Things I know, and wrote this year:
If you find yourself hoping that one day you'll have your chance to be the good guy with the gun, people are probably worried about you. (Jan. 5)
Innocence is not a renewable resource. (Jan. 12)
If you're not a sociopath, you pay for your transgressions. (Jan. 14)
We are what we do; when we do good, we are good. But even then we retain a dark capacity. (Feb. 2)
There is an interesting dichotomy to rock 'n' roll. On the one hand, it is sometimes better the more disposable it is--it lives in the joy-crammed moment. You get your one-off hit single, your timeless amber-trapped miracle, and after a while, everyone fades back into the working class.
That's the legend that we print. More often, hit records are conceived in offices and crafted by professionals paid by the hour. Come right down to it, it's mostly marketing. (Feb. 9)
There's nothing special about the people we lock up. Sometimes it seems we lock each other up more or less at random. (Feb. 16)
Chris Maxwell is an artist of the first order. You won't regret listening to him. (Feb. 23)
Some men behave badly because they can, because they find themselves in positions to wield power and feel insulated from consequences because of that power. Other men behave badly because they feel powerless, out of shame. (March 1)
Things went wrong when people stopped paying attention to what was real and difficult and complicated and started attending to 10-second sound bites and reality TV and news as entertainment. (March 3)
These Nietzschean microbes will test us. They might not make us stronger. But they might sober us up a bit. (March 15)
Sunlight feels disinfecting, even when it blinds. (March 24)
On a personal level, it has started. A friend of a friend died in a New Jersey hospital last week. (March 29)
Don't let nobody tell you how to mourn. (April 5)
You try to be as good as anyone. You don't say it out loud, but you try to chase down your models. Your Shakespeares, your Faulkners, your Walker Percys and John Prines. (April 14)
Jackie Robinson may have died disappointed in us; his spirit might be disappointed yet. (April 19)
Not every revolution involves pitchforks and guillotines. (April 21)
No one hears the same album twice. Listening to "Bitches Brew" today, I am more appreciative of its dark mystery and less bothered by what I perceive as its sketchiness and lack of resolution. (April 26)
Henry David Thoreau was no workaholic. (April 28)
[Lucinda Williams] chased Flannery O'Connor's peacocks. (May 3)
What I remember most about Little Richard was that he did not seem little at all. He was, in his platform shoes, as tall as me, and well built. He wore a relatively subdued cream three-piece suit with a striped tie with a honeycrisp apple of a knot, pancake makeup, and just a touch of mascara. His smile was electric. (May 12)
Stupidity is a choice. (May 17)
You can only kneel on a man's neck so long. (June 2)
"Defund the police" isn't a practical idea; it's a slogan. (June 9)
Context always erodes statues, for flesh and blood people can never achieve immovable consistency. (June 21)
For reasons that we cannot know, we find ourselves intoxicated by certain patterns of light and shadow, by the way words rub against one another, by ballplayers and movie stars and sometimes even poets. (June 23)
Somebody stole my bike. (June 28)
There was nothing romantic about the Confederate cause. The war was fought over complicated economic issues that resolve into a simple moral question: Can a human being own another human being? To present it as otherwise is to present a caricature. (June 28)
Nothing concentrates the mind like a deadline, but inspiration keeps its own calendar. (July 7)
One way to be seen as prescient is to make a lot of predictions. (July 12)
Newspapers have always harbored bullies, and sometimes we venerate them and tell cocktail party stories about the atrocities they commit. (July 19)
I don't know that I ever met a more dignified man than Buck O'Neil. (July 21)
Being a great editor is an invisible talent. (July 26)
I would agree that the 1619 Project is revisionist history. But I can't think of any part of American history that needs to be revised more. (Aug. 9)
Dee Brown never pretended to be an Indian. And he never pretended to be objective or measured about American atrocities. (Aug. 16)
If you produce hack work, you are a hack, no matter how talented you may be. (Aug. 18)
Every Republican who has not specifically opposed Trump's anti-
Americanism deserves to wear the shame for the rest of their political careers. (Aug. 23)
Newspapers are skeptical machines, unwilling to extend the credit of faith poetry requires. (Aug. 23)
There is a lot that is problematic in the Menckenian model of intellectual hauteur, arrogance and casual bigotry. (Aug. 30)
Kyle Rittenhouse is a kid, and kids--no matter what their age--shouldn't walk around with machines made for murder in their hands. (Sept. 1)
To someone else, the Bob Gibson I encountered might have seemed genteel and slim, an excellent old gentleman. But I saw a blinding archangel, a fluttering of genius, something great and awesome. And the best I ever saw smiled upon me. (Oct. 6)
Don't send me envelopes stuffed with cash trying to get me to review your book. (Or throw me in yonder briar patch.) (Oct. 11)
We can vote, but we might as well pray. (Oct. 13)
The wishful thoughts and prayers of patriots will never be enough to counter the calculated maneuvers of those who understand the law yet abhor justice. (Oct.18)
Just because something is inanimate doesn't make it unworthy of love. (Oct. 25)
Sentimentality gets a bad rap. (Oct. 25)
Your average commercial flight is like a Stanley Milgram experiment. (Nov. 1)
Before we can be great, we must be decent. (Nov. 3)
Genius can be particular and narrow; not all great minds are beautiful. A person can be both grandmaster and moral imbecile. (Nov. 10)
What we used to do was quarantine nutty ideas. (Nov. 15)
We baby boomers had our shot. What's left of history will judge us. (Nov. 17)
I don't believe Dick Allen was anything but gifted and proud and possessed of the sort of dignity that recognizes the futility of worrying about the sort of impression you might make on the envious and ignorant. (Dec. 13)
In a civil society, most of us get what we need. (Dec. 20)
pmartin@adgnewsroom.com
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