Negative Pleasure
The daffodils showed up hard on the heels of the crocuses, and again I am reminded that exhilaration almost requires its opposite to fully experience. You must have a mind of winter—been cold a long time—tossed through curtained unsettled 3 a.m.’s—for that one gleaming night to be so damned brilliant, for the purples and yellows to be so saturated.
Is it worth it? Probably not. But neither is it wrong to suffer so long for reward; pain has its pleasures. It’s like the sexy bad boy that you just can’t quit; it’s like, as Alissa Nutting once wrote, a raunchy S&M affair. Winter comes, spring behind: it makes me flush.
While I was wallowing in these internal weather/sex ruminations, the good folks at CLASH were out on the streets, collecting signatures on petitions, enough to deliver to the city in an grassroots hit to force the city to goddamned do something about our lead crisis situation. The bad folks at Advance were slashing even more jobs, and the only good thing to come of that is a New Yorker article about the laid-off reporter who was asked to come back in to write the story about laid-off reporters. Over on Twitter we tried to count the total number of staff reporters in the metro area. It’s wildly unscientific; it’s hard to know who to count and who not (editors? photographers? hosts?) but our back of the envelope, not to be quoted totals are: 30 at the Plain Dealer, 40 at Cleveland Dot Com, 5 at Cleveland Scene, 12 at Crain’s, 7 at Cleveland Magazine, ideastream has about 10. Who are we missing? Does Freshwater count? Cleveland Jewish News. Don King’s Call and Post? Round up a bit, and you get a total about 125, and that’s with a generous definition of “reporter.” 125 people to cover a metro area of 2 million or so.
Discussions about creating a new venue are ongoing; although I have received comments from local journalists who are upset about my thoughts about the future of the PD , I would hazard 90% of those 125 would agree that it is not a slight on existing outlets to state that we just need more, and going back to the same well might not bring up a heavy bucket.
Here’s George Rodrigue on the future of the Plain Dealer yesterday:
There was a time when newspapers could try to provide a fairly full record of “official” local news. Everything that happened at City Council. Every major crime. Every big zoning case. That model no longer works. The ways people get their news have changed dramatically, and when people sit down with their newspaper they often want the story behind the story.
Here’s a response today:
But back to sex. I’ve been reading and thinking more about the Industrial Sublime, and taking more iPhone photos on my walks along the river trail.
Here is Kant:
“As the mind is alternately attracted and repelled by the object, the satisfaction of the sublime implies not so much positive pleasure as wonder or reverential awe and may be called a negative pleasure”
Maybe that would be a good new slogan for Cleveland: “Negative Pleasure.” Think of the branding opportunities.
Cleveland Chronicles is a record of life in Cleveland throughout 2019 as filtered through the lens of the chronicler. Forward this email to a friend, and pay a few books if you want to read previous posts or because you believe in paying for content.