Modalities of escapism
Awake or not: Stories, letters, images . . .
During the misadminstration of the Big Baby, I habitually awoke at 2 am fearing what he might have done, and after scanning headlines (or squirreling down a hole) quieted my worries playing New York Time games. I’ve kept doing that. At 2 or 3 I find it reassuring that journalism — media — isn’t sleeping, either.
I deeply enjoyed the rush of overnight reviewing and red-eye City Desk shifts at the Chicago Daily News back when; now, juggling letters lets me indulge my all-hours appetite for words and their connotations. Fortunately for me, Jo Ann, herself a media hound (in retirement) usually can just bury her head in a pillow and snooze on.
So yesterday my media diet started like that, and proceeded as usual: reading NYT (learning of composer-guitarist Scott Johnson’s death, knew him in the East Village), WaPo, Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun-Times, ArtsJournal.com posts and some from Block Club Chicago, Medium Digest Daily, Daily Kos (I’m an ardent fan of satirist Tom Tomorrow), The TRiiBE (“reshaping the narrative of Black Chicago”), Authors Publish, Music Journalism Insider. The story that stuck with me most was a deep dive on Slate into Chicago mayoral candidate Paul Vallas’ controversial if not outright failed stewardship of school districts here, in Philadelphia, New Orleans, Haiti and elsewhere. 1
At night I consumed the empty calories of Ghost Ship, a horror thing starring Gabriel Byrne and Julianna Margulies, choosen all but randomly on HBO Max. Why this? I think I didn’t want to think about anything possibly more relevant. It put me in mind of B. Traven, although I knew it wasn’t his mordant The Death Ship
and The Wreck of the Mary Deare, which despite its irresistible premise dribbles off and fails as a film for the very reason Hitchcock rejected directing it.
Anyway, Ghost Ship promised arresting imagery - an ocean liner looming in darks seas - without the corn of Pirates of the Caribbean. And I like watching Julianna Margulies — she always seems like a regular person, except in this she did underwater blow-torching, several outrageously high dives into danger zones and struck up a friendship with a ghost. Byrne was ok, brooding. The inciting incident was genuinely godawful. The sets, costumes and illusory elements worked. No more. No less.
He’s not my candidate, I prefer county commissioner/union- and community-organizer/teacher Brandon Johnson’s forward-looking ideals, but I fear Vallas will win. Will he be able to staunch crime and still citizens’ fears of it, reduce gun violence, improve public school education, extend public transportation, encourage affordable housing, re-invigorate the Loop, maintain neighborhood services as well as the Lake, parks and forest preserves, command the new City Council, collaborate productive with Cook County, the Illinois state government and local Democratic party, be a leader for residents more than a servant to the interests of his supporters (business community, Republicans against Gov. Pritztker, the Fraternal Order of Police)? These aren’t media matters.