EPISODE 229: HIVE MIND

POP CULTURE SPIRIT WOW

I left town for a wedding and a couple days R&R, and of course just as soon as the busy portion of my days is done I immediately get hives. Nothing too dramatic – just tiny patches of slighty itchy heat here and there. As though while I was sleeping a needle of mosquitos (no idea if that’s the collective noun, but it should be something like that) descended through a crack in the roof, broke into family units and had a vampire weekend.

Or like the shower water happened to contain a very small percentage of those Australian sea lice (seriously, now we’ve got to worry about sea lice? Christ almighty this world), and they’re eating me away very slowly in a couple places. (On Tuesday the New York Times reported that their Australian sea lice story was its most read article for Monday. Never tell me people don’t like monster movies.)

They actually do kind of look like mosquito bites, the hives, just with that extra ongoing heat component, like they’ve been ever-so-slightly poison-tipped.

I’ve never had the hives before. I seem to be entering a whole new life phase of “what is this and should I be worried about it?” (Ask me about frozen shoulder!) My doctor, a young guy with a fair amount of “I’ve got this whole life thing figured out” (ah to be that young again), just looks at me deadpan each time I come in with something unexpected. “How old are you?” he asks. “Yeah, that just happens.” No one told me getting older would be like this, and I distinctly remember listening for just such information.

Hives are kind of interesting. (Yeah, we’re still talking about hives.) First of all, how is it that the word for small hot itchy bite-like mark is the same as that for the place that bees live? Did people at some point think that human hives were actual hives, that miniature bees (so adorable!) were living beneath our skin. (And if so, were they hoping at some point to excrete honey?)

(I know I know, yellow card on the play. But it was right there.)

What makes them more interesting, though, is I’ve learned that they’re oftentimes caused by stress. Not that that’s the case for me, I am sipping champagne and eating potato chips as I write this (as always), but stress is apparently a pretty standard diagnosis. And I love it, because it seems so poetic. If you were going to try and physicalize the experience of stress or anxiety, what could be more fitting than searing little bites all over your body? Maybe they’re like little release values, the pressure having built up to the point it’s actually pushed up and through the skin. And the heat off them is your body’s release.

I could do without the itching, which seems to extend beyond the hives themselves to the regions around them. And everyone in a while they kind of flare up for a moment, as though on some microscopic level a little Pompeii just happened. But then it passes.

++

As I’ve relaxed the last few days (when not itching)--

--actually, speaking of hive-itching (thanks for asking), it’s kind of a perfect metaphor for so much of the human condition, isn’t it? Most itches, you scratch, they go away. But hive-y itches, the more you scratch them, they only get worse. Discomfort – nobody likes it, but tell me it’s not the case that our “cures” can sometimes be far worse than just accepting it.

-- I’ve been listening to some musicals, including the (relatively) new musical adaptation of the classic Bill Murray movie, Groundhog Day. It was in the news this week, actually; Murray went to the musical for the first time (and apparently cheered, climbed over seats at intermission, gave a waiter $50 for a bottle of water, then complained $50 is too much for a bottle of water; passed out Thin Mints, and wept like a baby).

THEN – this is the great part – he went again the next night. It’s the great part because it made everyone wonder whether Bill Murray is in fact experiencing his own Groundhog Day and we are all a part of it.

(This is even more fitting than most of the clickbait knows. The resolution of the show, like the movie, is the formerly self-obsessed protagonist becoming this endlessly gracious soul who pops up up helping and/or cheering up each person he meets.

If that is not a description of our later-days Bill Murray, I don’t know what is.)

One of the great songs from the musical is itself an incredibly meta number. At the top of act two, a very minor character named “Nancy” who before now has really just been an object of lust for the lead, steps forward, breaks character and sings this song about being stuck in this kind of role.

Well here I am again
The pretty but naïve one
The perky-breasted, giggly one night stand
Is it my destiny to be
A brief diversion
Just a detour on the journey of some man?

I'm not really one for askin'
I'll play whatever role I'm cast in
Will smile with perfect teeth
And grimace underneath
I learned back in my teens
There's no point in protestin'
If you look good in tight jeans
That's what they'll want you dressed in
Once you're known for low-cut tops
It's pretty hard to stop
It isn't easy to break free
Of playing Nancy

I don't really remember
I guess I chose to be here
I wasn't quite aware that
I was put here to be stared at
But this world I chose to live in
Is mostly run by men
So you take what you are given
Just to feel the love again
So throughout the endless week
And all through the weekend
You will find me here
Playing Nancy

And look, I know this person fits me
I'm pretty good at being pretty
And I'm grateful, I mean to say
There are worse roles you can play
And I'd rather be up dancing
Than sad against a wall
It's better to be leered at
Than not desired at all
Who am I to dream of better
To dream that one day I will be
Something more than just collateral
In someone else's battle
I will be
Something more than Nancy

So basically, in this story about a guy stuck in an endless loop, we have an actor step forward and say yeah, that’s the story of my actual life which you are watching and enjoying (and also most women’s lives). She sings it very simply and without any edge or drama, and it is a show stopper.

++

A last little bit of meta before I crash (and by "crash" I mean "itch"): The Dark Tower film came out a week ago. That’s a movie sequel to the series of books written by Stephen King which I’ve mentioned in passing the last few months. (I’m about to start the final book. It’s been a glorious series.)

Now you might ask yourself, why would someone make a sequel to a set of books that many people won’t know? Why not just do movies of the books themselves? You know, like Harry Potter. Or Lord of the Rings. Or The Hunger Games. Or every other book adaptation ever.

This is an excellent question. At the end of the film, I can’t say I have an answer, as the story resembles the world and themes of the books only superficially, and offers no nod to suggest that this story is indeed a sequel.

(Honestly, this poster may be the coolest part about the film.
And it bears no significance to anything within it.)

Believe it or not, the movie did not do so well. But here’s the crazy thing: in the later books, the number nineteen becomes this weird and unmotivated obsession of the main characters. Everywhere they look, they start to see the number. It happens so much that it’s clear it means something. And then – in a move that should not work and yet is fantastic, the characters learn of the existence of Stephen King. And some of them go to meet him – this is 1977 King – and confirm that yes, they are characters in a story that he once conceived of but threw away because something about it was really disturbing him.

There’s a lot more to it than that, and again, I don’t know how it sounds to you, but before reading it I would have said this was a terrible idea that could only undermine the stakes that previous books had set up. Somehow King threads the needle and the introduction of his younger self adds a layer rather than subtracting.

For me, the constant recurrence of 19 serves as a shorthand for this fact that the characters are in a story.

Now get this: last weekend, how much money did The Dark Tower make?

Yep. Nineteen million.

Welcome to the Matrix, people. Enjoy the ride.

++ LINKS ++

Speaking of meta, have you ever wondered how Michael Bay would explain making waffles? Or Quentin Tarantino making spaghetti? This is for you (and it’s really well done).

Last week I posted a fantastic analysis of Charlize Theron’s work. This week author Anne Helen Petersen posted how she puts pieces like it together. It’s not often writers talk about how they do what they do; well worth a read.

Playwright Sam Shepard died last week. His friend Patti Smith wrote this beautiful farewell.

...Going over a passage describing the Western landscape, he suddenly looked up and said, “I’m sorry I can’t take you there.” I just smiled, for somehow he had already done just that. Without a word, eyes closed, we tramped through the American desert that rolled out a carpet of many colors—saffron dust, then russet, even the color of green glass, golden greens, and then, suddenly, an almost inhuman blue. Blue sand, I said, filled with wonder. Blue everything, he said, and the songs we sang had a color of their own.

For me the other profound moment listening to Groundhog Day was the opening number. Usually at the start of a musical you have a big number which introduces the cast and the world and the tone and dazzles you in some way. It’s the show making a contract with the audience; this is what you can expect here.

Groundhog Day is a big concept, insanely crazy and hilarious show. But its opening number unexpectedly gives you none of that. Instead we get this quiet, Irish hymn-like number, "There Will Be Sun", sung by the people of Puxatawney about how the sun will shine, whether today or tomorrow. It is without a doubt the most profound meditation on the idea of Groundhog Day that there has ever been (and wow that is a hilarious sentence to have written).

For me it offered a hopeful word for our difficult times. So I share it with you. (Here’s a link to hear it.)

Have a good week. Try not to stress. It's very itchy.

I was born in a Puxatawney dawn
At sunrise on a summer's day
And I learnt me a saying that folks round here always say

Who can curse, cast spells or cry
Offer your prayers to the unfeeling sky
Spring will arrive when the winter is done
And if it's not tomorrow then tomorrow or tomorrow there will be sun

Tomorrow spring will come and then
There will be blue skies my friend
Bright eyes and laughter

Tomorrow there will be sun
But if not tomorrow perhaps the day after

Oh if I could I'd will these clouds away my love
I'd wave my hand, reveal the stars

Oh if I could I'd hold the tide at bay my love
But clouds will come and tides will turn

Tomorrow spring will come and then
There will be blue skies my friend
Bright eyes and laughter

Tomorrow there will be sun
But if not tomorrow, perhaps the day af...