1. Tired of complaining all the time about everything, I decided I needed a break. Not a permanent one, but at least for a few days. As I ran through the snow (something I had been complaining about), it occurred to me that the most miraculous things in the world, the things we want to remember, are rarely covered in the news. Like this statue on the banks of the Hudson, sitting in the high tide with snow on its shoulders, contemplating the rest of Manhattan to the south.
2. The problem with the news, I realized (with the understanding that I'm far from the first to do so) is not so much that it ignores these moments of peace/tranquility/beauty, but that it crowds them out. Like who has time to contemplate the slow, majestic curve of Riverside Drive when you're worried about whether they're going to 'release the memo.'
3. Or be mesmerized by the patterns formed by the ice on top of the wall.
4. I often complain a lot about Twitter and Facebook, but since I'm not complaining this week, I thought about the woman who tweeted about finding a tired bee in the park, where she had gone to memorize a poem. She brought the bee home and fed it sugar and water, and kept it for the night under a strainer before releasing it the next morning. What could be more important?
5. Or someone else who said they spent an hour going back and forth between 'you aren't' and 'you're not' before moving on to the next word in the poem they were writing. These moments meant far more to me than anything about 'the memo' or whatever else was being engineered by the right wing to punish those who least deserve it.
6. On my Facebook, I was happy to see that one of my old friends from high school was getting ready for Mardi Gras, where he's marching -- as he does every year -- with a group who assemble reclining chairs, the ones you would expect to see in the den of a 1970s house, on wheels. It's pointless and ridiculous but hilarious and fun.
7. I never get tired of seeing people post pictures of animals they love. It makes me think of a movie I saw not too long ago called Kedi, about the stray cats of Istanbul and the saints who take care of them. One of these caretakers, an old fisherman, said something to the effect of how, if you can't love an animal, you can't love a person, either, which I have found to be true in my experience. (I highly recommend this movie if you love animals or are interested in seeing a movie about Muslims who are not depicted as maniacal terrorists.)
8. There's a part of me that feels guilty about carving out this space for bees and stray cats and other small miracles, which I know is a luxury that many people don't have these days.
9. But a bigger part, after so many years of protesting and marching and being consumed by anger for the plutocracy and those who (consciously and unconsciously) support it, is exhausted. Do I want to be ninety years old and shaking my fist at the latest abomination of the right wing? (Not that I would ever criticize anyone of any age for protesting in whatever way they see fit.)
10. For me, at least this week, the answer is no: I would rather be sitting quietly in the snow, maybe shivering as I listen to the lapping water, quietly hoping for the change that may or may not ever come.
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02/03/2018
ORDER HERE
A RADICAL NEW MYTH ABOUT SEX, FAITH, AND THOSE OF US WHO WILL NEVER DIE
A young boy wanders into the woods of Harlem and witnesses the abduction of his sister by a glowing creature. Forty years later, now working as a New York City homicide detective, Gus is assigned to a case in which he unexpectedly succumbs to a vision that Helen is still alive. To find her, he embarks on an uorthodox investigation that leads to an ancient civilization of gods and the people determined to bring them back.
In this colossal new novel from the author of The Metropolis Case, the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice collides with a new religion founded by three corporate office workers, creating something beautiful, illogical, and overwhelming. Part sex manifesto, part religious text, part Manhattan noir—with a dose of deadly serious, internet inspired satire—#gods is a sprawling inquest into the nature of faith and resistance in the modern world. With each turn of the page, #gods will leave you increasingly reborn.
Praise for #gods
“#gods is a mystery, an excavation of myths, an index of modern life, a gay coming-of-age story, an office satire, a lyrical fever dream, a conspiracy. One of the most ambitious novels in recent memory—and a wild, possibly transformative addition to the canon of gay literature—it contains multitudes, and seethes with brilliance.” —Mark Doten, author of The Infernal
“Matthew Gallaway’s #gods is a novel so brilliant, so funny, so full of strange and marvelous things, I couldn’t stop writing OMG WTF I <3 THIS SO MUCH in its margins. It’s rare to find a novel that so dazzlingly reinvigorates age-old meditations on faith and f&!*ing, art and eros. Luminous, enterprising, and sublimely cheeky, #gods tells the story, the myth, the dream of the human soul in all its glorious complexity.” —Suzanne Morrison, author of Yoga Bitch
“Matthew Gallaway’s storytelling manages to be both dreamy and serious; lean and luxurious. His words carry an incantatory power of mythic storytelling where beauty and savagery wrap around each other like bright threads in a gorgeous tapestry.” —Natasha Vargas-Cooper, author of Mad Men Unbuttoned: A Romp Through 1960s America
“If the ancient gods were just like us, only more so, then the same could be said for this strange, wonderful book, in which the mundane sorrows and small triumphs of very ordinary lives glow ever so slightly around the edges, sometimes quite literally. At once an oddly romantic send-up of dead-end office culture and an offbeat supernatural procedural, #gods is terrifically weird, melancholy, sexy, and charming.” —Jacob Bacharach, author of The Bend of the World
'It’s to the credit of Matthew Gallaway’s enchanting, often funny first novel that it doesn’t require a corresponding degree of obsession from readers, but may leave them similarly transported: the book is so well written — there’s hardly a lazy sentence here — and filled with such memorable lead and supporting players that it quickly absorbs you into its worlds.'
-- The New York Times
Music: Death Culture at Sea and Saturnine
Listen or download songs and records from my indie-rock past with Saturnine here and Death Culture at Sea here.
Music Video: Remembrance of Things Past
Watch the rock opera Remembrance of Things Past written and performed by Saturnine and Frances Gibson, starring Bennett Madison and Sheila McClear.
Video: The Chaos Detective
The Chaos Detective is a series about a man searching for 'identity' as he completes assignments from a mysterious organization. Watch the first episode (five parts) on YouTube.