I started reading The Corrections today, which I didn’t read the first time around because all I ended up hearing was that Oprah noise, and I lost the thread of whether the book was good or not. But I just read that excerpt of his in The New Yorker a few weeks ago and I thought it was stunning and it made me want to write like him. Also when I was staying with Stefan Block he kept telling me how it was the best book of the aughts. And then when I mentioned to Joanna Smith Rakoff that I have been reading epic books because I write smaller stories and I want to broaden the way my book feels at the very least, she told me about how she interviewed Franzen when The Corrections came out, and he mentioned something about – and I am paraphrasing here because I can’t access the interview online; it’s behind the Poets and Writers pay wall – reading smaller novels when he decided he wanted to write an epic novel, and then realizing that epic novels are really just made up of a collection of smaller novels.
Just one of those moments should have been enough to get me to read the book but sometimes I am thick-headed, and also sometimes I have to watch every single episode of the last season of “Dexter” even if I had already read an article about what happened in the season finale.
Anyway, I’m about twenty pages into the book and the only comment I have so far, which I made to a friend earlier today, is that Franzen’s sentences are designed to take you cross country and back, whereas mine are meant only to get you down the block, but when you get there, you’re (hopefully) going to have a really interesting conversation with someone. I wouldn’t mind upping my sentences to the point where at least you might get to the airport, even if you don’t get on the plane and go anywhere, and maybe just get drunk on overpriced Bloody Marys at the bar in the chain restaurant around the corner from the duty free section.
On Friday night Maura Johnston and I went to Monster Island, a performance space down the road from my house. Kid Millions from Oneida has a new project called Man Forever, which is him and a bunch of his drummer friends beating the crap out of their drums. They were kicking off their tour to support his album that night.
There were five drummers total. I recognized Shahin Motia from the Ex Models. Maura pointed out that one of the drummers was Brian Chase from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Those were the two I could see the most clearly through the crowd. The drum sets were crammed into a small space, only a foot or two between each. (The layout didn’t feel strategic, but perhaps it was. I don’t know anything about anything when it comes to stuff like that.)
I enjoyed very much watching the drummers warm up physically before the performance, because that’s not something you get to see too often, what with drummers being in the back usually. I liked when they quickly rubbed their palms together. Fingertips contain a lot of nerve endings. Also I liked it when one of the drummers stuck one hand in the air, bent it at the elbow so it dropped down between his shoulder blades, and then bent his other arm low in his back, stretching that hand up until it met the other hand. He held it there for a while. There was some neck rolling. They were all a little twitchy, but also quiet.
And then they started banging away. It was loud as hell, obviously. They played two separate sets of about twenty minutes or so, each time being alerted to conclude by a man with a stopwatch. During a short break in the middle, a couple of them rocked back in forth in some sort of meditative state. They were all in their own worlds, playing their own song. But all of their separate songs, performances, the noises they emitted from their drums anyway, all came together to create something bigger, something, yes, epic.
I particularly enjoyed watching Brian Chase, who had his own dramatic storyline involving losing his drumsticks several times. When that happened he would continue playing with his hand (although I don’t think he was striking the drum with it, just moving it along in the air), until someone from the audience would dart in and retrieve it for him. There was also a tricky moment when the person videotaping the performance loomed dangerously close to his glasses, and so, never losing his beat, he picked them up off the ground and somehow slid them into his pocket while still drumming. I was extremely invested in all of this; I really wanted him to succeed. He had a beatific look on his face the entire show, and when I got home I read about how he has synesthesia, which means he sees color in response to what he was playing. He must have been having a really good time. He must have a really good time all the time.
I’ve been thinking about all of this a lot today, but haven’t come to any greater conclusions yet. I had some other thoughts about how when I go on my cross-country trips, the joy of the journey is comprised of each individual stop. Sometimes people ask me, “How was your trip?” I don’t even know where to begin. I guess you just begin at the beginning, and keep on going until you make it all the way home.
