Slow Currents

So, I finally watched Memento, bringing me one step closer to watching all of Christopher Nolan. It was incredible. It cemented for me one of Nolan’s greatest strength, and a quality I most want to emulate, the marriage of substance with style.

Beginning to end, the movie is cool. It’s a fantastic action thriller, chock full of tension and fun.

It’s also a hardcore look at identity, choices, morality, love, and obsession.

Most of his movies do this. They start with a deep, significant idea, oftentimes something as quote unquote simple as love, identity, or guilt, and they…

Hang on.

I think every one of his movies hangs on those ideas. Love, Identity, Guilt. Examining them from different vantage points, delving in different ways, building up different styles and stories around those deep ideas.

And it always works.

I was going to talk about how he connects to Jeff Vandermeer, specifically Veniss Underground, but we might have to save that for another day.

Because Now I’m thinking about the Odyssey. I was excited for it because it’s myths, and Christopher Nolan.

Now I’m even more excited, because those themes hang heavy in the work.

The search for a home you’re kept separate from, sometimes through your own fault.

Love. Identity. Guilt.

What did I do yesterday?

Nothing special, by which I mean nothing out of the ordinary, and not, in fact, nothing special.

It was a great day.

I spent the morning with my girlfriend, and I read a long short story by John Langon, and I met an old friend for coffee, and I went for a walk and found a weird little supermarket that I didn’t buy any food from, and read some comics, and watched The Wire, and it was all told, a fantastic day.

Good enough that I missed writing here for the first time, not because I was procrastinating, or put it off, or not in the mood, but because, all day was full of such good things, that I didn’t even think to log on here and post something.

In the past, when I miss a step, it’s easy to just shrug your shoulders and throw an entire project out.

Yesterday was a brilliant day, and I’m left with no desire whatsoever to throw this project out. I missed a day, but I’m back now, and I’ll be back again tomorrow.

For some reason, those things all seem connected.

I hate trigger warnings.

You’ve got all the obvious reasons-they’re obnoxious, they’re infantilizing, and they don’t actually help-but there are others.

It interrupts the rhythm of the story. I don’t want to look at every character on screen, and wonder if they’re the rapist I was warned about.

I saw a play with trigger warnings once. The sign warned of homophobia. Early on, two rough around the edges small town folk wondered if the guy down the street was a “fruit”. They insisted that was fine, while they shuffled their feet and gave each other the side eye, and got increasingly uncomfortable. Completely fine though.

I spent half the play wondering when one of them would be revealed as closeted.

Surely, I wouldn’t be warned about bigotry for this? For what amounted to a couple of insensitive men doing a poor job of being sensitive?

Apparently I would.

Apparently, some people feel safer when everybody assumes they need to be coddled.

I watched The Brutalist last night, and have a lot of thoughts.

But for today, lets just go with this.

It’s fascinating to see the different ways art will draw you in.

The Brutalist starts with a frenetic scene of chaos and movement and everything happening at once, and immediately I’m invested in whatever emotional highs and lows are to follow, leaning forward in my seat, leaning into the rhythm and the desperation of movement.

Other movies start slow, setting the stage, full of establishing shots and slow events and a slow seduction until the film’s world is yours, the slow accumulation of time creating it, rather than the sudden burst of emotion.

Throughout, The Brutalist rocks between these two modes. It does a good job transforming from one to the other, and in each case, it excels.

My girlfriend bought me flowers last night.

It was unexpected and sweet and touching, and I want to make sure to do something for her, to make her feel the way she made me.

A simple made-me-think-of-you gift.

Something to remind her she’s loved.

She said she was excited for me, and proud of me.

“You make me want to be successful,” I said, and I thought, “I want to be able to give you everything.”

The Simpsons had a pretty good run of episodes around Season 25.

I’m past the point of no return now, and know, deep down, that I need to watch every episode of The Simpsons. Preferably, I’ll get caught up in the next four years, in time for Season 40.

Season 40, I’ve decided, is when they’re going to end the show, giving us a nice round number.

Although I’d respect the hell out of the hustle if they decided to push for Season 50, and risk some main voice actors dying in the mean time.

Come to think of it…

That could play out nicely, couldn’t it?

The last handful of seasons, on their own longer then any Netflix original series, serving as a coda, as character’s dropped off.

You could do something really beautiful with that, really swing for the fences, and let The Simpsons go out with the same kind of chutzpah it came in with.

The world that happens in, is a better world than ours.

When some people talk about zen-type ideas, and the way they connect to living in the moment, and avoiding attachments, I wonder if the disconnect from reality and pleasure and love is always as good an idea as they seem to think

Twain had a quote, and as a teenager it always seemed cool and funny, but it scratched at the morally neurotic parts of my head.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

Funny and edgy, but not to be taken seriously.

It wasn’t till later I realized he didn’t say anything about lying.

Maybe it’s another example of not understanding what somebody’s talking about until you’re ready to understand what they’re talking about.

Not everything’s worth the time and energy of explaining, and not everyone’s ready to understand it all.

Don’t hurt yourself spelling things out for people who aren’t going to get it.

If you bother to write, it’s probably because you think there’s something valuable to be said.

The trouble is, if you think it’s important enough to bleed over, it’s also important enough that you want to make sure it’s.

Completely.

Perfect.

So just put it off. After all, it’s better not to do something at all then to do something imperfect.

The Sailor Who Fell From Grace with the Sea closes with a meditation on all the glory that must be given up in order to lead a real life.

The author took over a military base, in an effort to restore Japan to its Imperial glory.

When he failed, he killed himself.