Double Flee A

I heard someone say that the Ramones started more garage bands than any other band. People at their shows would say "I could do that", and then go do it.

Reading Philip K. Dick gives me the same feeling.

His first short story ever published was about a dog that warns a family every day when the garbage can is getting full of food that's just getting really ripe, that the "roogs" are about to come take it away. "Roogs" are ostensibly garbagemen, and also onomatopoiea for the way the dog's bark sounds. The family eventually has to get rid of the dog because he raises total hell before the Roogs arrive. The last day, when they're getting rid of the dog, "Boris", the Roogs say to him, tomorrow we'll be back for the people. The dog was right all along.

Hellaciously good concept; the guy's an inspiration.

He was clearly a genius, but he also had to live on horsemeat at times due to poverty. Philip Dick had NO money for pretty much his whole life as a result of his chosen vocation, but he didn't see himself as an artist who had no choice but to crank out book after book and story after story. He saw himself as being hopelessly rebellious, and that's a profound degree of honesty. Here he is buying horsemeat at the pet store, and the guy behind the counter says, "You're eating this, aren't you?". Phil: "Yessir". He hated authority, which led him to write, hated it enough to eat horesmeat, which he said was too sweet. Kurt Vonnegut's character Kilgore Trout is Philip K. Dick.

Reading Vonnegut for the first time, people admire his style and his vocabulary, but Philip writes more plainly in both terms. Dick is accessible. Reading him, I realize I'm thinking: I think I could do this, but would I want to live on horsemeat? And the answer is, no.

Now, for all the artistic expression in the world, I'd live on horsemeat and make up songs about how great it was, but I want to do more than write SF. I want to create barriers that sonically separate spaces from the street, a conclusion I've drawn from city life is that the cars make it too fucking loud. I drew a picture of them. They look nice and work well and no one will ever build them. I also want to write a piece of music for a three piece jazz ensemble, invent better furniture, and make a reality TV show of a penal colony where it's justice in the hands of the people, so they'd be executing each other all the time. There are a lot of imaginative things that everyone is capable of, but Philip K. Dick went and did it. Brave man.

Nascar was fun. There were a lot of accidents. Today it's the renaissance festival.

posted by dale @ 10:18 AM