Seagull Eclipse Religion

My wife, son, and I went to Burlington, VT to see the eclipse on Monday. I’d wanted to see a total eclipse for decades (and I had this particular one in mind for thirty years, ever since my teenage self discovered it would be geographically close to where I might be living in 2024).

I expected to be awed but I was somewhat unprepared for the actual event. Having seen annuar eclipses before, I expected a more dramatic version of that, with more darkness and perhaps a glimpse of the corona through my eclipse glasses.

What I somehow did not process until the moment came: that I could safely remove the glasses for three minutes during totality and see the corona with my naked eye. I watched the moon darken the sun, and through my glasses I could see nothing at that point… so I took them off to look around the landscape, and that was when I noticed the glow in the sky. And I looked, and it was genuinely startling. That gorgeous silver-white corona around the black sphere, in a dark sky with an orange horizon: no photo I’ve seen captures the in-person effect of that silver-white light.

It’s like trying to take a photo of the full moon, and the photo always kind of sucks and does it no justice. The eclipse and its corona were like that. There was an otherworldly sense of, “I can’t believe I’m actually seeing this in the sky right now. This is real.”

The other remarkable detail (among many, but still) was the seagull reaction. We were watching from the edge of Lake Champlain, and during totality, dozens of seagulls freaked the hell out. They flew in chaotic masses, crying out in alarm over the water. The day after, I pictured the gulls forming a new proto-religion based on their experience, and every time one of them flew overhead and cried out, I imagined they were shrieking, “Repent! Repent!”

I won’t get into any deep discussion of the spiritual impact of the eclipse, except to say that even knowing the basic science, and knowing the event wasn’t some kind of cartoon magic from a higher power, it was a moment when any rationalism v. belief argument felt more wrongheaded than ever. There’s no full explanation for what happened in my brain during those three minutes. And anyone insisting that science can definitively explain my subconscious’s reaction to that event is as literal-minded as any fundamentalist, and as naive as those seagulls.

In other words, it was a moment of knowing I really don’t understand the full nature of anything, and I was totally OK with being overwhelmed by my own naiveté.

Twin Peaks Season 2

I’ve long been averse to rewatching the later episodes of Twin Peaks Season 2—after Laura’s murder is solved—because they’re occasionally brilliant but largely wince-inducing. Ben Horne’s Civil War obsession. Andy and Dick’s “little Nicky” storyline. James’ incredibly boring affair with a married woman. I remember my deflation, way back in the 90s, at watching the series lose its magic. Lynch and Frost had been the original magicians, and once they left the show mostly to others, almost everything started to feel like a mess of quirky tricks and gags.

The great Fire Walk With Me followed as a prequel in 1992, but chronologically speaking, the series’ second season was—for a quarter-century—the frustrating end. But in the aftermath years of Twin Peaks: The Return, which I love more and more, revisiting the later episodes of Season 2 is less painful. Now I can view those episodes as an interesting dip before the towering, bewilderingly deep and strange Return.

Nevertheless, last week I was watching the episode immediately following the climax of the Laura Palmer mystery… and my disc started glitching out so bad that a couple of scenes were unplayable. It was like my Blu-ray player knew what was coming.

Not Wasted Years

This isn’t their best song (damn good, though) but it’s the one that introduced me to Maiden in 1986. A gateway to so much in my early teenage years.

Reasons I Buy Vinyl Records

Let’s get this first part out of the way. For me, it’s not about the analog sound. Yeah there’s that crackly warm fireside quality of the soundwaves preserved in grooves, but streaming is usually good enough quality for me. Then again, it’s possible my brain secretly favors vinyl’s physical sound over digital, the way my brain works differently when I something on paper instead of on a screen.

Definite reasons I like vinyl:

1. Intentionally selecting and starting (and flipping) an album makes me pay more attention to the awesomeness of the album, which happens less when I’m just streaming random stuff for hours.

2. I’m not at the mercy of apps. Sometimes apps have outages. Or they’ll cease to exist, as will likely happen to the major players one day. Or Spotify will mysteriously remove an album I like, such as Siouxsie and the Banshees’ Juju (currently M.I.A.), and I’m glad I own my own copy. It’s the same reason I’ve started buying physical copies of movies I love.

3. I grew up with it; good nostalgia

4. Big cover art and liner notes

5. Delight in finding and collecting records, along with the nest-feathering satisfaction of surrounding myself with cherished albums

6. Musicians earn a better cut of the money than they do on Spotify. I believe in paying for art I like.

7. Once I own an album (and I’m a choosy buyer), I feel like a pre-internet teen again, when I often gambled on unfamiliar records and really listened close, repeatedly, to get my money’s worth. Often the album sucked, but those were never casual listens. And some albums or songs I otherwise might have dismissed too quickly were given proper attention, allowing me to fall in love with them.

8. As with books, records are a way better use of my fun money than overpriced drinks, crap I don’t really need, etc.

My Best Friend's Exorcism: A Novel

Finally got around to reading one of Grady Hendrix’s super-popular novels. I’d been wondering if he was really good or just good at irresistible concepts, and shit yeah, he’s really good.

I was entertained start to finish—the book lives up to its cover art—and extra credit goes to the character work. Amid the technicolor supernatural mayhem, I cared about the central friendship. The last chapter focused on the emotional aftermath of the human story, and that kind of thing is always at risk of feeling forced. Here it felt natural and earned. Will definitely read more Hendrix now.

Hell's Hundred Books Ouija

This was at the launch party on the snack table.

Hell's Hundred Launch Party

I had the pleasure of attending Soho Press’s launch party for their new horror imprint: Hell’s Hundred. My novel Our Winter Monster will be their fourth title, arriving January ’25.

Here’s me with E.K. Sathue (author of youthjuice) and Corinne Leigh Clark (author of The Butcher’s Daughter, spring 2025).

Snow Moon, Hungry Moon

Is that a full moon I see outside? Yeah no, the full moon is Saturday. But I did that thing everyone does when it’s almost a full moon and they think, “Is that a full…” before deciding it’s ever so slightly not quite round on one side, and then their interest deflates a little, as if they themselves were the not-quite-full moon.

The February full moon is called the Snow Moon, which sounds like an album from early ’00s, or the Hungry Moon, which sounds like an album from ’80s.

Demon Novel Update

I finished “plotting” the second act of my demon novel-in-progress.

My note doc for the first two acts, which I’ve described in an earlier post as not so much notes as an inelegant but extremely detailed first draft, now runs 60K words. I have three more acts to tell myself before I, you know, write the thing.

Before I continue, I’m taking a week or two for reading and general life improvement. I’ll read some Carl Jung and an oral history of David Bowie. I need to watch a couple of cannibal shows (for research purposes only, unless they’re really compelling). And I’m reenforcing some habits like meditation, lower screen time, lean eating, etc.