Low Grade Fever

I wore a pair of my new shorts yesterday.  Now I'm feeling all normcore and shit, and I'm wondering if buying them wasn't a mistake.  On the other hand, I don't want to look like I live in this "Starry Night" house I stumbled upon one day while on a driving trip through "far off lands."  It's a fine line, you know.  But normcore doesn't feel right.  It feels safe, sure.  People won't point.  They won't even notice.  I'll fit in.  

Woe is fitting in.  Whoa to fitting in.

That looks a bit Wes Anderson-ish, doesn't it?  Wes Anderson's style has made him the Hemingway of films.  Hemingway is easy to ridicule and to imitate because his style was so new and strong and radical that everyone began to copy him.  Years ago, there used to be "The Best of Bad Hemingway" contests.  They gave prizes and published them in small collectable books.  I have some.  Detractors thought that I would be ashamed of my love of Hemingway's prose when the books came out.  They were wrong.  I loved the Bad Hemingway.  I loved the silliness of lines like, "He died and then was dead."  That may be more Gertrude Stein than Hemingway, but she had her influence on him.  

Today in the Times, there is an article on Wes Anderson-style videos being posted on TikTok (link).  I liked the TikTok videos.  Flattery is the greatest compliment.  No. . . that's not it.  Imitation is the highest form of. . . something.  Whatever it is, it is.  Anderson detractors, I'm sure, will see this as the ultimate put down.  I just wish they would have waited until he was done making films before they did these, but time and technology being what they are. . . . 

ChatGPT will be making Anderson style films very soon.  It won't be any worse than those awful Van Gogh immersive experiences that are traveling the country.  How could it be worse?  

What I want is a pair of really wide-legged shorts, the kind the Patagonia company once made, the BBC shorts.  But I guess not so many others wanted them or they would still be around.  I had two pairs and wore them until they completely fell apart.  They were great.  

I stayed up late last night listening to music, then took two Tylenol and 300mgs of ibuprofen.  I slept like the dead.  Was it the music?  Was the paucity of pain?  Surely each played a part.  

I have become unproductive of late, both work-wise and creatively.  I still need to paint the fences.  I haven't scanned any old film in weeks.  I have boxes of old photographs that tell some stories that I need to get to.  I've had a deadening of the soul, it seems, except for the morning writing, and now that has gone belly up, too, if this is any indication.  I will spend some hours today working away at. . . something.  I have ideas percolating, though too often they fade and are lost.  But they are there. . . somewhere. . . and it will take some excavation to free them.  

What can I say.  You try writing a thousand to fifteen hundred words or more every day for people to read.  It can be daunting.  But why would you?  

You'd need to be as (fill in the blank) as I to do such a silly thing.  It is like having a low grade fever.  

But what if I were cured?  Would you miss me when I'm gone?  

Don't answer.  Don't even.  

You know, though. . . it might just be those damn shorts.