Jason K Chapman

Sights, sites, cites, and writes

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It's been a month and I still don't know if I can do this. I lost the single best part of me when Donna died last month. She was my courage, my confidence, and my strength. We were married for thirty-one years and every single one of those years was better than the one before it.

I can't even blame Covid. We were both already vaccinated and waiting for the restrictions to lift. We had a whole list of things we wanted to do first. If anything, the pandemic did me a favor. Working from home gave me a year and a half of being together without losing the time being at the office or commuting. I did the math. The pandemic gave me the equivalent of an extra 162 days with her. So thanks for that, I guess.

I'm finding ways to trick myself for now. Her flip-flops are still out on the front door mat--the sparkly blue ones that made her smile every time she wore them. It feels more like coming home that way. I let the dishes stack up in the sink for a couple of days, because I can't handle washing one fork, one knife, and one plate.

But this isn't about me. It's about the bright, fearless woman who made my world a better place just by being in it. It's about the woman who decided she wanted to go to film school at forty, moved from the city where she was born and raised, and graduated from NYU with honors. It's about the woman who made me write when I tried to find excuses to avoid the work. It's about the woman who could talk to anyone and made friends everywhere she went.

I'll do more later, in a more appropriate way, but this is what I can do for now. She was the best part of me. I will love her and miss her for the rest of my life.

Donna Joy Clarke
2/23/1952 - 5/18/2021

This is why I love the folks at Bethesda:

So there I am, fighting against a bunch of raiders in Fallout 4. They're ducking behind cover and shooting and I'm kinda ducking behind cover and shooting when, amid all of the other things the raiders are shouting, I hear one of them yell out, "Aggghhh. I got hit in the knee!"

So, if you've never played Skyrim, it's just another throw-away line like, "Keep firing!" But I have. A lot. So of course I got killed shortly after that because I was too busy laughing to even hit the pause button.

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, hit up Google with the phrase "arrow in the knee".

Kazuo Ishiguro and Neil Gaiman. Illustration: Tim McDonagh (via New Statesman)

This conversation between Kazuo Ishiguro and Neil Gaiman at newstatesman.com is just brilliant. It's a dissection of "genre" as walled gardens and the things that happen when writers choose either to wander at will or simply to stand atop the wall and draw from both sides. They touch on two particular points that I've long believed. One is that genre is primarily only useful as a marketing tool and that "literary" and "genre" are in no way mutually exclusive terms. The other is that "genre", the way it's been used, has created certain reader expectations beyond those dictated by mere story telling. Ishiguro uses the example of westerns and the good guy/bad guy showdown.

My question, then, is this. Aren't those tropes a learned expectation? Have writers or, more precisely, editors and marketing teams taught readers that certain genres must have certain elements--that noir must have a femme fatale--that westerns must have a showdown? Does it just make the books easier to sell, because tagging it [GENRE X] somehow lets potential buyers know that it's going to be inside their comfort zone? That they won't be jolted out of the safe coccoon that's been spun just for them? Is that why publishers are so fond of series fiction? Because it's the ultimate sub-sub-sub-genre?

Following on the second point, Ishiguro points out that there is a difference between a story with cowboys in it and a cowboy story. That leads right into the discussions I've read (and had) many times about whether or not there is a difference between literary science fiction and literary fiction with science fiction tropes in it. I'm of the opinion that there isn't. In my view, "speculative fiction in a literary style" and "literary fiction using speculative elements" are two ways of saying the same thing. Give me a good story, with good characters, and something for my brain to chew on long after I've finished the book and I'll be a happy camper.

I went to see Trace Bundy at DROM last night and he's even more amazing in person than he is on video. The man really is an acoustic ninja. You know the old saw about the farmer using every part of the pig but the squeal? Well Bundy leaves no part of the guitar unplayed. He'll provide his own percussion using various parts of the guitar's body, reproducing everything from a kick drum to bongos. In one piece, he even played a set of cutomized capos. He's not satisfied with just using the capos as capos, he actually works in playing notes with them in the process of moving them from place to place on the neck.

DROM, by the way, is a great, intimate little venue. It seats about 100 people for dinner-and-drinks acts, more if they clear the floor for standing/dancing.

You've probably seen Bundy's rendition of Pachelbel's Canon on YouTube, but that's just the start. He'll kick on his looper and, in real time, lay down three or four tracks layer by layer. He'll play a song you don't know, loop it, then play the loop backwards, at which point it becomes a rendition of something you do know.

Beyond the wizardry, though, his original compositions, like the majestic Elephant King, or the two-guitar Joy & Sorrow, are beautiful examples of everything the acoustic guitar can be.