1622.
What a week. Jesus. And I wanted to write about music.
1623.
Every New Year’s Eve, I do a little djaying, often just for Beth and myself. I let the spirit move me. This year I felt solemn and wintry and isolated, so I went with Americana and folk music, starting with Simone and Garfunkel’s “America,” Lucinda Williams’s “Right in Time,” Justin Townes Earle’s “One More Night in Brooklyn,” with appearances by Tom Waits, Bob Dylan, The Velvet Underground, and always, always a song or two by Aretha Franklin.
1624.
(They aren’t always thus. One year I played hair metal: Van Halen, Def Leppard, Cinderella, Warrant, with an appearance by Aretha. Another year I played dance music: Kanye West, Fat Joe, Wyclef, Beyonce, Sia, Rihanna . . . and a couple by Aretha.)
1625.
I always listen to Sufjan Stevens’s Carrie and Lowell in January. It’s heart-breakingly beautiful, a sumptuous melancholy banquet of ache and loss. I also listen to a record of medieval songs, To Chase the Cold Winter Away. The sleeve has a drawing of Santa on it.
1626.
I listen to The Weeknd’s “Save Your Tears.” I love it. God, I can’t get enough of his album, After Hours. He’s one of the great artists of the 21st Century, carrying the eighties synth-dance-trash banner Kanye West delivered with 808 and Heartbreak. The video is fucking wild.
1627.
The Weeknd remains one of my bright spots for music. My other discoveries were Cannonball Adderley—especially his album, African Waltz, and Ravel’s “Spanish Rhapsody.” (I know I’m late to the game with both of these artists; Adderley died in 1975, Ravel in 1937.)
1628.
While I write this, protestors are barging into the Capitol building, threatening police and attempting to intimidate our senators and representatives. It’s a sickening display, egged on by our soon to be ex-president. Trump said, just minutes ago, that his supporters should force their way into the building. So far they’ve slashed at police with batons and banged doors with metal poles.
1629.
They’re waving Confederate flags and Trump 2020 banners. They’re wearing red caps and camouflage and face paint. The whole thing has the feel of an SEC college football game gone sour, the drunken fans on the razor’s edge.
1630.
Only it isn’t. It’s a planned event, a coordinated attack inside a mob. They’ve torn down barricades, clashed with police. It’s a fucking powder keg. One of the protestors screamed at the police, “You’re a communist! You’re a fucking traitor!”
1631.
Mitt Romney yelled at his fellow Republican senators in the chamber: “This is what you’ve gotten, guys!”
1632.
Due to bomb threats, buildings all around are being evacuated. Protestors barged into the chamber and yelled “Trump won the election” on the dais, while secret service had their guns drawn. They had zip ties, kevlar, helmets, and other weapons. One rioter had eleven molotov cocktails in the truck bed of his truck.
1633.
The protestors run amok in the chamber, rifling through the Senator’s desks. The police were overwhelmed. Jesus, this is terrifying. The Senate chamber is historically seen as one of the safest places in the entire country.
1634.
We’re Rome circa 410. We’re witnessing the breakdown of our country. The barbarians have breached the gates. The barbarians are us.
1635.
I keep thinking of when Trump ordered the protestors dispersed so he could walk to the church and hold up a Bible upside down back in June. Now he’s siccing his followers on some of those same police.
1636.
Where are my law-and-order people now?
1637.
He’s moved us so far into dramatic irony he’s created a new post-ironic irony. We don’t have words for his depravity, mendacity, or myopia to his own flaws. We don’t have the words for the situation we are in: a sitting president urged his supporters to attack his own government. Are we beyond shock? Are we beyond redemption?
1638.
Like other cult leaders, his followers have glommed on to his insecurities and character flaws. He was historically unpopular, never breaking a 50 percent approval rating. Yet his supporters believe he won by a large margin, even though he’s lost by one of the largest margins in the history of our country (tallying by the popular vote).
1639.
Damage is being done. Trump is causing it. He is responsible. Our entire country is being degraded. People are being hurt. I am furious. You should be, too.
1640.
Look: he lost. The train has left the station. The ship has sailed. The fat lady has sung. All that’s left is the shouting. His supporters don’t like it. Who’s the snowflake now?
1641.
If you’re cool with this, if you think this madness is good or justified, then you’re lost. You exist in the upside down, and I doubt you’ll find your way back. Drawing false equivalencies between the social unrest after the murder of George Floyd and the attack on Congress is just more evidence of mass derangement. How can the most powerful man in the world be the victim? And if Trump is so tough, why is he always whining?
1642.
Sixty-three percent of Americans believe Trump is personally responsible for the attack. Six to eight Republican senators have called on him to resign. His cabinet is evaporating with resignations, he’s been banned from Twitter and Facebook, and the white house counsel, Cipollone, has told many of his aides not to speak to him, for they will only be subpoenaed for the inevitable trial. Cipollone is also considering resignation.
1643.
Trump still has his defenders, but his failures are multiplying. He’s the first president since Herbert Hoover to lose both houses of Congress and the White House in a single term. Does anyone praise Hoover as a good president? We are losing 4,000 Americans a day to Covid and the economy is in ruins. He’s failed by any and every metric or standard we could employ.
1644.
The death toll, the dyspepsia, the vitriol, the wounded, the scared, and the weary—Trump was angriest, according to sources inside the White House, when he was banned from Twitter. His narcissism is remarkable for its durable elasticity. Of course five people dead and riots in the Senate chamber are really about his accountability-free Internet megaphone.
1645.
Of course the rioters were white. Of course they assaulted police and killed a cop. Of course they blame the media for the violence. Of course Trump turned his back on them and said they would pay. Of course of course of course
1646.
Today he was impeached for the second time. He will be remembered, by every historian, as the president who was impeached twice. It isn’t a small thing. He’s facing a cascade of legal and financial troubles on January 21 and his circle of allies has shrunk to a few Fox pundits, right-wing radio nut-jobs, and a few dumbass members of congress. Even Bill fucking Barr—perhaps the most conservative man in DC—has criticized Trump’s behavior!
1647.
I find a note Pearl wrote to me a few days ago. “Dear father,” she writes. “This letter is from your daughter Pearl. I do not like the way you dress in jeans. Love, Pearl.”
1648.
(I rarely wear jeans.)
1649.
On the book front: I did a radio interview for the NPR affiliate in Birmingham. I have a live-stream of a talk at a public library in Alabama, and another at the Georgia Center for the Book. I have reviews coming from two journals. Things are cooking.
1650.
I watch Stand by Me with Simone and Pearl. Beth opts out. Five minutes in she says, I remember: I hate this movie. Despite her criticisms—it’s yet another movie about boys, she says—the movie holds up, in part because River Phoenix and the rest are so believable. It’s the holy grail of popular cinema: a literate movie for both kids and adults.
1651.
I watch The Midnight Sky. A friend of mine categorized it as space plus sadness. An apt description. George Clooney wanders around Antarctica with an abandoned little girl, while astronauts head back to Earth, unaware of the cataclysms that have made the planet uninhabitable. Plus, Clooney has cancer. It’s a sad and lonely little picture.
1652.
I read As I Lay Dying. It’s a masterpiece, probably Faulkner’s best book, lean, strange, wondrous, bewitching. The story follows a dirt-poor family as they try to carry the body of their mother to her burial place. The very earth seems to bedevil them, with storms and floods. And the old wounds of their youth bubble up to the surface. Why did I wait so long to read it? Faulkner’s best novels speak to us right now through the alchemy of fiction and his insights into deranged minds, the suffering of impoverished people, the cycles of history as they play out in tiny hamlets in forgotten places.
1653.
Beth picks up a new book off my nightstand.
Beth: This jacket copy is terrible. Listen to this. Oh, God. I hate this book, a priori.
She reads the first sentence.
Beth: This makes no sense.
Me: It isn’t supposed to be scrutinized like that. Just let the prose carry you.
Beth: I’m going to write a book about this book, about how I don’t know the author and how she can’t write.
Me: That doesn’t sound like a book-length project.
Beth: I’ll talk to people who also don’t know her. I’ll go to events and parties that aren’t about her. (beat) I can’t read this. It’s so boring. And self-involved. This is one of the worst books ever written. (She hands me the book.) Here, you can read it.