Serious, heavy-duty case of the Mondays going on here. I came this close to taking a mental health day, except my son was also having a serious heavy-duty case of the Mondays, and if I can’t set a good example for him, then what am I even doing being a parent? So here I am, twitchy and over-caffeinated, just trying to make it through the day, one endless hour at a time.
I have a bunch of random, scattered thoughts littering my head this morning, so, look out:
1. I don’t know what else to say about 45 other than I’m exhausted and feeling like I’m approaching some sort of breaking point, where I’m going to have to forcibly remove myself from the news in order to maintain some sort of equilibrium. This quote from Josh Marshall says it a bit better:
The terror attack in London is not Donald Trump’s fault of course. But his response to it is hard to fathom even for him… Actually, I wouldn’t say it’s hard to fathom. It’s not even surprising. We’ve known and seen this withering deficit of shame and grace before when he tweeted out “appreciate the congrats” in response to the Orlando club massacre last year. I’m not even sure what the word is or if there is one. But the one I am struggling to find is the experience of not being remotely surprised by the President’s action and yet marveling that the expected action – or transgression in this case – has managed to find a new depth of awfulness to penetrate and explore.
Emphasis added. I spent most of my therapy session this weekend trying to get this stuff off my chest. A lot of my anxiety issues in my 20s and 30s – back when I was actively avoiding therapy and medication – were because I felt out of control, or that things were happening to me that I was unable to control, or simply that if I couldn’t exert some form of control over what was happening to me, then I was doomed. I’ve gotten a lot better in the last few years with this; if things are out of my control, then I am (for the most part) able to accept that, and I can instead try to step back and be objective about whatever it is that’s bothering me and take stock of what I can control, and then deal with the rest when it finally happens. The thing with Trump, though, is that it would appear that nobody can control the nonsense that flies out of his mouth or fingers, and his insanity will have a very real and tangible effect on my life and of my child’s life. Every day it gets worse and worse and it feels like the worst kind of nightmare. I do try my best to keep it together, and if nothing else I indulge in every form of self-care I can think of. But as I said above, it’s exhausting. I don’t know how this circus can continue.
2. You know what’s good? Music is good. I haven’t written about music in a while. I haven’t written any music in a while, either, but that’s a different story.
I’ve been listening to music a lot lately – or, rather, I’ve been listening to music with great intensity lately. The new remix of Sgt. Pepper? Holy shit, it’s incredible. (And I say this mostly through listening via Spotify on my shitty work headphones.) If it’s not too much to ask, I’d very much love it if all of the pre-Abbey Road albums could get the same sort of 3-dimensional stereo support that this Sgt. Pepper album got, because it’s amazing.
Sgt. Pepper isn’t my favorite Beatles record – that distinction gets tossed around between Abbey Road, Revolver and The White Album, and I must confess that Magical Mystery Tour is up there, too – but there’s also a mythic quality to Sgt. Pepper that those other albums simply don’t have. When I think of my favorite Beatles songs, I tend to gloss over the Sgt. Pepper album just because they all feel connected in a way that the rest of their catalog doesn’t. But goddamn, this remix makes it feel vital in a way that it simply never has before. “Getting Better”, in particular, is staggering to behold – I don’t think I’d ever appreciated just how magnificent the arrangement of that song is. One can start to see, now, how mind-blowing Sgt. Pepper must have sounded when it was first released.
Another album that is also blowing my mind, in a completely different way, is Elder’s “Reflections of a Floating World.” I’d never heard of these guys before last week, and I acknowledge that they’re a bit more on the heavy stoner-metal side of things than what I normally listen to, but whatever – it’s awesome. Listen to “The Falling Veil”, if nothing else.
3. E3 2017 is next week and I am surprisingly apathetic about it. This may simply be because I expect that most of what will be announced will be stuff that isn’t coming out until 2018 at the earliest. Indeed, a lot of the most exciting-sounding stuff from last year’s E3 was for games that still haven’t come out yet. I may or may not live-tweet the press conferences; I’m not really sure I have the energy to sit through everything. I don’t even really know what it is that I’d like to hear, beyond a reasonable price for Project Scorpio (and that Scorpio will improve performance to existing Xbox One games the way that the PS4 Pro does for PS4 games). That’s really all I’m hoping for. I’d like PSVR to get some new stuff, too, though I’m not necessarily holding my breath.
OK, it’s lunch time.
Shouts From The Couch 