2007-01-26 - 1:09 p.m.
One of my good friends--one of my two or three best friends, etc.--is a pretty amazing dude. He connects with people fast, shows interest in as many things as he can, gets fun things started, makes everyone feel welcome and needed and all that. But when he's in a certain kind of superior mood, he can be incredibly cutting and mean. A few years ago, he was stoned and I was not and we were messing around in his girlfriend's apartment. He was playing records and talking about them and I was drawing, I think, a skateboard, for a drawing class he was taking. And somehow, I mentioned my mom, who he had met a few months before that. Four of us went whitwater rafting up that way, and we stayed at my parents' house one night. It was in the summer. We cooked burgers and stuff on the back deck and drank and smoked late into the night and it was good. Anyway, that day in his girlfriend's apartment, and I mentioned my mom and he said, "Don't take this the wrong way, but when I think of your mom, the first thing that comes to mind is 'ruined radiance.'" And, you know, all right, he was stoned and thought he saw something or whatever, but he said a similar sort of thing last night, this time about me, to me, and he's the kind of guy who thinks he can get away with it because in his mind he's speaking some sort of unvarnished truth in a blunt way and that everyone respects him for it. But, what it really makes me feel is that I want to punch him in his windpipe.
I guess it's those closest to us who have the ability to evoke those kinds of anger, right? But, you know, before that I was having a great time. And I don't want to be angry today but fact is I was, there for a while, when he sent me an unrelated, chatty, Friday-morning email.
So, there's this, which makes me happy: The Arcade Fire. Everyone I talk to about this band has a pretty strong opinion--one way or the other--but I tend to come to this sort of thing pretty late. The first song on their album, the song called "Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" is my all-time favorite song, for right now. It's transportive (sure?) and has this line: "You turn all the lead/sleeping in my head/to gold."
And I'm hungover and tired. I've got a new strategy for my second manuscript: to write a page a day. We'll see. Today's day three. But I haven't written the page yet.
Plan for tonight: rent a movie and make some dinner and read a little of that Safran Foer. He's gimmicky as shit but he's just about the most compelling writer I can remember reading, outside of some of Philip Roth's stuff.
The media we cram in our ears, through our eyes, in our heads. I wonder if there's a reservoir in there, and I wonder if it ever gets full. I suppose that if it gets full, maybe that's the time to turn out the light.
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