“Make your own Bible. Select and collect all the words and sentences that in all your readings have been to you like the blast of a trumpet.”
-Ralph Waldo Emerson
Happy Thanksgiving! This year, I’m thankful for you, my readers. I truly appreciate having a (small) audience for my writing. It keeps me going.
So, again: thank you. Sorry for being such a cornball about it.
This edition of the recurring Emersonian Bible series (see #1 and #2) has a new feature: an Archive of recent posts. I’ve always meant to include this, but the recent increase in post volume has made it a necessity.
Archive
Since the last Emersonian Bible, Smith’s Notes has published:
Year By Year, Month By Month, Day By Day, Thought By Thought
A rumination on reading, writing, and the anxiety of influence, by way of Harold Bloom, T.S. Eliot, and Leonard Cohen.Space / Speed Out of Mind: An Annotated Bob Dylan Playlist
Just what it says on the tin. If you enjoyed this one and you’re so inclined, check out my new (non-annotated) Elvis Costello playlist.Deckard in Juárez
An examination of two writers, Roberto Bolaño and Philip K. Dick, with a shared interest in the malleability of reality.The Sutter Cane School of Disembodied Poetics
This year’s installment of SHOCKTOBER, Smith’s Notes’ annual horror cinema series. Covers thirteen films, including The Shining (1980), Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), and In the Mouth of Madness (1995).Love Minus Zero / No Limit
Notes on one of Bob Dylan’s greatest love songs. Likely the first in a series.
Daily Devotional
I reject a hierarchy of languages where some languages assume themselves to be higher than others – especially within postcolonial countries or countries that experience any system of oppression whatsoever. At the same time, I believe all languages are very unique. Each language, however small, has a unique musicality that cannot be replaced by another. I like to compare them to musical instruments. A piano has its own specific sound or musicality, which you cannot mistake for that of a guitar. You cannot destroy or diminish the importance of other instruments like the guitar or the violin and leave only the sound of the piano. When different instruments work together, they produce harmony, orchestras – just like languages.
There is still this methodical work of mapping the moment and ordering the inundation of information that we are all in. I think that our brains are wired for story and narrative and sensemaking, and I don’t think we have begun to reckon with what it means to swim in a sea of non sequiturs, which is social media, right? It’s bad for the brain. When you spend your days reading books or watching films or reading poetry – anything that somebody has put care into creating – you find a pattern and a kind of order. That then brings a feeling of calmness to you. Whereas if you are just in the sea of non sequiturs – this and this and also that, and look over here, and I hate the Barbie movie, the world is ending, I love the Barbie movie, and I hate you – it’s a scramble. It creates panic.
And so, yes, it is still worth doing the work of ordering information, whatever form that takes. It doesn’t have to be a book. Any effort we make to rescue reality from the sea of non sequiturs, we help one another. It gets us out of that gripping panic, where we’re closed down, and gets us into a state where we can think clearly, and where we’re more porous to one another. But I think that calm can coexist with great passion. The worst state to be in is deadened. When I don’t feel either outrage, or floods of love for, you know, all of the beauty – that’s when I know something’s wrong.
Art should not lecture or talk down to us or reprimand us. There is little left of the sacred in the modern world, but great art still offers us an opportunity to experience the hallowed, the mysterious, and the reverential. For me, art of true significance chaffs against the prescribed modes of the day on its way to the transcendental. We are humbled by its power, as it reflects back to us something about the enigma of our own nature. We stand before it, quiet and awed, touched by the eternal.
Recommendations
Paperback Paradise
It’s been a long journey. You’ve crossed oceans, scaled mountains, and battled countless enemies – not just bandits, thieves, and the hostile forces of organized commerce, government, and religion, but also traitorous lovers and false friends. You’ve seen things no man should see and heard things no woman should hear. You haven’t showered in weeks. Maybe months.
But now, your travels have come to an end. You’ve finally arrived, ready to reap your reward. Behold: Paperback Paradise, “the world’s #1 used bookstore.”
I visit bookstores often, but only Paperback Paradise can consistently deliver what I truly need. You can’t find these books anywhere else: essential titles like The Man Who Doesn’t Piss and Shouldn’t Have Insulted My Dog. This is the good shit, folks. Paperback Paradise is the real deal. I implore you: give them lots and lots of money.
Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace (2004)
“I’m Garth Marenghi. Author. Dreamweaver. Visionary. Plus actor. You are about to enter the world of my imagination. You are entering my Darkplace.”
So begins the classic cult series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace. Starring British comedy royalty Matthew Holness, Richard Ayoade, Matt Berry, and Alice Lowe, Darkplace has a nesting doll quality that rewards repeat viewings. (I’ve watched it twice already this year, so I should know.) Each episode features an introduction by horror writer Garth Marenghi (Holness), who reads a selection from one of his novels before presenting an installment of his “lost” 1980s television series Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace – starring “himself” as Dr. Rick Dagless, MD of Darkplace Hospital and his publisher Dean Learner (Ayoade) as hospital administrator Thornton Reed. A gate to hell is opened under the hospital and every kind of madness ensues.
The longer I sit with Darkplace, the funnier it gets. It helps to be a horror fan – co-creators Holness and Ayoade somehow manage to jam in almost every imaginable horror trope, including sharp parodies of Stephen King, H.P. Lovecraft, and John Carpenter – but the thing that keeps me coming back to Darkplace is the intricacy of its construction. Everything seems to fit together in just the right way; no joke is out of place. Though I just finished it, I’m already looking forward to my third viewing. I’m sure it won’t be long.
The comments are open, friends. Be good to each other and cherish what you have.