Friday, October 11, 2024

Song Thoughts

Riders on the Storm is so evocative, so real I can barely listen to the song anymore, the song soaked with the sadness that accompanies being an encapsulation of both the beauty and tragedy of humanity somehow, punctuated by the tinkle of keys

Wednesday, January 24, 2024

We Don't Just Vanish


Today, crossing Sunset on foot, I could have sworn I heard the bus that had pulled over before the crosswalk say "Central Park," then after I had crossed, a man speaking German fell in behind me, sounding atmospheric going up the hill, before he got in some car or another and left.

My friend is still dead, as it turns out, these things don't change, if alive in spirit as I believe. I don't know why I go months not thinking about this grueling fact only for it to come flying up at me with such intensity I wonder how it ever left. I also have living friends who have now given up, I think we're old enough to admit that, though we're not old, out loud at this time.

I would stay in this decade of life forever if I could and yet as autumn emerges feel eerie having surpassed the life spans of certain friends I didn't even know could die, like on some micro level, somewhere in my psyche, I depended on them being alive and even if I didn't, their life force was strong enough to preclude dying as a concept applying to them. I really hope, whatever is true, we don't just vanish.

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

Spooky Circuits Is the Way (B)

Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Who Are You With

 

Wednesday, September 20, 2023

Succession: A More Honest Great Gatsby

There’s a homesickness evoked for me by the settings of Succession, the accurate, accessible cinematography of New York, an inaccessible place when you submerge to the heart of the matter, versus Los Angeles, where inaccessibility is more of a convincing illusion, and this ache arises to the strains of a pitch-perfect theme song. I feel homesick even though I did not move in those 0.01% circles beyond the mere wealthy in New York, as they repulse me and people who do move in those circles can discern that in any disinterested party immediately. The tenets of these circles extend to the arts at times, too—the coldness, alleged rationality, competition, and status-pushing more often than not overshadowing what would ideally be collaboration.

To be raised in any part of the state of New York is to be more of an open book. We’re, in fact, not any angrier than anyone else in the country; we’re just more open about both anger and what we find joyous, an openness Joan Didion, who I used to just love, sneered at as too sentimental in the style of those who move in those certain concentric circles, revealing now to me in my 40s how ignorant she was regarding the true nature of New York, despite having lived there, embracing obvious class illusions and fashioning her own chilly conceptions of success into a quasi-journalistic version of alleged objective reality, then coming to comprise a perfect caricature of herself in her later name-dropping, self-serious works that are overrated, much like Manhattan versus the landscape of New York's five boroughs. Money is not class; true class transcends finance. 

I didn't watch Succession until this past year due to my aforementioned repulsion, though the show, too, is repulsed by dynasty, and depicts its subjects' eviscerating disconnects without mercy versus romanticizing them as titans, a modern, more honest Great Gatsby for our times. These stark characters, as hyper-real as "the city" itself, don’t believe in happiness, but convenience, material wealth, capitalist power that long ago bypassed the mysticism of a Gotham they don’t see. They flatter themselves as Jokers, but they’re not that interesting, or intelligent, and they are not having any fun. Fun is to be frowned upon; upper-income success in this universe demands a dour disposition.

The way the city is shot in the show reflects the comfort and seeming stability of the realm outside the scope of these characters, the same strength I still felt a few months ago there as an adult who had opted back West years ago. There’s so much more to New York and its role in larger society than the characters of Succession, by conscious design, or earlier caricatures, by less conscious design, can even begin to glimpse, a spectrum of genuine humanity beyond the reach of self-proclaimed gatekeepers, these corrupt faux guardians looting everyone, starting with themselves.

Wednesday, August 02, 2023

Poetics: Flat Dread Forklift

“I’m really happy for you two,” a neighbor radiating android energy said to whoever was on the other side of her ear piece in her flat tone as we rode the elevator down to the garage.

“I dread leaving my apartment,” someone posted in a local online community, “because I can’t stand how anti-social people are.”

“Man drives forklift recklessly through Downtown Los Angeles,” the news headline read, “causing damage to multiple buildings.”

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

Dualities