About Me

- Pat Barton
- My most recent single release - "My True North" - is now available on Bandcamp. Open my profile and click on "audio clip".
Friday, January 31, 2025
One That Slipped By
Tuesday, January 28, 2025
A Thinking Person's Page Turner
Despite the fact that I finished it back in mid-December while on our extended trip to L.A., I'm still buzzing from the kinetic energy that infuses Harlem Shuffle (2021). And though novels that reprise characters are normally not a go-to for me, I'm looking forward to seeing where Colson Whitehead will take me when he follows Ray Carney - "...only slightly bent when it comes to being crooked..." - in Crook Manifesto (2023). If that follow-up is even roughly equal to Harlem Shuffle, Carney will end up on a short list of characters I want to hang out with more than twice. Which fictional characters from your reading life have captivated you enough to read more than two novels that feature them?
"Carney was confident in his salesmanship, especially on his home turf. Today's specials: surprise and sadness and curiosity."
Carney is a dedicated family man and mostly successful furniture salesman in late 50s, early 60s Harlem. But some of his family - notably his deceased father and very-much-alive cousin Freddie - dance to different music. His family's shenanigans and Ray's resentment of the pretensions of his effete in-laws complicate a facade he works hard to maintain. Using a classic three act structure, Whitehead never loses control of his propulsive narrative.
"An envelope is an envelope. Disrespect the order and the whole system breaks down." That brief passage from Act Two - my personal favorite even though the body count is lower than Act One or Three - hints at one of the broader themes Whitehead explores in this terrific book, i.e., what really makes a city like New York work. Though this gifted author has more on his mind than entertaining you, you will keep turning those pages compulsively. I guarantee it.
Saturday, January 25, 2025
A List-Maker's Dialectic
Although it's doubtful I'll ever totally abandon my lifelong list-making habit, modern technology has largely rendered that habit increasingly unnecessary. Any of my brethren - i.e., fellow list-makers - any ambivalence about this turn of events?
Most of the lists I still maintain are personal ones e.g., favorite authors. But given how easy it is these days to find any author's complete bibliography, keeping a list of which books I want to read by any of my favorites is silly. I recently gave up adding to my list of palindromes, a practice established many years ago to help me pay more attention, and also something I thought might keep my brain a little sharper. But AI can generate a complete list of those instantly. With just a few keystrokes, the same goes for a fun list of almost any type, like anagrams or other types of wordplay. Or song titles with just a woman's name or names that double as puns or ... Getting a picture of the kind of stuff that filled some of my old notebooks?
For me, lists have always been one portal to the creative process. Consequently, I'm hesitant to go cold turkey. On the other hand, I realize most of my lists became redundant years ago and not maintaining as many as I once did frees up time that can be used for creative endeavors. I'm grateful for that. I remain convinced, however, that over-reliance on technology vs. using the list-making part of my brain is not a foolproof solution. My lists are an adjunct that definitely help strengthen my memory. And maintaining a reasonable number of them additionally ensures I'm continually engaging the kinesthetic learning modality, along with the visual and auditory. Research has shown that using all three of those modalities regularly increases retention.
Being able to instantly find anything, without lists, clearly has advantages. But for the time being I'm keeping my options open. List-making brethren: Where are you in this dialectic?
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
Line Dancing
Am I the only one who finds it easier to see the line separating selflessness and selfishness by looking at the behavior of others vs. looking at myself?
I'll start here. No one who has ever known me would describe me as selfless. I would never describe myself that way. I'm attached to my ego, I'm fond of my opinions, and I'm resistant - as often as not - to the idea of making my needs secondary to the needs of others. Neither a bromance with Dietrich Bonhoeffer nor achieving sainthood alongside Mother Theresa - time machine aside - goes along with the cards in my deck.
Selfish? Here's where the line dancing gets tricky. I was raised Catholic, making selfishness roughly equal to mortal sin, i.e., hell and damnation. That scary and tenacious message created some serious cognitive dissonance when juxtaposed alongside normal adolescent impulses. Consequently, as a young adult/lapsed Catholic/thinking person, I rejected wholesale the selfish=sin bit, journeying toward hedonism, albeit half-heartedly. For the remainder of my life, especially after becoming a parent, I've moved away from craven selfishness, but as I indicated at the start, it's much easier for me to see the line when looking at others vs. looking at myself. That is, I think I can spot someone who appears to reflexively put themselves first - no matter the situation - but maybe that's just my recovering judgaholic getting the upper hand.
I remain certain that selflessness and I are never destined to cross paths. I'm equally certain that the line separating selflessness and selfishness is one I'll be dancing on or near until I can dance no more.
Sunday, January 19, 2025
Moments Across Years
I once heard it said we don't remember days, we remember moments. As thoughts of my daughter continually ran through my head on her birthday today, I paused to recall moments from her life that I'm sure will always remain with me.
* For the most recent moment, I selected the above - taken soon after the birth of my grandson - because it's fresh in my mind. And this picture also perfectly captures my daughter's playful and loving spirit.
* I've had so many transcendent musical moments with her, picking one is difficult. Today, I'll use a moment when she was in 5th grade and I was accompanying her on a LeAnn Rimes song called How Do I Live. When that school auditorium erupted with spontaneous applause after she effortlessly nailed the high note the first time through the chorus, I put my head down to avoid embarrassing myself. I was still regaining my composure as we left the stage together.
* While on a whale-watching excursion in Acadia National Park, I was holding my sleeping five-year old daughter against my chest. There was one magical moment that day when it felt to me like her heartbeat and mine had meshed. I'm guessing any woman who has ever been pregnant can relate to this. Although it wasn't my first bonding experience with my daughter, it remains a singular moment from my life.
Happy birthday, sweetheart.
Friday, January 17, 2025
Book Club Report: Year Eight
Before beginning to compile this post, I rewound and read all the previous iterations of this annual series dating back to when the No Wine or Whiners book club finished its first full year. Before you say it, I acknowledge how self-referential that sounds. But isn't it fun from time to time to remind yourself of books that have moved you? It is for me. Added bonus: Those older posts also brought back some nice moments from discussions of the 80+ books my club has tackled since its inception in January 2017.
Because of three extended trips away from home in 2024, this past year ended up having fewer meetings than in any year since the club began. In addition, my not-entirely-successful experiment with a book of non-fiction essays - breaking up our discussion of that book over three non-consecutive meetings - ended up further reducing our usual number of titles. But the club continues to attract new members, the charter group of six remains in place, and the conversations almost uniformly exceed my expectations.
And in an unusual twist, last year's undisputed winner for most well-received novel - This is Happiness (2019) by Niall Williams - and undisputed winner for most well-received book of non-fiction - Say Nothing (2018) by Patrick Radden Keefe - were both recommended to me by the same person. I met this reading soulmate - who also happens to be an author - on our February trip to Africa. So far, every title he has recommended to me - both while we were travelling together and in subsequent e-mails - has been a winner. Gotta love that.
Please share with me and others some highlights from your book club involvement. More than a few times, readers of my blog have directed me to gems that could have easily gotten by me. Thanks in advance.
Wednesday, January 15, 2025
The Nasty Inner Critic
Friday, January 10, 2025
Woody Completism (Mea Culpa)
I checked Wikipedia and it's official. After watching Melinda and Melinda (2004) a few nights ago and Rifkin's Festival (2020) while in California over the holidays, I've now seen every movie Woody Allen has written and directed over his long career as a filmmaker. I realize that publicly declaring this dubious distinction opens me up for censure, given the significant controversy that has engulfed Allen for years. Why - many could reasonably ask - would anyone want to make this claim? My simple, if inadequate, answer: completism.
Have you ever wanted to hear - perhaps even own - every recording by a favorite musical artist? Read everything ever published by a beloved author? Visit every National Park? Collect every Hummel figurine? I submit most of us - if we're honest - have either indulged in or thought about some form of completism at some point in our lives. Maybe your completism carries less baggage than confessing what I have here. But when you reached that end, e.g., you had a meal at every five-star restaurant in Boston, you set foot on every continent, you completed the NY Times crossword puzzle every Sunday for a year, didn't that give you a rush of satisfaction? Admit it, if for no other reason than to make me feel better.
For the record, neither of the films above was great but spending time with even an average Woody Allen movie - his greatly tarnished reputation aside - is preferable to much of what is available most of the time. My Mt. Rushmore of Woody films? Another Woman (1988), Blue Jasmine (2013), Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), and Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). The last time a movie of his really enchanted me was a recent re-watch of Cafe Society (2016). This time around it hit me that none of Woody's other doppelgangers - Kenneth Branaugh in Celebrity (1998), Larry David in Whatever Works (2009), even Owen Wilson in Midnight in Paris (2011) - played him nearly as well as Jesse Eisenberg did in the later film.
Final conflicted admission: I'll probably continue to re-watch selected Woody Allen films for the rest of my life. He's a flawed human being. Who isn't? He's also a great filmmaker and I love movies. I have no neat rationalization for my decision to continue supporting his art. Another of my flaws, I guess.
Tuesday, January 7, 2025
Batting Four for Four: Elizabeth Strout
"This was the skin that protected you from the world - this loving of another person you shared your life with."
Yes, English teachers - many of us recall the rule about ending a sentence with a preposition. Who can be bothered with rules when captivated by a storyteller as skillful as Elizabeth Strout? Every one of the nine linked stories in Anything Is Possible (2017) is so nearly perfect that I'm unable to identify a favorite. The sentence opening this post - from Windmills - was the first of many I felt compelled to copy. Not pulled in yet? How about this?
"People could surprise you. Not just their kindness but also their sudden ability to express things the right way."
That's from The Hit Thumb Theory, arguably the most heartbreaking story in the book. But large parts of it still manage to sing with an unmistakable joy because of Strout's always-present capacious heart. I'm not at all sure how she does this but I'm so grateful to be witness to her exceptional gift.
"She suffered from only the most common complaint of all: Life had simply not been what she thought it would be."
And Strout is way too skillful to pummel you with any capital "E" epiphany. The hard-earned wisdom in the everyday lives of her characters - like in the sentence above from Dottie's Bed and Breakfast - comes to a reader without flourish. This is an author who never raises her voice but can be clearly heard at all times. Years back, right after finishing the deservedly praised Pulitzer prizewinner Olive Kitteridge (2008), I suspected Elizabeth Strout was a keeper for me. After now reading three more of her books, I'm totally smitten. What a blast.
"Yes, there it was, the perfect knowledge: Anything was possible for anyone." (from Gift)
Saturday, January 4, 2025
Practicing Gratitude
Soon after my wife's involvement with the Positive Psychology movement reignited my commitment to regularly documenting moments of gratitude in my journal, our daughter made a suggestion to us that she believed could take our gratitude practice to another level. And she was right.
It began in January 2020 when we placed a ready supply of post-it notes in several colors and a pen next to a large glass jar on our kitchen counter. Whenever either of us is reminded of something we are grateful for, we record the date and the thought, fold and then put the post-it into our jar. When we have guests at our home and we remember, we ask them if they'd like to contribute something. We've even begun taking a small supply of post-its with us during time away from home and asked both fellow travelers and family to join us if they'd like.
I've saved the best for last. On or near the first of the year, my wife and I turn the jar upside down and shuffle all the post-its we've collected. We then read them to one another - out of order - giving us an opportunity to re-live moments of gratitude from the past year. This tradition - now repeated five years running - has quickly become one of the undisputed highlights of our year. Each year we are reminded anew of both the richness of our lives and the power of practicing gratitude. How do you remind yourself to be grateful?
Wednesday, January 1, 2025
Stop - Start - Continue: 2025
Among the once-each-year series I've created, Stop - Start - Continue, published on New Year's Day, has continually gotten some of the most positive feedback. I encourage you to join me here today - as some of you have in the past - and make a public commitment. There is substantial research indicating people are much more likely to follow through on public commitments than on ones they make only to themselves.
In 2025, I will stop allowing closeness communication bias to get in my way when listening to people in my family of origin as well as with my wife and daughter. When I finished reading Kate Murphy's exceptional 2019 book You're Not Listening, it was clear that I'd fallen into the trap of frequently "thinking" I knew what people close to me we're going to say before they'd finished speaking. I'm now firmly committed to curbing this behavior.
Reflections From The Bell Curve: Rescuing Ourselves
In 2025, I will start reading at least one well-regarded biography each year. My reading diet has been lacking in this particular protein for too long. I'm thinking of starting with a biography of Winston Churchill, a complicated, controversial, and critically pivotal twentieth century statesman.
In 2025, I will continue to regularly attend open jazz jam sessions all across the area. This road has started out bumpy and I've had some demoralizing moments. But I'm driven to find my improvisational voice and to discovering more joy in what I'm able to do vs. being pre-occupied with what still eludes me.
I look forward to learning what you plan to stop, start, and continue in 2025. If you have trouble with one or two, no worries. Commit to just one of the three. But be sure to tell me and others what that is, OK?