tin boxes no matter what they are fitted with. If you are in possession of such equipment please hand it in to the nearest police station.”

(I write this to put it on the web. If Google is to be believed, no one else has written about it.)

The past isn’t what it used to be

Here at Mission, one of my fellow residents is quite old — 99.

I thought about that a little bit. So he was born in 1922. That’s not right. Surely a 99-year-old was born in the 1800s. Horse-drawn carriages, not Duesenbergs and gin.

I think that way because for so much of life, it was true. But time advances, and now 99 years reaches back only to the Jazz Age, instead of the McKinley administration.

Jason Kottke has something he calls “The Great Span”: “(T)he link across large periods of history by individual humans.” The last surviving child of a Civil War veteran (and thus drawing an Army pension) died in 2020. Units of 99 years (sometimes called “Bettys,” after Betty White) definitely qualify, but it’s stunning how quickly that event horizon moves on.

At least to this 60-year-old.

No stain of cruelty…

“As a man, his character cannot be spoken of too highly; no stain of cruelty or faithlessness rests on him.”

That’s an old fashioned, but quite wonderful, assessment of a life. It comes from the 11th Edition Britannica, discussing Étienne Macdonald, one of Napoleon’s marshals.

(To explain his surprising last name: His father was a Jacobite exile, who was of Bonnie Prince Charlie’s retinue. The elder Macdonald married well, giving his son the background to have a chance to advance in the Army.)

In the Icebox

“Another of this wonderful woman’s wonderful sayings (I told you—I got a million of ‘em; don’t make me prove it) was “Milk always takes the flavor of what’s next to it in the icebox.” Not a very useful saying, you might think, but I suspect it’s not only the reason I’m writing this introduction, but the reason I’m writing it the way I’m writing it.
Does it sound like Harlan wrote it?
It does?
That’s because I just finished the admirable book which follows. For the last four days I have been, so to speak, sitting next to Harlan in the icebox. I am not copying his style; nothing as low as that. I have, rather, taken a brief impression of his style, the way that, when we were kids, we used to be able to take a brief impression of Beetle Bailey or Blondie from the Sunday funnies with a piece of Silly Putty (headline in the New York Times Book Review: KING OFFERS EERILY APT METAPHOR FOR HIS OWN MIND!!).”

— Stephen King, from his introduction to Harlan Ellison’s Stalking the Nightmare