Why Hozier’s fan comments are the best

Andrew Hozier Byrne, best known by his stage name, Hozier, inspires a kind of fan devotion that is intense, even for fan devotion. Aside from his megahit “Take Me To Church,” I was late in discovering his music (although I firmly believe that music, no matter how old, comes alive for us right when we need it), and fell in love not just with his songs but also the commentary on his YouTube videos. I once said on Twitter that fan comments on Hozier videos were my new favorite form of literature, and that remains true.

I love how these comments convey a passion so fervent that the rules of grammar and syntax break down. I love the mythology that has sprung up around him; that he is some sort of mythological forest creature, or an honorary lesbian. In several spots, there are lengthy comment threads about his hands.

As I promised back in December, in this post I’ve compiled some of my favorite comments on Hozier’s YouTube videos. I’ve also provided links to the videos. In some cases the comments will make more sense if you’ve watched the videos, but I wouldn’t blame you if you didn’t want to spend an hour watching them all. Then again, they’re all very, very good. I promise!

“In a Week”

• “cute date idea: run away and get married in the woods, and then lay down and decompose together”

• “This is song is like caressing my hair and cuddling me to sleep, without the promise of tomorrow”

• “i love the way the irish can sing about decay and corpses and graves and the like with such incredible lusciousness.  brings to mind sinead o'connor's, "i am stretched on your grave." buzzards, insects, foxes, ravens. so nice.

“Work Song”

• “hosier said ‘fuck it i'll just invent love’ and then wrote this”

• “‘Lay me gently in the cold dark earth; No grave can hold my body down, I'll crawl home to her’ GOOD LORD THIS LINE MAKES ME FEEL THINGS I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW I COULD FEEL”

• “This song has so much of the energy as one of my favorite lines of poetry, ‘They asked “Do you love her to death?” I said “Speak of her over my grave and watch how she brings me back to life.”’”

• “hozier, a straight man, has somehow perfectly nailed the feeling of gay yearning”

• “The reason lesbians/bi women like hozier so much is bc he sings about women in a longing beautiful way”

“To Be Alone”

• “i dont know what im feeling but ive never felt it more intensely”

• “Love how gritty and dark this version is, feels like he's dragging you through mud and rocks back to his bog-shack while you're half-conscious”

• If Hozier ever kidnaps me and takes me to a distant unknown bog surrounded by an endless forest, mind your own business and do not call the police

• Raise your hand if you've fallen in love with Hozier and now you can't go back
  

“NFWMB”

• “Whenever I meet a man I come here to remind myself that I deserve better”

• “I'm a lesbian but I would die for this man”

• “A rare video of Jesus playing guitar”

• “I will never get over Hozier saying ‘honey.’”

• “if love doesn’t feel like this then what’s the point”

“As it Was” (Uploaded to YouTube after a long absence from the public eye)

• “the forest nymph is emerging back to life with little bread crumbs of music”

• “Tell the Satyrs they don't need to look for Pan anymore, we found him”

• “Andrew its 3AM and I'm sobbing”

• “it’s 7am and im already crying”

• “Please sir stop making me yearn this early in the morning”

“From Eden”

• “Hoziers music: a gentle beat with some nice jazzy guitar. Hozier lyrics: innocence died screaming”

• “Director: How slow-mo do you want this music video to be? Hozier: Yes”

• “why does hozier’s songs make me nostalgic over memories that never happened”

“Whole Lotta Love” (Led Zeppelin Cover)

• “so basically i just sat here with my mouth open the whole time...speechless.”

• “When both  your hands are trembling before  you touch that guitar to play.  O man, it's going down”

• “Andrew is fire.”

• “I'm pretty upset that I didn't get to hear Hozier sing ‘I'm gonna give you every inch of my love’“

• “only hozier could make this song sound wholesome”

”Talk”

• ”Hozier using Greek Mythology references, the absolute AUDACITY of this man.”

• “‘Imagine being loved by me’ THIS MAN KNOWS THE POWER HE HOLDS”

• “‘Imagine being loved by me’ spaghetti is falling out of my pockets and I'm sweating buckets god that's so hot”

• ”’must talk pretty so lovely lady won’t know I have carnal desires ever at all’ our lesbian king returns in full force wow”

• ”This is what a level 20 bard sounds like ladies and gentlemen”

Battle, Zoom, Compassion, Chronic, Fatigue

“The Morphine’s Girl”, Santiago Rusinol, 1894.

I’ve spent the past month or so coping with deep, relentless fatigue. I wasn’t necessarily sleepy or sleep-deprived. My bones felt heavy, my body as if it were moving through thick mud, my head too light and wobbly. I tried resting. I tried napping. It would get a tiny bit better, and then it would get worse again. Nothing really helped. 

A couple of weeks into it, I was diagnosed with a minor infection, and thought maybe that was the explanation. But clearing the infection didn’t resolve the fatigue. I already deal with a baseline amount of daily fatigue and have to ration my spoons carefully to get done the things I want and need to get done. But this took most of my remaining spoons away. A lot of things piled up. I tried not to feel guilty. I failed. 

During this period, the disability rights activist Jessica Kellgren-Fozard released a video on pacing when you have conditions that limit your energy levels. Maybe I’m just not pacing myself enough, I thought. I need to rest more, build back that store of energy like she says. I tried. My tank remained nearly empty. 

In late March, I went to a retreat that I’d been looking forward to for ages. Although there were opportunities to make art, write, and engage in gentle movement, I wasn’t up for any of it. I spent mealtimes trying to catch up with friends and fond acquaintances. Otherwise, I mostly laid in the narrow bed in my room and looked out the window at the back garden and trees. 

At home, it was much the same. I spent the bulk of many days in bed, either writing, chatting with friends online, or watching TV shows and movies, watching the birds and butterflies and squirrels and bumblebees outside in the garden, wishing I had the energy to go for a walk or tend to the plants outside. 

Even so, I managed to get a few things done. I finished a couple of sewing projects and filmed them, to make videos about the process. I picked away at a new draft of the book I’m writing, about San Francisco’s forgotten cemeteries. I researched potential publishers and started a book proposal. I wrote an article that I’ve been researching, off and on, for a few months, and I started research on a few other ideas. Maybe I should have rested more. But I also wanted to do things that make me happy, and these are things that make me happy.

I'm sure plenty of other people have said this before, but that whole "only use your bed for sleep and sex" suggestion is ableist. I'm going through some intense fatigue lately and working/reading/etc. from bed is pretty much necessary. #sleep #sleeproutine #chronicillness

— Beth Winegarner (@bethwinegarner) April 1, 2022

Finally, I saw my doctor. I’d put it off because it’s so hard to pin down what causes fatigue, and I wasn’t sure it would be a good use of my limited resources to talk it over with him. We spoke on a video call. He wondered if maybe my sleep quality was worse, but conceded that I probably didn’t suddenly develop sleep apnea. He also wondered aloud whether it might be some kind of post-viral syndrome. I didn’t remember having any particular viruses before the onset of the fatigue, but I’m so well immunized against Covid that I might not notice if I was exposed to it again. Finally, he asked me to come in for a bunch of labwork, including tests for anemia and B-12 and Vitamin D deficiency. 

Although those tests all came back normal, I learned in the interim that another medication I’m taking can cause poor absorption of B-12, and that lack of folate supplementation can also make things worse. As an experiment, I started taking extra B-12, folate and Vitamin D, as well as electrolytes daily. I’m beginning to feel better. Whether it’s because of the supplementation, because whatever was causing the fatigue has run its course, or something else, it’s impossible to say. 

And it’s hard to trust that it will last. When this latest round of fatigue came on, I was just getting my energy back from the Covid-19 booster I got in early December. I’ve written about this before, but each vaccination has caused me some kind of flare that feels like my fibromyalgia kicking up for weeks at a time. This time, it lasted more than two months. Another doctor I’ve seen this year, one who works closely with fibromyalgia patients, confirmed that she’s seen this reaction pretty often. After all, she said, this virus is still new to our systems, and the vaccines kick up a pretty hefty immune response, especially in those of us who have aggressive immune systems to begin with.

One bright spot in all this: One of my favorite writers, Johanna Hedva, released a revised and updated version of their incredible essay, “Sick Woman Theory,” earlier this month. The earlier version created tidal waves of awareness when it came out in 2016, and gave me a lot of language I didn’t have before for my experiences of being in my body. It also seeks to answer the question: “How do you throw a brick through the window of a bank [in other words, engage in meaningful protest] if you can’t get out of bed?”

The revision is accompanied by a new essay, “Why It’s Taking So Long,” about Hedva’s experiences being asked to give talks and teach about Sick Woman Theory since the piece came out, and their struggles to create accessible spaces for those events. Hedva eventually hopes to publish a Sick Woman Theory book, but all of these shenanigans have gotten in the way. Seriously, why would a venue refuse to provide a sign-language translator or audio captions? Or not give a disabled writer enough lead time to deliver on a project? Or not compensate them adequately for their work and/or expenses? This is someone who must already ration their time and energy carefully. It’s a frustrating, and illuminating, read. I hope event organizers are paying attention.

So, here I am, hopefully feeling better. Maybe now is the time for pacing, now that I’ve got some energy to pace, to build back. But there are so many things I want to do.

Please don’t send me notes of pity or regret. This is part of life, and it’s something a lot of people go through. I know such messages mean well, but they have a way of reminding me that many don’t understand what it’s like, outside of the flu or recovering from surgery before bouncing back to full health. It’s a reminder that too many people see disabled life as inferior. It isn’t. It’s just different. 

Our flag means stop pirating my books

Promotional photo from “Our Flag Means Death,” on HBO.

One of the most challenging things about being a self-published author is that I don’t have a legal department to defend me. Another is that PDFs of some of my books are circulated widely on bootleg/piracy sites and it’s like playing whack-a-mole to try to get them taken down. Once you figure out how to send your copyright infringement form to the right person at the right website, and they agree to pull your work from the site, it pops up somewhere else the next day. And, unfortunately, there are people out there who have taken my PDFs and republished them as their own work, selling them on sites like Amazon and Booksamillion. When that happens, it’s my job to contact the booksellers and ask them to remove the products, because I don’t have a legal team to do it for me. It’s a tedious and annoying process.

I went through a round of this a year or so ago, when my friend Justin texted me to tell me he’d seen some books in the Amazon Kindle store with the same content and similar titles as my book, “The Columbine Effect.” There were three different ebooks, each with a different title and subtitle. You can see them in the images below. 

Most of the subtitles were pulled from the book description on my website, and the cover images are either stock photos or a (presumably unauthorized) copy of a photo taken at Columbine High School the day after the shootings. One of the ebooks is called “Afterword,” which is just baffling. Amazon has a form that authors can fill out to report the sale of books that infringe/pirate their content, but it’s often a slow process to get these reports reviewed and the books removed. Eventually, they got taken down and I thought that was the end of it.

Around New Year’s, my friend Edward reached out, this time to tell me a friend of his had bought a book that included an article I’d written about his book, “Heavy Metal Africa,” a few years ago. My article, along with many others, are included in my book “Tenacity: Heavy Metal in the Middle East and Africa,” which came out in 2018. But the book his friend bought wasn’t “Tenacity.” It was called “Loyal to The Music: Middle East and Northern Africa War on Heavy Metals.”  Another book with the same content also popped up, this one called “War of Heavy Metals: Crisis Unfolding Around the World.” According to Amazon, “Loyal” was written by “Lawerence Orrantia,” while “War”’s author is listed as “Rick Moyd.” A quick Google search reveals that neither of these people exist. 

Unfortunately, these two books were already being distributed widely on a number of bookseller sites, as well as places like Goodreads and Google Books. I painstakingly reached out to each one of these places and figured out what forms to fill out and/or who to email, and most of them have since been taken down. In the process, I also discovered the three “Columbine Effect” clones were back in the Kindle store, so I asked Amazon to take them down again. 

This is a frustrating and exhausting process. Still, I wanted to see if I could find out more about the people or bot farms or whatever are taking pirated copies of my books, turning them into new books, and selling them online. I bought a copy of “Loyal to the Music” from Amazon – I hope it was the only sale – but when it arrived, it had no identifying information on it. The back page mentions Las Vegas, but nothing else, and all the barcodes take you back to the sales page on Amazon. 

I’m pretty sure “Loyal” was published by Amazon’s own print-on-demand service, and that the pirated Kindle books are also published through Amazon’s Kindle publishing platform. In many ways, this means Amazon is complicit in selling pirated books. Sure, they have each user/author/seller tick a box promising that they are the rightful content owner of the work, which lets Amazon off the hook. Amazon COULD match uploaded texts against the texts of existing books for sale on the platform, and dig deeper when a new upload matches something that’s already been on sale for years. Doing this – and blocking the publication of any new work that plagiarizes legitimate work – would cut down on the amount of time that publishers and authors have to spend filing complaints. But Amazon probably won’t, since doing so would make the company less money, and it doesn’t technically help customers in any way. In a word, it’s shitty.

Going forward, I expect I’ll have to keep looking for bootlegged copies of my books and asking sellers to take them down. I’ve had people say “hey, be flattered that they want to copy your work!” But my books aren’t that popular, and my sales are small. It isn’t flattering to have someone attempt to divert revenue away from me for the years of work, research and writing I’ve done. I don’t mind if people want to quote from my books if it’s relevant to their own writing; fair use is a thing, and I’m happy for my work to inform others’. But wholesale reproduction, in an effort to make easy money off my writing and skills, isn’t flattering at all. It’s keeping me from the work I really ought to be doing: more writing. 

I woke up with these songs in my head

Thanks, YouTube Music, for making this image so I didn’t have to.

Ever since I started listening to popular music, around age 10, I’ve been aware that, most mornings when I wake up, there’s a song playing in my head. I’ve often wondered what it would look like if I started tracking those songs: Are there any over-arching themes? Are they relaying subliminal messages? Are they entirely random, or are they mostly songs I’ve heard recently?

It took me until late 2021 to start tracking them, in the hope of perhaps answering some of those questions. I created a playlist on YouTube Music, my subscription service of choice, and set a reminder on my phone to notice what song is playing in my head when I wake up and add it to the playlist. If it’s a song I’ve already added, then I skip the process for that day.

So far, the answers to the above questions are: No, no, no, and no. Mostly they are catchy songs I’ve heard recently, but not always. Once in a while, it’s a song I haven’t heard in years, or a song I barely know. (One morning I had to sing what I could remember to my kiddo, since it was a tune she knew but I didn’t.) I’ve been listening to a ton of Hozier over the past year, so he shows up a lot and, in general, these songs (regardless of genre) skew toward the catchy end of the spectrum. I suppose that’s to be expected, given the nature of earworms. I mean, if you look closely, my brain even Rickrolled me one morning. Jeez.

Now that the playlist is nearing 100 songs, I thought I’d share — and perhaps inspire others to do this as well. I know I’ve inspired one person already (Hi, Rosa!), and it would be fun to get more people paying attention to this stuff. Not for science or anything, but just to make ourselves more mindful of the songs our brains play for us when we first greet the day.

You can see and hear my playlist here:

https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLpEjxKHxZD0mOzAqyMxIYSmamuf1nl4yz

On disability and longing

“The compact between writing and walking is almost as old as literature – a walk is only a step away from a story, and every path tells.” — Robert MacFarlane, “The Old Ways”

I recently read Robert MacFarlane’s lush, poetic book “The Old Ways,” about walking miles and miles of footpaths in England, Spain, Palestine, India and Scotland (where he also takes a couple of journeys by boat as well). Even before I opened the book I had the sense that it was the land-bound version of Roger Deakin’s book, “Water Log,” about swimming in England’s wild waterways. Indeed, MacFarlane and Deakin were good friends before Deakin’s death, and indeed there are a lot of similarities. 

“The Old Ways” also references (and is probably named after) an old favorite of mine, Alfred Watkins’ “The Old Straight Track,” his 1925 book about discovering alignments of sacred sites in the British landscape. Watkins was hugely influential when I was learning about these ideas in the mid- to late 1990s, and researching what would become “Sacred Sonoma.”

Both books enticed me because of my love for British landscapes. I’ve visited a few spots around Britain, and long to visit many more, but I’m unlikely to ever get to see all I want to, a list that includes the Scottish Highlands and islands (the Orkneys and Shetlands in particular), the Lake District, the Peak District, the Yorkshire moors and Pennines, so many more. I love the British landscape for a few reasons: It’s beautiful, and when I’m there I feel like I am home. Either that’s because so much of it reminds me of the Sonoma County landscapes, where I grew up, or because many of my ancestors lived in these landscapes, and something of the familiar has trickled down to me. 

But I am also disabled; my body tires easily and hurts all the time. It’s worse with more than a little exertion. I can’t walk more than a mile or so without pain. Travel and jet lag alone make my pain and fatigue worse, at least until I settle into a new location and time zone. If I had months or years to spend abroad (thar lear (pronounced “har lar”) in Irish; literally, “over seas”), maybe I could accomplish it, but I don’t foresee having that luxury. 

And so I read books like MacFarlane’s and Deakin’s, rich with language and description, quiet moments and insights, the poetics of nature and the exhaustion of a long journey. It’s a way to experience these places vicariously, but there’s a catch. Their perspectives and insights are almost certainly different from what mine would be. They are young, relatively able-bodied white men, able to walk long distances through these landscapes without much fear for their safety. I am not. Reading these books makes me want to take these journeys (some of them, anyway) for myself. It’s frustrating.

What’s more frustrating is that MacFarlane makes the argument – as many philosophers have in the past – that humans are meant to walk, that we are at our most intelligent, that we are able to do our freest and most creative thinking, when we journey on foot. “‘I can only meditate when I’m walking,’ wrote Jean-Jaques Rousseau in the ninth book of Confessions, ‘when I stop I cease to think; my mind only works with my legs,” Søren Kierkegaard speculated that the mind might function optimally at the pedestrian pace of three miles per hour, and in a journal describes going out for a wander and finding himself ‘so overwhelmed with ideas’ that he ‘could scarcely walk,’” MacFarlane quotes. (I quote Kirkegaard on walking in “Sacred Sonoma,” too; he’s so good.) “In all of these accounts, walking is not the action by which one arrives at knowledge; it is itself the means of knowing,” he writes. 

In some sense, I think these thinkers are probably right, that the repetitive motion of one’s legs, combined with a relaxed openness to the environment, can stimulate the mind and imagination. But to insist it’s the only way for humans to reach their intellectual peak is ableist, suggesting that those who can’t walk, or walk much, are suffering mentally. As many of us know, many other repetitive and habitual tasks, such as folding laundry, knitting, hand-sewing, washing dishes or rocking in a rocking chair, can stimulate this same kind of mental state. The Nagoski sisters, in “Burnout,” call it “default mode,” a kind of resting state where our minds can relax, woolgather, daydream and make connections we can’t make when we are more focused. 

Thankfully, MacFarlane continues, “It is now a familiar suggestion, and one which we are wise to be skeptical about when it is asserted as a rule. … As you will know if you’ve ever walked long distances for day after day, fatigue on the path can annihilate all but the most basic brain functions.” Walking isn’t the only way. And too much walking is exhausting for anyone, whatever their limits may be. 

Still, I remain frustrated, caught between the desire to explore all of the places in MacFarlane’s book (and many more) on foot, and recognizing that my body has its limitations. Reading books like “The Old Ways” stimulates my hunger to go there, to see these landscapes in person, to feel the earth and its different “personalities” all around me. And, in small ways, it also satisfies them. 

What the trees want

Detail from a painting by Tomasz Alan Kopera.

“But what if the knowledge being forbidden to Eve was … a kind of deeper communion with and understanding of the tree and the fruit itself, an awareness of her kinship with them?”

–Maud Newton, “What Did the Forbidden Tree Want?”

I haven’t been able to stop thinking about this quote since I first read it, more than a month ago. My regular readers know that I think about that moment in the Garden of Eden with the Tree of Knowledge often, and I’ve written about it several times. There are so many theories on just who (Lucifer, Lilith, the Simurgh) that serpent in the tree was, so many theories on what kind of knowledge was forbidden to Adam and Eve. Genesis never explains it; it only says that if they eat the fruit, they will “surely die.” Why would our supposed creator threaten us with death just to keep us from knowing things? Why would they want to keep us naive and ignorant? What would they not want us to know?

Newton’s quote connects my ruminations on the Tree of Knowledge to another of my interests: the Green Man. This figure (like the serpent in the tree) is connected to many different deities and characters: Jack-in-the-Green, Robin Hood, Gawain’s Green Knight, Pan and Dionysus/Bacchus, the woodwose, Cernunnos, Herne the Hunter, and others. He’s also connected to the foliate head carvings so often seen on churches, particularly medieval churches, across Europe and into the Middle East. 

Why were the builders of Christian churches so eager to depict a figure that was clearly pagan in origin? Yes, there is plenty of evidence that Christian leaders adopted (or wholesale appropriated) earlier pagan traditions, in part to make it easier to convince people to join them. The way Christmas supplanted celebrations of the winter solstice and Yule, which we’ve just finished celebrating in the northern hemisphere, is a prime example. But to me, it feels like there’s something else at work. 

A foliate head in Llangwm, Wales.

Many foliate heads appear miserable, terrifying or both. Leaves sprout from their noses, mouths and ears. Their mouths are often open in surprise, or perhaps a scream; their eyes are wide, bewildered (literally) and frightened. In earlier, pagan times, these figures were comfortable with (and celebrated for) the close connections between humans and the rest of nature. But under Christianity, this connection becomes sinister. The woods and wilds become dark, dangerous, terrifying places. This becomes a pretense for domination; we seek to control the things we fear. 

But humans and the more-than-human world, as Queer Nature calls it, have long relied upon each other. While it’s true that, if humans disappeared from the planet, nature would be just fine, it’s also true that a wide range of plants and animals depend on us, just as we depend on them. Robin Wall Kimmerer writes about this extensively in “Braiding Sweetgrass,” including a story about how sweetgrass grows back stronger and healthier when a certain amount of it is regularly harvested. Regular pruning and proscribed burns strengthen plants and ecosystems. Wild animals depend on humans, not just for the ways in which we function as part of larger ecosystems and food webs, but also for our wildlife rehabilitation efforts. The Green Man’s woods and wilds were once our home; we were once much more consciously a part of nature and the environment than we pretend to be now. The Green Man, in his hybrid form, represents that history. 

Dominance over nature has allowed humans to flourish in many ways as a species — and Christianity has abetted that process — but we have also lost a great deal. We have lost the ways in which our nervous systems settle when we’re tracking, foraging, working the land or resting among the trees. We have lost the friendship and medicine of plants, the awe and wonder of seeing wildlife going about its business, the humbling sense of vulnerability and interconnectedness that is our natural place in the world. We (especially white people) chase romantic notions of Native Americans and their “connections to nature,” appropriating imagined spiritual practices because we have long since lost our own sense of indigeneity; either we became colonists, or our ancestors were victims of colonization. 

Racism and other forms of bigotry play a role here, too. Once white people saw wild nature as something to fear and dominate, we began treating Black, Brown and indigenous people as subhuman, as savages. Likewise, queer and neurodivergent people are marginalized for being too uninhibited, too transgressive to belong in human society. In “Black Skin, Green Masks: Medieval Foliate Heads, Racial Trauma, and Queer World-Making,” Carolyn Dinshaw connects these ideas back to the foliate heads and representations of the Green Man. “These aesthetically intricate, affectively intense images represent bodies that are strange mixtures, weird amalgams: they picture intimate trans-species relations.” She connects them to festivals like burning man, queer subcultures like the Radical Faeries, and “traumatic postcolonial contexts out of which new queer worlds are imagined.”

The Green Man in my mind isn’t shocked or terrified by his hybrid nature. He’s calm and present, glad to bear the horns and greenery that grow from his head. He knows what we have largely forgotten; that we are nature, and nature is us. He doesn’t mind if we eat from the Tree of Knowledge, if we remember our connection to the natural world. In fact, he’s waiting for us.

The music, books, movies and TV shows I enjoyed most in 2021

Music and stories have always been a significant coping mechanism for me, and 2021 was no different. As the year comes to a close, I wanted to share a few of the things that brought me joy and/or distraction.

Music:

Hozier: Before this year, I pretty much only knew this Irish musician as the “Take Me to Church” guy. But then, one day, YouTube Music randomly played me “In the Woods Somewhere” and I stopped breathing, it was so beautiful. I fell deeply in love with his catalogue, especially songs like “To Be Alone,” which made me feel seen in ways I rarely do. I suspect he’ll have new music out in 2022, and I can’t wait. Someday I’m going to write a whole post about his fandom calling him Faery King and Forest Daddy. Just you wait. 

“The Harder They Fall” Soundtrack: I love this movie for its representation, its style, its casting (I’ve had a crush on Jonathan Majors since “Last Black Man in San Francisco”), and its music. Particular favorites include the addictive title track by Koffee and “Better Than Gold” by Barrington Levy. It even made me like a CeeLo Green song. And I love the tidbits of dialogue from the movie, especially the part where Regina King’s character shoots a man before he can finish saying a word that begins with n.

Emma Ruth Rundle, “Engine of Hell:” I’ve long found a home in Emma Ruth Rundle’s bleak, beautiful songs, and her 2021 release is her most bleak and beautiful yet. The bare-bones arrangement, just Rundle’s voice and guitar or piano, gives you nowhere to hide from her vulnerable voice and stark lyrics. Favorite song: “Body.” 

Books:

“32 Words for Field,” Manchán Magan: I began learning Irish through Duolingo this year, partly in the hope of getting closer to some of my ancestors by speaking the language they commonly spoke before it was outlawed by colonial England. I eventually discovered Magan, who’s devoted to reviving the language. “32 Words” focuses on nearly extinct Irish words, such as “sopachán” for nesting material (but also an unkempt person), or “sí gaoithe,” for a gust of wind, particularly if it’s caused by fairies. But he also writes about connections between native Irish people and the Middle East and India, and about communing with the Cailleach in an abandoned kiln. It’s a great read. 

“White Magic,” Elissa Washuta: Washuta writes essays the way I wish I could. She goes deep and wide, bringing seemingly disparate subjects together, tethering macro to micro, nature to the heart, pop culture to spirit. This book shook me to my core. 

“The Only Good Indians,” Stephen Graham Jones: A perfect mix of humor, horror, mythology and indigenous reality. I can’t wait to read more from him. 

Movies:

“Bright Star:” Ben Whishaw is perfect as John Keats and Abbie Cornish is astonishing as his fashion-forward lover, Fanny Brawne, in this Regency-period sketch by Jane Campion. 

“Hunt for the Wilderpeople:” Perhaps the most unlikely buddy comedy of all time, featuring a rebellious teen (Julian Dennison) and a cantankerous man (Sam Neill) who reluctantly becomes a father figure. Written and directed by one of my faves, Taika Waititi.

“Magic Mike XXL:” I had no idea what to expect going into this movie, which I watched with online groups twice this year. I didn’t expect it to be sex-positive, pleasure-affirming spin on masculinity, sexuality and brotherhood, but it is. So good. 

“Ondine:” I joke that this movie stars “Colin Farrell’s eyebrows,” but in reality I found a lot of solace in this movie about a strange woman who gets caught in an Irish fisherman’s net, and who may or may not be a selkie. 

“The Green Sea:” Randal Plunkett, the current Lord Dunsany, gained a lot of attention this year for his plans to restore and re-wild his family’s ancestral home. He also released a quietly brilliant film, “The Green Sea,” about a novelist and former heavy metal musician who meets her own characters while living in a remote manor house. 

“Nomadland:” I saw a lot of myself in Frances McDormand’s character, Fern, as she makes her way across the American landscape in her van. She reads to me as neurodiverse, probably autistic, but that isn’t the point of the story. Representation matters.

TV: 

“The Witcher:” I tried to watch this series when the first season came out in 2019, but found the triple timelines confusing and bailed after about four episodes. But with the new season coming out this year, I gave it another try – and fell in love. This is a series that rewards repeated viewings, and not just because you get to spend more time with Geralt of Rivia, TV’s yummiest monster-hunter. Season 2 is excellent as well, but much easier to follow. The whole thing makes me want to pick up my sword again.

“Reservation Dogs:” There is so much to love in this series: the teen actors who anchor it. The pull between home and escape. The hilarious unknown warrior. The “Willow” in-jokes. Mose and Mekko. The humor and heart. More shows like this, please. 

“Midnight Mass:” I really enjoyed Mike Flanagan’s previous series, “The Haunting of Hill House” and “The Haunting of Bly Manor,” but appreciated that he went in a new direction for “Midnight Mass.” This series takes a bunch of traditional horror tropes in new directions, to brilliant effect. 

“Shetland:” I am abolitionist in my real-life views, but I still love stories in which grizzled detectives solve crimes set in remote, close-knit communities. This makes for an uneasy headspace, but then again, half the reason I love this series is for its far-flung Scottish landscapes, and probably another 30 percent is for the accents. It also handled a sexual-assault plot in a way that felt honest and respectful, not gratuitous. That’s still vanishingly rare.

“Normal People:” Two Irish teens find unexpected comfort and pleasure together, but life finds ways of keeping them apart. One of the most realistic love stories I’ve ever watched, and the stars, Daisy Edgar-Jones and Paul Mescal, have unbelievable chemistry together. 

“Lovecraft Country:” As someone who’s very uncomfortable with H.P. Lovecraft’s deeply racist and xenophobic legacy, I appreciated the effort to tell a story of ancient evil through a Black and historical lens. “Lovecraft Country” isn’t perfect, but it aims high, and tells some unforgettable stories. 

Ancestors: Puritan minister Stephen Bachiler, from birth to Bedlam, with separation of church and state (and Hester Prynne) in between

Puritan lawyer and politician John Winthrop.

One of the fun things about tracing one’s family tree is occasionally coming across well-known people who shaped our cultural history in some way. Of course, you have to be careful; genealogy sites are full of crowdsourced information, much of it duplicated across family trees without fact-checking. But if you follow the actual documentation, occasionally you find you’re related to someone people write Wikipedia articles or even books about. 

I discovered recently that D. is distantly related to Stephen Bachiler, who was D’s 10th great-grandfather. What first caught my attention was discovering that one of D’s ancestors was buried on Halloween, 1656, in the infamous Bedlam Burial Ground in London. I have deep interests in London, cemeteries and historical treatments for mental illness, so discovering something like this makes my brain all kinds of curious. But when I looked Bachilor up online, I learned a lot more. 

Bachiler was born June 23, 1561, attended Oxford University and was one of its early graduates. In 1587 he became the vicar of Wherwell, Hampshire, England, but was kicked out in 1605 because he was too Puritanical for the changing tastes of the British monarchy. He married four times. The first was Ann Bates, in 1589; they had six children together, including Theodate Bachiler (D’s ninth great-grandmother), who married Christopher Hussey and became one of the early settlers of New Hampshire. Christian Weare became Bachiler’s second wife in 1623; she died three years later, and then he married Helena Mason in 1627. I’ll get to his fourth wife in a moment. 

In 1630, Bachiler was a member of the Company of Husbandmen, in London. They formed the Plough Company and secured a 1,600-square-mile land grant in Maine. They named it Lygonia, after Lygonia for Cecily Lygon, mother of New England Council president Sir Ferdinando Gorges, and Bachiler was going to be its leader and minister. He and Helena sailed to North America in 1632 and landed in Massachusetts, but by then the plans to establish Lygonia had already been abandoned. Puritan lawyer and leader John Winthrop later said that once the Plough Company families arrived and got a look at the land for themselves, they didn’t like it and settled elsewhere.

Bachiler bounced around New England for several years, establishing a church in Lynn (then Saugus), Massachusetts, where he managed to piss off the Puritan theocracy in Boston, apparently because of "his contempt of authority” and some sort of church “scandal.” Back in England, Bachiler and his son Stephen were sued by a local clergyman after they allegedly wrote “scandalous verse” about him and had been singing these songs around the village. But the scandal in Massachusetts was over something that eventually became a core American value: the separation of church and state. From his early days in England, Bachiler called for a “holy house without ceremonies,” a church free from the state’s control. In October of 1632, Winthrop was the governor of the state (the literal opposite of a separation between church and state) and had Bachiler arraigned for his stance on the church and state issue, forbidding him from “exercising his gifts as a pastor … until some scandles be removed.”

Hester Prynne and Pearl before the stocks, from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel “The Scarlet Letter.”

Bachiler later moved to Newbury, New Hampshire, with Theodate and Christopher, where they established a plantation at Winnacunnet. Bachiler named the town Hampton when the town was incorporated in 1639, and is credited as its founder. In 1644, Bachiler was invited to become minister of a new church in Exeter, Massachusetts, but that fell through when the state’s General Court postponed the establishment of a new church there. He returned to New Hampshire, working as a missionary in Strawbery Banke (now Portsmouth) and, in 1648, he married Mary Beedle. Three years later, she was indicted and sentenced for adultery with a neighbor, potentially inspiring the character of Hester Prynne in “The Scarlet Letter.”

Even so, the courts would not grant Bachiler a divorce. He returned to England in 1653, where he died on Oct. 28, 1656. He was buried three days later in what was then called the New Churchyard, a municipal cemetery in London next door to Bethlem Hospital, known for housing and (debatably) caring for the mentally ill. An estimated 20,000 people were buried in this plot of land in the 16th and 17th centuries, but city development eventually overtook the area. Headstones were removed and a few graves were relocated, but many more remain. Today this cemetery is located beneath the Liverpool Street Crossrail station, about a half-mile north of the Tower of London. 

If you enjoyed this and would like even more detail on the life of Stephen Bachiler, check out this 1961 article by Philip Mason Marston, Professor of History and Chairman of the Department at the University of New Hampshire.

Natural megaliths on the Sonoma Coast

A small rocky hill, with one of the sea stacks in the distance.

Millions of years ago, these sea stacks were underwater. Tens of thousands of years ago, mammoths and giant bison came to these tall stones to rub against them for grooming purposes. Today, groups of rock climbers gather here to test their abilities. 

They are most commonly known as the Sunset Rocks, or to some researchers as the Mammoth Rocks, because certain sections of them were rubbed to a polish by ancient megafauna. The person who introduced me to this place more than 20 years ago had another name for them, which is still how I think about them privately.

The early peoples of California didn’t build megaliths like the ones we see in the UK and Ireland, but these sea stacks have a similar feeling. As you approach the cluster of towering stones, you’re struck by a similar sense of awe, the feeling of entering a space that is sacred, other. When you find the path and follow it into the clearing between the stones, it feels like you have crossed into another world. The air is often warmer, more still, and the sounds of wind and pounding sea fade away. 

It would be difficult to overstate how special this place is. 

When I came here regularly 20+ years ago, it was often on weekday evenings around dusk, when we could have the place to ourselves. These days, I live too far away for a casual visit on a weeknight. I keep winding up here on Saturday afternoons, when the stones are covered with climbing enthusiasts. 

Fog covering the plain.

During my most recent visit, in mid-November, 2021, I was excited when I arrived, because the whole plain was blanketed with a thick layer of fog. Mists mean the possibility of straying into another world, like the stories about Avalon. But when I reached the stones, I discovered there was some kind of party or event in the clearing. Someone had set up a table with fliers, and I could hear the beep of a credit-card reader, though I didn’t get close enough to find out what they were selling. Laughter and chatter rose up from the stones, which were studded with climbers. 

I spent some time visiting the stones scattered around the main three, and on a little rocky hill nearby, enjoying the fog swirling across the landscape. I tried to imagine that perhaps I had wandered into another world, and the chatter from the Sunset Rocks was a gathering of nature spirits, but I wasn’t really convinced. I admit, I was disappointed; I wanted to go into the clearing and meditate with the stones, but that’s difficult to do when there are lively people all around you. I’ve tried.

Reading up later on the climbers who come to Sunset Rocks, I learned that, in general, they climb in a respectful way, using the stones’ own lumps and bumps for hand- and footholds, or placing anchors only in existing chinks in the rocks. Visiting this spot regularly seems to have fostered stewardship among climbers, and I appreciate that other people love and revere the stones, even though they’re in ways that are different from mine. Part of me objects; it would be disrespectful to go bouldering at Stonehenge or Avebury, but that’s not what this place is.

Somehow, I need to find ways to visit this place that aren’t peak climbing times, such as lovely (or even misty) Saturday afternoons. And I hope you get the chance to visit them too. Until then, you can read more about them, and other special Sonoma County sites, in my book “Sacred Sonoma.”

The house (and tunnels) that Thomas Midgley built

My dad and uncles grew up in an unusual house in Worthington, Ohio, located at 382 West Wilson Bridge Road. It was more than large enough for my grandparents and their five boys, and provided ample room to run around and explore. Just before the property was torn down to make way for a freeway, Columbus Dispatch reporter Bill Arter and photographer Jack Hutton visited the property to capture images of the unusual series of caverns and tunnels under the property, built by inventor Thomas Midgley. Read the full article below.

Worthington house tunnels, mid-level exit.

MAN-MADE CAVERN 
By Bill Arter 
Photos by Jack Hutton
Columbus Dispatch Magazine
Sunday, October 31, 1965

THERE'S this big stone wall with a great big solid-oak door with great, huge iron hinges and iron all over it, right down at the bottom of the bluff in the woods." Thus, all in a rush and with little by way of introduction, began my young son. At least he was young then; it's been more than 20 years ago. Having caught my interest, he proceeded from allegedly observed fact to hearsay: "The kids say it leads into a cave that runs all around and has big stone rooms and everything and finally runs right up into that rich guy's basement.". "What rich guy?" I asked, more or less idly, being convinced that young Bill had been having his leg pulled. "The guy that invented Ethyl gas," he replied. “You know, the big white house with the swimming pool that sets way back from Wilson Bridge Road."I began to feel a flicker of interesting hope that this wonderful tale might be true. 

Certainly our neighbor, Tom Midgley, could afford a private cavern, if he wanted it. And, as it turned out, he had wanted it and he did have it every bit as grand as the description. Thomas Midgley came by his inventiveness naturally. His father, born in London, England, was an inventor and natural mechanic who contributed a great deal to the development and manufacturing of bicycles. He came to America at an early age and was living in Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania when Thomas was born May 19, 1889. The family soon moved to Columbus where his father became superintendent of the old Columbus Bicycle Company. Young Tom grew up here; he attended Hubbard and Fifth Avenue schools and graduated from old North High School.

He went on to graduate from Cornell in 1911 with a degree in mechanical engineering. Surprisingly, his most significant inventions were in another field altogether--in chemistry. 

Tom's first job was with the National Cash Register Company in Dayton. Then he and his father took a flyer--establishing the short-lived Midgley Tire & Rubber Company in Lancaster. The enterprise was not a success but it left Tom with a life-long interest in rubber--and in chemistry. Years later (and well before the critical, wartime need) he did tremendously significant work toward developing synthetic rubber. He was working at the time for the General Motors Chemical Company. 

In 1916 he joined Charles Kettering at General Motors Research. It was to be a lifelong association and “Boss Ket" shares the glory for some of Tom's greatest developments. Tom's two most celebrated (and personally profitable) inventions were tetraethyl lead additive to make the familiar. Ethyl gasoline and freon, the first safe refrigerant. In his short career he was granted more than 100 patents, including one for extracting bromine from sea water--to break a bottleneck in the production of Ethyl gasoline. He was showered with professional honors. He became president of the American Chemical Society, received honorary doctorates from two universities and won five important medals for scientific achievement. 

The house Thomas Midgley built, and my grandparents purchased in 1945.

In 1929 he came back to Columbus. Up along Wilson Bridge Road, between High Street and the Olentangy River Road he built a stately Colonial home. In spite of its immense size be installed a complete air-conditioning system, perhaps not the first such in all the land. He intended it for a retirement home for his father but made it his own home, too.  He was there very little, dividing most of his time between Dayton, Detroit, Washington and New York. 

The house was hardly completed when the great depression began. Midgley hired as many men as he could possibly use, building roads, landscaping and otherwise furbishing his estate. But, finally, everything was complete. The distress of the jobless still worried him. Then he had his great idea.  

He had shared with most boys a feeling of fascination for caves. As he cast about for ways to make work, the old lure beckoned. The very immersity of what he envisioned was its chief advantage. It would take a lot of men a long time to dig and line with stone a system of caverns and rooms ranging inside the big bluff behind his house.  And it would take a lot of money, which Midgley had. He lost no time getting on with the project. 

Ted Severance, who now lives on nearby Worthington-Galena Road, was Midgley's estate manager. He became superintendent of what a lot of people thereabout considered the craziest project of all time. Some of them criticized Midgley for pouring good money into a "gigantic anthill." But most were gratefully aware that it was Tom's way of sharing his wealth--that the cavern was, in truth, a byproduct.

Ted recalls that the job took more than a year to complete, and that as many as 50 men at a time burrowed and dug to create two separate caverns (that were finally joined) and special rooms. The vaulted ceilings, the walls and floors were all built of limestone, blue and white, from nearby quarries. Ted and his father laid it all with meticulous care. The wrought-iron hardware – hinges, straps, bolts and candle sconces--were made by Mr. Kirker, a skilled Worthington blacksmith. At last the great undertaking was completed and things were back to normal. 

Tom Midgley, it is said, got his money's worth out of the astonishment of his guests. It was his custom to invite them to the baronial-size recreation room and then swing open a heavy door at one end. Inside was a stone-lined room with a candle guttering in a grinning skull. With guests trailing in open mouthed wonder, he'd lead the way through another great door and, via vaulted passageways and endless steps, start the tour by candlelight. Visitors from all parts of the world came away wondering if they had really seen it or only dreamed of those tombless catacombs beneath peaceful Ohio soil. 

Midgley continued his ceaseless professional activities until suddenly, in 1940, he contracted polio. Soon his legs were practically useless. Even so he continued to be the scientist. In 1942 he addressed the National Inventors' Council on behalf of the war effort from his home, via closed-circuit radio. For himself he invented a system of harness and slings so that he could move from bed to wheelchair with the strength of his arms. It was his final and fatal invention. 

Thursday morning, November 2, 1944, his wife found him strangled by his own device. Thomas Midgley died at 55. 

In 1945, the beautiful Midgley estate was purchased by Mr. and Mrs. Gail Winegarner. They had fallen in love with its spacious grounds and house but, even more importantly, they saw in it the perfect place to raise their five active sons. It has proved to be everything they desired. 

More than a year ago I was passing the estate and, on sudden impulse, drove back its long, curving driveway to the house. I was received most kindly by Mr. Winegarner. I told him how much I always admired the place and said I'd like to make a painting of it. To my dismay he answered that I'd have to get on with it; that it would all be destroyed when the north Outerbelt went through. The distressing news brought to my mind the never personally confirmed story of the caves. Somewhat diffidently I asked if the famous “catacombs” really did exist. He assured me that they did and asked me if I'd  like to inspect them. I jumped at the chance. 

The pictures tell of what I saw. But they can't possibly convey the weird and wonderful sensation it was to step from the brilliantly lighted home into a gloomy cave, lighted by a glinting electric torch ahead, with inky blackness closing in behind. We traversed all of its many levels and explored all the passageways and rooms before returning to the house. Once there I asked eagerly if I might do a story about the caves for The Sunday Magazine. Mr. Winegarner smiled a rueful smile and said, “Not until the bulldozers are at our door." Then he explained why: Years ago the Winegarners became aware that the huge door to the cave at the foot of the bluff had been forced. They learned it by investigating noises from the caverns. They learned that boys (strong, well equipped boys) had been unable to resist the challenge of thię mysterious door. It developed that they had grown bolder and bolder, roistering in the caves and even trying to force their way into the house. A final blow came during a court hearing. It concerned a youthful gang that was accused of stealing. There was testimony that the gang had made the cave their headquarters and had hidden their loot in it. 

Stronger bars on the bottom door didn't stop the intrusions. It was literally destroyed. The best estimate Mr. Winegarner could get for building a duplicate was $400. And then the bidder backed out. 

Determined to stop the prowling, the Winegarners closed the lower entrance with a masonry wall. To their utter amazement and chagrin, the new wall was attacked with crowbars and sledgehaṁmers before the mortar was dry and soon pulled down. A second and far more formidable wall, at last, foiled the would-be trespassers. Not long afterward the family investigated noises down in the ravine and discovered evidence that an especially determined gang had been attempting to blast through the new wall. The presence of the alluring novelty became a real tribulation. 

When Jack Hutton and I returned to the cave to take these pictures, Mrs. Winegarner added a new chapter to the vandalism saga. Quite recently she smelled smoke in the house and traced it to the rapidly filling recreation room. She then discovered that a second level door to the cave, halfway up the bluff had been forced (the door literally torn from its hinges) and that kids had built a roaring fire in one of the passageways. She insisted that a deputation of them come up to the house and see what was happening to the smoke. 

With the second door gone, uninvited visitors have prowled the caves at all hours. Jack and I noted, just inside the forced entrance, a cache of matches and candles tucked between the stones. The Winegarners, before final destruction of the house, almost gave up trying to keep out trespassers; their concern being the danger of someone's being hurt. For that reason, primarily, they wanted no further publicity for the catacombs before roadwork began. 

I could, of course, understand their feeling. Thus I kept my peace until now. The bulldozers will have started laying bare Tom Midgley's caverns by the time this appears in print and one of the strangest examples of privately financed welfare projects will be gone for good.