Time and Tide

Wait for no man.

Apr 22, 2024

Dear Scriptor,

It’s wild to me how fully a compelling show can alter an age’s aesthetic. Back in 2006, I first become conscious of how complete could be the change, as Daniel Craig’s chic and sleek Casino Royal Bond ushered in a whole new look. The next year, Mad Men filled the sails cultural ship, filled its sales just in time for it to crash upon the rocks of the 2008 collapse.

Despite some lean years where we (most of us) lost the hats, this aesthetic held but became rougher, more comfortable with how ‘old’ and ‘vintage’ it was. By 2012 the Hipster flannel garden had fully flowered and was ready to be shown and adopted by normies (or the “basic” poeple, as we used to call them). This was the year of Girls. Mumford and Sons came out with Babel and Macklemore had “Thrift Store” (“No, for real, ask your grandpa — can I have his hand-me-downs?”).

This was a boon for me, for I (cool kid that I was) had continued wearing the fedora through the ravine of the post-collapse years, but by 2012 it was back in style. (Though, in fairness, probably not the way I wore it.) What’s striking to me is how unconscious all of this is. We go ‘that looks good’, without paying attention to the tributary rivers of our taste.

By early 2013, Vikings arrived in America, and the aesthetic changed again the year after when the show became popular. Long hair, tight pants, close and open shirts, which moved afterward towards “workwear” and (hated phrase as it is) “athleisure”. Starting around here, I largely retreated from the world and became unconscious of its sartorial undulations. So, for example, I wonder how the worldwide sensation of Game of Thrones (which ran this whole time) affected clothes.

This is where the world seemed to be heading into March of 2020. Then the world exploded. And I haven’t a clue what’s happening on this side of Covid, except that I’m trying to move towards a more formal style. Suit pants, button-down shirts, layering. But whether that’s me catching the zeitgeist again or just me making the transition into (what I hope to be) a dignified middle age — I haven’t a clue.

One of these days I plan to read René Girard and see if he truly opens this world up as his proponents claim.

Hortus Proprius

Y’all get a special treat, by which I mean I’m experimenting on you all. Today I’m sharing with you not only a poem but my reading of that poem. Y’all can tell me at the end if I can get away with saying ‘y’all’ (I almost certainly can’t). I’ve been told I have a good reading and declaiming voice, so we’ll see if that holds true over the internet, to those who aren’t family.

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Harp Song of the Dane Women
Rudyard Kipling

“The Knights of the Joyous Venture” — Puck of Pook’s Hill

What is a woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

She has no house to lay a guest in—
But one chill bed for all to rest in,
That the pale suns and the stray bergs nest in.

She has no strong white arms to fold you,
But the ten-times-fingering weed to hold you—
Out on the rocks where the tide has rolled you.

Yet, when the signs of summer thicken,
And the ice breaks, and the birch-buds quicken,
Yearly you turn from our side, and sicken—

Sicken again for the shouts and the slaughters.
You steal away to the lapping waters,
And look at your ship in her winter-quarters.

You forget our mirth, and talk at the tables,
The kine in the shed and the horse in the stables—
To pitch her sides and go over her cables.

Then you drive out where the storm-clouds swallow,
And the sound of your oar-blades, falling hollow,
Is all we have left through the months to follow.

Ah, what is Woman that you forsake her,
And the hearth-fire and the home-acre,
To go with the old grey Widow-maker?

The Amphitheater

I’m about to share a video from Postmodern Jukebox. What’s funny is that I have been following Postmodern Jukebox on YouTube for almost their entire career, so I remember when this song first came out. Their setup looked so plunky back then compared to what they can show us now. Many of these early videos don’t have 1080p either, much less 4K.

(And how young they all look!)

I think in adulthood, we can forget how much our world has changed. We remember our-childhood-selves getting excited about cordless phones and DSL (or even just dial-up! AOL chat rooms!), but we take such advances in adulthood for granted. At least, I do. 4K YouTube on my phone? No big deal!

Except my first several phones in adulthood had no YouTube. They didn’t even have email. The power one felt with his first BlackBerry!

Reviso et Peroratio

There’s been a kerfuffle on Twitter again about the cost of the living. There always seems to be such a kerfuffle, to the point where it may be better to say the kerfuffle is always active and that it recently erupted. I neither need to nor (likely) would you want me to rehash the arguments going around and my reaction to them, but there’s something I realized in all the debate over the cost of food, childcare, houses, &c.

Despite 66% of Americans owning a house (about 20% higher than the 1940s and 1950s and the highest it’s ever been except right before the ’08 crash), despite how just one moment contemplating Spotify would blow the mind of someone from 2005 let alone 1965 (‘you mean I can get hundreds, thousands, hundreds-of-thousands of my favorite albums on a supercomputer I keep in my pocket all for about an hour of work a month!?), and despite the fact that what used to be a luxury item (steak) can now be had by the pound for half-an-hour’s work (depending on the steak, of course, depending on the work, but even Ribeye is often less than $15/pound now), despite all that, no matter how much team Overpriced and team American-Dream-Maxx (and bet you can’t guess which team I’m on after those examples) throw data at each other and no matter how much data we throw, we’re both talking about the price of goods and services.

That is, we’re all Marxists now.

One can make the argument all day that we’ve always cared about money, that the Peasant’ War was about money (‘When Adam delved & Eve span, who was then the gentleman’), that the French Revolution was about immiserating inflation (‘Let them eat cake’), that the American Revolution was about commerce (‘No taxation without representation’), but when the American Fathers talked about the ‘good life’, it wasn’t one with running water, air conditioning, and a freezer. They didn’t talk about how they wanted widespread antibiotics, or birth to cost nothing (birth did cost nothing, and you got what you paid for), or about artificial valves for the failing hearts of their stout-hearted fellows.

They talked about leisure, about being one’s own man. And when they pledged themselves to each other, they pledged their fortunes — sure. They pledged their fortunes as something to lose. They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor. That last bit was by ells and miles the most important.

I make no broad claims for this theory; I just thought of it this week. Nor do I think there is nothing to the economic complaint; telling a whole generation they must go to college only to notice that what we need now, what is paid now, are the trades — that has to sting. But I can’t help noticing how like luxury our forefathers would view our now supposed poverty. And I can’t help noticing that we talk about comfort, cars, interest rates and not feasts, fêtes, faith, fellowship, and virtue.

Have you noticed how little we hear now of Benedict Arnold? He was a stock character of my childhood. And I’m really not all that old. There’s a lesson there, for those with ears to hear.

I’ve shared with you one of my weird theories. Do you have any you’d like to share with me? I’d love to hear them, so please

Hortus Scriptorius

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