In this episode, Steve and Mal hurtle with guest rider Phoenix from Point A to Point B (the end of a long pier), while contemplating death doulas, subversive sherpas and a gay giraffe. Strap in for … The Ride To Redacted Prime.
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Show notes:
Concerning Edward Gorey: you could do worse than muck around at https://edwardgoreyhouse.org/e-is-for-edward
For example, Gorey drawings there abound, and in the blog section at https://edwardgoreyhouse.org/blog/good-grief-or-drawings-from-yet-another-neighborhood can be found this noteworthy comparison of the works of Charles Schulz and Edward Gorey: “Though working from opposite approaches, and from opposite coasts, both Schulz and Gorey created art containing the same message: that it was okay to let children know that there would be grief that would linger — but that there was such a thing as good grief; that grief could sometimes become a rich loam from which observation and self-reflection grew; that not only were the threatening things that hid in the dark recesses of a room entirely imaginable, but also into that same darkness one would sometimes return — to find solace.”
One is tempted to add that one finds a certain compatibility between the vibe in Mal’s creations in various media — as witness the random examples gracing these show notes — and the vibe in Edward Gorey’s work.
In this ep, when the subject of mortality comes up, Mal mentions the books they read in 5th grade, Tuck Everlasting and The Bridge to Terebithia. One can’t help remarking that the latter was published in 1977 by Thomas Crowell. Meanwhile, the book Gods and Beasts: The Nazis and the Occult (mentioned in Episode 11) by Dusty Sklar — Steve’s mother and Mal’s grandmother — was also published by Thomas Crowell in 1977. Coincidence? We think not.
Here’s an interesting article on death doulas, for those who want to know more about that career path: https://www.pbs.org/independentlens/blog/death-is-just-one-day-how-end-of-life-doulas-are-changing-the-conversation-around-how-we-die/
Speaking of paths, the language sherpas speak, per Wikipedia, is “Sherpa (also Sharpa, Sherwa, or Xiaerba) … a Tibetic language spoken in Nepal and the Indian state of Sikkim, mainly by the Sherpa. The majority speakers of the Sherpa language live in the Khumbu region of Nepal, spanning from the Chinese (Tibetan) border in the east to the Bhotekosi River in the west. About 127,000 speakers live in Nepal (2021 census), some 16,000 in Sikkim, India (2011), and some 800 in the Tibetan Autonomous Region (1994). Sherpa is a subject-object-verb (SOV) language. Sherpa is predominantly a spoken language, although it is occasionally written using either the Devanagari or Tibetan script.”
And finally (for now), it’s easy to imagine Gorey contemplating, and drawing something inspired by the sight of, knives stuck into the back of a disposal truck seen on this ep’s drive by Mal, Phoenix, and Steve not so many miles from where Gorey once lived.