Scribbles at the Bungalow

William S. Burroughs dragged his habit around Mexico looking for just such a place as this. He would flit from barrio to colonias in search of a particular thing, an ostensibly simple, even inevitable thing, but for Burroughs, it was the one thing he could not find and that he needed most. Well, Burroughs wouldn’t flit really. He would more trudge. He would trudge in the cement shoes a junkie wears. And he would always leave. He would always leave because there was always something wrong, of human invention, also always, with every place he went. And whatever that thing was—artlessness, prevailing guile, danger—it would prevent him from attaining his Excalibur, his Holy Grail, his reuniting with Penelope. But upon cresting Rincon and turning up Weaver, The Hidalgo would come into view, and even before surveying the grounds, he would truly grok the size and vigor of the Joshua trees here, prompting perhaps a rumination on just what was their unique evolutionary advantage in this climate, and already the intimations of, “Hey, maybe, just maybe…” would start. And that would even be before his marvelment at the rock formations that somehow play logical and graceful host to mid-twentieth century gas pumps, automobile crank shafts and filling station signage. Eventually though, he would know this space here. What would be his, what he could expect from being here. What tomorrow would bring. I can so easily picture William S Burroughs stepping out of The Bottle House, as I did just now, and saying, “Yes. Yes, yes, yes. Now here is a place where a fellow could get some rest.” 

#bungalowinbouldersjoshuatree

An appeal for practicality to 45*'s legion of racists, zealots and wealthy industrialists

Racists, unite. Vote this guy out. You can get a way better racist than this. A silver-tongued devil who can etch it into law, not just executive orders and nyaah-nyaah rhetoric. There is nothing game changing and nothing big picture with this guy and you know you can do better. Take four years off and find him. See how he does against a black lady in 2024 and really prove your point.

Zealots, unite. Vote this guy out. Come on. You can get a way better zealot than this. A PhD theologian with a gift for plain speaking. Here’s a concept—shooting for the moon maybe, but how about you draft a presidential zealot who actually believes. Pray for better, because it’s out there. One that serves your vision of life on Earth but doesn’t burden you with the deep sense of hypocrisy you now must bear.

Wealthy industrialists, unite. Come on. Vote this guy out. He is a clown and you know it. You can get a way better wealthy industrialist than this. One who is an actual billionaire and not just a carnival barker with flaking cake makeup selling a step-right-up shtick to the local rubes. Imagine it—no more sheepish admissions of how yeah, he doesn’t know what he’s talking about, no more ambitiously constructed defenses of things you know to be stupid, no more time wasted convincing yourself the sale of the last shreds of your decency weren’t offered at a bargain. 

There ought not be any shortage of wealthy industrialists, so pick a charmer to get those white suburban ladies Republicans court so assiduously, and if he’s southern and hearkens the comportment of a brave, 19th century abolitionist, well, you can start picking out the oval office drapes by August. Come on, you tubby, pink bullshitters with your Monopoly Man suits and your Formula 1 race teams. You stain yourself with a muck that belies every aspect of the image you seek when you wallow with this guy. Dirty, cheap and impermanent. Is that branding?

Racists, zealots, wealthy industrialists, this era must come to an end. All of the gracelessness, incuriousness and crassness aside, the incumbent should not be reelected solely on grounds of competence. The coronavirus pandemic is the obvious manifestation of his gross personal deficits, and any objective assessment of his performance in the crisis ought to be seen as disqualifying for the job of president. And the same defects of character that drove him to failure in the epidemic will present themselves in other times of great challenge. Imagine personal aggrievement figuring into a nuclear exchange. So please, racists, zealots, wealthy industrialists. You comport your ilk poorly with this man. Sit on your hands this week, and devise the monstrosity of your dreams for some time in the near future. It’s just not your year.

 

The Entity

Pudgy was barking like mad. “What is it Pudgy?” asked Koko the Clown. Pudgy jumped stiff-legged straight up and down yapping a rapid-fire burst of piercing kyoodles that sounded like a Boston Terrier saying, “Boop-boop-ba-doop.” 

“Betty Boop?” Koko asked, one hand on his forehead, the other akimbo. Pudgy nodded, eyes brightening. Koko rocked on his heels at a diagonal from which it should have been impossible to right himself. “Betty Boop is missing?” There was a boing, boing, boing. 

Pudgy started barking and leaping again and then dashed off toward the midway. When he returned he was more animated than ever, jerking his head in the direction of the circus tents. 

“I doubt it, Pudgy. You know how popular Betty is. She’s probably off flying around with Superman or something.” Koko sighed. Like everyone, Koko had a crush on Betty Boop. 

But Pudgy wouldn’t listen. His yips and yaps escalated in frequency and pitch as he pointed his nose toward the distant canvas tent sidings. Their contrasting blacks and whites billowed and sagged in opposing festoons. 

“Okay Pudgy, whatever you say.” The clown pointed his colossal clodhoppers in the direction of the midway, his bumbling gait barely keeping up with Pudgy’s frenzied scuttle. As the calliope’s stilted descant crept first into Pudgy’s audition and then the clown’s, the bleakness of the familiar circus landscape made an eerie impression on them both. 

Hadn’t there been a Pitch-Till-U-Win booth just to the rear of the big top? Wasn’t there a fifty-foot Ferris Wheel right in the center of the fairgrounds the day before? Where was the Haunted House? Was there no popcorn maker? No cotton candy whisker? Just that morning there had been a bunch of balloons in the barker’s fist, stretching taut a web of string, like a movie star’s jaguars straining against leashes. The balloon seller stood stiff as a statue, his hand clenched pitifully around a skein of nothing, his ordinarily jovial visage now wan and drawn. 

Koko approached the balloon vendor and Pudgy’s pogoing became more frantic with each step, circling them both and yelping. As Pudgy and Koko got closer, the balloon man’s bowler hat disappeared, then his head, and soon his chest, waist and legs all vanished. When they reached where the man had once stood, all that was left was his shoes. 

“What’s going on here?” Koko cried out to a storyboard whose animals, acrobats, jugglers and mimes were disappearing one by one. “And where’s Betty Boop?!” 

Pudgy’s yaps and turning circles ceased, replaced by an aspect of fear and a trembling that was drawn by wavy lines at his shoulders and haunches. “What is it Pudgy?” Koko cried. “What do you see?” 

Darkness fell across the midway and Pudgy began fading into it. He resumed his piercing yelps, but as his image became less and less distinct, his vocalizations were likewise evanescent. Rides, ticket booths and little boys and girls, once rendered with a true and sure hand all grew fuzzy and vague, their fine black lines’ dramatic play against the white of the page now smudged into a mottled wash of gray. The penumbra that had begun as subtle shading became darker until it was slate, shale and then nearly pitch black. The clown felt the presence of something enormous and awful, its hot breath upon his neck. He tried to run away from it, but it was everywhere. 

The thud of Koko’s heart filled his ears, or perhaps it was the heartbeat of the terrible creature pursuing him. Its sickly smell enveloped his head. In the spaces between the thundering heartbeats, he heard its footpads scraping across the ground. Koko looked down at his hands and the left one was gone. 

“I have to make it to the next frame,” he thought to himself. “I have to warn the others!” Koko pushed forward, his leaden legs barely able to drag himself along. One brave thrust with his right, then his left, then his right, but as he attempted the next footfall, his left leg was no longer there and he crashed to the ground. Koko dragged himself forward with his one good arm across the page using the few stones, trees and tent poles that had yet to be erased. He grasped the corner of the page and tore it back, and columns of light poured in from Gasoline Alley. He stuck his head through and saw Walt Wallet and Phyllis Blossom walking hand in hand down the street, Skeezix in knickers traipsing behind them. 

“Wallet!” the clown screamed. “It’s here! It’s happening! Like they said it would! Run! Run! Save yourselves!!!” 

When Walt Wallet turned around, all he saw was a turned back corner of that day’s final panel and a dark void behind it that slowly shrunk back to the white of the page. The clown’s death cries chattered in the distance, like screeching tires two blocks away, full of fury, but so indistinct as to be dismissed without much concern. 

“What was that Daddy?” Skeezix asked. 

“Sound’d t’me like th’ clown fr’m Betty Boop, but t’warn’t nuthin’ I could say f’r sure!” Walt Wallet said. 

Bugs Bunny and Popeye had both had a long day at the studio and were relaxing over carrots and spinach at the Cartoon Canteen. 

“So ah...tck-tck-tck...what’s up Doc?” Bugs asked. “Airplanes and flags, ah-gka-gka-gka-gka-gka.” Popeye’s corn cob pipe clacked against his dentures. 

“It’s ah...Boop ain’t it, Popeye? You sweet on her?” Popeye’s pipe made the sound of a steamboat whistle. 

“Why I oughtta...” 

“You wouldn’t hit a woman, now would you?” Bugs had changed into an evening gown, bustle, falsies and full makeup and was batting two-inch long eyelashes at Popeye. 

“W-w-w-w-o-w!” Popeye said, his eyes bulging and his pipe spinning in his mouth. “I wouldn’t hit no goil!” 

Bugs turned back into himself. Popeye kept talking. “Speakin’ o’ goils though, the goil I wants is likes you said, Betty Boop. You see, I was just gettin’ up the noive to ask her out, and here I haven’t seen her in a week. Don’t tells Olive! I mean I loves Olive, but Betty Boop’s got some coives! W-w-o-o-o-w-w!” His pipe grew to ten times its normal size and let loose a foghorn blast. 

Elmer Fudd walked into the Cartoon Canteen dressed in a blazing red plaid flannel hunting jacket and hat with fold-down earmuffs. Bugs and Popeye were still being drawn in black and white and they practically fell off their barstools. 

“Ah...tck-tck-tck, what’s up Doc? With the jacket and hat I mean.” Bugs said, trying hard but barely keeping his composure. Popeye was less concerned with decorum.

“Well blows me down and shiver me timbers, where did you get that coat and hat? W-o-o-o-o-o-w-e-e-e-w-o-o-o-w!” Pipe, eye, forearm, all were in full bloat. 

“It’s cuwuh,” Elmer Fudd said. “you know, wike bwoo, wed, gween, and yewow. Aah, wats. Howcome so many cuwuhs have elhws in them? Wats.” 

Popeye mauled his corncob and “Anchors Away” played in the background. “You don’t suppose Betty’s taken up with some color cartoon, some Dick Tracy with a flesh- colored face? Izzat why she hasn’t been down to the Canteen?” 

“Aah...tck-tck-tck...maybe she’s on the wagon...” Bugs said, though he suspected Popeye’s fears might be true. 

“Naah...dey’s somethin’ wrongs and I means to finds out what it is!” Popeye squeezed a can of spinach at its middle, and when its contents popped out in an arc, he thrust open his lower jaw and swallowed them whole. 

“What’s wong?” Elmer asked. “What’s Popeye tawking about?” “Ah...tck-tck-tck...Betty Boop’s toined up missing, and ah, Popeye here’s got a mind to batten down her hatches if you know what I mean...” 

“Why you...” Popeye wound up his forearm and spun his fist around ten times in a second preparing to deliver a punch, but Bugs had again transformed himself into the image of a beautiful, voluptuous woman. “W-o-o-o-a-a-a-h!!!” Popeye unwound his wrist and Bugs turned back into himself. 

“I heard it was The Entity,” Elmer said. 

“Ah...tck-tck-tck...The Entity, Doc?” 

“The Entskitsky?” Popeye asked out loud then muttered, “well I’ll be a monkey’s uncle or at least his second uncle once removed and twice put back or something like that ah-gka-gka-gka-gka-gka...” 

“Yeah, The Entity. You know, Woody Woodpecker disappeared yesterday too. I wiked Woody Woodpecker. For one thing, his name was easy to pwonounce.” 

The Cartoon Canteen front door flew open and the Roadrunner blew through the room and out the rear door, the rush of wind mussing Bugs’ fur. Wile E. Coyote followed closely behind, but he stopped in the middle of the room, first looking left, then looking right. He heard a whistling sound, looked up and a 2000-pound anvil manufactured by the Acme company landed on him, squashing him flat. The Roadrunner dashed back through the room in the other direction, said, “Meep, meep,” and left. 

“Ah...that’s a tired bit,” Bugs said, then turned his attention back to Elmer Fudd. “So ah...tck-tck-tck...what else do you know, Doc?” 

“Cecil the Seasick Sea Serpent got erased this morning. And of course, without Cecil there is no Beanie. Deputy Dog, Quick Draw McGraw, Snagglepuss. All gone. Johnny Quest isn’t even funny and it got him.” 

“What got him, though? That’s the 64-carrot question,” Bugs said. 

“It’s The Entity,” Elmer Fudd said.

“It’s gotsk to be The Entskitsky. It’s gotsk to be,” said Popeye. 

“Mnyeah...I thought The Entity was an old wive’s tale,” Bugs said, now dressed as an old wife. 

“The Entity is vewy weal.” The Canteen was beginning to fill up, and several other characters joined the conversation. “Call me s-s-sus-s-s-picious,” said Daffy Duck, “but from what I know about The Entity, this-s-s is exactly the way the firs-s-s-t cartoonis-s-s-t-s-s-s s-s-s-aid it would happen.” 

“Ah...jeez Daffy,” Bugs said, brushing his chest fur with his fingertips, “if I’d known you were coming, I’d have worn a poncho.” 

“I say son, I say, I say it got Yogi Bear last week,” Foghorn Leghorn said. “I guess he won’t be stealing any pic-a-nic baskets any time soon.” 

“Abidy-abidy-abity-and then there’s Mister Magoo,” Porky Pig chimed in. “He d-bah, d-bah, d-bah, didn’t even see it coming.” 

Tom and Jerry sat and listened, saying nothing.

“Well, tck-tck-tck...I’ve hoid just about enough,” Bugs said. “From what I’ve been told about The Entity, you can’t see it until it’s right on top of you, but when it is, it’s so huge you can’t see it. I’m going to build a rocket ship and go visit Marvin the Martian to see if we can get a better look at this thing.” 

“And I’m setting sail for the stormy seas to sees if I can sees it any better from out there,” Popeye said. Bugs and Popeye left the Canteen amid the best wishes of the rest of the cartoon characters, hopeful their heroes could get to the bottom of this. 

******* 

Popeye’s tiny ship was tossed in the waves, many times spinning under the water line, and at one point even being batted back and forth between two waves and over a third like a ping-pong ball over a net. He passed by an island of cannibals and a stark rock outcropping with a lighthouse manned by a hideous old sea hag, and narrowly escaped giving away his last hamburger on a promise of being paid the following Tuesday. His craft sliced through shark-infested waters and survived a pirate attack. Storms raged and days passed without a breath of wind. Water was running low and he was down to his last can of spinach. In the distance and across the arc of time and space, he heard a pitiful wail, “W-i-i-i-l-l-l-m-a-a-a!!!” 

Popeye pulled a hand-held telescope from his pocket and peered through it squinting with one eye, though his squinted eye didn’t vary much from the way it looked when he was not squinting. The other eye popped out the end of the telescope and throbbed as it observed The Entity consuming the entire town of Bedrock. “Well blows me downs! I haves to gets backsk and warns the others!” 

******* 

Bugs Bunny’s rocket ship streaked toward the stars, Bugs relaxing on the nose cone and munching a fresh carrot. The spacecraft loop-de-looped and landed on a planet that looked like earth, but spangled with buildings and vehicles he’d never seen before. “Hm,” Bugs said, “I must have taken a wrong toyne at Albuquerque...tck-tck-tck...aah, that’s a tired bit.” 

A young boy named Elroy and a cute blonde girl who introduced herself as Judy greeted him as he hopped off the rocket. Bugs was introducing himself when the three of them turned in the direction of a tortured scream. “Jane!!! Stop this crazy thing!!!” 

A sudden cold wind blew across the futuristic city and they saw George Jetson scooped up by an enormous beast, so huge that all you could see from the ground were its filthy feet, legs and haunches and a distended belly that obscured any view of the creature’s head and shoulders. Judy and Elroy watched in horror as The Entity’s hands ripped Jetson like a wishbone and tossed the halves aside. 

“Dad!” Elroy and Judy screamed in unison. They ran off in the directions of their bisected father, but were vaporized before they had gone ten feet. 

Bugs jumped back on his spacecraft and streaked into the sky. “Ix-nay on that anet-play,” Bugs said, checking his map and charting a course for Mars. 

Marvin the Martian had been tracking Bugs’ approach and was uncharacteristically hospitable at his arrival. He opened the bay doors of his spacecraft and welcomed him in. 

“Ahh...tck-tck-tck...what’s up, Doc?” Marvin offered Bugs a carrot and a seat.

“Ordinarily you earthlings make me so angry I would prefer to destroy your feeble planet. In this case however, as you say on your water-logged earth, we’re in the same boat.” He flicked a remote control and the front shade on the windshield rose up tick by tick. 

There it was, The Entity, scooping up cartoon characters, backdrops, entire strips and movies and popping them into its mouth. Bugs and Marvin still couldn’t see its face, only the top of its head, but the images of each character that it had consumed could be seen roiling and writhing within a thin gelatinous bladder of clear liquid just beneath the beast’s transparent dermis. 

“Despite my ordinary fearlessness, I don’t know how to deal with this guy, and I’m reasonably confident once he dominates Earth, I’m next.” Marvin boosted the magnification on the windshield. 

Speed Racer sat strapped into a car without wheels, his fierce and determined expression now that of a frightened child. Tom Slick, Kimba the White Lion, and even Scooby-Doo and the gang wandered lost and wailing through the endless sea of The Entity’s bloated belly. The images of Tennessee Tuxedo, Chumley, Boo-boo, Hekyll and Jekyll, Huckleberry Hound and dozens of others all danced across the beast’s body, their fond and familiar faces now contorted in wails of eternal agony. 

“Marvin,” Bugs said, “thanks for the carrot. And ah...tck-tck-tck...as a favor to me, if I do save the planet, please don’t blow it up right away.” 

Bugs boarded his rocket and headed home, hoping it wasn’t too late. 

******* 

Bugs and Popeye arrived back at the Cartoon Canteen at the same time. It was mayhem. There were cartoon limbs and heads scattered everywhere, buckets of red ink splashed across most of the pages, and the bongo riff that is heard when legs run but the character goes nowhere reverberated through the barroom. 

The Entity ripped the roof off the Canteen and for the first time took a deep breath and sucked in its gut so all of the cowering characters inside could see it top to bottom. A 900-foot long black tail coiled around the building’s foundation, occasionally snapping like a bullwhip and slicing some duck, bunny or little boy in half. Black, bristly hair covered the creature’s fat haunches, and its toenails, each the size of a dump truck, clacked against the sidewalk. 

The mural of consumed cartoon characters undulated across The Entity’s sucked-in stomach, now even more distinct for having been pressed closer to its transparent epidermis. Thick black hair sprouted from the creature’s neck and back and its mammoth ears were rounded across the top, freakishly symmetrical to one another. A pointed nose terminated in a wet, black ball and as it scooped up cartoon character after helpless cartoon character, everyone noticed its white-gloved hands had three fingers and a thumb. It threw its head back and laughed, and juxtaposed against its enormous and hideous aspect, the lilting chuckle of the oversized mouse was striking. 

“It’s Mickey! I should have known.” Bugs was hopping mad. “Why that rat bastard. I’ll send him to kingdom come.” Popeye chugged a bushel of spinach. 

“Save your strength, Popeye. There’s only one way to deal with this.” Bugs walked over to a pay phone attached to the side of a tree and fished a coin out of invisible pockets. He dialed, waited a moment, and brightened as his party answered. “Ahh...tck- tck-tck...what’s up, Doc? Yeah, it’s me, Bugs. Have you heard? It’s the mouse. Yeah. Out of control. Yeah, I know. It only understands one language. You will? That’s great. Thanks. We all really appreciate it.” 

Within seconds, Richie Rich’s armored car pulled into the parking lot. At first it seemed like a lot of money, but in exchange for a trillion dollars, Mickey agreed to regurgitate all of the characters he had already consumed and promised not to rampage for at least another five years. In the end, it was all worth it, even to Richie Rich. “It’s only money,” he said. 

The Mouse just laughed. 

The Crow

I was walking on this gloomy morning alone after Sam had been particularly atrocious on an attempt to walk him. He has always barked at other dogs with an assassin’s vigor; whether Dachshund or Doberman, Bichon Frise or Boxer, Sam transforms into 35 pounds of pure Beagle hatred upon sight of another dog. He strains at the leash, snarling, gnashing teeth and salivating wildly, barely able to get in a breath between the bays, barks and other ballyhoo. 

I’m used to this. At 15, which if Lorne Greene is to be believed renders him a 105-year old human equivalency, Sam persists with these capricious expressions of violent desire. Fine. Now though, his failing eyesight is such that he mistakes toddlers for other dogs and offers them the same kindnesses he would a fellow canine. After two instances of Sam making plain his wish for some dog-on-baby ultra-violence, I brought him home and finished my walk alone.

It has been raining for the past several days in Southern California and not only that, a somberness has descended across the world and across the United States. I am away from my native family and I ache for that connection in this muddle. I am married to a person who is perfect for me, and I am happy. I am artistically satisfied for the most part (whether or not my audience is), and in the largest sense of it, my life is going well. Happy but sad, the simplest iteration of the human condition. I am sad for my separation from those who have known me forever, and sad for my country and for my world. We fight an enemy we cannot see, and the only weapon against it is doing nothing. And that is not our nature. Not our nature at all. It is in this frame of mind, under a low-hanging slate sky and into the needling mist of a middle-of-March low pressure system that I walked in a forward tilt, keeping stiff pace for no reason.

The sometimes torrential and sometimes misting rains of the past few days have rendered the earth soft on my walk across a dramatic mound that offers a 360-degree panoramic view of the San Fernando Valley. Before rising to the mound, I hop across a small creek, which because of the rains had swelled beyond its usual trickle. As I selected a stone for crossing it, I spotted a crow standing on a rock in the river.

“Well, hello, little man. How are you today?” I said softly, hoping not to startle him.

“Okay, I guess,” he said.

I don’t know if I took another step, but if I did, that was it. I definitely didn’t take two. I looked at the crow and he looked at me. “I could have sworn I just heard you talk,” I said to the crow. He continued to stare back at me. 

In writing that last sentence, I felt compelled to write the word “blankly” at the end. Because in describing a crow staring at something, how could you not say the stare was blank? But it wasn’t. It was the opposite of blank. It was…thoughtful. “Did you just talk to me?” I asked.

“It would have been rude not to, don’t you think? Oh, and speaking of rude, please pardon me. I didn’t inquire as to how you were doing today. I hope you’re well.”

I was shocked. I guess it showed.

“Well?” he said.

“I’m doing great!” I said.

“Are you sure? I saw you walking up this way and you seemed a little down,” he said. “I’m Matt.”

“Hi Matt. My name’s Chris. Chris Elliott. Like the comedy writer. I write comedy too. He screws up my brand like you wouldn’t believe.”

“He is funny though.”

“I know, he’s really good. That’s part of the problem. I publish under Christopher sometimes, sometimes under Christopher Dean, which is my full name—"

“I know. I have your ‘Pottymouth’ album.” He was smiling. Can crows smile? “That’s some funny stuff, man. I also love the ‘Dismayed Gourmet’ essays.”

“So you know me? You know who I am?” I was beginning to get nervous.

“You think this talking crow stuff happens randomly? I was sent here to help you feel better. I was sent here to grant you a wish.”

“A wish? Anything?”

“Of course not. None of this, ‘Okay, cure the coronavirus’ pie-in-the-sky. It has to be for you. For you alone. My managers say you apologize way too much and that it hamstrings you from being of greater value to the world. They say you should just lighten up, give yourself a damn break, and let your spirit truly roam. The world derives nothing from you unless you are at peace and comfort to offer the full measure of your unique expression. They’re thinking maybe if you get a nice piccolo trumpet or something, it might help free some of your bottled energy.”

“Wow. Who’s your manager?” I asked Matt.

“Classified. Now, your wish?”

“Not sure. Can I finish my walk first?”

“Of course!”

“Care to come along?” He flew up from the rock and turned a circle over my head. "Caw! Caw! Let's go!"

I started up the mound and he circled me as I walked up the grassy hill to the spectacular view that was always the centerpiece of my walks with Sam, except of course when he wants to maim the new progeny of Woodland Hills. 

"Reminds me of a joke," Matt said. "Even though we eat carcasses on the roadway, we never get hit ourselves. Do you know why?"

"No, Matt. Why?"

"Because one of our buddies sees the automobiles coming and yells 'Caw! Caw!"

We continued our walk across the mound and then down the other side, and Matt lighted upon my shoulder. “Chris, I know you’re sad. I know you’re in between on a couple of things. Your work life is in between, your music life is in between and your writing is between. You‘re looking for your next big idea to work on, but hey, you’ve had a great couple of years, haven’t you? You wrote a novel and a musical in the last two years, Dude, that’s awesome. Seriously, respect. High-level avian respect. So you haven’t sold them. So what? Some people whose opinions you respect have assured you that they are both good quality works, and that they are both in a professionally presentable condition. There is a lot you can do to share your work more widely.”

“Matt, how do you know all this stuff about me?”

“Again, classified. Now, this wife of yours. She seems pretty cool. Tell me about her.”

And so we walked the full three miles that Sam and I usually walk, chatting about love, music, poetry and the flavor of fresh roadkill. I walked an extra bit of the loop to get him back to where I found him.

“Chris,” he said. “You never asked for that wish. You know I could probably get that novel onto a decision-maker’s desk for you.”

“Matt. Crows are smart.” I said, a broad smile crossing a face that really needed one. “You must know by now; my wish has come true. I have wished only for a friend.”

Doing nothing is the only weapon we have against the coronavirus

The Patrick Henry avatar remains a prominent American ideal—the mystique of the rugged individual—indefatigable, unflappable and unchangeable; give me liberty or give me death. Well, that is indeed what the choice has boiled down to. For the time being, I am advocating against liberty and against death. 

The liberty we sacrifice in this case amounts to passive resistance as a means of winning a war, social distancing being the primary strategy that will defeat the coronavirus. We win by retreating into our imaginations, by getting to know our families better, by reading, making an improvement on a musical instrument, painting, learning a complex software suite, taking a crack at actively navigating a wild bear market or whatever it is that sustained periods of time apart from society may inspire. We are such a handshakin’, high-fivin’, fist-bumpin’, bro-huggin’, joint-passin’, buffet-eatin’, chip-dippin’, ride-sharin’, subway-takin’, airline-flyin’, concert-goin’, casual sex-havin’ society, how are we ever going to adjust?

We will need everyone’s voluntary cooperation. We will need government to help workers and small businesses suddenly upended by this. We will need large corporations to provide work-at-home solutions for employees. We will need community in the large and small sense of the word. We will need to embrace a sense of shared destiny. We will need people to cease socialization for a few months. We can mitigate this to a large degree, but in order to do so, we will need all of this.

The United States is on the upswell of a wave that has not yet crested. Think of it as a climate crisis in miniature. We are failing at climate crisis response, largely because it is an enemy we cannot see and whose crisis point is decades out—a profile tailor-made for human ignoring. The coronavirus has closer to a one-month envelope before its potential crisis point, and that seems indeed to be within the scope of human strategizing. 

We are at the front end of what appears to be a solid understanding of the danger, albeit six weeks too late, and albeit without much coherent messaging from the Trump administration. Communities and corporations have taken this over, rendering the federal government a dead and bloated thing, a dull-eyed impediment, a nuisance if not for its checkbook, irrelevant to strategy or communications. The Trump administration has shrunk into miniature or has been distended to vile and bizarre grotesqueries over this, its image a comic reflection in a funhouse mirror, engorged in one place and elongated in another, all where it shouldn’t be, all in distorted disproportion. Everyone but the truest devotees to the realm understand that Trump’s cabal of amateurs, sycophants and witnesses are hopelessly out of their depth when it comes to actually managing a crisis. Fortunately, communities and businesses are largely ignoring the lies and bogus recommendations coming out of the White House. 

This thing is a beast, and it is going to tear into this country all through spring and summer unless we get and stay serious about social distancing. Our trajectory is on a par with Italy and Iraq, not with South Korea or Germany, both of which have flattened their curves. I read a Johns Hopkins analyst this morning who approximates 50,000 undiagnosed cases in the US right now at a minimum. With statistics indicating a three to six-day doubling, that puts us into millions of cases by summer absent vigilance about social distancing, which in turn translates to overwhelmed ICU capacity. Some promising reports came through today, but we have to keep our foot on the gas. We are just beginning to respond appropriately to this as a nation, and we cannot blow it now. Write or call, but don't come by. It's the thought that counts, and you must know I love you.

Did You Know That You Can Change A Bed With Someone In It?

Did you know that you can change a bed with someone in it? Did you know that you can change a bed with a six-foot, two-inch, two-hundred pound man in it? Did you know you can change a bed with your hero in it? Did you know that you can change a bed with all of the strength that allowed you to develop all of your own signature softness in it? Well, you can. First, wash your hands and put on gloves, for your protection and for that rare opportunity to offer protection to the one who took it out on the first few bullies who tried to leverage your oddness so that it rarely happened again. Then, you’d ordinarily explain to the one who taught you how to ski what you were about to do, if he hadn’t slipped into an intermittent unconsciousness, a next loss that followed continence, speech, mobility, memory and a genius that twin tumors ravaged inside of his spectacular mind. If he’s not awake, and you can’t tell your boyhood’s whole world how you remember how he pushed those guys out of the way in the tunnel collapse at Seabrook nuclear station, and you can’t tell him you didn’t think it was fair for him not to be saved, especially in light of that, well, then you roll him onto his side, and beginning at the opposite side of the bed, remove the tucked-in sheet and roll it in the direction of Mike, or whoever is shredding your heart on this terrible day. Next, roll a clean sheet out toward the boy who beat you in chess your first dozen times playing him and then when you finally won, reached across and shook your hand with a look that told you to have confidence in your mind, a look of assurance that told you there would be a lot of things coming your way that you would be good at, whatever the struggles, and whatever it might be that the rest of the world wouldn’t understand. Then, you roll all of that strength without glower and brilliance without condescension over onto his back first, and then onto his other side and onto the clean sheet. If your brother was as beloved as mine, you have a helper, and as you are rolling out the clean sheet, she is pulling back on the old sheet—and the helpers are always “she” in this kind of delicacy, in this kind of intimacy, aren’t they? Yes. They are. Pull the fresh sheet taut, to his standards in living, so there are no bumps not smoothed, no errancies not reckoned with, no problems not solved, no truths not faced, and secure them as he did his children, his wife, and his mother, sister and brothers, only with what they call hospital corners instead of the lifetime of deep knowledge combined with Yankee work ethic that provided an earthly tethering to serve as crucible for his unending love. Never forget to change the pillowcase where he shall rest his head. Cover him. Remove your gloves and wash your hands. Then cry. It's that easy.

My brother and me.

A brief history of Autotune

          By now, most people are familiar with the audio software application Autotune. Autotune is a pitch correction device used in vocal processing that was developed by Andy Hildebrand of Exxon, originally intended to manipulate sound waves for locating offshore oil reserves as well as for detecting earthquakes before they fully manifest. It was subsequently used by recording studios to correct vocal pitches on jingles, movies and other studio projects, and was a godsend for producers in session with artists whose material, persona and timbre of voice were enough to sell records, while their strict technical ability as vocalists was in some degree lacking. Techniques for achieving this same result previously existed in tape studios, but they were cumbersome and rarely used.

           The initial mission for Autotune was to keep the pitch adjustments as transparent as possible. Even when adjusting pitches in increments far less than a half-step, there are variations in formants and harmonic overtones that without compensation are noticeable to even an untrained ear and glaring to a professional or aficionado. Unsophisticated coding within software of this type can lend elevated pitches an “Alvin and the Chipmunks” kind of effect, and lowered pitches a mouthful-of-marbles kind of articulation. The true grace of Autotune’s coding was its sensitivity to the harmonic structure of pitches and the natural changes in formants that present themselves with pitch correction.

                The reasons for its immediate commercial success are obvious. Imagine an advertising executive booking a jingle singer and a producer for a TV commercial and neither of them are 100% that evening. The singer has already gone home with his check but a later playback reveals a pitch problem on one of the words. What used to be a disaster suddenly became easily manageable.

                Then came the inevitable experimentation and creative mangling of the initial purpose of the software by creative artists, as is the way with all new tools in music. Dance records in the late nineties used it on lead vocal tracks and it became a well-known club sound in England and the US. The first mass popularization of the unabashed use of Autotune on a lead vocal was Cher’s number one Billboard hit, Believe, in 1998.

                Listener or professional music-maker, everyone interested in sound all of a sudden asked themselves two questions: “What the hell was that?” and “Why am I listening to a Cher record?” Believe became Cher’s biggest hit ever, leaving Gypsies, Tramps and Thieves, Half-Breed and other racially tone-deaf anthems in its unwavering pitch and sales wake. Whatever its artistic merit, Believe featured a lead vocal sound millions of Americans had never heard before and they loved it. After the Cher phenomena, Autotune use, with its signature audible click as it releases one pitch and jumps to another, was soon ubiquitous on the radio. Artists emerged whose every vocal take was processed using Autotune, notably T Pain, who scored the ultimate pitch-correcting triumph in his use of Autotune often being referred to as “The T Pain Effect.”

                Autotune is by no means the only pitch correction game in town. Melodyne aims itself pointedly toward the market that serviced the initial use of Autotune, to correct pitches with utter transparency rather than to use it to obvious effect on a lead vocal. Melodyne introduced a radical component to its software suite a few years ago called Direct Note Access or DNA, which lets you isolate individual pitches within a polyphonic performance and manipulate its attributes without affecting other notes in the chord. That is to say, if you are recording a barbershop quartet on a single microphone and you get a fantastic performance, save for Uncle Floyd’s one flat note in the last verse, DNA can isolate old Floyd’s baritone clam and bring it into pitch. It’s on the other three to pull him aside and tell him he’s keeping a secret from no one. Synthesizer giant Roland has developed an effective pitch correction software plug-in called V-Vocal that ships with its Cakewalk Sonar audio suite. It is easy to use and operates seamlessly within the parent software. Another big player is Waves, whose Tune correction software is in use in many major studios.

                After all of the hit songs with pitch-corrected vocals came the inevitable parodies and comedy applications, most notably the "Autotune the News" team who scored a major hit Autotuning Antoine Dodson’s notorious rant on Huntsville, Alabama television following an assault attempt on his sister. It’s amazing what passes for comedy, but that’s for another essay. Somehow though, Katie Couric reading national news in a pop/R&B vocal melody on top of what sounds like a Mariah Carey rhythm bed is pretty irresistible.

                Pitch correction as a blatant vocal effect is still popular in commercial music production but seems on the wane. Pitch correction as an editing tool, however, has cemented itself forever as an essential arrow in the music producer’s quiver. It opens worlds for artists, which is precisely what music technology tools are supposed to do.