Definitely not a Nashville party

The eleventh periodic Tropical Depression digest post

Nov 19, 2023

Here’s your eleventh periodic digest post reviewing the last few entries and tossing in some recommendations, tidbits, etc.

“Ships in the Dark,” Paul Klee, via Tate Modern

Posting has been slow in the last few months mostly because of work obligations but also because it has been a difficult season in the life department. For a while, I had the bandwidth to treat Tropical Depression like something in range of a full-time job. The typing of this paragraph is being completed as a little break—with a sick daughter at home and deadlines piling up and logistical obligations I am ignoring. (Note: This paragraph was originally typed maybe a month ago.)

I went to visit someone in a psychiatric hospital not too long ago and they told me they were hiding babies in an Afro wig to rescue them in a boat. But they weren’t babies, exactly—they were adults, but small.

Everyone loves a boat metaphor, I’ve noticed. Although in this case it was not meant to be a metaphor.

For the first stretch of writing Tropical Depression, I cut my normal slate of freelance work way back, mostly said no to stuff, and tried to focus on my energy on this Substack. I’m really glad I did that. Both in terms of the quality of the work and also just in my own satisfaction, it was one of the most rewarding periods of labor in my life.

At a certain point, I had to go back to saying yes to stuff because we needed the income. Happily, I’m really enjoying all the freelance work I’ve been doing, but miss the feeling I had when Tropical Depression felt like a job I had to wake up and think about every morning.

When I began the project, I mostly just wanted to try to do some writing free of the bureaucratic constraints of professional writing. I wanted to write about what I wanted, how I wanted, and when I wanted. At the time, I thought there was no chance that it could amount to a professional project in its own right, bringing in enough income to make a good chunk of a living. After a while, I started to think that there was a chance—maybe a small one, but a chance—that it could attract enough paying subscribers to pull that off.

Speaking of metaphors, there is a wonderful printmaking shop in Pittsburgh called Tugboat. Because, like, something little pulling something big.

So we’ll see. It pains me to slow down my pace on here, but maybe I’m getting closer to figuring out how to manage it alongside a full freelance schedule.

I don’t do this often, but I’ll do it today: If you read, but don’t subscribe, please subscribe! If you subscribe for free, I would be so honored if you’d consider getting a paid subscription to support my work.

And most of all, the sweetest thing you could possibly do (and many of you have!): If you know someone who would enjoy this Substack, please pass it along. I want to write this thing for the scattering of people who love exactly what this is. Help me find those people!

From the archives

I meant to re-post this on September 11, but forgot. For newer subscribers, here’s one of my favorite posts, from back in February: on Las Vegas, the arrow of time, America, roadtripping, unknown unknowns, the composer John Adams, the I-40 bridge over the Mississippi River, 9/11, staying up all night, pretending to be the Chrysler building, stamp controversies, and Riot the dog.

Strange Vibrations from Behind the Iron Curtain

Pleasant 60s-style folk rock from Ariel, based in Chelyabinsk, Russia. Strong endorsement for the inclusion of two horses and one dog on the cover of this album, from 1981.

These Are People Who Died, contd.

Addendum to my in memoriam post:

Dwight Tilley passed into the magic on October 18, when he had a stroke while driving and crashed into a tree. A near-legend always stuck on the outskirts of rock stardom, I will always and forever recommend Tilley’s “Looking for the Magic,” an underrated classic that belongs in the pantheon of twentieth century popular music (featured on Tropical Depression mixtape #2).

Here’s a gem of a video of the Dwight Tilley band performing in 1977, with Bill Pitcock IV on guitar, Phil Seymour on drums, and can’t miss him: Tom Petty on bass, nearly overcome by his own grooviness. I endorse Nate DiMeo of the Memory Palace’s take: “I love how his head bob and shimmy echos the echo.” The grooviest dudes.

Alive Like Blood

And as addendum to my Eggleston post, let me recommend Tropical Depression reader Will Stephenson’s 2018 Oxford American piece on Eggleston, the doomed dentist who was his muse, quantum electrodynamics and ancient volcanic activity, the horror and the redness of red, an unsolved mystery, and other stuff. First few paragraphs to rope you in:

William Eggleston first tried peyote one summer in the early 1960s while visiting a friend in Oxford, Mississippi. You can find the story in a memoir by University of Mississippi football star (and later Dark Shadows actor) Jimmy Hall, who was there at the time. Eggleston had invited Hall to join him and his friend, and the three men puzzled over the green-blue cactus in its cardboard box, purchased via mail-order from a nursery in Laredo, Texas.
They ate it straight, stripping off the spines and skin and chewing it to a pulp, washing down the bitter taste with ouzo and cigarettes. They also brewed it into tea. Before long, the effects began to reveal themselves. For a time they sat in silence, enjoying a comfortable introspection. They laughed a little, too. The third friend quoted Allen Ginsberg and clapped off beat. Inspired, Hall leapt up off the couch and danced his version of a Ghost Dance. After a while, he noticed Eggleston sitting very still and staring at him with an obscure, stony concentration. Hall asked what he was looking at.
“You,” Eggleston said. “You are pulsating red.”
Keeping his solemn expression, Eggleston stood and announced that they should leave at once for Laredo—a thirteen-hour drive—to procure more peyote. Who could argue?

Go read the whole thing.

Dept. of Paintings I Like

“Portrait of Oranges,” by Palestinian artist Sliman Mansour (2015). You can see more of his work at his Instagram page; here’s his website.

Low Was the Moon

To take us out, here’s Sammy Davis Jr. on vocals, trombone, vibraphones, and drums, performing “Perdido” in 1959.

Tropical Depression