I was watching a bob Marley documentary. I know, what the fuck does Richard Thompson have to do with Bob Marley? I don’t know, but neither do you. I like Richard Thompson and bob Marley for different reasons but in the same manner; I listen to stuff they recorded. I never saw Bob live and, um, I don’t know if I ever saw Richard Thompson live, I certainly never saw him as a solo act or just him and his ex wife.
Also, I associate both with summer music, the sort of summer music you hear walking through a park either on tinny speakers or some thick haired lothario in sandals picking out a song on the guitar. The documentary ended with Bobs Death in a sort of chronological kind of way. I think it was Bunny Wailer (I forget his real last name) who was saying, at first, that Bob hadn’t written a will because you only do that if you’re going to die. Then he got mean an ascribed a different reason like Bob wanted to see who loved him and who wanted to fight over money. The ideas aren’t mutually exclusive but the snetiments are different ends of the spectrum. I read it as ‘Bunny Wailer doesn’t know why there wasn’t a will’. It made me think of a line from the above song “… they ask you to die when you’ve written your will”.
One of the people being interviewed throughout the movie was his attorney. Nobody asked her about the lack of a will. Nobody suggested poor kids don’t think about that shit and most 36 year olds don’t have to. He did know he had cancer though … It takes a lot of work to fight off the world. Every now and again a self help book or a doctors journal hits the shelves about how a positive attitude can turn around life threatening ailments. I never actually read one, but it takes a lot of emotional work, strength, courage and something we don’t have a word for in English, something very solidly dead center between acceptance and denial. It’s accepting that the inevitable isn’t inevitable. I mean, I don’t know, but I know the feeling. I haven’t read the books nor written one.
I do know there’s a bunch of shit I don’t know and some of that is very much on purpose. If I were a professional ball player I would not think about about my batting average in the box, if possible I wouldn’t even want to know. I might want to know the pitchers ERA, but even that … You are always indanger when you “know” something of whittling away possibility. Being an agnostic I think of not knowing about God as one of the sillier and more academic things I don’t know. Yet it’s one of the few things I don’t know that strangers aren’t that uncomfortable asking about. But, like anything else, I don’t know, seems to give people license to explain it to you. With the baseball analogy that’s what a catcher might do, one who knows you aren’t thinking of your batting average, explain it to you to get you rattled.
Um, sorry, but to explain the baseball analogy — you live in the moment, non of your past hits or future ones are going to matter as the horsehide flys at you, it’s a split second decision and any time before or after — you can’t afford to split that second any further. There are enough things that affect the moment without you adding more. The world shrinks to your breath and the ball. I’m sure there are better analogies. I just can’t think of one.
I’m just thinking if you are planning on surviving cancer that doctors say you can’t, it takes a lot of concentration, will, knowledge and ignorance, well, something between knowledge and ignorance, again we don’t have a word for it. Ok, there are words between both my examples, but not ones that mean what I’m talking about. Sort of like the best translation of de ja vous is to not translate it; it’s clumsy in English and doesn’t quite get where you’re trying to go. Petit mort is downright morbid in English, but romantic in French. I’m not judging either language, but it’s not just how to communicate, it’s how to think. We think in language and if we think something is important enough to tell someone else we translate the language we think in into the language we speak in.
I don’t know why but the documentary didn’t play a lot of Bobs song, one most notably missing was I shot the Sherrif. I mean the middle of the documentary was about getting famous and that was a famous song. Middle to end of the working part was about trying to reach American audiences. I shot the Sherrif was big in America even before Eric Clapton (not an American) covered it.
I don’t know. My teeth hurt. Ordered food, soft, but solid, need to practice eating with fake teeth. Oh. Yeah. Teeth don’t hurt, gums do. Some of my teeth are strangers.
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