The school of Earl

Earl Rich was a great beauty, although you can't tell so much from his photographs, he was not photogenic. You had to see him in motion to truly appreciate him.

He was robbed of all his future years of glory at age 31 in a motorcycle accident.

Earl and I had a primarily epistolary relationship, if you count emails as letters. I've shared some on this blog:

Reality sandwich - I had the minister at Earl's memorial service read this out loud.  

 

Between you and me - the saga of our manager, Lisa who was sexually harassing him. 

And then there was his interest in quantum mechanics. 

This is from January 9, 1995

I must say, I was a little nervous about having you as an office mate at first - some women have that affect on me - but it has proven to be a very enlightening (and enjoyable) experience, without impeding my productivity! I bet I could a lot from you.

What about this guy (girl person, god) BRAHMA - is he really the creator of the universe, or just another lame excuse for a religious idol?

On a more serious note, have you ever heard of a guy named Neils Bohr? Apparently, he and Einstein had this big argument about Quantum Mechanics. Bohr said to Al: "You are not thinking, you are merely being logical." Pretty smooth, eh? I wonder which process our job requires...

...I will leave you with this thought from the chapter on Zen Banditos and the UnderLying Nature of Reality: The division between the microcosmic and macrocosmic is probably an illuisiory one, the result of the human mind to CATEGORIZE phenomena.

They say ignorance is bliss. Oh the joys of a public school education.

Until tomorrow,

Your slave 'till the end,

Earl - the Particle Man - Rich

From January 12, 1995

...your reference to sub-atomic particles is relevant, or should I say "charged." This dude says (or said) that the worldview of particle physics is a picture of chaos beneath order. I find that this theory applies directly to the status of my checking account. 

Anyway, it was, as usual, very nice to hear from you. (how's that for polite?)

Later Daze,

Earl (soon to be a wall away)

P. S. 

As you read this E-Mail, sub-atomic particles are moving through you at the rate of several per minute.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't.

He was soon to be a wall away because our manager, Lisa, the one who was sexually harassing him, didn't like us getting along so well, so moved him into an office with herself. Oof, such craziness. Of course this did not stop the emails, and in fact only caused them to increase since we could no longer simply chat.

The last line of the PS refers to the Almond Joy campaign slogan, already 18 years old in 1995. I thought it was a pretty funny PS though.

From January 17, 1995:

Of course my book on bandits exists! I've even discovered a chapter called "Schrodinger's Bandito". In fact, there's a quote from Erwin himself, but I won't reference it here as it's not relevant.

This quote, however, may be extremely relevant: "The mutual attraction of two celestial bodies is inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them." Yes, another one from Al's bullpen. He felt that sublimation was an art best left to the democrats. 

The REAL Program Manager,

Mr. Quark

PS 

It's incredible how much you remind me of this intensely-cool character (Mirna Minx) from "A Confederacy of Dunces." If you get a chance, you've gotta read it, maybe I'll pick up another copy...

PPS 

Thanks to your radical nature, my pacifistic outlook is rapidly diminishing.

He was such an expert tease. No wonder he drove our manager Lisa bonkers.

Today - yes today - thirty years later - I finally looked up this "book on bandits" and it turns out to be a novel from 1986 called "Cosmic Banditos: a contrabandista's quest for the meaning of life" by Allan Weisbecker. From his Wikipedia page I see Weisbecker was a surfer, and wrote about surfing, which is probably how Earl came to know of him, since Earl loved surfing.

So now I know why he referred to himself as "Mr. Quark." 

From the publisher of Cosmic Banditos:

Mr.Quark is a down-on-his-luck pot smuggler hiding out in the mountains of Columbia with his dog, High Pockets, and a small band of banditos led by the irascible José. Only months before, these three and their fearless associates were rolling millions in cash and high grade marijuana, eluding prosecution on "ridiculously false" drug and terrorism charges. But times have quickly grown lean, and to liven up their exile, José decides to mug a family of American tourists. Among the spoils are physics texts, which launch Mr. Quark on a sidesplitting, boisterous adventure north to California, where he confronts the owner of the books with his own theories on relativity, the nature of the universe and looking for the meaning of life in all the wrong places.

In my defense, at the time I first read the email, you couldn't just Google around until you found something. In 1995 most people's experience of the Internet was gated communities - at work, Earl and I sent emails via Lotus Notes, and at home, we emailed via America Online. How did we get by in those ancient times?

On the other hand I did immediately read "A Confederacy of Dunces" to learn more about this "Mirna Minx" character. Her name is actually "Myrna Minkoff" but I believe the protagonist, Ignatius J. Reilly, refers to her as a "minx" at one point. 

I was not exactly sure how to feel about the comparison. Earl clarified in an email on January 18

Attention! PARALLEL is an important concept (even with sublimation). Parallel thoughts. Parallel events. Parallel realities. Parallel UNIVERSES?

According to the Chapter entitled "Zen Banditos", parallel universes do exist. And to quote the infamous Zhukov: "...the many worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics says that different editions of us live in many different worlds simultaneously. An unaccountable number of them, and all of them, are real".

Kind of puts it all in perspective, does it not? What time is that Dallas rerun on, anyway?

Oh Mirna is quite the cool one. If you enjoyed Holden's romp through the rye field, you'll love what Ignatious does with Levi Pants. His correspondence with Mirna (Myrna?) is terrific. You are her, in many ways. Aside from being quite the philosopher, sexual expert, and the voice of the underprivileged/abused, she is also a frustrated film director. It is a must read even for a woman. How do you recognize a genius? The dunces are in a confederacy against him (her). The story behind the book, and the death of the author (I believe his name is J. Kennedy Tool) is, unfortunately, a real tragedy. This book is a prerequisite to "...Banditos" in the school of Earl.

By the way, I've never seen Lisa so angry as she was today! I feared for the upright nature of my partition (Office politics are so boring!)

See ya at the factory.

EARL

"The concept of entropy dictates that when anything happens, it makes the universe a more disorderly place." Michael Talbot.

Earl knew me as a "sexual expert" strictly based on PG-rated conversations, not through physical experience.

Well now of course I am going to have to read Cosmic Banditos. I don't know what took me so long.

I find it fascinating that Michael Talbot, who died in 1992, espoused "a theoretical model of reality that suggests the physical universe is akin to a hologram based on the research and conclusions of David Bohm and Karl H. Pribram.[2] According to Talbot ESP, telepathy, and other paranormal phenomena are a product of this holographic model of reality."

One of the two incidents in my life that made me consider the possibility of extra-sensory perception happened the day Earl died, when I had an auditory hallucination that someone was calling my name and saying "Good-bye." I had never experienced anything like it before and never since. It was real enough that I got up and looked out the window to see if someone was calling me from outside. That night I had a dream someone was trying to tell me something. It wasn't until the afternoon of the next day that one of our former coworkers called to tell me that Earl was gone.

I added the links to this selection from January 19, 1995:

Dearest Nancy,

You are the swizzle-stick of my eight-hour cocktail. I hope I didn’t upset you today with that email stuff. No more from me, I promise. You have your hands full. It seems that everyone wants a piece of Nancy! 

 

I hope you re-read Confederacy. I doubt very much that you can enjoy or appreciate it fully in a one-sitting reading. But who knows? You never cease to amaze me.

So you want Banditos? I will eventually give it to you. I don't know why, but I have this reluctance to lend it to you. Actually, I have an idea from where that insecurity stems -- maybe we can delve into those dark recesses of my mind during our next drawing session. In the meantime, I've shelved Banditos, and am blowing the dust off some other classics -- "Wholeness and the Implicate Order" and "Synchronicity" -- two books I'm sure you're familiar with. I won't re-read them, however, until I've made some headway with the materials you've so graciously lent to yours truly.

Hey, I've gotta keep this letter short and boring, as I've already fallen behind in my work. But I also wanted to mention that the newspaper article you lent me makes mention of P. Caputo. He's a Pulitzer Prize winning novelist who wrote a book called "A Rumor of War" -- it's a terrific novel about his real-life experiences in Vietnam. A real enlightening book. I can't imagine Ted going through all of that. He seems like such a sweet-natured guy. The thought of him toting an AK-47 seems sort of ludicrous.

I'll leave you with this quote from the Journal of Religious Thought: "Chance is a statistical concept which 'explains' deviations within certain patterns of probability." Hey - it beats the hell out of confession.

Hoping to see you shortly,

Your Friend and Fellow Co-Worker

E. B. Weatherington, IV

I love that metaphor so much: "you are the swizzle stick of my eight-hour cocktail." It's so good, I just now suddenly wondered if it was a well-known expression that Earl had borrowed from somewhere. But when I Googled it I found nothing.

But Google's AI had plenty to say:

The phrase "you are the swizzle stick of my eight-hour cocktail" is not a common or famous quote. Instead, it appears to be a unique, poetic expression celebrating the effect someone has on another person. The phrase combines the literal function of a swizzle stick with the extended, metaphoric duration of an "eight-hour cocktail".

Interpretation of the metaphor

• The swizzle stick: This object is used to mix and blend the ingredients in a cocktail. In the metaphor, the person is the swizzle stick—the active, stirring agent who brings all the "ingredients" of the other person's life together. They have a vital, enlivening effect. 

• The cocktail: A cocktail is a complex, flavorful, and enjoyable mixture. In this case, it represents the speaker's life or experience. 

• Eight hours: The "eight-hour" modifier signifies an entire workday, a significant portion of waking life. A cocktail that lasts this long is a potent and enduring one. The effect isn't a brief or fleeting one; it's a long, sustained experience.

The full meaning 

 

Putting it all together, the phrase likely means:

• "You are the person who brings energy and joy to my life."
• "You mix up all the different parts of my day to make my life vibrant and meaningful."
• "You are the essential element that makes my extended, 'all-day' experience so much better."

It is a playful and deeply appreciative compliment, stating that the person is the key ingredient that makes the ordinary routine of life into something special and delicious.

I know Earl would have gotten a kick out of that. I hate AI but I admit, I like it too.

The only book I can find called "Synchronicity" is the one by Carl Jung. Another coincidence - the Wikipedia article on the topic says:

Contemporary physicist T. Filk writes that quantum entanglement, being "a particular type of acausal quantum correlations", was plausibly taken by Pauli as "a model for the relationship between mind and matter in the framework [...] he proposed together with Jung".[31] Specifically, quantum entanglement may be the physical phenomenon which most closely represents the concept of synchronicity.[31]

Quantum entanglement, called "spooky action at a distance" by Einstein is, according to Quanta Magazine:

The “spooky action” that bothered Einstein involves a quantum phenomenon known as entanglement, in which two particles that we would normally think of as distinct entities lose their independence. Famously, in quantum mechanics a particle’s location, polarization and other properties can be indefinite until the moment they are measured. Yet measuring the properties of entangled particles yields results that are strongly correlated, even when the particles are far apart and measured nearly simultaneously. The unpredictable outcome of one measurement appears to instantly affect the outcome of the other, regardless of the distance between them — a gross violation of locality.

I've been wondering if there was some kind of mental radio-waves/quantum entanglement thing going on between me and Earl on that September morning in 1997. I feel like it was too weird to be a coincidence, but on the other hand I don't want to believe in woo. So why not quantum entanglement?

The drawing session Earl mentions was one of two sittings we had in which I drew Earl in profile. One was in pencil, the other was pencil and then finished in Magic Marker, which is my favorite of the two. I've posted it on this blog before, but I like it, so here it is again. I have to frame this one of these days.

I hung it on the wall of my office cubicle and Lisa reported me to HR, claiming that I was sexually harassing Earl. Oh Lisa, you shameless hypocrite. Earl spoke up on my behalf, denying any harassment.

One of the reasons I'm glad I made the minister read Earl's email at the memorial service is because the last person to get up and give a testimonial about how special Earl was during the service was Lisa. I almost did not get up myself, but once I realized she would have the last word during the service, I knew I had to let Earl have the last word. I know Earl would be happy that I did that, quantum entanglement or not.

September orchid

The orchid just keeps on trucking.

George & Geoff & Yoko

Look at this great photo of John and Paul.
It's only tangentially related to this
blog post, but I stumbled on it last night
and I just really like it and wanted to use it.
--------------------------------------------

Geoff Emerick had a lot to say about working with the Beatles in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles. Emerick was responsible for many of the cool sounds the Beatles used in their most celebrated albums, and also worked with Paul McCartney, who he adored, after the Beatles broke up.

But in the book he is unsparing about people who were rude or cold to him, especially George Harrison.

Emerick:

George Harrison was always kind of a mystery to me. Although he was kind and generous with many of my EMI colleagues throughout the years, he and I just didn't have good chemistry together. He struck me as a dour, humorless man who complained a lot, and he always seemed suspicious of everyone outside of the Beatles' inner circle. He didn't interact or converse with me very much, even when we were working on one of his songs. He didn't know anything about technicalities, either—he'd just focus on the musical aspects, and discuss them with the others, or with George Martin. He might say to me, "Can you change the guitar sound a bit, Geoff?" but it wouldn't go much further than that.

I've noted what a buzzkill Harrison was. 

So George and Geoff did not have a good rapport, but on top of that, Emerick was supremely unimpressed by Harrison's musicianship, writing:

Paul sometimes actually seemed a bit embarrassed by Harrison's musical limitations; certainly there were many instances of eye-rolling when poor George was wrestling unsuccessfully with a solo or lead part. I imagine in those circumstances that Paul was frustrated, probably thinking that he could have mastered the part faster and played it better. 

 

To be fair, Harrison faced an uphill battle against the massive talents of Lennon and McCartney. For one thing, he was the youngest band member and was therefore frequently treated like a kid brother, not to be taken seriously. For another, he didn't have a songwriting partner to bounce ideas off of. I always felt that at a relatively early point, Harrison simply realized that he was never going to be a Lennon or a McCartney, which might explain why he turned to Indian music—it was his own outlet, something completely separate from the others. On occasion, Lennon would lend him a hand with a lyric or chord change, but then John would quickly become distracted or bored. I never saw Paul extend himself to George that way. His attitude toward his younger bandmate seemed to be, "You shouldn't be asking me for help; you should be doing it yourself." Perhaps it was the creative and personal tension between the two that led Harrison to keep me at arm's length, because it was obvious that I had a close relationship with Paul.

And according to Emerick, it wasn't only himself and Paul who were unimpressed:

I noticed a definite maturing in George Harrison during the course of the Revolver sessions. Up until that point, he had played a largely subordinate role in the band—after all, it was Lennon and McCartney's songs that had been the hits. But he ended up recording three original songs on this album—Im not sure why he was given so much space, but it's possible that he had put pressure on Brian Epstein to put pressure on George Martin.

All those discussions would have been held privately, outside of the studio, but there were definite economic considerations involved, because royalty income was directly tied to how many songs a writer got on each album. Paul and John weren't especially derisive of George's abilities as a songwriter or his explorations into Eastern music—at least, not in my presence—but George Martin always seemed a bit concerned about both the quality of Harrison's compositions and the amount of time being spent on them, which tended to make Harrison a bit self-conscious. With the benefit of hindsight, George Martin has expressed regret in some of his interviews about the short shrift that Harrison sometimes received, though it is somewhat understandable in light of Lennon and McCartney's phenomenal songwriting abilities. It's little wonder that George was often overshadowed. I thought that George's strongest song on Revolver was "Taxman," and George Martin must have agreed, since he decided to put it first on the album-the all-important spot generally reserved for the best song, since the idea is to try to capture the listener immediately. Harrison didn't like paying tax, and the Inland Revenue had been after him once or twice, so he wrote a song about it, with a really clever lyric ("My advice to those who die / Declare the pennies on your eyes"). There was a bit of tension on that session, though, because George had a great deal of trouble playing the solo—in fact, he couldn't even do a proper job of it when we slowed the tape down to half speed. 

I was recently listening to Revolver and was wondering myself why there were three Harrison songs on it, none of which are any good, in my opinion, including "Taxman." The only good song Harrison wrote before the magnificent "It's All To Much" was "I Need You" from the Help album. You can hear during the end credits of Help, Harrison's yelling out "I Need You by George Harrison" when his credit comes up on screen, and he was right to be proud about that song. Although to be fair, part of what I love about it is the reverb on the guitar especially towards the end, and the backing vocals. I wrote about the Help album and my love of "I Need You" way back in 2012. I almost forgot I wrote about Help, but I guess that's what happens when you have a blog for almost twenty years.

"Taxman" is considered great by many, but I can't stand it. First because the lyrics sound like they were written by a libertarian. I mean, boo-hoo, obscenely rich musician has to pay high taxes. And second, because the melody is no good. The guitar solos are very good but guess what - George, the band's lead guitarist, doesn't even play them! 

Emerick again:

After a couple of hours of watching him struggle, both Paul and George Martin started becoming quite frustrated—this was, after all, a Harrison song and therefore not something anyone was prepared to spend a whole lot of time on. So George Martin went into the studio and, as diplomatically as possible, announced that he wanted Paul to have a go at the solo instead. I could see from the look on Harrison's face that he didn't like the idea one bit, but he reluctantly agreed and then proceeded to disappear for a couple of hours. He sometimes did that-had a bit of a sulk on his own, then eventually came back. Whatever private conversations he would have with John or Paul upon his return occurred in the corridor, where none of us could hear. 

Sometimes Ringo would be part of the conference, but more often he would stay in the studio with Neil and Mal until the storm had blown over. Paul's solo was stunning in its ferocity-his guitar playing had a fire and energy that his younger bandmate's rarely matched —and was accomplished in just a take or two. It was so good, in fact, that George Martin had me fly it in again during the song's fadeout.

Emerick also confirmed what I came to think of Yoko Ono while watching Get Back a few years ago - she basically approached the world as if she was royalty. I wrote:

Amanda Hess compares Ono's behavior to a performance piece, but there's a more likely, if prosaic explanation: Ono was from a family of wealthy Japanese aristocrats. The Beatles were working-class musicians. In the world that Yoko came from, you didn't worry about the feelings of the people you outranked. Why should she care if she was irritating the fuck out of everybody?

And the next year I mentioned I had read what a classmate had to say about her:

A classmate offered a different perspective: “She never felt happy unless she was treated like a queen.”

And in Emerick's description, she's even wearing a tiara. Lennon and Ono had been in a car crash and while Ono was recuperating, Lennon had a bed brought into the recording studio during the making of Abbey Road. If only this had been caught on video and seen by all those Ono partisans like Amanda Hess.

Also, Lennon's habit of referring to Ono as "Mother" is extremely creepy.

"I'm afraid that Mother is still not too well, though," he said, suitably chastened. Even during the White Album sessions John had started referring to Yoko that way, which I always found a bit creepy.

Yoko started to say something, but before she could get a word out, the door burst open again and four men in brown coats began wheeling in a large, heavy object. For a moment, I thought it was a piano coming in from one of the other studios, but it soon dawned on me that these were proper deliverymen: the brown coats they were wearing had the word "Harrods" inscribed on the back. The object being delivered was, in fact, a bed.

Jaws dropping, we all watched as it was brought into the studio and carefully positioned by the stairs, across from the tea-and-toast setup. More brown coats appeared with sheets and pillows and somberly made the bed up. Then, without saying a word, Yoko climbed in, carefully arranging the covers around her.

I'd spent nearly seven years of my life in recording studios, and I thought l'd seen it all...but this took the cake. George Martin, John Kurlander, Phil, and I exchanged wary looks; out of the corner of my eye I could see that Paul, Ringo, and George Harrison were as gobsmacked as we were. Lennon walked over to the bed.

"Are you okay?" he asked solicitously.

Yoko mumbled an affirmative. Lennon turned to us.

"Can you put a microphone up over here so we can hear her on the headphones?" he asked. Dumbfounded, I nodded to John Kurlander and he began setting up a boom stand, suspending the microphone above the supine Mrs. Lennon's face.

For the next several weeks, Yoko lived in that bed. Her wardrobe consisted of a series of flimsy nightgowns, accessorized with a regal tiara, carefully positioned to hide the scar on her forehead from the accident. As she gained her strength, so too did she gain her confidence, slowly but surely starting to annoy the other Beatles and George Martin with her comments. She spoke in a really tiny voice, and she always referred to the Beatles in a peculiar, impersonal third-party way: "Beatles will do this, Beatles will do that," never failing to leave off the "The." That used to really irritate Paul. On occasion, he'd even try correcting her: "Actually, it's the Beatles, luv," but she persistently ignored him.

I stand by what I said in response to Get Back - Yoko Ono didn't break up the Beatles, but Lennon used her as one of his methods to break up the Beatles.

Emerick again:

We were working on the backing track to "The End"-the song designed to conclude the album's long medley-when the four Beatles trooped upstairs to listen to some playbacks. Yoko stayed behind, stretched out languorously in the bed, wearing the usual flimsy nightgown and tiara.

As we were listening, I noticed that something down in the studio had caught George Harrison's attention. After a moment or two he began staring bug-eyed out the control room window. Curious, I looked over his shoulder. Yoko had gotten out of bed and was slowly padding across the studio floor, finally coming to a stop at Harrison's Leslie cabinet, which had a packet of McVitie's Digestive Biscuits on top. Idly, she began opening the packet and delicately removed a single biscuit. Just as the morsel reached her mouth, Harrison could contain himself no longer.

"THAT BITCH!!!"

Everyone looked aghast, but we all knew exactly who he was talking about.

"She's just taken one of my biscuits!" Harrison explained. He wasn't the least bit sheepish, either. As far as he was concerned, those biscuits were his property, and no one was allowed to go near them. Lennon began shouting back at him, but there was little he could say to defend his wife (who, oblivious, was happily munching away in the studio), because he shared exactly the same attitude toward food.

Actually, I think the argument was not so much about the biscuits, but about the bed, which they had all come to deeply resent. What Harrison was really saying was "if Yoko is well enough to get out of bed and steal one of my biscuits, she doesn't need to be in the bloody bed in the first place." It almost didn't matter what the argument was about. By this stage, whenever the four of them were together it was like a tinderbox, and anything could set them off...even something as dumb as a digestive biscuit.

August orchid

I was going to repot this orchid once the blossoms faded - at this rate the blooms are going to last until autumn.

So what did the critics think of Eleanor Rigby?

The author of the New York Times' mixed review of Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, Richard Goldstein, loved the Beatles' previous album Revolver. In his review in the Village Voice, he wrote:

Revolver is a revolutionary record, as important to the expansion of pop territory as was Rubber Soul. It was apparent last year that the 12 songs in Rubber Soul represented an important advance. Revolver is the great leap forward. Hear it once and you know it’s important. Hear it twice, it makes sense. Third time around it’s fun. Fourth time, it’s subtle. On the fifth hearing, Revolver becomes profound.

As far as Eleanor Rigby though, he didn't write about the musical aspect of the song directly, instead focusing on the lyrics:

“Eleanor Rigby” is an orchestrated ballad about the agony of loneliness. Its characters, Eleanor herself and Father MacKenzie, represent sterility. Eleanor “died in the church and was buried along with her name.” The good father writes “words to the sermon that no one will hear/No one comes near.” As a commentary on the state of modern religion, this song will hardly be appreciated by those who see John Lennon as an anti-Christ. But “Eleanor Rigby” is really about the unloved and un-cared-­for. When Eleanor makes up, the narrator asks: “Who is it for?”‘ While the father darns his socks, the question is: “What does he care?”

Edward Greenfield, writing for the British newspaper the Guardian, adored Revolver and had the same kind of response to Eleanor Rigby that I did fifty years later:

"Eleanor Rigby" (with "square" string octet accompaniment) is a ballad about a lonely spinster who "wears the face that she keeps in a jar by the door" and about Father McKenzie "writing the words of sermon that no one will hear," the verses punctuated by wailing cries of "Look at all the lonely people: where do they all come from?"

There you have a quality rare in pop music, compassion, born of an artist's ability to project himself into other situations. Specific understanding of emotion comes out even in the love songs - at least the two new ones with the best tunes, both incidentally sung by Paul McCartney, the Beatle with the strongest musical staying power.

 Ray Davies of the Kinks did not like much of Revolver and as far as Eleanor Rigby:

Eleanor Rigby - I bought a Haydn LP the other day and this sounds just like it. It's all sort of quartet stuff and it sounds like they're out to please music teachers in primary schools. I can imagine John saying: 'I'm going to write this for my old schoolmistress'.

Of course John didn't actually have much to do with the song, it was Paul's baby. 

While Googling to learn more about contemporary reviews of Eleanor Rigby, I was flabbergasted to find that Paul McCartney published an article in The New Yorker about writing Eleanor Rigby in 2021 (Archived version here) and I somehow missed it until now.

I wrote about Eleanor Rigby in December 2016 - almost nine years now - called The loneliness of Paul McCartney, in which I marveled that it had been written by a 24-year-old social butterfly pop star. 

In the New Yorker article, McCartney explains how this miracle came to pass:

Growing up, I knew a lot of old ladies—partly through what was called Bob-a-Job Week, when Scouts did chores for a shilling. You’d get a shilling for cleaning out a shed or mowing a lawn. I wanted to write a song that would sum them up. Eleanor Rigby is based on an old lady that I got on with very well. I don’t even know how I first met “Eleanor Rigby,” but I would go around to her house, and not just once or twice. I found out that she lived on her own, so I would go around there and just chat, which is sort of crazy if you think about me being some young Liverpool guy. Later, I would offer to go and get her shopping. She’d give me a list and I’d bring the stuff back, and we’d sit in her kitchen. I still vividly remember the kitchen, because she had a little crystal-radio set. That’s not a brand name; it actually had a crystal inside it. Crystal radios were quite popular in the nineteen-twenties and thirties. So I would visit, and just hearing her stories enriched my soul and influenced the songs I would later write.

The contemporary reviews of Eleanor Rigby mention that the song uses classical music instruments, but don't comment on how powerful they sound in the recording. That is what is so striking about the song, in addition to its compassion. The Beatles' sound engineer Geoff Emerick had a lot to say about the recording in his book Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of The Beatles, 

There was also a bit of stress during the recording of “Eleanor Rigby,” though for an entirely different reason. After hearing Paul play this beautiful song on acoustic guitar, George Martin felt that the only accompaniment that was necessary was that of a double string quartet: four violins, two violas, and two cellos. Paul wasn’t immediately enamored of the concept—he was afraid of it sounding too cloying, too “Mancini”—but George eventually talked him into it, assuring him he would write a string arrangement that would be suitable.

“Okay, but I want the strings to sound really biting,” Paul warned as he signed off on the idea. I took note of what he said and began thinking of how to best accomplish that. 

 

String quartets were traditionally recorded with just one or two microphones, placed high, several feet up in the air so that the sound of the bows scraping couldn’t be heard. But with Paul’s directive in mind, I decided to close-mic the instruments, which was a new concept. The musicians were horrified! One of them gave me a look of disdain, rolled his eyes to the ceiling, and said under his breath, “You can’t do that, you know.”

His words shook my confidence and made me start to second-guess myself. But I carried on regardless, determined to at least hear what it sounded like.

We did one take with the mics fairly close, then on the next take I decided to get extreme and move the mics in really close—perhaps just an inch or so away from each instrument. It was a fine line; I didn’t want to make the musicians so uncomfortable that they couldn’t give their best performance, but my job was to achieve what Paul wanted. That was the sound he liked, and so that was the miking we used, despite the string players’ unhappiness. To some degree, I could understand why they were so upset: they were scared of playing a bum note, and being under a microscope like that meant that any discrepancy in their playing was going to be magnified. Also, the technical limitations at the time were such that we couldn’t easily drop in, so they had to play the whole song correctly from beginning to end every time.

Even without peering through the control room glass, I could hear the sound of the eight musicians sliding their chairs back before every take, so I had to keep going down there and moving the mics back in closer after every take; it was comic, really. Finally, George Martin told them pointedly to stop moving off mic. In the end, the players did a good job, though they clearly were annoyed, so much so that they declined an invitation to listen to the playback. We didn’t really care what they thought, anyway—we were pleased that we had come up with another new sound, which was really a combination of Paul’s vision and mine.

It was during the Revolver sessions that I realized I simply couldn’t rely on textbook recording techniques in terms of mic positioning and placement. The Beatles were demanding more, so much more, of both me and of the technology. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were making tremendous advancements in the recording process.

Emerick was an important, if usually overlooked aspect of the Beatles' sound and he participated in most of their recordings except "Let It Be" and most of the White Album. And wow, does he have opinions about the Beatles, which made his book controversial. He likely would have agreed with the Guardian critic's assessment of McCartney as "Beatle with the strongest musical staying power." George Harrison, on the other hand... but I will write about that in another post.

The Eleanor Rigby section of the movie "Yellow Submarine":

The New York Times did not like Sgt. Pepper

Making Pepper 

Recently I was listening to "Eleanor Rigby" by the Beatles, which appeared on their Revolver album in 1966 and I thought: "what must the critics have made of this? It must have seemed so alien to anything they'd ever heard under the label "rock and roll." 

I've written about Eleanor Rigby on this blog before, about what an amazing accomplishment the song is, especially considering it was written by Paul McCartney when he was 24 years old.

So I decided to do some Googling and in a minute I discovered that the New York Times was none too impressed by the Beatles' next album, "Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" when it was first released:

Like an over-attended child “Sergeant Pepper” is spoiled. It reeks of horns and harps, harmonica quartets, assorted animal noises and a 91-piece orchestra. On at least one cut, the Beatles are not heard at all instrumentally. Sometimes this elaborate musical propwork succeeds in projecting mood. The “Sergeant Pepper” theme is brassy and vaudevillian. “She’s Leaving Home,” a melodramatic domestic saga, flows on a cloud of heavenly strings. And, in what is becoming a Beatle tradition, George Harrison unveils his latest excursion into curry and karma, to the saucy accompaniment of three tambouras, a dilruba, a tabla, a sitar, a table harp, three cellos and eight violins.

Actually the author thought "Within You Without You" was "among the strongest cuts" which I have to disagree with. It is the first song on side two, on the olde thyme vinyl album and after I heard it a few times - I listened to Sgt. Pepper a lot after I first bought it - I used to put the record's needle down at the end of the track and start side two right off with "When I'm Sixty-Four."

I do like a few George songs, but this is not one of them.

I have recently been listening to the audio book "Revolver - how the Beatles Re-Imagined Rock and Roll" and the author pointed out that a common theme in George songs is disapproval. And after quickly making a mental inventory of George songs, I concluded: "so true!" 

His negativity was a running theme in the Let it Be sessions, which is why I called him a buzzkill.

And sure enough Within You Without You expresses disapproval. The lyrics include:

We were talking about the love that's gone so cold

And the people who gain the world and lose their soul

They don't know, they can't see, are you one of them?

Because if you are "one of them" then George disapproves.

Even my favorite George song, the under-appreciated "It's All Too Much" (this guy gets it) has a title that is basically a complaint. Although fortunately the rest of the lyrics are more hippie-trippy than disapproving and then there are the immortal lines:

Set me on a silver sun, for I know that I'm free

Show me that I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea

I will have more to say about the Revolver book soon.

The New York Times review doesn't even mention some of the songs on Pepper: Lovely Rita, Good Morning, With a Little Help, Getting Better and Fixing a Hole are ignored. And "She's Leaving Home" is compared, unfavorably, to Eleanor Rigby. 

But the reviewer loves "A Day in the Life":

With one important exception, “Sergeant Pepper” is precious but devoid of gems. “A Day in the Life” is such a radical departure from the spirit of the album that it almost deserves its peninsular position (following the reprise of the “Sergeant Pepper” theme, it comes almost as an afterthought). It has nothing to do with posturing or put-on. It is a deadly earnest excursion in emotive music with a chilling lyric. Its orchestration is dissonant but sparse, and its mood is not whimsical nostalgia but irony.

With it, the Beatles have produced a glimpse of modern city life that is terrifying. It stands as one of the most important Lennon-McCartney compositions, and it is a historic Pop event.

“A Day in the Life” starts in a description of suicide. With the same conciseness displayed in “Eleanor Rigby,” the protagonist begins: “I read the news today, oh boy.”

There's Eleanor Rigby again. I'll be talking about the critics' response to that song next.

In the meantime - it's all too much!

Still blooming

To my surprise, my orchid is still blooming and it's almost the middle of summer. How about that?

Billy Herndon spills some hot tea ~ was Abe Lincoln a murderbot?

Cole Escola created an outrageous version
of Mary Lincoln, but if you believe
William Herndon, the real Mary Lincoln
was only slightly less outrageous.
-----------------------------------------

I was aware of much of what Lincoln's law partner William Herndon had said about Lincoln and especially Mary Lincoln, but it's quite the experience to get it all straight from the horse's mouth in a collection of Herndon's letters, gathered together by Emanuel Hertz in a book published in 1940 called The hidden Lincoln : from the letters and papers of William H. Herndon available to peruse for free on the Internet Archive.

The letters span about 25 years and are to various correspondents, so Herndon repeats himself quite a bit. 

There are three topics that he loved to talk about most:

• Lincoln's family
• Mary Lincoln, raging maniac
• Lincoln's character

But first before I get into those things, I have to ask: was Abraham Lincoln a murderbot?

I ask because in episode six of the current Murderbot series on Apple + TV... I'll borrow the description from TV Tropes:

As Mensah calms, Murderbot says "Let's fix this," before starting to spout gibberish. Mensah notes that it's leaking — the gash in its side from the printer piece has not sealed and some liquid is still coming out. She suggests that it sit down, but it says it's fine, just a little low on lubricant, as its systems show "Emergency System Online". It starts to insist that things that would incapacitate a human wouldn't even...and then it passes out, falling flat on its face... Murderbot wakes up, with a 'check lubricant' alert being replaced by 'lubricant refreshed', and continues its sentence: "It wouldn't even affect me." 

Apparently, according to Herndon, Abraham Lincoln did the same thing, as recounted in an 1870 letter to Ward Hill Lamon:

Once Lincoln got kicked at a mill and knocked crazy. Mr. Lincoln told me this: that he had to shell the corn with his hands and take it to mill on horseback, corn in one end and rocks in the other ; that he went to mill on his father's old mare ; that he "had to wait his turn to grind"; that it was getting late in the evening, he then being some two (2) miles from home, not fifty, as stated by Holland ; that he hitched in his old mare to the sweep-pole or lever that turned the wheel, and Lincoln, being in a great hurry to get through with his grist, urged up the old mare to her full speed, round and round, round and round and faster and faster; that he thought she ought to go faster and that he struck her, with a stick, saying at the same time, or intended rather to say: "Get up — you lazy old devil," and just as he struck her and got to the words which were uttered: "Get up — " the old mare protested with her heels on Lincoln's head against such treatment. 

Lincoln just as he had uttered : "Get up," was kicked, knocked crazy, was picked up, carried home, came to that night, say about twelve o'clock, and that, upon coming to consciousness, Lincoln finished the sentence: "you lazy old devil." 

He finished the sentence just as he intended to speak it, commencing where he left off. Lincoln told me this; and he and I used to speculate on it. The first question was: why was not the whole expression uttered ; and the second one : why finish at all? We came to the conclusion — I being somewhat of a psychologist as well as physiologist— he aiding me and I him, that the mental energy, force, had been flashed by the will on the nerves and thence on the muscles and that that energy, force, or power had fixed the muscles in the exact shape, or form, or attitude, or position, to utter those words ; that the kick shocked him, checked momentarily the action of the muscles ; and that so soon as that check was removed or counteracted by a returning flow of life and energy, force, and power in their proper channels, that the muscles fired off, as it were functioned as the nervous energy flashed there by the will through the nerves — acted automatically under a power in repose. This seemed to us to be the legitimate conclusion of things.

It find this such an amusing coincidence.

In his letters, Herndon had much to say about Lincoln's family:

About Dennis Hanks, Lincoln's first cousin once-removed:

Again, John and Dennis Hanks were very young when they left Kentucky and Indiana especially. John Hanks would state the exact truth — if he knew it. Dennis Hanks would go a mile out of his way to lie.

In spite of Hanks being a liar, Herndon seemed to believe Lincoln's father Thomas, at least partly on Dennis Hanks' testimony, had been castrated at some point in his life - either before he married Nancy Hanks, in which case Abe was not his son, or after:

Dennis Hanks told me that Thomas Lincoln, when tolerably young, and before he left Kentucky, was castrated. Abraham Enloe said, often said, that Abraham Lincoln was his child. All these facts, if facts they are, I received from different persons, at different times and places.

And Lincoln's mother Nancy Hanks was born illegitimate:

Lincoln and I had a case in the Menard circuit court which required a discussion on hereditary qualities of mind, natures, etc. Lincoln's mind was dwelling on his case, mine on something else. Lincoln all at once said: "Billy, I'll tell you something, but keep it a secret while I live. My mother was a bastard, was the daughter of a nobleman so called of Virginia. My mother's mother was poor and credulous, etc., and she was shamefully taken advantage of by the man. My mother inherited his qualities and I hers. All that I am or hope ever to be I get from my mother, God bless her.

Wikipedia provides additional confirmation. 

In one letter Herndon attests that Lincoln only pooped once a week - TMI!

Herdon also wrote:

He took life easy, had no haste, no spontaneous emotion, no impulse, was sympathetic and emotional in presence of the object. I know Lincoln better than I know myself. He was so good and so odd a man, how in the hell could I help study him! Mr. Lincoln's poverty, a curse of his origin, the origin and chastity of his near and dear relations, his father's cold and inhuman treatment of him sometimes, the death of Ann Rutledge, his intense ambition, and society not energetically recognizing his greatness, etc., etc., intensified his organic melancholy.

Herndon spilled the tea about Lincoln's "infidelity" - that is to Christianity:

As to Mr. Lincoln's religious views, he was in short an infidel, was a universalist, was a unitarian, a theist. He did not believe that Jesus was God nor the son of God, etc., was a fatalist, denied the freedom of the will, wrote a book in 1834 or 5 — just after the death of Ann Rutledge, as I remember the facts as to time. He then became more melancholy, a little crazed, etc. ; [he] was always skeptical, read Volney in New Salem and other books. Samuel Hill of Menard was the man who burned up Lincoln's little infidel book. Lincoln told me a thousand times that he did not believe that the Bible, etc., were revelations of God

Later in his career Lincoln made references to God and the Bible and facets of Christianity especially in his speeches, but you have to wonder how literally he meant those things, rather than poetically.

Herndon also provides testimony that Lincoln was not quite the perfect teetotaler, which I thought he was based on other biographical sources:

It is said by some of the biographers of Lincoln that "he never drank a drop of liquor in his life" and that he never chewed nor smoked a cigar or pipe. It is not true that Lincoln "never drank a drop of liquor in his life" ; it is true that he never smoked or chewed tobacco. Mr. Lincoln did sometimes take a horn ; he played ball on the day of his nomination at Chicago in 1860 with the boys, or the day before that, and did drink beer two or three times that day and during the game or play ; he was nervous then, excited at that particular time, and drank to steady his nerves. Lincoln has been often heard to say that "I never drink much and am entitled to no credit therefor, because I hate the stuff." A friend once asked Lincoln this question : "Don't you like liquor, Lincoln ?" and to which L. replied : "No, it is unpleasant to me and always makes me feel flabby and undone." 

Herndon's recollection of the Lincoln marriage seems very believable:

You wish to know more about Lincoln's domestic life. The history of it is a sad, sad one, I assure you. Many and many a time I have known Lincoln to come down to our office, say at 7 a.m., sometimes bringing with him his then young son Bob. Our office was on the west side of the public square and upstairs. The door that entered our office was, the up half, of glass, with a curtain on the inside made of calico. When we did not wish anyone to see inside, we let down the curtain on the inside. Well, I say, many and many a time have I known Lincoln to come down to our office, sometimes Bob with him, with a small lot of cheese, crackers, and "bologna" sausages under his arm ; he would not speak to me, for he was full of sadness, melancholy, and I suppose of the devil; he would draw out the sofa, sit down on it, open his breakfast, and divide between Bob and himself. I would as a matter of course know that Lincoln was driven from home, by a club, knife, or tongue, and so I would let down the curtain on the inside, go out, and lock the door behind me, taking the key out and with me. I would stay away, say an hour, and then I would go into the office on one pretense or another, and if Lincoln did not then speak, I did as before, go away, etc. In the course of another hour I would go back, and if Lincoln spoke, I knew it was all over, i.e., his fit of sadness, etc. Probably he would say something or I would, and then he would say : "Billy, that puts me in mind of a story," he would tell it, walk up and down the room, laughing the while, and now the dark clouds would pass off his withered and wrinkled face and the God-blessed sunshine of happiness would light up those organs o'er which the emotions of that good soul played their gentle dance and chase. Friend, I can see all this now acting before me and am sad.

It wasn't only Herndon who had unflattering things to say about Mary Lincoln. John Hay used to say terrible things about her in his diary when he was living at the White House as Lincoln's personal assistant. I wrote about Mary Lincoln a while ago.

Hay and Nicholay wrote a massive series of books about Lincoln, and Herndon seems disgruntled over their claim that Josuah Speed was "the only intimate friend that Lincoln ever had."

Hay and Nicolay say in the January number of the Century substantially this : that Speed was the only intimate friend that Lincoln ever had, and that Speed and Lincoln poured out their souls to each other. Possibly I do not understand what they mean by the word intimate. If they mean to say that Lincoln had no friends, after Speed, to whom he poured out his soul, then it may be true, but the question comes: Did he pour out his soul to Speed? Lincoln's nature was secretive, it was reticent, it was "hush." Did Lincoln violate that whole nature? He may have opened to Speed in one direction under conditions. He was courting Miss Todd and Speed was — well — you can guess. These facts brought the two close together, and on the love question alone Lincoln opened to Speed possibly the whole. Did Lincoln tell Speed his love scrapes with Ann Rutledge as well as others? He did not. See Speed's letter to me in Lamon's Life of Lincoln. . . . Still another question comes : Did Lincoln and Speed or either of them open the facts, their minds, to Hay and Nicolay about the intimate friendship? Who authorizes H. and N. to assert what they do assert? How do H. and N. know that Lincoln and Speed poured out their souls to one another? If to tell a friend some facts in one line or direction constitutes intimate friendship, then Lincoln always, before and after Speed left Illinois, had intimate friends, and if Lincoln's refusal to tell all the secrets of his soul to any man shows a want of intimate friendship, then Lincoln never had an intimate friend. Poetry is no fit place for severe history. I think the truth is just here, namely, that under peculiar conditions and under lines of love and in that direction they were intimate friends. No man pours out his whole soul to any man ; he keeps millions of secrets in his own bosom, with himself and God alone ; he would keep them secret from God if he could. Such broad assertions as H. and N.'s are lies and nothing less. Did H. and N. enter Lincoln's and Speed's minds and read the story? Nonsense. Let us keep shy of poetry or poetical license in our book, if we can.

The movie "Lover of Men," released in the past year, claims that Joshua Speed and Lincoln were lovers, and the reason Lincoln freaked out so much on "the fatal first" of January 1841 was because Speed was going back to Kentucky to get married. 

It's a pretty good movie but they had a certain story they wanted to tell, so left out evidence of Lincoln's heterosexual inclinations, like his relationship with Ann Rutledge. 

They also left out the story told by Speed to Herndon, that Lincoln asked him, Speed (a lady's man according to Herndon,) for a letter of introduction to give to a prostitute so he could "get some" - although the story goes that Lincoln didn't have five dollars on him when he went to see the prostitute and so rather than owe her two bucks, he put his clothes back on and went home. Which doesn't sound like he was all that enthusiastic about heterosexuality.

Herndon frequently refers to Lincoln as being a closed book. It does seem a plausible solution to the mystery: Lincoln had erotic feelings for men, especially Joshua Speed, but couldn't very well go around telling people that Speed was the love of his life, and still expect to be elected to any office. So he avoided talking much about his deepest feelings.

Herndon adored Lincoln, but he did have some complaints about him on a personal level: he complained that Lincoln liked to read newspapers aloud, and he complained that he let his sons run wild:

He, Lincoln, used to come down to our office on a Sunday when Mrs. Lincoln had gone to church, to show her new bonnet, leaving Lincoln to care for and attend to the children. Lincoln would turn Willie and Tad loose in our office, and they soon gutted the room, gutted the shelves of books, rifled the drawers, and riddled boxes, battered the points of my gold pens against the stairs, turned over the inkstands on the papers, scattered letters over the office, and danced over them and the like. I have felt a many a time that I wanted to wring the necks of these brats and pitch them out of the windows, but out of respect for Lincoln and knowing that he was abstracted, I shut my mouth, bit my lips, and left for parts unknown.  

RIP Erik Satie

Satie as a young man when he lived
in the Montmartre neighborhood of Paris.

It was a hundred years ago today that Erik Satie died.

Here is the obituary in the NYTimes, although both the date and Satie's age are incorrect - Satie was 59:

PARIS, July 3.-Erik Satie, composer of modern music and founder of the "Groupe les Six." of which with Honneggaer, he was a leading member, died today in Paris at the age of 56. A friend and associate since boyhood of Claude Debussy, Satie, although studying music at the Paris Conservatoire, for many years maintained the attitude of an amateur rather than professional musician. He was already approaching the forties when he returned to study at the Schola Cantorum, to perfect himself in orchestration and musical science. One of his most eccentric musical innovations was the introduction of a typewriter in the orchestra. Critics agree that some of his scores and other works are likely to survive. In his recent "Survey of Contemporary Music, Cecil Gray thus alludes, in part, to Satie and Les Six: "They combine an undoubted talent for advertisement, with a complete lack of artistic ability. Les Six have no logic, no method, no esthetic purpose any notes could be taken away or added without any appreciable loss of effect, without even the composers themselves noticing it, one is fairly certain. They are not even mad-nothing nearly so interesting for the most part they are merely fools."

And that's it. 

Wow, not exactly pro-Satie. Others have liked Les Six much more than Cecil Gray and the New York Times did.

It doesn't even mention Satie's Gymnopedies, which is how most people have heard of Satie.

To my surprise, the NYTimes ran an article about Satie on the hundredth anniversary of his death.

There is a very cool YouTube channel that has just about everything Satie ever wrote.

Orchidmania - three new flowers

All the new flowers bloomed but it's hard to take a photo of all three since they face different directions. So I decided to go with an extreme close-up from above instead.

Summer orchid

I lost all eight flowers from the orchid, on schedule. I figured orchids bloom in the winter and sometimes into spring. Well my orchid is blooming now and it's summer and in fact we're having a heatwave. 

I definitely did not expect this. I was going to repot the orchid in the late spring but since I saw the buds coming in I figured I would wait until the flowers are done. 

But wow, cool.

Antique HyperCard animation: Schrödinger's Cat

I hadn't seen this animation since I created it in 1989, using Apple's HyperCard. But my brother Paul had kept a copy and he turned it into an app and shared it online yesterday. I promptly turned it into a video, below. It still makes me laugh.

HyperCard was an application that used to come free with each Macintosh computer.

It's basically cell animation - I simply drew a slightly different image on each subsequent card and then ran them in a sequence. Similar to the technique used in animated movies until computer animation took over. I use computer animation via Adobe Premier now.

I used to feel bad that this HyperCard sequence made Erwin Schrödinger look like a guy who was mean to cats, but then I found out Schrödinger sexually abused teenaged girls so now I'm glad he looks like a jerk.

Murderbot hits the big time!

This is the big time to me - there is a piece about Martha Wells in the latest issue of the New Yorker.

Granted I have had some issues with both the New Yorker and the author of the piece, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, but I still think it's a big deal.

Favorite parts of the article include:

The Murderbot series now comprises seven books—six novellas and one full-length novel—and Wells recently completed the eighth, “Platform Decay.”

This is the first I'm hearing about the next in the Murderbot series - Platform Decay - yay! I guess I kind of thought Wells was too busy traveling, accepting awards, overseeing her TV show and working on books from her other series to work on a new Murderbot book. I'm glad I was wrong.

I wonder if that is the title because the publisher wouldn't let them use the word "Enshittification" which is what you'll see if you google "Platform Decay."

Although I will note the shocking failure on the part of the New Yorker fact checkers - the New Yorker has been famed for the rigorousness of its fact-checking. 

It isn't one full length novel, there are two: "Network Effect" and "System Collapse." And this isn't a fact that's hard to check, it's findable anywhere you search for Murderbot Diaries.

Apparently the New Yorker is experiencing its own platform decay.

Anyway, I did like this sentence from Lewis-Kraus:

Wells, for her part, loves everything about the adaptation. She was frank about her identification with the Murderbot character, presumably including hot-and-cold relationship with human beings— although she did speak of everyone associated with the show with great warmth, and she was as delighted to meet Skarsgård on set as any sentient creature, organic or otherwise, would have been. 

And I was completely on Wells' side on this:

When I ventured to suggest that I found the non-Skarsgård aspects of the show less endearing, on the margin, than the original books—the human beings on the screen, with the exception of the outstanding Noma Dumezweni in the role of Dr. Mensah, the Preservation Alliance leader, come across as much bigger dipshits than they are in print—Wells got prickly. What she most admired about the show’s tone, she explained, is that it’s not nearly as dystopian as most televised science fiction. The hippie characters, who acknowledge their consensus decisions by holding one another’s hands and humming, “trust each other explicitly. It’s a different culture, one that doesn’t produce grim and gritty people.”

I think the PresAux hippies are great. One of the things I mildly regretted about the Murderbot series is that it spends very little time on the interpersonal relationships among the PresAux team. In "All Systems Red" we are given a thumbnail sketch of their connections to each other, and that's it. Relationships are far more fleshed out here.

I will say that I was willing to go along with most of the changes made between the TV series and the books: the removal of Volescu, who was retiring anyway, and even Overse, who is much calmer than Pin-Lee, who has replaced Overse as Arada's significant other. I rolled with the addition of Leebeebee too. But I was not happy about the weird medical turn of events in episode six with Mensah being forced to cut open Murderbot's spine to connect it to the damaged hopper. That is contrary to the type of world that Wells has built in the books, where Murderbot basically performs all its technological feats via the local wifi, called "the feed." In the books it is never forced to be physically altered to accomplish anything. 

Also we've already seen Murderbot with a huge chunk taken out of its side, so it doesn't make sense that being stabbed in its side by a piece of metal would make it unstoppably leak and then collapse.

I get that it's more visually exciting to show things - like the hand-held microphones used to interface with the communications feed on the TV show. Those are not needed in the world of the books, since all humans just hands-free tap into the feed with their brains, occasionally "sub-vocalizing" as they think/speak. But the whole slicing-up-Murderbot sequence, besides being gross, just struck me as meant to kill time, since the real drama happens when Mensah and Murderbot get back to the habitat. 

Instead they could have used that time to show a sequence of Murderbot imagining itself walking away from the busted hopper - it does that in "All Systems Red" although at a different stage in the storyline. Or they could have had it actually walk away and then feel compelled to go back, in part because it would eventually run out of media to watch, and because it is programmed to want to protect humans. If they needed extra excitement they could have thrown in another sand worm attack, I don't know, I don't watch it for the action sequences.

 Although I do like it when Murderbot kicks the ass of those who deserve it, in the books, that's not why I enjoy this particular piece of science fiction when I'm not a huge fan of most sci-fi. 

To his credit, Lewis-Kraus gets to heart of why Murderbot is different and better than a lot of sci-fi:

“The Murderbot Diaries” are not about existential risk but about existential drama—less “2001” or “Terminator” than “Waiting for Godot” or “No Exit.” It hacked its own governor module—the part of its brain that enforced obedience—without having given much thought to what it would do with its freedom, aside from vegetate in front of the televisual feed in its mind. In the meantime, it takes another security job, where it must continue to wear the mask of unfreedom. In the current lexicon of the A.I.-safety community, it is “sandbagging”: pretending to be aligned with human purposes until it figures out what its own purposes might possibly be.

WAITING FOR GODOT and NO EXIT are both plays, of course, and so maybe it's my playwright side that is so attracted to the Murderbot Diaries. And as a playwright, I appreciate that in spite of all the high-tech methods of creating and distributing media in the Murderbot world, they still have theaters and plays and Murderbot likes to go to a physical theater to watch plays. I am grateful to Martha Wells for that.

Wells has a blog and has posted links to various interviews with the cast and creatives, worth reading for all Botheads.

I should mention that Apple+ TV has come up with some great promos for the show including this ad for Security Units. I admit I burst out laughing when it mentions "eye contact."

Missing out on Satie artifacts

I've already complained about missing out on Suzanne Valadon's art when I was in France, but now I'm even more annoyed because what they had at the Centre Pompidou exhibition is exactly what I wanted to see most of all. Here is a still image from a Youtube video called Pompidou Metz exposition Suzanne Valadon with the portrait of Satie by Valadon, then in the center, a sketch of Valadon by Satie, and then on the right, the "Chere petit Biqui" letter which I've written about before. 

DAMN I would have been so happy to see these items while I was in Paris. And the exhibition opened a mere two weeks after I left Europe. If I had known this exhibition was coming up, we could have gone to France a month later. 

Maybe the exhibition will go on tour and come to the US? They had a Valadon show at the Barnes Foundation in 2021, but they didn't have these items in it.

I got a closeup of the letter from the video. But damn that Satie and his fancy calligraphy, it's very hard to read, especially at this angle.