This Is Not a Love Song

I love my state.

I just walked into CVS, asked for the booster, and got it. No fuss, no cost.

Of course, now the RFK, Jr. is trying to take the aluminium out of vaccines, I kind of think I should just walk in every day and ask 'em what they've got for me and just take it. Hopefully, at some point the booster will show up on Docket, the vaccine tracker app that I downloaded. Also, I hope that at some point Wisconsin will join the states that are reporting and I can see all the things I had as a child.

Anyway, how are you?

I never ended up writing up my Wednesday reading blog so I will tell you about my feelings about How High We Go in the Dark by Sequoia Nagamatsu which I listened to via audiobook. This was another book that felt to me like mainstream fiction masquerading as science fiction. It was BETTER at being science fiction than, say, Station Eleven, by which I mean that the future seemed slightly more thought out/plausible. Although, like all of these fake SF books (and I shouldn't call them that, but they're lit fic SF, not SF SF), the SF elements were entirely backdrop to the emotional stuff--and then there were the occasional suspender snapping moments, like the weird place people seemed to go when they were in a disease induced coma.

So, the plot, simply, was: "I want to write about COVID without writing about COVID, so how about a plague that comes from a melting permafrost that is actually far more deadly?" And, then Nagamatsu wrote a bunch of vignettes about death, dying, and grief with vaguely science fictional settings, like the Disney World death park, where parents would take terminally ill children to give them one last happy day before murdering them on a rollercoaster. I mean, this was a tough book to get through? But, there was a lot that I ended up finding compelling because this is one of the few books we have that address our collective trauma over COVID. There is literally a couple in one of the chapter vignettes which is comprised of an EMT worker and a pathologist and it's about how, really, this is the worst timeline for both their jobs and it f*cks them up in different ways.

( Spoiler for the end of How High We Go in the Dark )
The book I'm listening to now is Set My Heart to Five by Simon Stephenson, which is 100% a Murderbot fanfic, again, masquerading as lit fic. The schtick here is that robots now live among us, but really don't. (This is clearly the Preservation side of things, where people sort of accept that robots are human-like, but also treat them as disposable, etc.) Robots now do the jobs no one wants--in the protag's case, it's dentistry. They are programmed to be perfectly pleasant enough and human enough, but have a definite termination date. This robot wakes up one morning with an error, it has spontaneously generated the number of teeth, on average, it will clean/care for until its retirement (which in this case is PERMANENT retirement, not freedom from service.) And the number is counting down with every new day. The robot immediately requests to have a hard reboot, but the error isn't considered significant enough to warrant a memory wipe. I've only just started this novel, but it's clear that this is an exploration of mortality and community--as the robot isn't supposed to have feelings, but it's clearly developing them.

I've been sticking with it, because who doesn't love a Murderbot fanfic?

Up at the cabin, I also read a bunch of manga. Probably nothing to really write home about, however? (As always, I am keeping tabs over at Mangakast--https://mangakast.wordpress.com/-- if you do want ot know the details.) The guy who wrote that weird little second chances manga, Hirayasumi, that I loved has (or had, I don't actually know which came first off the top of my head) another short series about two aliens who come to Earth on an invasion scouting mission, but decide (as one does) that Earth is kind of too cool to try to oppress called Tokyo Alien Bros. Although, interestingly--and I'm not sure I've seen this really dealt with in another manga--one of the aliens decides it would be fun to be the other gender for a day, nearly gets raped, and has a profound change of heart about the goodness of humankind. What is notable about this, is that previously this particular character was the playboy of the two brothers and was kind of a love 'em and leave 'em sort. So, it's shockingly self-reflective for this kind of humor manga, actually? I am very on the fence about whether I liked Tokyo Alien Bros because, where Hirayasumi has this lovely, slow pace, Tokyo Alien Bros is kind of all over the place. 

Otherwise, I've been catching up with the anime that they made of The Summer Hikaru Died, which is a weird combination of horror and gay romance. The anime is now past where I've read in the manga and I'm getting the vibe that maybe part of the tension in the story is that the not-Hikaru character, the guy who loves the monster that returned in Hikaru's body--his dad might be gay, too? Which... would be kind of a cool twist because it would explain why the main character is so gloomy and depressed. It seems like maybe the family is split/not split. Dad has taken a job as a lumberjack and that keeps him away from home a lot, and mom is clearly DONE with dad on some level, but this is a small, SMALL village and so they aren't broken u/separated. And, it's been a weird thing in the background that I'd been reading as "oh, an affair," but after a scene from last night's episode, I'm thinking, "OH! A gay affair!"

Anyway, I'm probably wrong. But, it will be interesting to see if they go there.

I should probably read the manga again and see if I can suss it out. It looks like the manga is maybe still ongoing, though.

So, yeah. I'm about to head into my writers' group Zoom. Tonight is Pendragons (not Wyrdsmiths.) Pendragons is a group I started during the pandemic and includes folks from all over the country. When Laurie Winter was still in Montana, I think we had all the continental US time zones covered, which is kind of cool. 

K. Goodnight. Hope you have a good one.

While I was at Gaylaxicon, an email went out form Cole Sarar (she/they) who runs Sci-Fi Reading Hour desperately looking for any author who might be up for a performance in early November. I checked my calendar right away because I really enjoyed naomikritzer 's performance last year. I wrote about this here, but this is the gig where Cole pairs a musician and an author together. In Naomi's case, it was like getting to watch a radio play because the musician had the ability to do sound effects and she had reworked the piece so that Cole and she could share the narrative.

At any rate, ever since then, I've been thinking about what of mine might work for something like this. I don't write a lot of short stories, though I have written some. The short stories I have written don't tend to get very broad distribution (by which I mean, I have yet to truly break into any kind of traditional short story market. The one I did get in in the 1990s? SF AGE? Now defunct.) A few years ago, I wrote something for one of rachelmanija 's projects that I really loved. It was about a supervillain trying to adopt a cat. It's very silly and tonally and conceptually, the complete opposite of naomikritzer 's "A Year Without Sunshine," so I had no idea if that would appeal to Cole. But, I was recently reminded at Diversicon that one of my strengths is humor. I decided to take a chance and I sent that along with a note that said, "You're probably already booked, but in case not, I'm up for it, and here's the piece I'm considering performing."

I don't know if I was, in fact, the only one to reply or if my being ready with a specific piece made me more appealing than any others who jumped in, but I got the gig.

I will, of course, be reminding you as this gets closer, but for your records here's the pertenent information: the performance will be Sunday, November 2 at the Bryant-Lake Bowl & Theater (https://www.bryantlakebowl.com/). Doors open at 6 pm and the show starts at 7 pm. There will be a post-show interview with both the writer and the musician at 8:00 pm. Cost is $10 in advance and $15 at the door*. (Braynt-Lake Bowl has its November calendar up, but this show isn't, for obvious reasons, up yet.)

Also, my co-performer will be the lovely and talented Scott Keever who says this about himself: Scott Keever is an award-winning guitarist and composer from Minneapolis. He has specialized in solo guitar, primarily fingerstyle, utilizing resophonic, classical, jazz and folk guitar sounds in his explorations while also focusing on Celtic and Eastern European styles. His stylistic range can be heard on his solo albums "Solo Guitar: Vol. 1" (2018) and “Solo Guitar: Vol. 2” (2022) (both available on Spotify and Apple Music) As well as being a solo performer, Scott plays guitar, Bulgarian tambura and oud for Orkestar Bez Ime (OBI), an award-winning Twin Cities band that specializes in Balkan dance music. He is also currently a member of chamber pop group Follow The Firefly and has recently worked with Ukrainian Village Band. He has been a long-time musician and performer in the local Minnesota theater scene and has appeared in productions with Brave New Workshop, Flying Foot Forum, Walking Shadow Theater, Ethnic Dance Theater, O’Shea Irish Dance and Table Salt Productions. He has also composed music for short films, documentaries, theater, radio and podcasts.

If that sweetens the deal for you. Please come if you're interested, yada yada, but what I really wanted to tell you about was the rehearsal yesterday morning. 

Our schedules are such that all of us were available in the morning. We met at Cole's South Minneapolis house at 10:00 am. 

It is always a challenge for me to navigate Minneapolis. When I first moved to the Cities, I lived in Minneapolis, but now, after decades of living in St. Paul, I find that whatever fey creatures rule the leylines of Minneapolis have rejected me. GPS mostly helps? It still managed to lie to me about which side of the street Cole's house was on so I spent several confused minutes trying to decide whether or not we were actually supposed to meet at the taco shop at the corner, or what. But, thanks to my chronic fear of being late, I had plenty of time to figure it out and managed to arrive nearly precisely on time.

Cole's house is a typical Minneapolis two-story affair. (How do I describe this to out-of-towners? A lot of our houses in the Twin Cities are older, at least by Midwestern standards, so I'd guess this was a Craftsman era house--early 1900s.)  Cole did not offer the full house tour, but I was immediately at home to see a dining room table full of art supplies and other child-friendly detrius. It was a lovely, lived-in house. We chatted about this and that while waiting for Scott to arrive. Cole's ethnic heritage is Turkish and so she offered Turkish tea. I've had (and loved) Turkish coffee, but I was very intregued by Turkish tea, so I said yes immediately.  During that conversation I learned that their father immigrated from Istanbul, but never became a US Citizen. We spent some time trying to decide if that made her a first generation immigrant or second. We settled on one and a half, which I found amusing. 

Scott arrived in an extroverted, (likely) undiagnosed ADHD clamor. I, of course, liked him immediately. But, between Scott and I, thoughtful Cole had a tendency to get left behind as conversation lept from subject to subject without even a pause for a breath. I spend at least part of the time pausing Scott to make sure Cole--OUR ACTUAL HOST--was included.

I'm pretty sure that Cole hoped for this rehersal to be no more than an hour and a half, but we ended up going three hours. 

Whew.

The way this show works Cole will also read something, so we started by listening to their story. They had sent us something ahead of time, but as Scott and I sat on the floor listening it was very clear that what she sent was NOT this story. After it was over we had a laugh because Cole had been saying that the piece they wrote "matched" mine in tone, but what we'd gotten in the email was so much DARKER that I spent some time thinking, "Wow, well maybe humor wasn't as self-evident as I thought?" But, no, it was just a clerical error. Cole had accidentally sent us the piece that had gone with the previous month's show! 

I read my piece and then we spent a little time trying to figure out the order if the show, who would read first, etc. That's all still up in the air, and I don't think it really much matters. I think Cole's piece is longer than mine, but we need to fill an hour one way or the other.

Then, somehow, the conversation got on Neil Gaiman and that whole horror show and I discovered I have a ton of friends in common with Scott thanks to his association with Cat's Laughing and the general Venn Diagram of nerds, music, and Renaissance Festival. 

It was a good time, but ran late and so then I made a tactical financial error by suggesting to Mason that we hit his favorite Korean fried chicken place for lunch. We had a great time and great food, but this--it turned out--was not the time of the month to splurge. Money is a huge argument in my household and so the rest of the evening was not nearly as fun as how the day started. 

Captialism, man. I could really do without it.



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*If you're local and want to go but can't afford it, let me know. I have two comp tickets as part of the package. My wife never attends my readings and my son will be out of town, and I hate to waste these.