I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream

Short story collection written by Harlan Ellison

Before I knew anything, the library existed. The brick building housed one floor of books and nothing else. A few were reference only and could not be checked out. The huge wooden card catalogs dominated the center of the public space.

The children’s area was to the left as you entered with the picture books closest beside the bench. Back in the far corner, you could find paperbacks and anthologies of old myths as well as scary stories beneath Alfred Hitchcock’s name. Some of the paperbacks collected old Peanuts strips. Others enticed with promises of adult knowledge.

If you went straight ahead and to the right, then you entered the adult area. Their paperbacks were right up front on spinning racks. A little searching revealed Star Trek books, which adapted the episodes of the series.

At that point, the librarians also took notice of your height and overall gravitas. Every step was watched. Unfamiliar librarians would consult a parent to ensure that you had permission to peruse the secrets that lay buried within those metal shelves: automotive repair and martial arts; biographies that got the facts wrong because of poor research and not because the facts might upset you; etc.

As I remember it, I received my pass because of my expressed desire to read Ian Fleming. Naturally, you could walk as slowly as you wanted and look at everything on the way. But you had to play it cool. You couldn’t just start grabbing stuff down. You were not going to get yourself banned because of a lack of self-control- just make a mental note for the future.

Within a couple months,

the librarians stopped watching out for you until you brought the books up to the counter for check-out. If you were alone, then you had to face that dreaded raised eyebrow. Act casual and lean on the counter. Stare off into the middle distance like this would not be the first Arthur Hailey book that you had ever read.

As with all libraries, they had a few shelves for displays of featured items. Eventually, they got around to the science fiction section and a librarian pulled a few books down off the stacks and arrayed them in a more public area.

There were multiple books by Harlan Ellison. I had devoured Isaac Asimov already. I don’t know why I bypassed the other authors. Maybe it was the cover. And the stories were mighty odd. They explored themes that were somewhere outside the normal bounds of what I had been reading, to say nothing of the structure and the characters and the settings. These were often deeply flawed individuals traversing environments that felt solid and fluid, rather like life felt at the time.

Moreover, Ellison wrote these introductions and comments that placed the stories within the life of the writer. Sometimes the adventures of that life seemed inviting, but just as often not. Either way, the authorial comments suggested that life happened to writers, too.

In a sense, Harlan Ellison prodded me along to thinking about what it meant to be a reader and a writer in a practical sense. Sure, like a lot of people, I have a Harlan Ellison story or two. Mine is minor on the Ellison scale. Maybe I’ll tell them sometime if you ask, but it’s never really been about the artist as personality. Ellison has cultivated a reputation as an artist without a filter, but that was never the point. That’s the sideshow as well as part of what allows a person to keep creating art.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 97 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Must of Got Lost

Song written by Seth Justman and Peter Wolf; performed by the J. Geils Band

“Centerfold” was unique on many levels — not the least of which being its distinction as the first chart-topping single about softcore pornography to be released by a band that counts someone named Magic Dick among its members. – Jason Roth

That is surely a mic-dropping line.

Recorded music and broadcast television have utterly changed our relationship to art. The social ecstasy of cheering on a performer has given way to a personal relationship created wholly on the part of the spectator. While I am sure that a travelling troubadour carried the scent of the exotic about him, the relationship people felt for him was built in the moments of his performance. No princess had a stack of records in the Middle Ages, listening to them in her tower and pining away for this man on whom she has projected so much. Nay, I say. When the wandering minstrel appeared, you gave him a bath and made him sing for his supper. Maybe he got to sleep with the horses.

If you think about the relationship that people have always had with precious objects, then you can trace a line from lockets and miniatures to record albums and mobile phones. Any image we conjure of someone opening a locket containing a memory is easily re-imagined as a person holding an iPhone. In both cases, the moment is personal and the originator of the focal object is distant.

I suppose what

I’m really talking about is the way the artist has had to re-imagine their audience. Live performance may not have changed in the sense that the artist faces a group seeking a collective experience. But I can’t imagine an artist envisions the audience for their sitcom or YouTube video as a bunch of people sitting together. It’s all ones and threes adding up to millions.

What’s all this got to do with the J. Geils Band? Part of their story is that they were this fantastic bar band that started out playing the heck out of rhythm and blues. They made a number of great albums and then finally broke through after more than a decade with an album that sort of sold out and sort of did not.

Through the purchasing choices of my elders, I had listened incessantly to some of the earlier stuff, so I was well-prepared for their explosion in popularity. Yet, I had created some sort of weird personal relationship with the band because I was always listening to them in my room. Really, I didn’t find a lot of affinity for the band among my contemporaries until Love Stinks. So, it was just me and them and a couple AOR DJ’s.

Over the years, I became inured to any bad reviews or unfortunate news about the band, because we had a history together. I knew that it was an entirely one-sided thing, but that was all right. They had thought about someone like me for maybe a moment when they were in the recording studio.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 98 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.

Legit

Television show created by Jim Jefferies and Peter O’Fallon

Clearly, video streaming services have discovered the popularity of stand-up comedy and that they can make money off the seemingly inexpensive cost of producing an endless profusion of performances. It’s the Comedy Channel model writ 24/7.

If you didn’t have cable before video streaming proved practical and you wanted to see what stand-up was all about, you had to find An Evening at the Improv on the television dial once it moved into syndication. Besides, these were likely the sitcom stars of tomorrow. That was the other thing- network television executives kept raiding the stock of touring comedians for those who could carry a weekly situation comedy. Freddie Prinze and Robin Williams did great, so clearly the executives had found a potential gold mine. Forty years onward, IFC and Netflix have appropriated the model while also letting the comedians have a bigger hand in shaping the shows themselves.

I probably would have noticed Jim Jefferies’ routines. I tend to give new faces about ten minutes to hold my interest. That is the equivalent of the book scan at a B&N (and hasn’t that fallen by the wayside?). I caught one of his early specials. He told a long, involved confessional that concluded in hilarious fashion with a few moments of self-realization. That’s awfully hard to do in such an entertaining fashion, especially since the story involved moments that passed beyond cringe-worthy into you-don’t-really-need-to-share-that.

Next thing,

I noticed (after catching up on his available specials) that Jefferies had a television show. It kept in that mode of “beyond cringe-worthy into you-don’t-really-need-to-share-that.” Yet, it was funny and filled with characters that you don’t get to see on television. I don’t mean the sort of characters that seem ground-breaking. I mean people that come to the gym when I’m there. You know, some folks need a little extra help as well as other people who probably need a lesson in sharing the planet.

You don’t watch a comedy if it isn’t funny. So let’s be clear- the show worked because of a fantastic cast willing to do a lot that would have to give anyone pause. Of course, a lot of moments should give us pause, but our better angels kick in, hopefully.

I know there are a lot of television shows out there that portray the nitty gritty of life. They also have that nice through line that gives us all three acts. They provide a backstory that makes everything a little more palatable. Everyone finds resolution- maybe not a happy ending, but you can look back at the story after its over and draw a nice line about how things happened.

Every now and then, it’s important to be reminded that life is basically mess without a straight line anywhere. Art struggles with such a portrait because most of our art is defined by boundaries. The challenge, as an audience, is sometimes letting the art overflow those lines and not move in a particular direction.

What’s it all about?

You’ve Got to Check This Out is a blog series about music, words, and all sorts of artistic matters. It started with an explanation. 99 more to go.

New additions to You’ve Got to Check This Out release regularly. Also, free humor, short works, and poetry post irregularly. Receive notifications on Facebook by friending or following Craig.

Images may be subject to copyright.