Otis Redding might hold the distinction of being the first person to break my heart, never mind that he’d already been dead for almost 40 years when it happened. I was 20 and watching John Sayles’s Lianna when “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long” began to play. It was a movie I’d wanted to see since reading Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet as a teen, and it had finally arrived on DVD two decades after its theatrical release. But if you asked me what I thought of it now, I wouldn’t be able to tell you: all I remember is being so moved by Redding’s song and the pain in his voice that it made me question the usefulness and necessity of any further attempts — by anyone anywhere — to articulate sadness or longing.
Tonight I could write about almost falling earlier and tweaking a muscle near a knee still bruised from that recent driveway tumble. Or about operating on fewer than four hours of sleep and what it does to your concentration. Or how much I’ll resent closing my laptop without hitting ‘publish’ on that Firefighter review, uncertain that tomorrow will be any different. I could explain what it’s like having neck muscles so tight that it feels as if you’re being strangled by a diabolical device operated by a mustache-twirling Vincent Price in a forgotten William Castle flick. Or what a jerk you feel like at 4 am when your sleeping wife reaches for your hand and you’re reminded that you may view her as more of a sister these days, but she still sees you as a spouse.
I never question my present, future or general existence more than I do in the middle of the night, but none of it seems worth pontificating about when you could listen to “(Sittin’ On) The Dock of the Bay” instead. So I’d suggest doing that rather than poking around here, though I’ll offer a quick ‘Bob the Builder’ update: I’m waiting for some backordered baseboard to arrive and once that’s installed I can glue the cottage walls together and start on the roof. The lighthouse’s bathroom furniture just arrived and I’ll paint and assemble it later this week, while today I painted some very small chairs that still need light detailing to look a bit more worn.
These will go with a 1:48 scale town I’m developing that will recreate elements of the area where I grew up. The suburb where my parents moved when I was six was relatively new then and located on the outskirts of town, abutting a small city that served as a railroad hub. The sound of train whistles could be heard in my bedroom most nights after bedtime with a consistency I found comforting. Some company houses still stand there today but are virtually uninhabitable due to periodic flooding.
It was a pretty grimy area by the ’90s, with shuttered factories, seedy bars where the regulars started drinking early on weekday mornings, a restaurant that touted fried brain sandwiches in a sun-faded ad painted onto its traffic-facing exterior wall, and a repulsive strip club that was such a conspicuous front for drug sales and prostitution that it was repeatedly shut down by the authorities until the river finally closed it for good.** To bring it back to life I’ll use a mix of model kits and original structures, so I’m learning how to paint on plaster and plastic, not just basswood.
* Sayles was one of my favorite independent American filmmakers at the time, mostly on the basis of Lone Star and Limbo. Lianna held the minor distinction of being one of the few films of its era (it was released in ’83) to depict a woman leaving her heterosexual marriage to embark on a lesbian affair.
** That club was a textbook example of why I have a low tolerance for pro-prostitution ideology. What’s empowering about mother-daughter acts or toothless women with sub-70 IQs and extensive abuse histories selling themselves to the dregs of society to pay the rent? My stance on this is unpopular with sheltered Millennials and Zoomers and I’m glad for that, because I’d hate to be naive enough to hold such flippant views. (Technically I’m a Millennial but I might as well have been born in the 1920s.)