19 Comments

"The Trump phenomenon doesn’t exist because people are stupid. It exists because many people are ill-informed or influenced by mass media and oligarchs like Elon Musk and his massive 300 million user-base Twitter empire."

Truer words never spoken, Charles. People are either just stupid or willfully ignorant. We haven't paid attention to what's happening in our government for so long that when we really should, we don't.

Like you, I lose some subscribers the minute I hit send! It bothered me at first, but I've learned it is inevitable. There are so many great writers on Substack I cant possibly read them all, and I hope that is the case with those who leave me. Obviously I would like to keep them all.... but I'm sure I'm not everyone's cup of tea. 😂 I'm writing for the love of it...and the discipline of it. And I always look forward to what you have to say. ✌️

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"And I always look forward to what you have to say."

Thanks, me too you. I won't be unsubscribing, lol. I think I found you through Jay Kuo's substack.

He's got a nice little community of frequent commenters there that I enjoy.

I'm the same way. I can't subscribe to all the ones I like.

As for the Trump phenomenon, wow, I just can't understand that. I find my attempts to explain them in posts wanting. Today I'm blaming the media, tomorrow I may have a different explanation.

Today, Musk sent out a tweet with 25 million views backing the German far-right anti-immigration party. Biden needs to take Musk's toy away and let SCOTUS reverse its presidential immunity decision if they don't like it.Hmm, sounds like a note.

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I’m still waiting for Biden to do a ‘Thing’ to make this better. I have no idea what. 😂

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The fiction writer in me has all kinds of ghastly things happening to the orange blob at the hands of Dark Brandon.

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OOOOOOOHHHHH.... perhaps it's time to cultivate that story!

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Leon Musk will tweet that I should be thrown in jail, but at least I'd have some fun.

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I 99 point 9% agree with you both.

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Automatic "like" button hit.

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It's more than just not giving the reader the content they want - a lot of people are treating Substack like they treat Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and so forth: they're after numbers and they think you are too. So they subscribe. They subscribe so that you'll subscribe back. They aren't writers and they aren't writing. And because they aren't writers, there's a good chance that they aren't readers either; they're subscribers. They are validated by their subscription numbers and when you don't subscribe back, they're gone. And then there's the subscriber/numbers persons that, once they have your subscription, that's all they were ever after and they unsubscribe because they were never interested in your writing in the first place.

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Hopefully the number fetishists realise and leave. I also encounter people selling crypto and sex. If they unsubscribe so be it.

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Extra points for "number fetishist."

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I report every scammer. Usually gone within a day after.

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Thanks, Cliff, I hadn't considered that angle, but it explains a lot. I've never been active in the social media game, and my ignorance of that part of the world kind of shows sometimes.

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Good for you! It shows that you are genuine, honest, truthful, trustworthy and principled, all admirable qualities. Not being offended is NOT a human right, I really don't know when so many of us became so sensitive. I think it's actually downright dangerous to shut ourselves off from anyone we disagree with. It makes us ever more entrenched in our opinions; unable to argue, debate or defend our positions; less open-minded; less tolerant and more judgemental. We are encouraged to dismiss the people we disagree with as stupid, illiterate, uninformed, unreasonable or even to ‘other’ them. And when we view them as less than human, that's where polarization and violence take root. Having said that, I did finally unsubscribe from Xitter a month ago. If stopped engaging over a year ago and deleted the app about eight months ago. However, when I still did I tried to engage with people I disagreed with. Usually I just got abuse which I always took as evidence that I'd won the argument. I was always polite and civil but I only managed to have a reasonable discussion twice. We didn't change each others' minds but the exchanges were interesting and informative and we ended respecting each others' views.

Regarding your post that God is transsexual, I regret that I haven't read it (at least not yet) but it reminded me of one of my uncle's pearls of wisdom: “Saints are bisexual”. I can't remember if I've mentioned my uncle before? So at the risk of repeating myself, his name was Peter Schmidt (he was my father's older half-brother by my grandmother's previous marriage). He was an artist one of the wisest, gentlest, thoughtful and most intelligent people I've ever met. He's probably best known through his long friendship and collaboration with Brian Eno, e.g. ‘Oblique Strategies’, who was one of his students. He died tragically young aged 49. He'd moved to London long before we did in 1969. Until his death in 1979 we used to see him about twice a year: he'd visit us once and we him once. I actually spent a bit more time with him as I sat for him during his portrait phase. He changed styles frequently until the last five years of his life when he painted watercolours. One of the reasons he started watercolour was because they weren't taken seriously by the art world, seen as amateur (he hated snobbery and had a keen sense of humour) ¹. His watercolours were still lifes and landscapes, mostly of Scotland and Iceland. I think they're stunningly beautiful but you can see for yourself, if you're so inclined, on his website: http://www.peterschmidtweb.com/main.html. I was also a big Roxy Music fan in my teens and on one of his visits he noticed the stickers of them on my door. “Oh, do you like them? Would you like to meet him?” he asked me, pointing at Eno. Of course I said yes and he was true to his word, inviting me a few months later. Some thirteen years after that (the meeting with Eno was in the winter of ’73) I met Eno again at the opening of a retrospective of my uncle's at Watford College of Art, where he taught. I introduced myself by saying “You probably won't remember me but…” and was flattered to discover he did. I chatted with him at length, particularly about his and David Byrne's seminal album ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’ ². Anyway, I won't go on any more, suffice to say that I miss my uncle terribly. His death was one of the most shocking and still affects me to this day. Despite the infrequency of our meetings he was and is one of the most profoundly influential people in my life. In case you're interested (but please don't feel obliged) you can find out more about him from his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Schmidt_%28artist%29?wprov=sfla1.

¹ One of the tasks he once set his students was to go and study a favourite painting of theirs, analysing its qualities. “Now produce a painting with none of those qualities” 😂.

² The guitarist in the band I was in at the time worked at the Capital Radio record library (Capital Radio was London's first commercial radio station. Previously my friend had worked at the BBC record library) and often gave me promotional copies of albums; they all had “Promotional copy only. Not for resale” stamped in gold lettering on them. That's how I got one of the original copies of ‘My Life in the Bush of Ghosts’. The album's use of sampling before sampling became a thing is one of the reasons I called it seminal. It was years ahead of its time. All of the tracks used ‘samples’ from various sources for their vocals. It was released in February 1981 after going to extensive efforts to sort out permissions for the use of the various vocal recordings. Soon after its release the Islamic Council of Great Britain objected to the use of Qur'anic recital on the track ‘Qur'an’, describing it as blasphemous. In deference Eno and Byrne withdrew the track, replacing it with ‘Very, Very Hungry’, although David Byrne is quoted as saying that they were probably being overly cautious. The second track to be withdrawn was ‘The Jezebel Spirit’ which originally featured the voice of evangelist Kathryn Kuhlman performing an exorcism. Her estate objected to the use of her voice in that context, so they replaced the vocal on that track. Another track, ‘Come With Us’ used a recording of an ‘unidentified radio evangelist; San Francisco April 1980’, according to the sleeve notes. Eno told me that this radio evangelist had one of the most evil sounding voices he'd ever heard. He later discovered that he'd actually died quite some time ago, but that he'd left 25 years' worth of recordings for his broadcast! If you don't know the album, apart from featuring many of my favourite musicians (e.g. Bill Laswell, bassist and producer, founding member of NY experimental band Material)³ it made extensive use of sampling, except samplers weren't available at the time and Eno used tape loops instead. He described one that was over 30 feet long so that it went around the entire studio and required several people to hold it and stop it from getting tangled or twisted!

³ Bill Laswell is one of my absolute favourite bassists. On one of the ‘Seven Souls’ spin-off recordings (with William Borroughs on the subject of Egyptian beliefs regarding the afterlife. I think the spin-off was ‘The Western Lands’. Unfortunately the album isn't available from my streaming service in the UK – it is available in Germany) he plays the same single note every four bars with a different note every sixteenth bar! Compare that to the virtuoso and hugely funky bass line of ‘Come Down’ from the album ‘One Down’ or the intricate harmonics and rhythm of ‘Silent Land’ from the album ‘Memory Serves’ (all Material albums) show what a versatile bassist he is and that he doesn't unnecessarily complicate his parts to show off his chops. The two tracks I mentioned are the only ones I'm aware of where he really shows what he's capable of.

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Haven’t had a chance to reply to this. Mostly I just want to say thanks for the long comment. Really interesting stuff. I forgot about Roxy Music! Classic band. Brian Eno, of course, I guess became more well known than Roxy Music, at least among music heads because he was such a prolific producer as well as a band musician. Have a great holiday!

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Charles, I'd never unsubscribe from you! You are a prolific writer of great talent, in my opinion. Curious if you were always writing or is this a later in life event? What did you use to do?

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Thanks, Charles, much appreciated. I've been writing since I was a kid. But I didn't send out short stories (my usual writing thing when I was younger) to pubs. Real life work jobs got in the way of taking it to that level. I did send a short story to Omni Magazine, a sci-fi mag run by Penthouse (but it wasn't at all an erotica pub) a very, very long time ago, and received a very nice, non-form letter from the editor, Ellen Datlow (I still remember her name), who went into specifics about why she liked the story and why she was also rejecting it. She encouraged me to send more. I never did. My HS also had a creative writing workshop where a sci-fi writer named Gene Wolfe critiqued my work and was very complimentary and strongly encouraged me to keep at it.

I read like a fiend as a young boy. I was reading stuff like Brothers Karamazov in eighth grade because classics were around the house.

But overall, in my adult life, I just did work-a-day stuff, art direction and creative director, then later when the web took hold, software engineering, because I became fascinated by coding. I've always written on the side though. Lots of novels in the drawer that never saw the light of day.

When I "semi-retired," I tried to move full time into writing. I still occasionally get pulled into a software project because I have friends in the business but I try not to, so that's why I call it semi-retirment. I'm trying to do this full-time, now.

Thanks for the kind words again!

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I too learned to read at a young age and devoured books in my formative years. Sadly, I don't read as much now. I'm not sure why I got out of the habit, I think partly it's because I was reading so much non-fiction, technical manuals and text books, that took some of the joy out of reading. Partly it's the daunting thought that if I spent every moment reading I wouldn't manage more than a tiny fraction of what's been written, so where do I start? My two favourite authors, Terry Pratchett and Kurt Vonnegut, are both dead and I've read everything they've written, not that that's an excuse but they always encouraged me. And I do reread their books regularly. And then there old age that, ironically, rather than making me read more has a similar discouraging effect: I'm reluctant to start books like ‘Gravity's Rainbow’, which took me four attempts and a considerable amount of willpower to finally finish. I'm glad I read it, but if I'd known how it left me feeling I may well not have bothered. Nowadays, instead of reading 20+ books a year I'm down to 3/4. I should do something about that. Unfortunately, I'm a little pig-headed about books I've started, I tend to plough through them however unsatisfactory I find them. It's that fear of making such an effort for what ends up being little reward, at least for me. On the other hand, and this is at least part of the reason I persevere with ‘difficult’ books, there are plenty I've been inclined to give up on that ended up being wonderful and very rewarding. You never know until you finish them! Another negative experience was Joseph Heller's ‘Something Happened’. Then there was James Joyce's ‘Ulysses’. A close friend whose tastes I very much respected and admired urged me to read it. It took me four weeks and when I'd finally finished it and told him I was now ready to discuss it with him he replied, “Oh. I haven't read the book, I watched the film.”! That was frustrating, although it's a book I enjoyed despite it's difficulty. Gore Vidal's ‘Creation’ is one of my all time favourite books in that line, albeit one I've had trouble rereading.

Perhaps I'm too demanding. As with music (and music is my abiding passion – I am a musician), I've become less patient and want something new, surprising and different, something I haven't considered or that gives me a perspective I haven't come across before. That's a big ask and another thing where age makes a difference. I'm not so arrogant as to think I know it all and have experienced everything, far from it, but enough to make me fussier.

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I don’t read anywhere near as much as I used to. My eyes, for one thing, aren’t the best. And I get sleepy when I read even something I like a lot. And I’m a lot pickier. If I am not into a book by about 70 pages I just drop it. It’s gotta grab me. I no longer read stuff because it feels like I should, which I have done for years because it seemed like a way to understand all forms of literature.

I am not a musician but I love music so much that I can’t listen to it when I write or work. I just want to listen to the music, lol.

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