Out of both of my shoes

There's a song that was very popular in the early 1900s which you never hear anymore, for reasons that are obvious from the title: "The Darktown Strutters' Ball." It may once have been covered by people like Fats Domino and Ella Fitzgerald, but right now it's a musical style played by revival bands full of white people who like swing, and even if you restrict yourself to the chorus and omit the outdated references to "high browns" and the "hightoned," something with "darktown" right in the name assures you're culturally appropriating at best.

I keep hoping a hip hop artist will reinterpret the song and give it a second, better life, simply because the idea of the Darktown Strutters has always worked on me powerfully. As a kid, I imagined them as supernaturally tall crayola-black people with long limbs and fierce energy, dressed in bright-colored striped suits, cocked hats, and two-tone shoes; good and alert and dangerous in the way of wizards, meeting once a month to hold their ball - a ball which mortals were not meant to see and would be fools to wander into, a music hall fairy circle. I imagined the Strutters as urban dryads, the spirits of buildings, who lived and worked in the buildings and who were the buildings, but who might sometimes ride anonymously on the bus.

Some rapper needs to run with this.

It's 4th of July weekend in Boston, which up here is a significant holiday on the order of Thanksgiving; I would say it's taken more seriously than Halloween or New Year's Eve. People take off several days if they can, particularly if they have summer houses. It is hard to predict whether a given store will be open. I think it's partly a function of the Bostonian style of patriotism, the sense that we own the American Revolution and are the ones responsible for taking care of it in the face of other states which are not nearly as enlightened, etc., etc. (I have an affection for this possessiveness.) But I think it's mostly the weather. July 4 is when it's actually warm enough to make going to the beach sound plausible. And if you're not into beaches, your lawn is looking really good and you want to show it off by having people over for cookouts.

Quite a contrast to Texas, where you maybe go out and see fireworks after dark, when maybe it's gotten down into the low 90's, or swim in your pool a little if you have one and feel like cleaning all the bugs out of it. It's always made sense to me that NASA is headquartered in Texas; most of our celebrations feel like attempts to sustain "Earth Traditions" while we otherwise shelter in climate-controlled bunkers and try to survive the hostile landscape inimical to human life.

Scarlett's going sailing and to a beach house. I'm off for the day, but have no plans; I'd thought I'd go see the Boston Pops, but it's not being hosted by anyone I care about.

Finally have a date for Ciro to come back from Texas, and a colorist to process the video. Spent a couple hours over at Hendrik's again yesterday, recording more music for the film along with drinking coffee and talking best Danish pastries. Wrote a little goose song which I really don't think is going to make it into the film; it's funny and weird but entirely the wrong kind of funny and weird. Maybe if we did a film where Robert Blake was chasing a goose. Hendrik, Scarlett, and I have contemplated performing live versions of the song with one of us dressed as Morticia Addams and one of us dressed as a marshmallow peep.

Just realized today (the 2nd, not the 3rd) is the 10th anniversary of this blog.