On The Wings of a Gun
I made some more scones this morning, because that’s the way I roll. This afternoon was spent looking through the last 5000 or so words I’ve written and kicking them into some sort of shape. A lot of this involves taking the more florid sentences that come ‘in the moment’ and rewriting them on the principle of subject-verb-object. The great Elmore Leonard once listed his rules of writing which included his overriding rule: if it sounds like writing, rewrite it. It’s easier said than done, but it’s necessary and worth it in the long run. While doing this, I usually carry a mallet to crush adverbs, cruelly.
After supper I spent some time reading some of the indictments and arrest warrants of those charged with offences in Washington DC last week. It started off as a bit like a ‘spot the clown’ exercise, and I laughed at the guy who was identified, with some delight, by his ex-wife. But then you get to the guy with the multiple guns and ammunition and Molotov cocktails containing gasoline and melted Styrofoam which functions as napalm, sticking to the body of anyone it lands on, or the guy who is clearly seriously disturbed (and heavily armed). At that point the snickering stops.
I also spotted that one guy had the wit to delete his threatening social media posts on the evening of 6 January but, a footnote advises, by that time the FBI already had downloads.
Writing this, and thinking about tonight’s music choice, it struck me that a lot of what’s going on right now was at the heart of the recent novels of Thomas Pynchon, starting with Vineland in 1990 and running through Inherent Vice (2009) and Bleeding Edge (2013).
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The leader of Labour in Scotland resigned today. His name was Richard Leonard. Other than that, neither I nor most others know anything about him, which was, in part, why a lot of people wanted him to go.
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Music: in the books I mentioned, Pynchon explores the fracturing of America from the counter-culture of the sixties onwards (although fractures and demarcations of America are also core to Mason and Dixon (1997) which I regard as his masterpiece). Inherent Vice tacitly contrasts the stoned out but essentially harmless hippies with heavy-handed policing and the darkness of the Manson cult. Tonight’s music, a random selection from my shelf, because yes, I have this on vinyl, is from the heart of Californian counter-culture. Joe Byrd and the Field Hippies : You Can’t Ever Come Down.
The era was expertly parodied by the Folksmen in this out-take from the fabulous A Mighty Wind that forms the second video below. Weren’t your listening? Or are you just blind?
Far out, as John Denver used to say.
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