For some inexplicable reason, a few readers have expressed that they miss my words in this space. I frankly needed a break from myself because I was sick of my own thoughts and even of facing what passes for reality at the moment. The problem is that I can’t write without being candid. There are so many things that I’m holding in my roiling brain and need a dose of mental Imodium, stat, before I dump my mental discontent all over the page.
I get it. No matter what is going on in our country or our world, The Syncopated Times is supposed to be a Happy Little Jazz Newspaper. The Editor is supposed to keep his distress to himself, or confess it quietly to his beer glass in the privacy of his own living room. He is supposed to weave a cocoon of the soothing denial he himself is unable to experience.
The angry letters, the condescending letters, don’t faze me. When I say, “send all your hate mail to the usual address,” I’m not kidding. But the polite notes, the well-thought-out objections to my truth-telling have rattled me. I can easily laugh off an irate ideologue. A note of remonstrance from a correspondent I have regard for is something else. Here is one quote: “I also feel that the negativity expressed in your column takes the joy out of reading the paper. Lately that negativity has been confrontational and adversarial in nature. Confrontational and adversarial are words that I have chosen carefully.”
And this: “Nobody is asking you to change your views. You have ample opportunity to express them on social media as you have been doing. But if those views do not directly relate to TST’s mission, they should not be in the paper. I do not want to have to read letters next month debating this topic, which is essentially a no-win situation…If I were in your position I’d play it safe because the success of the paper could depend on it.”
I have withheld the names of these writers; one specifically stated his letter was not for publication. I respect both these correspondents and am grateful to them for kindnesses they have done me on many occasions. But I am stewing in my own bile, it seems. I find it as ungracious as everyone else does. Last month I had a “substitute” columnist whom nobody liked. I nearly recruited another “ringer” for this month, deciding only at the last minute to write my own words in my own voice.
My decision to appear out of false-face may have been sparked by the realization that however poor a companion I am, I need to use and cherish this meager platform while I still have it. This evening, shortly before I began to write this, a particular favorite comic commentator of ours was denied access to his long-standing late-night show. I will not discuss the details of the matter here, and no doubt you think even less of me now that I have expressed admiration for such a one. These days, very little makes me laugh and to have one source of that laughter stilled is a serious business indeed.
Getting back to “Spasmo Brown,” it is absolutely certain that I enjoyed putting words into his mouth more than anyone else enjoyed reading them. I offer no apology for that break. I wish I could go back to where Spasmo dwells and plumb his hallucinations. Surrealism is so much more appealing to my mind in its present state than whatever it is that we’re living through.
Since childhood I’ve been an avid admirer of Robert Benchley. What many people don’t know about Benchley (if they know about him at all) is that he had inside information from a friend of his that Sacco and Vanzetti were being railroaded. One of his friends at a particular club heard the judge in the case say, “I’m really going to get those Reds.” Since Benchley had a kind heart he strove to bring that information to light, even testifying in court as to what happened. (His friend somehow declined to testify.) Benchley and Dorothy Parker marched in demonstrations to save Sacco and Vanzetti from execution. And when they were killed, it broke him.
Soon thereafter the style of his writing changed. He started out writing more-or-less straightforward, gently humorous essays at the beginning of his career, with plausible characters and events. After the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, he veered into a more surrealistic (though still hilarious) style of writing. His writing, which had been moored in reality, had come unmoored from it. He still wrote straightforward theater and media criticism (the New Yorker column “The Wayward Press” was his) but his humor was loopy nonsense from the early 1930s onward. He was also drinking quite a bit.
Suddenly, I’m beginning to feel a lot like Benchley, everywhere I go…
No one wants to hear this. The tell me to go hug a sunset or look at a puppy or whatever. They tell me to “get help”—if only help helped! Perhaps I need to eat more vegetables or take a 20-mile walk every day. How are my electrolytes? If the sound of combat boots gets too loud, turn up your stereo.
Done! It seems I can drown out the boots but not the quacks. And I feel just like new, if by “new” you mean “lousy.” I’ve been living in my own head rent free but there’s a new landlord and I’m facing eviction.
Fixing things (and people) is hard. I know, there should be an app for that. What does AI say? How do you suppose we fix this so we can make things as passably mediocre as they were before, rather than atrocious?
Or are you Living Your Best Life, Right Now? You devil!
If so, please send all your hate mail, etc., etc., etc.
Andy Senior is the Publisher of The Syncopated Times and on occasion he still gets out a Radiola! podcast for our listening pleasure.
