…was unremarkable, at least in my personal sphere. I accomplished very little. I woke up late, meditated, scrambled an egg, walked the dogs, listened to a couple of albums, The Last Dinner Party and Father John Misty, respectively, culled through some Project MA demos for the next album, texted with my musical partner from that endeavor, posted to instagram a photo of myself with a paper bag over my head, ate a completely unremarkable dinner from Chipotle’s, and now I sit down to compose today’s little effort toward 31 consecutive days of blog posts in January. I did, early this morning, have another unsettling dream, my second in a row about mysteriously being inside the home of someone I didn’t know, this time asking to use the shower. One might make a broad and dubiously accurate interpretation that I am not feeling at home of late. Not entirely untrue, I’d say, but only insofar as it relates to how I’m already feeling in this country of ours. I’d say I didn’t recognize it, but that’d be putting it on a bit thick, because we have been in this state with more or less intensity for the last eight years. It’d be better to say, I still don’t recognize this country, and it’s becoming more and more unrecognizable, and, I fear, not too far into this administration’s tenure, we will no longer know where we are. That’s it. Two dreams in a row in which I did not know where I was.
Perhaps the most substantial thing I did today was to spend about a half an hour reading in the novel James by Percival Everett. I started this thing several days ago and am embarrassed how slowly I am working my way through. I’m probably only averaging about 10 pages a day, but I have yet to really settle in for some long stretches. This novel kind of lends itself to quick little snatches, as its chapters are exceedingly short and typically consist of a single scene or episode, many of which correlate almost precisely to their counterparts in the source material. I taught The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn through more than a decade as a public educator, so I know exactly what’s going on when Huck is telling Jim about Tom Sawyer’s crazy robber gang, or when he asks Jim to tell his fortune about his drunk daddy from a hairball coughed up by a cow, or when Huck runs into Jim on Jackson Island. Huck is hiding there after faking his own death to escape his drunk daddy and the rest of “civilization.” Jim is also hiding there, but for weightier reasons. He has learned that Miss Watson wants to seperate him from his family and sell him to New Orleans. I have mentioned this before, but I can better articulate it now. The most fascinating and perhaps important aspect of this novel so far is the way it recasts Jim and other enslaved black characters as individuals with complex and sophisticated intellectual powers who only employ Twain’s linguistic caricature of the 19th century southern negro dialect when they are in the presence of white characters. At one point early in the novel, Jim is seen teaching his children language lessons which amount to “the proper way” (read: the safe way) to interact with white folks. Always allow them to discover something; whatever there is that needs to be known, the white person must always believe they knew it first. Always allow them to name the thing they’ve discovered. And this from James to his children: “the more you talk about God and Jesus and heaven and hell, the better they feel,” to which his children respond in unison, “and the better they feel, the safer we are,” which his daughter February translates into “proper English”: “Da mo’ betta dey feels, da mo’ safer we be.” It is hilarious on one hand and absolutely heartbreaking on the other. But it feels absolutely convincing to me, and points to one of the reasons Twain’s novel has not fared too well in the 21st century: these people were far from stupid, but Twain’s representations, regardless of his intentions of his characterization of Jim, failed to demonstrate the intelligence and humanity of these folks. As Jane Smiley argued probably twenty years ago, anyone looking for a 19th century novel about the evils of slavery should immediately give a hard pass to Twain’s “masterpiece.” It might be great for other reasons, but that’s not one of them.
My evening is free. I will likely read some more in James. I will listen to some more music. I will maybe play a little on my drums. I will watch the late night comedy monologues. I will try not to consume very much real news. There’s no beer and no spirits of interest in the house, so this January the 21st will also likely be dry. Good night.
michael jarmer 