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Printed from https://www.writing.com/main/profile/blog/mathguy/sort_by/entry_order DESC, entry_creation_time DESC/page/3
Rated: 18+ · Book · Writing · #2041762
A math guy's random thoughts.
A math guy's random thoughts.
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February 9, 2024 at 11:35am
February 9, 2024 at 11:35am
#1063846
Amazing Grace and The Stranger

I've been using these blogs to highlight stories I've written and the songs that have inspired them.

As I've looked over my files, I'm surprised to see how often music appears in my stories. Sometimes it's mentioned just to set the mood, or maybe the era, or even hint at character. But more often, as I re-read the story, I remember music playing in my head as I wrote. That's especially true for songs with compelling narratives--songs like "Take on Me" or "Ode to Billie Joe." But in other cases, it's the lyrics, as in "Amazing Grace." In still other cases, it's magic blend of timbre, harmony, and melody. Billy Joel's paene to loneliness and existential angst, "The Stranger," is one of these latter songs.

Pairing Billy Joel and a traditional hymn might seem a strange choice, but both played a role in inspriing one of my stories. The lyrics for Amazing Grace are by an Anglican curate, John Newton, while it was an American Baptist preacher who paired the lyrics with the tradtional tune, "New Britain," creating the version familiar today. Billy Joel has said that he wrote his song without any core themes in mind. Perhaps that's the genius of the song--it's truer than true, as Hemingway might say. In any case, for me it evokes the kind of loneliness and existential angst one finds in authors like Albert Camus and his book with the same title.

In any case, the title for my little story, "Amazing Grace, certainly comes from the famous hymn, and the ending echoes some of the words in that song. The story starts by mentioning a piano playing in a lonely bar and a man slouching nearby, his eyes leaking loneliness. I remember listening to Joel's song, "The Stranger," while writing the story and trying to capture the feeling of the song's opening, where he whistles the haunting melody while playing spare chords on the piano. That was the mood I was shooting for. Later, the piano man in the story sings the song, in a bit of heavy-handed foreshadowing.

I'm not particularly happy with my story. The direct inspiration was a classic short story, "My Object All Sublime," by Poul Anderson. Anderson's story was much better, and I probably should have left well enough alone. I've struggled with several different endings to my story, and found none of them satisfying. Maybe I'll come back to it, as I've done with the various versions of "The Flying Dutchman (version 4). The most recent one of that story, written today, seems best to me. I've not yet given up on "Amazing Grace.

For a link to "Amazing Grace," I chose a scene from the sitcom Cheers. Here, the bar's customers hold a wake for a departed friend, but as the wake proceeds, they remember the many awful things the friend had done. They get so angry, they take an effigy of their friend and plan to burn it. Diane, though, has other ideas, in one of the most effective endings ever to a sitcom. Since my story is set in a bar and ends with hope of redemption, this seemed like an appropriate link.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IeeN4YCNn6o

For "The Stranger," I chose Billy Joel's 1977 performance at Carnegie Hall.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdLPI6XhEN8

February 9, 2024 at 10:23am
February 9, 2024 at 10:23am
#1063837
Crossroads


Authors love metaphors and symbols. Crossroads are a powerful example.

Whether it's a Frost poem about the "road less travelled" or Goethe's Faust making his deal with the devil, crossroads are a liminal place where worlds meet, where temptation lurks, and decisions are made. From Greek myths of Hermes and Hecate, to Norse myths about Odin, to the medieval practice of burying criminals at crossroads, they are part of the cultural heritage of our modern world.

Modern songwriters understand this, and build music around the mythos of the crossroad.

Robert Johnson was one such musician. His recording career spanned only seven months between 1936 and 1937, but during that time he produced some of the most influential songs of the twentieth century. In particular, his "Crossroads Blues," arguably the first ever blues song, has influenced an entire generation of rock musicians, including Bob Dylan, Keith Richards, and Eric Clapton. Indeed, Clapton's song "Crossroads" is a direct homage to Johnson's earlier song.

A legend has grown that Johnson's musical talent comes from a deal he made with the devil at a crossroads, and that this is the story behind his song. The existence of such a legend shows both his prowess as a musician and the power of the crossroads metaphor. Of coursre, Johnson must have had formidable native talent, but it's well documented that he honed his skills with long hours of practice and with study under Ike Zimmerman.

In any case, I've not been immune to the lure of the crossroads, and both Clapton's and Johnson's songs have directly inspried some stories I've written. Just to give two examples, "The Flying Dutchman (version 4) occurs at a crossroads and explicitly mentions both Clapton's and Johnson's songs. While the story "At the Crossroads doesn't directly mention the music of either, it's direct inspirations are Johnson's song and the myths of crossroads as liminal places where the real and unreal meet.

The latter story does specifically mention two other songs which I won't discuss here. Doubtless these will appear in a subsequent blog on this topic.

Links to the Johnson and Clapton songs are in the story "The Flying Dutchman (version 4), but I'll include them here, too.

Crossroads Blues, Robert Johnson: https://youtu.be/GsB_cGdgPTo
This is a link to the original recording, not remastered for modern ears. It sounds the way people would have heard it on the radio in the 1930s, which is the setting for part of the story "The Flying Dutchman (version 4).

Crossroads, Eric Clapton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewFiqngynNk
This is Clapton performing the song in one of his many concerts and the Royal Albert Hall.

February 7, 2024 at 10:53am
February 7, 2024 at 10:53am
#1063695
In Dreams, Roy Orbison, and Ray Lynch


The soundtrack of my life wouldn't be complete without Roy Orbison.

It's not just his remarkable three-octave range. There's the operatic character of his ballads. Even more, there's the haunting melodies. His songs have layers of meaning, and invite listeners to find their own truths in his music.

Hemingway once said, ""I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea, a real fish, and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough, they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true."

Orbison was the Hemingway of popular music.

Legend has it that Orbison first "heard" the song in--where else?--a dream. He woke the next morning and wrote the song in twenty minutes. It opens with hushed, half-spoken, half-sung words about the Sandman bringing sleep, and with it dreams. The opening is almost a recitative, a technique common in opera. The music progresses into a dreamlike state as the song recounts memories--dreams--of his love. But then the singer wakes to find his love missing. It rises in pitch and power to a falsetto, where he sings, ""It's too bad that all these things / Can only happen in my dreams." It concludes, an octave lower, with the lament, ""Only in dreams / In beautiful dreams."

On the surface, this song is a romance, a tale of love, loss, and sorrow. But it has multiple levels.

Ray Lynch used the song--without Orbison's knowledge--in the movie Blue Velvet. That movie is about obsession, power, and the dark secrets lurking beneath misspent and mundane lives. "In Dreams" is the perfect song for that movie.

The movie came out in 1986, at a time when Orbison's career had stagnated. Orbison initially hated the movie and its use of his song, but came to understand and eventually embrace Lynch's alternative vision.

I'm sure I encountered the song prior to seeing Blue Velvet, but it was Lynch's film that awakened my interest in Orbison and his music. Later, in Mulholland Drive, another Orbison song, "Crying," was the critical lynchpin of that movie. I'll probably write about that one later, since Mullholland Drive is one of my all-time favorite movies and that song is therefore on my personal soundtrack. But it was Lynch's use of In Dreams in Blue Velvet that first revealed to me the depths of Orbison's music.

Not long after I started attempting fiction, "In Dreams" makes an appearance in a story I wrote.

 
STATIC
In Dreams  (18+)
Sleep eludes Matt, while snow falls and his wife and best friend argue downstairs.
#1800027 by Max Griffin šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ


The song provides the title of my story, but it's also mentioned in the text. In fact, it's the fulcrum on which the story turns. This is my most-read story on Writing.Com, but I'm not sure anyone has ever quite realized what I was trying to achieve, or the significance of the song to the story. On the other hand, people seem inspired to bring their own interpretations to this story, so I could aspire to no higher goal. After all, Lynch found something in Orbison's songs that the composer didn't intend. The song "In Dreams" is truer than true. There's no higher aspiration for any artist.

                                       

Links

Cuts from Blue Velvet with Orbison singing "In Dreams" in the background

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xtjiVTSs8pc
                                       

Orbison singing "In Dreams" Provided to YouTube by Monument/Orbison Records/Legacy

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tEdYQozrM8
                                       

Ray Lynch on Orbison, Blue Velvet, and "In Dreams."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7zukRlfzh8






February 6, 2024 at 7:01pm
February 6, 2024 at 7:01pm
#1063659
In August, 1967 I was getting ready to start my senior year in high school. Lyndon Johnson announced he was sending 45,000 troops to Viet Nam. Brian Epstein, manager of the Beatles, committed suicide. The fifth James Bond film, You Only Live Twice, was number one at the box office. The Carol Burnett Show would begin its run next month, in September.

But what everyone was talking about that August was what Billie Joe McAllister and his girlfriend threw off the Tallahatchie Bridge.

When Bobby Gentry recorded her song earlier that summer at Capitol Tower in Los Angeles, the studio expected no one would ever hear it. They threw in some strings to accompany her spare chords and southern-fried voice and slapped it on the ā€œBā€ side of something called ā€œMississippi Delta.ā€ No one remembers the ā€œAā€ side, even though the record sold 750,000 copies in the first week of its release. It was the ā€œOde to Billie Joeā€ that propelled an otherwise forgettable 45 to eventual platinum status.

Gentry later pointed out that what they throw off he bridge doesnā€™t matter. Itā€™s what Hitchock would have called a Maguffin. What matters is the cold indifference of the characters, revealed as the song evolves. They sit around the dinner table, passing the fried chicken, talking about the suicide without even realizing Billie Joeā€™s girlfriend is right there with them. Itā€™s what the characters say, and donā€™t say, that matters. The song tells a story. Gentry is an artistic genius of the same order as Flannery Oā€™Connor, whose stories were equally compelling.

The dinner that the family shares resonates because itā€™s an echo of so many family gatherings, where whatā€™s not said is more important that what is.

This song inspired me to write my own little gothic tale, based roughly on the sequence in the song. I set my story in Oklahoma and added some local references, such as having the bridge be on old Route 66, the ā€œMother Road.ā€ The story is at

 
STATIC
An Ordinary Day in June  (18+)
A dysfunctional family shares dinner but not secrets. Written on and in honor of June 3
#1936639 by Max Griffin šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ


Later in 1967, Gentry would give a stunning live performance of the song on the Smothers Brothers showā€”another relic of the era. I can sill remember seeing it on my parentā€™s bulky old black and white TV. Thatā€™s the performance linked below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EPzqAGsh24


February 5, 2024 at 9:44am
February 5, 2024 at 9:44am
#1063544
"Take On Me" and it's iconic video are landmarks of the 80s. Their popularity endures even today, and the video consistently makes the list of top five music videos no matter who is doing the judging. There's something compelling, something elusive, about this song and the video.

The first release of the song in the UK failed. So did the second and third releases. The band thought that Warner, the company they'd signed with, was about to drop them. But Andrew Wickham , who'd originally signed them, believed in the band and the song.

Wickham remembers his first encounter with the band as being like something from Hans Christian Anderson. In the first place, they were from Norway and looked like lithe Nordic Gods. When they sang, Wickham wondered how Morten Harket could have movie star looks and a voice like Roy Orbison. That first impression proved prophetic.

The video that accompanied first release of "Take On Me" wasn't bad, exactly. But it was routine--it consisted of nothing but the band singing and playing instruments on a sound stage. True, they wore tight and tattered jeans, but their perfectly coifed hair added an MTV veneer that clashed with the song.

The sound design was even worse. When the band prepared their original audition track, they'd envisioned an electronic, what we might today call cybernetic, tone to the famous opening riff. They didn't have access to the technology to make that happen, so they said they just tried to play like robots. The original producer did have access to a synthesizer, but not one that was adequate to even reproduce the sound on the band's original track.

After three tries, Wickham brought Alan Tarney in, and he worked with the band to reproduce and enhance the vision from their audition track. Instead of one synth, he layered together as many as twenty. He worked with the artists to achieve the sound that we know today.

Harket says that it wasn't until then that he realized how to approach the song with his voice, and "then it was there. It had its wings."

Wickham also brought in Jeff Ayeroff to produce a new video, and he had the idea of using animation. Ayeroff brought in Steve Barron, who had directed the ground-breaking "Billy Jean" video for Michael Jackson. Between Ayeroff and Barron, it's not entirely clear who was responsible for the video's story board, but it's the story that makes the video so special.

One of the animators, Candace Reckinger, described the story as a fairy tale, like Sleeping Beauty or Cinderella. It even has elements of the hero's journey--or, in this case, the heroine's journey. It's also an inter-dimensional love story--a slipstream before anyone knew what that that meant. The video starts with a woman who has a hum-drum life and fantasizes over a comic book. There's a call to adventure when a hand reaches out from the comic book and draws her into another world, an animated world. They have an adventure, and then she returns to the real world. At the end, her love returns to her--or maybe not. The video doesn't quite come to closure on whether or not they reunite in the real world. There's a hint that everything, adventure, love, even life, must come to an end.

All of the elements of the video--the love affair, the adventure, even the meloncholy sense of loss hinted at in the ending--all of those are in the song, too. Despite the drumbeat of the riff, it's in a minor key. Even the lyrics convey longing, loss, and, at the end, hope. The song and video are the perfect marriage of media.

As it happens, I've recenlty written a slipstream story grounded in the original video. It even quotes bits from the lyrics.
 
STATIC
In a Day or Two  (18+)
A slipstream tale in four parts
#2303342 by Max Griffin šŸ³ļøā€šŸŒˆ

While the video's inter-dimennsional love affiar is the clear inspiration for the video, the musical inspiration for the more melancholy mood of my story is this amazing acoustic version of the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-xKM3mGt2pE
It's Merton Harket singing, with his original band mates accompanying. Even today, Harket's voice and range are amazing. The riff is still there. But while the original version makes you want to dance, this one is...different. It's worth hearing.

                                       
The original video, remastered
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djV11Xbc914&list=PL0QFDUXn1p9TlNgLR74MU8lstzAU1T...

                                       
Michael Jackson's BIlly Jean video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zi_XLOBDo_Y

                                       
The story behind Take On Me in three parts. Much of the above is based on these three videos.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlTHJJX7QVU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CcxLyGKw48s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Lho0_9-V-8
February 5, 2024 at 7:44am
February 5, 2024 at 7:44am
#1063540
Certain times are forever in our memory.

The night my daughter was born is one. Cradling her in my arms while snow fell outside and her mother slept--those are moments that will always be with me.

Other memories still sear. I remember my friend Sue McCausland, running into the lunch room at school in tears, telling us that our President had been shot. That was November 22, 1963.

There are memories of 9/11, too, seeing that airliner crash into the tower, and later seeing it fall. I'll blog more about that one later--that one has a musical echo that belongs in my soundtrack.

Bad as that day was, my worst memory is a recent one, barely eight years old: election night, 2016. I listened in horror as first one state, then another fell to Trump. Despair consumed me. The ensuing four years turned out even worse than I feared, though not as bad as they might have had the insurrection succeeded.

But there is one positive memory from that horrible week, and it's a musical one.

Back in the 70s, we watched Saturday Night Live every week. I was in graduate school, and we got together weekends with another couple for bridge and dinner. But we'd stop at 10:30 so we could watch the opening of SNL

Years had passed, and SNL ceased being a weekend staple. By 2016, I hadn't watched it in at least a decade, but for some reason that week it was on TV, and I watched. By purest chance, I happened to catch the opening of SNL that week. There, on the screen, was Kate McKinnon, in character as Hillary Clinton, singing Leonard Cohen's glorious ballad "Hallelujah." When she sang, "even though it all went wrong, I'll stand before the lord of song with nothing on my toungue but Hallelujah," tears fromed in my eyes.

Kate ended the song and then looked into the camera and said, "I'm not giving up, and neither should you."

That marvelous song, soulfully sung, and those words, they gave me hope.

Here's a link to McKinnon's performatnce:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BG-_ZDrypec
February 4, 2024 at 12:33pm
February 4, 2024 at 12:33pm
#1063450
Coming Home Again in Junebug

My third entry in "The Soundtrack of Your Life, another catch-up entry.

The title of Thomas Wolfe's book, You Can't Go Home Again, captures a loss that resonates with our modern world. Wolf, a native of North Carolina, doubtless personally experienced this loss since he spent almost all of his adult life away from his native Ashville. Many others, myself included, have departed rural roots for more cosmpolitan and urban settings, only to discover later in life what they've lost. I have no regrets for having departed rural Iowa, but I acknowledge I lost something that I can't recover by doing so.

Junebug is, in part, a movie about this kind of loss. It's the story of George, a North Carolina native, and his sophisticated art collector girlfriend, Madelline, who decides to meet a Southern folk artist from George's hometown. This results in a collision of cultures and memories involving George, his parents, his ne'er-do-well brother, his brother's expectant wife, and, of course, the culture which gave birth to George and his family.

The movie is worth watching for many reasons. The opening scene where Madeline meets the local artist is a gemlike vignette that, all by itself, makes the movie worth watching.

But one scene in particular is pure genius. It captures everything that the movie is about. It's set at a church social, a dinner held in the basement of the local church. It seems that George, played by Alessandro Nivolo, was a well-loved member of the choir, and he's invited to sing. The hymn they choose is "Softly and Tenderly." The lyrics are a perfect match for the conflicts in the movie, with Jesus calling for the dearly departed to "come home." The blending of the promise of redemption, the inevitable loss, and the mix of expectations is what makes this so brilliant a choice. George, of course, ultimately discovers you can't go home again--if only he'd read Thomas Wolfe before he tried!

In any case, as Nivollo sings, the camera pans across the other actors, whose expressions provide deep insight into what's happening to their souls while Nivolo sings about Jesus calling, softly and tenderly.

To start with, there's Madelline, played by Embeth Davidtz, whose face reveals wonder and astonishment at seeing a new and unexpected side of her boyfriend, George. Ben McKenzie, who plays the brother, manages to convey both hostility and agression by barely glancing his brother's way while chewing tobacco. Amy Adams, who plays the pregnant wife in an Oscar-nominated performance, follows the lyrics with a religious rapture. Perhaps my favorite is George's mother, played by the ineffable Carla Weston, who silently mouths the words that her beloved son is singing.

But what brings the whole scene together is Nivolo's crystaline tenor, pure and perfectly on pitch. He sings a cappella, accompanied only by two extras, drawn from the locals who populated the scene.
Their voices, too, are perfection.

The whole scene, the song itself, the singers, the expressions of the actors, and editorial cutting combine to make this one of the most memorable bits of cinema I've experienced in any movie. It's rare for a musical interlude to so perfectly capture the themes and conflicts of a movie.

I replicated at least some of this scene in a novella I wrote many years ago, On the Road. It's in my short story anthology, available on Amazon:
ASIN: 1512274127
Amazon's Price: $ 12.24


Here's a link to the scene from Junebug:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OO6RwS3BBu8
Listen and weep for what we've lost or, just maybe, rejoice for what we've found.
February 4, 2024 at 10:28am
February 4, 2024 at 10:28am
#1063440
Non, je ne regrette rien

This is a catch-up entry to "The Soundtrack of Your Life

Edith Piaf's 1960 recording of Je ne regrette rien is an all-time classic. You don't have to understand French to appreciate the song. It's driving tempo and her triumpant rendition say it all.

The lyrics are powerful even without the music. It certainly helps if you understand them. You can find a translation here:
https://www.frenchlyricstranslations.com/non-je-ne-regrette-rien-edith-piaf-fren...

Christopher Nolan's movie Inception reinforced my love for this song. This movie is about the power of memory and raises questions about how memory and reality intersect. The song is a perfect complement to the themes of the movie.

In fact, it's in the DNA of the movie.

It's obvious that the song cues the start of a "jump" to one of the movie's dream levels. What's less obvious is that all of the music in the score is a subdivision and mulitplication of the Piaf song, sometimes at varying tempos. For an audible example, there's this YouTube video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UVkQ0C4qDvM
which plays Piaf singing at the normal tempo, then slows it down. The slow version is recognizable as the thudding blats that accompany the start of the transitions to new dream levels!

For a discussion, see this article in The Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2010/jul/29/inception-soundtrack-edith-piaf

One genuis--Nolan--applying the genius of others--the lyricist, the composer, and Piaf's rendition. That's what makes this song so memorable for me.

I used this song in a chapter to a novel I'm working on. The chapter called for a young man to sing to his lover, and was inspired by this awesome rendition.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=layECWup8sU
I even used the vocalist's appearance to describe my character!







Max Griffin
Please visit my website and blog at
https://new.MaxGriffin.net

Check out most recent release!
ASIN: B0C9P9S6G8
Product Type: Kindle Store
Amazon's Price: $ 1.99
February 4, 2024 at 9:48am
February 4, 2024 at 9:48am
#1063438
Soundtracks--Bohemian Gravity.

This is my first response to "The Soundtrack of Your Life for February, 2024.

"Bohemian Rhapsody" is one of my favorite Queen songs. This genius combination of classical forms with rock and roll rhythms is both captivating and fun.

I've also always been fascinated that one of the founders of Queen, Brian May, is also an astrophysicist. Not many bands have founders with scientific credentials!

Which leads to the particular cover of "Bohemian Rhapsody" I want to credit:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rjbtsX7twc
This is an incredibly clever discussion of quantum mechanics set to the tune of "Bohemian Rhapsody." It features one singer performing all the parts, threaded together in an awesome video and vocal showcase. It's worth watching just for the sock puppet Einstein!

The vocalist has a whole sequence of these clever science-set-to-music collages. I'll probably feature more in this sequence of posts.





Max Griffin
Please visit my website and blog at
https://new.MaxGriffin.net

Check out most recent release!
ASIN: B0C9P9S6G8
Product Type: Kindle Store
Amazon's Price: $ 1.99
December 8, 2019 at 12:01pm
December 8, 2019 at 12:01pm
#971140
** Image ID #2207324 Unavailable **
Most people occasionally see these little specks. They seem to randomly drift across your field of vision. Iā€™ve seen them all my life. I can remember reading a Scientific American article in 1962 or 1963 on them, so I know Iā€™ve seen them on and off since at least that time.

The vitreous body refers to a jelly-like substance that fills the interior of your eye. Sometimes little imperfections form, and this results in these little flecks floating across your field of vision. By themselves, they are harmless. I didnā€™t think anything about it when one appeared Friday night after watching the Utah-Oregon game on TV.

However, it was still there Saturday morning, along with something new. Intermittent flashes of light popped up in my right eye, and the floater didnā€™t floatā€“it stayed at exactly the same place in my field of vision. It was also a little bigger than a usual floater.

I still didnā€™t think much about it, but just out of curiosity I checked WebMD. The advice there was alarming. The combination of unusual floaters and sparklers is a potential symptom of a torn or even detached retina. The only way to tell for sure is to have a physician examine your eye.

I didnā€™t need WebMD to tell me that this required immediate medical attention. If it turned out to be one of these serious conditions, treatment within the first 24 hours of onset of symptoms gives a high probability of success. Failure to obtain treatment could result in loss of vision.

That sent me hot-footing to the nearby urgent care clinic. They agreed with the urgency of the symptoms, which didnā€™t exactly help my blood pressure. They tried to contact the on-call ophthalmologist for a proper eye examination, but she didnā€™t answer. (It turns out she was doing an emergency procedure).

They wound up sending me to the ER. The staff there took my medical history, recorded my symptoms, and hooked me up to blood pressure and pulse monitors. They gave me a vision test, which showed my vision was not impaired. They tested my peripheral vision, which was also fine. The latter made retinal tear or detachment less likely.

Finally, they found someone to actually look inside my eye. They rolled in one of those gizmos you see in any eye doctors office, like when you get tested for glasses. You put your chin in it, and they shine this dazzling light in your eye while they go, ā€œHmmm,ā€ and otherwise make unsettling noises.

At the end of the dayā€“literally: I was there six hoursā€“my examine was ā€œunremarkable,ā€ i.e., the diagnosis was no ā€œretinal damage.ā€ Instead, the physician said it was most likely a ā€œvitreous event.ā€ When I asked, what this seems to mean is that the jelly-like substance in my right eye had formed a little glop of extra-dense goop, accounting for the fixed floater. When I moved my eye, it would sometimes bump against the retina, which caused the flashes.

The cause of the glop? Unknown. But, back to WebMD, age is the number one ssuspect. Iā€™ll be 70 in March, so thereā€™s that. It also says you can reduce floaters by staying hydrated. Well, I recently added the diabetic medication Jardiance to the cocktail of pills I take every morning. It works by flushing sugar out through the kidneys, so of course that means you, uh, pee more. Like, a LOT more. Iā€™ve been drinking more fluids, too, but I conjecture this might be related.

In any case, the attending in the ER arranged a follow-up appointment with an ophthalmologist on Monday, just to be sure. Iā€™ll keep you posted!

So, thatā€™s how I spent my Saturday. At least I was able to use my phone while sitting in the ER to watch my Sooners beat Baylor.

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