Listening to: Kokoroko’s debut album Could We Be More
Reading: Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
Also Reading: 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write by Sarah Ruhl
Drinking: Water (for reasons yet unknown)
Listening to: All my R.E.M. albums
Watching: Avatar: The Last Airbender
I’ve been writing a lot of words this week — including finishing Gates to Illvelion — and I’ve been listening to a lot more music lately. I don’t think this is a coincidence. Music has always been — and continues to be — a major source of inspiration for my writing.
When I don’t listen to enough music, my writing well runs dry. When I’m saturated in good music, then my cup overflows. So simple, but sometimes I forget it.
Reading: Jack of Shadows by Roger Zelazny
Also reading: The Collected Fantasies of Clark Ashton Smith, Vol. 2: The Door to Saturn
Writing: The penultimate chapter of my novella, Gates to Illvelion
Listening to: Tangerine Dream stuff
Listening to: Michael Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto in D
Reading: “Kubla Khan” by Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Drinking: Magners Cider
My reading list grows ever longer. The Coleridge came about because I was rereading How to Be Idle, and there’s a little anecdote about how Coleridge probably got the idea for the poem after walking in the countryside and taking some opium. Does not surprise me. I hadn’t read “Kubla Khan” in awhile, but reading it again was fabulous. Very DCC RPG in a lot of ways.
Other books currently reading or in the queue: The Two Towers, Labyrinth (yes, the movie novelization), On Lying in Bed and Other Essays (by G.K. Chesterton), Jonathan Hickman’s run on Avengers, and Jack of Shadows (this one is in the queue). Plus, I have about a dozen more I really want to start reading in earnest. Too many books. I really need a week off from everything just so I can read. It will never happen, but a girl can dream.
And anti-Nazi too.
Awhile back, I discovered dungeon synth and thought it was super-cool. The Italian punk label HDK put out cool tapes (Kobold, Gnoll, Basic Dungeon), and I thought, “Hey! This is fun RPG music I can listen to and get inspired!”
Then the YouTube algorithm led me to other bands: Fief, Thangorodrim, Elador, Quest Master, Midnight Odyssey. I was digging all this new, evocative music.
But just the other day I stumbled (whilst looking up RPG stuff) onto a Reddit thread where people were talking about the Neo-Nazi, Neo-fascist dungeon synth scene and I was like, “Whoa! What?!” and started feeling all icky and gross because what if I had been listening to some disgusting fascist crap?
So now I am trying to research every album that popped up on YouTube and finding very little information about most of these bands. From what I can tell Fief and Thangorodrim are anti-fascist. And the stuff from HDK seems like leftist/anarchist; no Nazi stuff there, from what I can tell.
But I don’t feel safe listening to this genre anymore. It’s hard to find info about a lot of these bands, and I don’t want to listen to anything even remotely connected with racist or fascist ideology. I think HDK is still okay, especially considering they are more punk/diy/arthouse and seem to be coming at dungeon synth from the left. But it’s incredibly frustrating and upsetting that what seems like an innocuous subgenre of electronic music is very much attached to horrific Nazi stuff.
So just an explicit announcement: this blog is anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-Nazi, anti-white supremacy. From now on, I will probably leave off listening to most dungeon synth and just groove to old soundtracks from 80s movies.
Reading: The Right to Useful Unemployment by Ivan Illich
Listening to: Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #1
Watching: The Last Blockbuster
I have thoughts about nostalgia, video rental stores, Blockbuster Video, the documentary referenced above, etc. that I might riff on in another blog post. Overall, the best parts of the documentary were in watching Sandi the Blockbuster store manager do her thing, and seeing how a humanely-run and community-oriented business can be such an important part of people’s lives (the humanely-run and community-oriented business in question is specifically the franchised Blockbuster in Bend, Oregon, not Blockbuster stores in general).
As far as the Illich book, I don’t know what to think. I was very excited to read it, and it’s the first of his books I’ve tried, but I’m worried that I’m not intellectually up to the task (i.e.: I’m not a good enough reader/not smart enough).
I feel like maybe I’m not getting the nuances of Illich’s points. Based on my reading so far (about 2/3s through), his ideas would fit right in with today’s Covid anti-vaxxers and denialists. And yet, thinkers I admire like Sam Rocha and L.M. Sacasas are Illich guys (as is Mr. Idler Tom Hodgkinson) so I’m not sure if I’m just reading Illich wrong, misunderstanding him, or being too quick to lump him in with the “Free Michigan” people who stormed my state’s capital last spring. Or maybe my reading of the book is right, and Illich would be very much against the vaccine and masks and everything related to slowing the spread of Covid, things I consider to be necessary for the common good and do out of concern for my fellow humans. David Cayley’s piece on Illich and Covid seems to indicate that I am reading him right, which is kinda… bleh.
I was very excited to dive into Illich’s writings because I’ve become more and more disillusioned with our current meritocracy, with our hyper-Capitalist society, and with the ways in which we devalue work that doesn’t contribute to the GDP. But in reading this book and seeing Illich argue against things like gynecology and giving birth in a hospital just seems insane to me. I and/or my daughter probably wouldn’t be alive today without modern obstetrics. His weird swipe against breast self-exams and mastectomies was jarring too. Like, why are you against women getting treatment for breast cancer, Illich?
Anyway, maybe I’m not following his argument or I’m missing some important details. I’m planning to give Tools for Conviviality a try next.
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