thank you notes 10/26
i'm thankful for shock and awe, the new simon reynolds book on glam, which includes paragraphs like this one:
"Bolan's most extravagant fiction was a kind of self-creation myth: he said he spent a long period living with a wizard in France, claiming it was a profoundly formative experience during which he was exposed to various forms of magic and esoteric wisdom. The details changed from telling to telling. Sometimes the stay lasted five months; on other occasions it was a year, even eighteen months. Sometimes he and the wizard lived in a wood, under a tree or even up in a tree. At other times he stayed at the wizard's forty-room chateau on Paris's Left Bank. In one version, Bolan was the sorcerer's chauffeur—this despite the fact that he never learnt to drive."
"Bolan's most extravagant fiction was a kind of self-creation myth: he said he spent a long period living with a wizard in France, claiming it was a profoundly formative experience during which he was exposed to various forms of magic and esoteric wisdom. The details changed from telling to telling. Sometimes the stay lasted five months; on other occasions it was a year, even eighteen months. Sometimes he and the wizard lived in a wood, under a tree or even up in a tree. At other times he stayed at the wizard's forty-room chateau on Paris's Left Bank. In one version, Bolan was the sorcerer's chauffeur—this despite the fact that he never learnt to drive."
i'm thankful for the later description of a t. rex song with "a chorus so cloying it's like black forest gateau squooshed into your ear canal." i'm thankful that because of bakeoff i know what a black forest gateau is, which makes that metaphor more vivid. i'm thankful for the promise of many future chapters about david bowie and am thankful for the description of bowie's first tv appearance in 1964, complaining about mistreatment as a teenage member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Longhaired Men, an imaginary organization he made up on the spot in conversation as a way to get on the bbc:
"His manager Les Conn drummed up further fake controversy around the issue when Bowie and his band The Manish Boys were lined up to perform on the pop show Gadzooks! Conn—whose catchphrase aptly enough was 'Conn's the name, con's the game'—propagated the rumour that the BBC were insisting that Bowie cut his hair. He even orchestrated a demonstration, with fans parading 'Let's be Fair to Long Hair' placards outside the television studio. A huge amount of publicity was wrung out of this spurious dispute, with stories appearing in the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, the Mirror and the Daily Telegraph, bearing headlines like 'Get Your Hair Cut BBC Tells Pop Man' and 'Long Suffering,' and featuring Bowie quotes like, 'I would rather die than get my hair cut.'"
"His manager Les Conn drummed up further fake controversy around the issue when Bowie and his band The Manish Boys were lined up to perform on the pop show Gadzooks! Conn—whose catchphrase aptly enough was 'Conn's the name, con's the game'—propagated the rumour that the BBC were insisting that Bowie cut his hair. He even orchestrated a demonstration, with fans parading 'Let's be Fair to Long Hair' placards outside the television studio. A huge amount of publicity was wrung out of this spurious dispute, with stories appearing in the Daily Mail, the Evening Standard, the Mirror and the Daily Telegraph, bearing headlines like 'Get Your Hair Cut BBC Tells Pop Man' and 'Long Suffering,' and featuring Bowie quotes like, 'I would rather die than get my hair cut.'"
i'm thankful to have learned from a possibly spurious tabloid story that oasis used to freak noel gallagher out by moving around the furniture in his room and blaming it on ghosts. i'm thankful for the children's game "bloody mary" which honestly i still find kind of frightening. i'm thankful for all the stories of silly occultism around the recording of led zeppelin iv which i devoured as a teenage boy who loved, in bolan's words, "erection rock." i'm thankful for the drums from "when the levee breaks." i'm thankful for the header image of this old blog called "deep pagan thoughts." i'm thankful that we have a smart friend who is a pagan and it seems like kind of a nice form of spiritual practice, even though it's not one i'm interested in taking part in.
i'm thankful that yesterday at work was better than monday. i'm thankful that i was able to catch up and finally get through some particularly difficult tickets about which my angst was compounding like interest. i'm thankful that i don't feel dread about going to work today the way that i did yesterday. i'm thankful that even when it's busy now, i'm making time to take a lunch break. i'm thankful to have had a good yoga and qigong session. i'm thankful that at the end of the day today, the work week will be more than halfway over. i'm thankful that we have one more night of leftover tacos to eat and that tomorrow i will make puttanesca for us to eat the rest of the week.
i'm thankful for the trailer for the new season of gilmore girls, which honestly kind of bummed me out but seemed to make other people very happy. i'm thankful for the idea that gilmore girls is just "a modern remake of 'grey gardens'." i'm thankful to have learned about this spooky cartoon, which sounds good. i'm thankful after dinner in the glow of the sleeping TV to have tickled d until she couldn't breathe for giggling. i'm thankful when i feel jealous of the success of others to know that it has no bearing on me, no reflection, and am thankful always for the opportunity to remind myself how nice my life can be.
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