It's exceedingly difficult to write about The Beatles at this point -- but of course you've done it perfectly. At the level of the sentence, your prose is miraculous, and it just gets better as it builds into paragraphs and essays. I was a John guy as an adolescent in the early '80s (wore the round glasses and everything), but have since come to relate most closely to Paul...
“ more snarly and unsentimental and ‘70s, less compromised by the hype machine.” Dr. D., are you calling the 70s more real than the 60s? Even if the 60s dream of making the world better foundered in the burnt out, hungover 70s, when corporate capitalism secured its grip for the next 50 and counting years, according to Jung the psychic reality is the only reality. Couldn’t the dream still make a comeback, Cinderella story, kid came out of nowhere and astonished the world?
Oh course it could! And we should never stop cultivating it, or allowing it to arise and appear in smaller scales, for a time, for a moment, among friends and animals and magic hours. For me the question of reality is not so easily resolved as it was for Jung, what you might call the ultimate reality of psyche/mind is in tension with, well, call it "realism". But being only a realist is a trap, like cynicism, which is why I have to give "the 70s" some chops but also resist that lack of sentiment and hope. (And there was a lot of hype in the 60s too!)
The Atlantic had what I think was supposed to be a negative review of "Get Back" by James Parker (https://tinyurl.com/2p8cujmj). While a bit down the nose, I think he did a decent job of capturing the film which was, at times, indeed a leeetle bit morose. But so much more than that, too.
He's got this great line early on: "...viridescent splodges and blooms of moody fuchsia, as if they’re trapped at the end of a rainbow.” That’s just such a good, chilling line and really captures that uniquely lonely, psychedelic (in that everything was turned up to 11) prison the Beatles seemed to find themselves in around January 1969.
But, dammit, if you have to study monkeys - and apparently we do - these four primates were by far the most interesting, most talented, and often times, most funny monkeys around to cage and stare at.
James Parker is a great writer and a fine culture critic, one of my fave critics at the Atlantic. This was a bit nosy but hey: we arent all rainbow junkies. The loneliness of the psychedelic show is particularly key. Thanks for the kind words my fellow monkee!
It's exceedingly difficult to write about The Beatles at this point -- but of course you've done it perfectly. At the level of the sentence, your prose is miraculous, and it just gets better as it builds into paragraphs and essays. I was a John guy as an adolescent in the early '80s (wore the round glasses and everything), but have since come to relate most closely to Paul...
“ more snarly and unsentimental and ‘70s, less compromised by the hype machine.” Dr. D., are you calling the 70s more real than the 60s? Even if the 60s dream of making the world better foundered in the burnt out, hungover 70s, when corporate capitalism secured its grip for the next 50 and counting years, according to Jung the psychic reality is the only reality. Couldn’t the dream still make a comeback, Cinderella story, kid came out of nowhere and astonished the world?
Oh course it could! And we should never stop cultivating it, or allowing it to arise and appear in smaller scales, for a time, for a moment, among friends and animals and magic hours. For me the question of reality is not so easily resolved as it was for Jung, what you might call the ultimate reality of psyche/mind is in tension with, well, call it "realism". But being only a realist is a trap, like cynicism, which is why I have to give "the 70s" some chops but also resist that lack of sentiment and hope. (And there was a lot of hype in the 60s too!)
The Atlantic had what I think was supposed to be a negative review of "Get Back" by James Parker (https://tinyurl.com/2p8cujmj). While a bit down the nose, I think he did a decent job of capturing the film which was, at times, indeed a leeetle bit morose. But so much more than that, too.
He's got this great line early on: "...viridescent splodges and blooms of moody fuchsia, as if they’re trapped at the end of a rainbow.” That’s just such a good, chilling line and really captures that uniquely lonely, psychedelic (in that everything was turned up to 11) prison the Beatles seemed to find themselves in around January 1969.
But, dammit, if you have to study monkeys - and apparently we do - these four primates were by far the most interesting, most talented, and often times, most funny monkeys around to cage and stare at.
Another great piece, Erik. Glad to see it!!!
James Parker is a great writer and a fine culture critic, one of my fave critics at the Atlantic. This was a bit nosy but hey: we arent all rainbow junkies. The loneliness of the psychedelic show is particularly key. Thanks for the kind words my fellow monkee!