Psyched out

When I am trying to make sense of things I am grateful for the help I find, even in the oddest places. I just finished Till We Have Faces and that contained some helpful passages, even if it did not end with me reconverting to Christianity. Or converting to Christianity. I'm not sure I ever really gave it any particular devotion. It was just the one meal on offer throughout my first two decades. When the only meal is fish you can declare yourself a proud eater of fish, even though you don't really like fish that much and would probably eat other things given the opportunity.*

Legion, oddly enough, offers me some help.** I mean, it's a wanton dive into psychological craziness. Kind of a joyful counterpoint to Lynch's heavy shamanic dream states. I appreciate both for the enthusiasm it embraces the Marvel telepathic mutants and all their attendant craziness and for the questions it brings up. Frankly these days I like any work that tries to make any sense of how the human mind works and dives in without hesitation. Plus that show is pretty dang creative. Just mesmerizing to watch.

I just love the way Legion talks about ideas, as living things, good or bad. I think I need to read more book on psychology (and, again, see a therapist). Like everyone on the show seems half mad, but it seems to be a sort of good natured ribbing about the kind of monkeys we tend to be, and how even the shallowest analysis of how we think leaves one with that impression. My favorite element this season is Division 3, an organization trying to defend against imminent psychic assault but without only one half-crazed mutant on the roster with any actual ability in that realm. Any scene set there features an announcer in the background describing various symptoms as signs of psychic attack. "Disorientation is not normal. If you feel something, say something." and so on.

We have such a rich and detailed vocabulary surrounding physical health, as limited as we know that knowledge to be, but it's much harder to describe a healthy psychology, at least for the non-psychologist.  Is this because of an overall trend towards materialism and reason? We know the mind is a product of a brain so we tend to focus on the health of the brain and its attendant chemicals rather than the thoughts it thinks and the feelings it feels and their intrinsic coherence. Or maybe it's capitalism, and we can only define sane as that which leave a body producing and consuming at an acceptable rate. I'm not sure I like where we're at in thinking about our thinking, is all I'm saying. Which is why I like shows like Legion and Twin Peaks: the return.

One of Vonnegut's books (the Sirens of Titan?) starts with someone babbling about a primitive age was so primitive it didn't even understand the 53 portals to the soul (or something like that). Which I took as Vonnegut's acknowledgement that as limited as our knowledge of bodies is, our capacity for discussing and assessing the mind and the soul is even more so.

Which is why I like reading C.S. Lewis. For all the christian apologist stuff, he seems to be one of the few authors that takes the struggle to reconcile how best to reconcile the needs of our feelings and the needs of our intellect. We live in a materialist age and we talk with a faint embarrassment when it turns out our feelings exist at all. How unreasonable. What a lack of discipline.

In David Brin's uplift series he talks about an alien race that is composed of a series of layered rings, each with its own thoughts, that makes decisions by consensus. And the race called the Jophur, which employ a master ring to provide a coherent sense of identity to the composite being, and brings order to the stack through electrical shocks. I'm not sure we are meant to be the Jophur exactly.

I'm not sure we should live lives in constant religious ecstasy. Or forever committing horrors against other people out of fear of the gods. Or at the whim of whatever emotion takes us. But I don't think we are complete without letting that side of ourselves free on a semi-regular basis. This, to me, is the central benefit of religion, the freedom and permission to feel your goddamn feelings without shame. Taking the time to feel deep down what it means to be part of something bigger than ourselves, which we transparently are even from the most secular point of view. We are all very reasonable now but we are also very repressed as a result. We remain creatures that feel first and think second,  and maybe it serves us poorly to shackle and punish that first part of us 24/7.

I think we might have over-corrected in our pursuit of reason and it worries me. And I feel it a lot in this culture and it bothers me. I just want an understanding that our feelings are as important as our thoughts, and that there's such a thing as thinking that does more harm than good as much as there is such a thing as emotions that hinder more than they help.

 It's balance, baby, balance. That is all I am trying to say. There's a time to think and a time to feel and we could be less shit about how we talk about that in this culture.


*Not to be crass, but it occurs to me this metaphor, while not clever, works equally well for sexual orientation.

**Help that I should probably be seeking form a qualified therapist. But who has the money for that shit?

Psyche!

Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Probably my favorite novel by C. S. Lewis. I'm not really into christian apologetics at the moment, but I appreciate his facility with words, his in-depth knowledge of mythology and philosophy and most importantly his honest attempt to reconcile the irrational and rational sides of humanity and how best to tend to each without diminishing the other. This is the kind of conversation I wish there were more of in the world. For him, the answer was best expressed in Christianity, but for me I'm not so sure. I do feel him a kindred spirit in that particular search though, the desire to reconcile thoughts with feelings in a way that is beautiful and alive.

Some of his best work and one that will leave you thinking for some time after. Who are you really? What is your true voice and what story does it tell you over and over without ceasing? Where is you face? Why do you hide it?

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Call Me by Your Name

Call Me by Your Name by André Aciman
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I watched the movie first, although the movie compliments the book nicely. The book has some insights into Elio's thinking that the movie failed to convey so well. Elio's obsessive over-thinking and the strange dance shy people do all rang very true for me. the prose is beautiful and engaging and I was underlining frequently.

The movie truncates and wraps up and neatly cauterizes what the book draws out into an open wound. I was weeping by the final pages over these two beautiful idiots both for what they had and that they never had and by extension perhaps for what I have had and never had. Could they not be together because of timing? Fear? A random and ultimately cruel universe? I'm not sure and I'm not sure it matters what it was specifically, but I found it affecting nonetheless. I do think of Oliver as a traitor though. In that, Elio was quite correct.

I adore this book. Like all good art, I think it changed my life.

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to write or not to write.

I have vowed to write more, but have yet to be disciplined about what to write. I've had several story ideas I was very excited about, which have since faded to nothing because I forgot to write them down. Also, I am still pre-occupied with the general trainwreck that is my life. But here are some things I've been thinking about.

I, an poorly educated stem major, have been thinking about and reading some about philosophy, ethic, morals, purpose, etc. Christian apologists tend to claim christianity supplanted the pagan gods for a reason, and I am inclined to agree if not for all of the same reason. I think we are ripe for the next great moral framework to supplant christianity but it hasn't happened quite yet. It could be humanism, but it isn't yet. It could be some fusion of old and new ideas and gods but it hasn't happened yet. It is still trying to be born, stymied greatly by the dystopian horror also currently trying to breach the amniotic sac of bad ideas and break it's way into our world. Maybe the next phase only gets born as opposition to a greater evil though.  I do not have the details or evidence to argue these assertions just yet.

I am still at war with my addictions. I cannot yet break from from bad habits of technology or diet or lack of exercise into habits that I am sure would make me feel much better. Getting closer every day, but no watershed moment just yet.  Good art keeps trying to save my life though. Call Me by Your Name, however flawed, nudged something lose and I am still turning it over. It's not quite depression, it's more a lack of purpose and connection, as I believe I've mentioned before. Hoping to get it before it gets me.

The other cat is starting to show the same signs of kidney failure as the last. She and I do not have the same connection as I did with Zapp, but I am not looking forward to another round of "hey, your cat is dying." I want to write a book on cats and religion and history. A history of religion and cats. I'm not even quite sure that's the book idea I had. God, I need to write these things down.

My face is almost not completely fucked, although I still need to actually meet a dermatologist to confirm. Hooray?

Call me by your name

I finally got around to watching Call Me By Your Name this week and I'm still thinking about it days later.

I don't think it's the most epic romance I've ever seen, but it was sweet and lovely and life affirming and such a stark contrast to the life I've been living.

Let's set aside the gay stuff for a second, even though it's more or less central to the whole experience. Just lingering by proxy in such an idyllic setting was ... shocking? Invigorating? I traditionally go to movies to escape to outer space but who knew what I really needed was lingering shots of riding bikes through the Italian countryside? That depiction of life, albeit as inherited wealth, complete with servants, was so refreshing. Even in a much more modest home, would I enjoy swimming every day, riding bikes into town and community events like dancing and volleyball? Yes, yes I would.

Are some of these community things absent from my life because times have changed or just because I have changed into someone who tries very little to improve his life? I don't know, but my relation to the setting of this film is simple longing. Well, longing is a central theme of the film and my relationship to it in general, but specifically the setting. Goddamn gorgeous.

Continuing to put the gay stuff aside temporarily, I also felt a strong sense of desire for Elio's family life. When I was young I dated my own Marzia, the daughter of a professor with a rich family life. their house was a clutter of musty books and their conversations were about music and writers that largely went over my ADD comic-book loving head, but I adored them all the same. Talking about philosophers and composers and the finer points of the humanities is extremely soothing to me, as it turns out, and I appreciate having a friendly place to do that. Elio's family life reminds me much of that time I spent with her and her family.

We even had a similar arc to Elio and Marzia, albeit years later. She admitted she broke up with me because she felt there was always a part of me I couldn't give to her and when I started dating men it clicked. She remains one of my truest friends and still the only ex I have a good and strong connection with. She' is also the sole reminder of what a delight the humanities loving lifestyle can be whenever I visit her and her own giant collection of books and music.

So I long for that scholastic home life, but I also greatly envied Elio a family that only cared that he was happy and supported him no matter who he happened to love. I kept waiting for it to go dark, for his father to become irate, but it never happened. I'm not sure Elio understands how good he has it. But I can't be the only queer watching this with an ache in their heart about how their own family experience contrasts with the almost high fantasy portrayal here. I'm not saying it's unrealistic, just so pure and life affirming that it almost doesn't feel like real life. Real life, historically, being less affirming of the humanity of those experiencing it.

I mean, this film is a pure gay coming of age fantasy in many ways. An ideal setting, an ideal family, an ideal lover, an understanding ex-girlfriend, etc. that's kind of what makes it beautiful. A pure and good expression of the world it is possible to create.

I say it's not an epic romance because while I found the lead actors both handsome and good at their craft, the chemistry didn't seem quite believable to me. As a man who has kissed men I didn't quite buy their sexual chemistry. Of course, epic romance and smoking sex scenes is not really the intent here anyway. It was much more about Elio's awakening and Oliver's liberation at being allowed to be exactly who he was without pretense for a few sweet moments.

Elio's adolescent weirdness rang extremely true for me and Timothee Chalomet did such great work with it. The sense of longing he had for Oliver was very real to me. And rang very true of how weird I was as an adolescent and how I was when I first started to try and date men, albeit at a more advanced age.

Oliver's sense of liberation when he finally gets to be with Elio struck a chord as well. It's left fairly ambiguous whether the both of them are gay or just bisexual but this is clearly a part of them they don't get to express openly in 1983. The sense of joy at being able to let their guard down with each other is very real. Was the tragedy that their joy was to be short-lived solely due to circumstance or from the assumption that this is something they would not be allowed to have long term? Part of the tragedy is we just don't know. Does Oliver get engaged to a woman because he is truly bisexual or because he gives up on ever having what his heart truly desires? Much like Elio's father did, as he reveals in a moving final speech.

So as much as the film is about longing it is also about loss. About letting loss numb you to the point you stop believing you can be who you truly want to be and be with who you truly want to be with. It happened to Elio's father. It may have happened to Oliver. Only Elio, in a moving and lingering final shot on his face as he stares into the fire and lets himself feel what he feels, refuses to cut part of himself away to spare himself pain.

This movie is begging us not to surrender our deepest selves in the face of pain or loss or a world actively hostile to who we truly are. And so I am still thinking about it several days later.

Inifity War = a numb ass at the theater

I don't know if I need to spill ink over Infinity war. It was what it was. I liked it as a spectacle. It is basically a comic book cross-over in movie form with all the good things and bad things that brings.  All your favorite heroes meet each other!  Hooray!

But aside from spectacle, it relies heavily on the character work from all the pervious films to drive this one, because there's no time to develop it here.  You really, really have to care about a character coming in to the film to even start to care what happens to them here. A lot of amazing things happen that land with no weight because you know the ending will absolutely be reversed, and, more importantly, there's not enough time to establish any sense of stakes and therefore, inevitably, loss with any of the characters. I think it's supposed to be Tony carrying the emotional weight here, but he's not really given any more time than the others to develop it.

The only death that seemed sad was spider-man's, but that's largely because they pulled the "I don't want to go," line which was powerful the first time I saw a character say it, but seems cheaper and cheaper as a trope the more time goes on. Even the post-credits scene is less an emotional after-punch than an ad for the next movie. Not that that's particularly unusual, but it doesn't help things land any harder.

I don't know, it didn't crush my soul and I liked it okay. I can 100% see why someone would be tired of these things at this point though.

Also, my ass really was numb at the end.

Goodbye, good friend

Nobody tells you when they're young, that in all likelihood you will have to kill your cat. That's not the way they would actually say it, they would say "put to sleep" or some softer euphamism. But the reality is, if you don't lose your cat to accident or some natural, sudden death you will be the one who has to decide when killing them is more of a mercy than letting them suffer. It is a miserable and heart-breaking decision and I don't wish it on anyone.

I had to say goodbye to my big, dumb, wonderful cat Zapp a couple weeks ago and I was not prepared to either make that decision for him or to let him go. In the end I have no regrets about the timing of the decision, but the weeks leading up to and the day itself were a misery I do not soon want to repeat.

He had been declining slowly for 6 months or so, and then in the last month rapidly, although truthfully his end was ultimately about as peaceful as any creature could hope for. I don't think he felt too good between kidney failure and some underlying problem (probably cancer), but I felt the decision of when to end it was his to make and my job was to intuit when he was done. I think the vet disagreed with me, but I got it to within a day or so I think. On that score I did right by him.

He still wanted to do his routine. And although it was stressful for me more or less waiting for him to die or to decide he finally wanted to, there was an opportunity for many kindnesses in that last month. He was having trouble bending his head for food, so I raised his food and water dishes. He couldn't jump up on the toilet to get water from the sink splashed on him, so I picked him up and put him down, with a kiss on the back of the head as payment. He would purr throughout. I think at the end he was just happy to be held.

Of course, eventually you run out of time for kindnesses and care, as the body of a creature you love deteriorates beyond your ability to help until the range of kindnesses available reduces to one final act: a cessation of suffering and a peaceful death. When I reached this point I understood it was a kindness, but it felt like complete garbage and a terrible betrayal.

The last half hour was terrible. I was sobbing hopelessly because there was literally no hope of more time with him, and he still reached out with his paw in the way he always did when I wasn't paying enough attention to him. "Hey, stop that. This is our time, spend it with me."

he was already mostly gone, and by the time the second injection was administered he was gone within moments. I kissed him on the back of the head and told him I'd love him forever but did not linger. He was already gone.

The urn they gave me was an entirely unsuitable floral tin that I plan on replacing with a more appropriate container. Probably the one with Bastet on it that I liked.

Towards the end, clearly more for me than for them, I bought a statue of Bastet and lit some incense to her for the protection of my cats in this life and the next. I'm not sure that does anything at all, but I felt better. I find I am hungry for ritual, around even the death of my cat. I want a service, a ritual, a formal set of practices I can perform to honor him and say goodbye. Ancient Egypt had that in the worship of Bastet, but we proud irrational rationalists have long since abandoned such nonsense.

But still, I miss it. I want to reach for a cultural tool here, and obvious and meaningful rituals to perform, but find myself grasping at empty space. We don't believe in the importance of rituals anymore and you don't really notice until you actually need it and it's not there. I will probably have to make my own, and I will make my own, but I still wish for a commonly understood practice to cope with it.

That said, I am also dissatisfied with the rituals we have for our own species. I attended the fourth funeral in a year for an elderly relative who has moved on and did not enjoy the Adventist version of such, for a variety of reasons. It seems to bring my family some comfort, but the rituals of a belief system I no longer buy into and am actively angry about bring me no comfort.

So I will buy an urn and light some more incense and put his picture up on the wall and miss him terribly.

Why did I love that fuzzy thing? What purpose does it serve? Why was that such a significant relationship to me and why is the sense of loss so profound? I don't understand any of this right now. Certainly my human social web is in tatters and this loss serves to highlight that, and the need to repair it, in a number of ways. But still, answers and understanding are not things I have a lot of right now.

It is certainly a reminder that I do not have forever to get my ship in order. I find myself battling a lot of regret. Did I do enough for him? Was I present when he was sick? Was I present enough when he was well? Did I give him a good life? Did I take him for granted? He knew he was loved (he would nightly crawl up beside me on the couch and purr contentedly) and he had a decent life, but I find myself reflecting on the shambles I've been and wondering how I could have done better if I was, I don't know, actually trying at life. In any case, I hope he looks back kindly from wherever he is now. I hope I can learn to look back kindly on myself as well.

So that's that. My life's a mess and my wonderful, beautiful cat is dead. Best cat I ever knew. I wish you could have met him.

Southern Reach Review

Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I would have hated this series when I was younger, too much writing, not enough resolution and revelation. Now that I am ancient of days (early forties) I enjoyed it a great deal.

Look, at some point you realize some stories are plot-driven, full of mysteries where the deepest satisfaction lies in the resolution. In the confirmation that what is happening is knowable and the satisfaction of mapping it all out.

Other stories are meant to be experiential, where the satisfaction lies not in the mapping or the knowing but the transcendent experience of the inexplicable. These stories may purposely thwart knowing, not to spite you, but to shift your attention to the experience of not-knowing or understanding and the joys that may be found there. It's a kind of transcendence edging, for better or for worse. Hanging on the cusp of revelation, tasting it on the tip of your tongue, feeling it in the tips of your fingers, but never quite getting there.

We've all experienced stories with a dissatisfying resolution. Sometimes it comes from a poorly crafted story or characters. Some writers are good at crafting questions but poor at answering them. Some answers are disappointing because they turn the mystery mundane. It was just Old Man Higgins in a suit and the Force is really just micro-organisms in the right concentration. Transcendent fiction eschews the concept of answering them entirely, focusing instead on that wonderful sense of excitement that comes from not knowing, chewing endlessly on the tantalizing hints provided. Answer fiction is order and materialism and experiential fiction is spiritual mysticism. Neither is superior, they are just addressing different needs in different readers.

Southern Reach is a trilogy that falls squarely into experiential fiction, much more David Lynch than not. The entire point of the series is the experience of encountering life or intelligence or something so alien and so different from human experience that interacting it with it leaves you less human than when you started. Of how maddening it is to attempt to rationally understand something which will forever defy the scientific progress of your understanding because you don't have the context or tools or senses to render it explicable. That, at best, it must first be understood irrationally, and that in that process you will be irrevocably altered. It is quantum slit experiment, except that the observation changes, and possibly mutates, the observer.

It's not that answers aren't supplied. By the end of the series you understand where area X comes from and the vague outlines of what it is, but not what it might think or want. What it might think or want is not the point. The psychological and body horror of being changed by something just by interacting with it at all is. You get full character arcs and resolution. It may not be the resolution you are hoping for for them, but their arcs are tangible and, to me, satisfying.

A lot of this kind of experiential fiction depends on the artistry of the author. Lynch is not popular because he gives satisfying answers; he is popular because he excels at filming sequences that feel like dream sequences or being on psychotropic drugs. Likewise, Southern Reach fails or succeeds on the quality of Vandermeer's prose, which is high. I came for the weird story, but I stayed for the evocative writing and compelling characterizations.

Do I recommend this series? Absolutely. So long as you're into more the experience of psychological and body horror resulting from contact with the alien and not hoping too much for a rational mapping and understanding of everything that's happening. That's not the point and it's not a bad thing.

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Dragon Short Story

Wrote this today after it popped into my head during breakfast. A world where dragons rule and men drool.

Seductive GOD of thunder!

"Are you Thor, the god of hammers?"

Watched Thor 2 again at the cheap theater. Although not so cheap with pizza and beer I guess. Anyway, I enjoyed it just as much, if not more.

Still struck by the conversations between Thor and Loki and Thor and Odin. Some of the best character work in the MCU in just a few sentences.

Still love Hela. Would die for Hela. Yes, Hela.

I think the commentary on Asgard's wealth and prosperity built on the blood and tears of a hundred civilizations part is still important. I think the "fuck it, here's scourge dual-wielding M-16s. USA! USA!" kind of undercuts whatever high minded allegory they're trying to make there. It's just kind of brought up and uncomfortably dismissed. To be fair, this is as far as we've gotten with the topic ourselves.

It can't let a heavy moment stand. In the middle of the destruction of Asgard they still have to be cracking wise. I want to say it smacks of emotional immaturity and insecurity on the part of the creators, but I think it's more likely just a lack of faith in the audience to actually care about that moment. I just don't think they struck a good balance between light-hearted and dramatic. Which is to say, it's a funny, light-hearted film, but they probably could have gotten away with letting things land harder.

Overall, still one of the best MCU films to date, although I suspect Black Panther will be a strong contender there as well.

They still should have left him his chest hair.

Shower Thoughts

Dissociation is a spectrum from day-dreaming to pathological. No, people day-dreaming shouldn't be be talking about it like it's pathological.

You are more than the sum of your clinical diagnosis and more valuable than you think. But so is everyone else.

People are valuable, even though they are not scarce. An inability to see life as valuable because it is abundant is one of the sins of late capitalism. An economic system that does not value human life and the ecosystem of this planet is not worth keeping.

I'm on the verge of finally falling through the cracks or finally getting some of this stuff together.

That demoralization vs depression article hit me hard. Important reframe. Easy to take it too far and think, "Aha! All the rest of you were the problem after all." but it narrows the focus of this existential investigation.

Consciousness is a fundamental force of organic life. It's what gets this lump of matter moving when it's at rest. Understanding the fuel that drives that consciousness is important.

Blade Runner 2049 brain dump

I saw Blade Runner 2049 tonight and figured I should try writing these things while I'm still thinking about them.

My one good line was the one from the villain (Wallace?). Something about how civilization was built on the backs of a disposable labor force but we lost our taste for slavery. This is something I have been thinking about for a while. We have decided overt slavery is wrong, but have not lost the idea that great men must build cvilization on the backs of disposable labor. So labor practices walk towards slavery as much as they can get away with, meanwhile steadily working on a machine work-force they can use like slaves. I only worry about it in the context of modern society because my distinct impression of the self-styled masters of the universe is not an overwhelming reverence and respect for life and humanity. Everything would be different if that were the case. So what happens when they don't need us anymore? Anyway, I'm putting a pin in this.

Visually spectactular. Dreamy. Moody with a matching soundtrack that sets the action in a soothing bed of sound. I felt no real attachment to the main character but did not care.  I greatly enjoyed the experience even though I feel like the message was muddled and it may more or less have failed to get at what it was trying to get at. Maybe it's brilliant and I'm stupid, I don't know. It at the very least gives me a lot to chew on.

The gaze is very male, if that's important to you. I don't have any big thoughts about it, just noted it.

The carved or origami figure trope in this series is iconic at this point. My sole thought on it tonight was the contrast of past and future. When we were a young species, we carved crude creatures we did not understand well but were fresh and alive all around us. Here, we carve fine and intricately understood recreations of a living, breathing world we have long since killed. The characters carve crude figures as a sort of memory of the lost world and a sort of therapy in the new one.

It is still crudely dystopian in grand PKD fashion. We've advanced in cleverness but not kindness and have long since poisoned the world. The world itself is dead and gray, a mass of rock and mud lit by the occasional neon lights. Presumably, life is grand on the offworld colonies, but if Earth is representative of the spiritual stagnation of the human race, one can't feel too optimistic about their future. Why wouldn't they poison those worlds the same way they poisoned earth eventually, especially with men like Wallace at the helm of their grand design?

Robin Wright is great as always. As is Ford. Gosling is handsome and muted as usual.

They are all insane. The central replicant is in love with an software girlfriend. Replicants cry as they kill, kiss as they murder you. Replicants can clearly feel, but they are taught to keep emotions baseline or they will be murdered. This sets up a repression that you might expect will explode violently. It is almost comically stupid on the part of humanity to create  this state of affairs, but maybe therein lies the realism? There is ostensibly monitoring of replicants to detect the development of emotions, at which point they will be killed. "Hmmm, why is this robot with feelings so angry?" they might later say.

Who is sane in a world where creatures that seem impossibly human are murdered publicly more or less regularly? The replicants are built to look like us, and are set to soon overthrow and surpass us if this story is any indication, but they are not sane by our standards. Everything about them exists in the uncanny valley. It makes me wonder about a future for a society like ours, that consciously and unconsciously seems to worship machines as more human than human. Would that future society be sane by today's standards? Could evolution on technological lines with no concurrent sanctity for human lives and bodies lead to descendants we would consider deranged? Are we deranged by the standards of our ancestors, all walled up in concrete jungles, wrapped up in productivity and progress at the expense of human health and happiness?

To what end, replicants? I wonder even what PKD was trying to get at. Why decide slavery is wrong but then build a new race of slaves that are so human it becomes wrong again to enslave them? In a world where AI cannot, and will not ever exist, robot slaves is more about centralization of power and what to do with an excess human "work force" who is now no longer needed to drive the great engine of civilization. In in a world where we can replicate human beings so perfectly we essentially recreate them, why recreate the original problem so perfectly? Was the original problem that slaves would rise up and kill you if you kept enslaving them, or that it was intrinsically wrong to enslave creatures with "souls," whatever you define that to be? In either case, why create replicants who are physically superior to you, recreating the "slave revolt" problem. And why give them a soul, recreating the "it's wrong to enslave 'people'" problem. Is the human race of Blade Runner unfathomably cruel  or just stupid. Why not both?

Another thing I think about a lot is the satisfaction of accomplishment. If danger and creation and accomplishment are some of the core components of human satisfaction, why are we so intent to hand them over to machines like replicatns? We can't be simultaneously trying to create a world where people don't do work and a world where people find satisfaction and accomplishment. I believe the line of thinking goes that we will find new and more satisfying work to accomplish. But what specifically? And are we really happier the farther we remove ourselves for natural environments? Shouldn't we at least think about whether some of the work we do might be necessary for the ideal human happiness? I'm putting a pin in this too for now, but I think about it a lot.

Back to the movie. I wish more films worked as a visual meditation like this one. Big, moody moments. Long shots, lingering pans. It's not quite a David Lynch acid trip, but I greatly appreciate the attempt to create atmosphere. The music really does work for me. Something about the wall of bass that sets a lot of the scenes is soothing to me. I wish I had cared more about the plot, but the score and cinematography work so well by themselves that you can just sit there and wallow in it, letting the melancholy beauty and aching sadness of this fallen world sink in.

Okay, that's all I got. Good movie in terms of asking questions. Poor in terms of answers. Not necessarily a bad thing. If answers were easy to come by we wouldn't create so much art looking for them.

The Last Jedi Blaster Points

I am writing these notes with no reverence or respect for spoilers. Read at your own peril.

One of my favorite songs is still "I still haven't found what I'm looking for." Not because I like Bono's warbly voice all that much, but because it still encapsulates my feelings about this life the best. I've been skimming new and old shows on the streaming services like I'm looking for something, and it occurred to me recently that I AM looking for something. I just still haven't found what I'm looking for.

As the product of a millennialist religion, to me the anticipation of the star wars movies most resembled anticipation of the second coming, and joyous hope for a world made new. This blessed hope has diminished with each flawed arrival of the christ movie, as disillusioned adults realized they weren't 10 anymore and never would be or simply believed the perfect SW movie WAS possible, it was just in hands incapable of crafting paradise correctly. The blessed hope is that someday, someone WILL craft the perfect SW trilogy, and we will walk hand-in-hand into that eternal realm.

As for me, I have long lost the hope that a movie will save me in any fashion, but I still sift through them restlessly, hoping to find some sign of good in them, and by extension the industry that creates them, and by extension western civilization. Like Luke, I want to find the good in the thing that created me. Not coincidentally, one of my other favorite songs is, "Give me something to believe in."

For now, I hold on to one quote from each movie I see that means something to me, even if I can't explain why. For the Force Awakens this was:

"Dear Child. The belonging you seek is not behind you, it is in front of you." (I went home and sobbed after this movie).

For the Last Jedi it's Luke saying:

"No one's ever really gone."

Which ties with my other favorite SW quote:

"Luminous beings are we. Not this crude matter."

"No one's ever really gone." is simultaneously the hope of redemption in this life and the hope of possibilities beyond it.

I look for hope in SW, and in the original trilogy that was the redemption of Darth Vader. A father's love for his son, redemption, and sacrifice are all powerful themes and their combination in Return of the Jedi is probably my favorite aspect of star wars. I personally think genuine redemption (as opposed to posed redemption with no real contrition), is one of the most powerful ideas in human society, is vital to healing social bonds that every one of us can't help but damage from time to time and I like aspects of our culture that champion that idea in a sincere and meaningful way. Our default setting is angry, gory revenge when we are wronged and while we still haven't really gotten much beyond it in our society, we should still try. And what concerns me most about modern society is the increasing absence of redemption, as if we are afraid the wrong people could make use of it.

I believe in redemption because anger leads to hate and hate leads to suffering and while this is a trite pop-culture spiritualism in a kids movie, it is also an idea intimately intertwined in every major religion. To forgive is divine. That doesn't mean you have to be stupid about it, that doesn't mean you have to pretend someone is sincere when they are not. It just means if you can't mend the wound, the remaining options get less fun over time. Isolation, demonization, and violence are less ideal than the alternatives.

So to see redemption tossed so casually aside in the Last Jedi concerns me, but then again, not every story is a story of redemption. This is partly a story about fascism that cannot be reasoned with. I think western civilization is still figuring out how to deal with fascism politically and Star Wars is some not small part of that. How do we stop violent eliminationists without just violently eliminating them? Star Wars has so far not been up to the task in answering this question, but I'm glad it tries. The First Order is still woefully underdeveloped, and the original empire under Palpatine was 1-dimensional evil. A deep exploration of fascism this series is not.

Part of the problem here, is I don't think we have much of an idea of what a healthy, functioning democracy looks like yet in our civilization, which is partly why you never actually see one in Star Wars. Just cartoon fascism and people clinging to hope that we'll figure it out someday. That moves me, and If feel it, but it doesn't enlighten me. Star Wars has yet to show me how things could be better, just that power is being taken by hateful, violent people and we should stand up to them. And they should and we should and I still want to know what better, specifically, looks like.

More interesting here is the way TLJ seems to upend the traditional star wars story entirely. Not even is this not a story about the redemption of Ben Solo, this may not even be a story about the empire or the rebellion. Both the main empire vs rebels and jedi vs sith storylines are cracking at the seems in this movie, as new stories threaten to break free from beneath them. The rebellion vs the First Order is recast several times as the 1% vs the poor and downtrodden and jedi vs sith is cast as dogmatic religions too rigid in their thinking and the light and the dark as oversimplifications that hurt more than they help.

Luke panics at how readily Rey faces the dark side cave, but the panic seems more that the dark is so seductive a person can't help but succumb. But this is Luke's problem, not Rey's. She touches the dark side and instinctively recoils. It is not who she is, it does not have what she wants, it holds very little power over her. Luke's reaction reminds me a lot of christians who freak out when their kids are exposed to any non-christian opinions. If you genuinely believe your ideas are more powerful and more compelling, why be afraid?

Similarly, Kylo Ren seems devoted to the dark, but does not seem to fear his explorations into the light. His lines about killing the past and leaving the Jedi and the Sith far behind were genuinely exciting but also the kind of thing an ambitious Sith would say. For the Sith, it's always about being the new force-using iconoclast who reinvents even as he innovates and remolds the universe around him. But still, as a fan I'm genuinely excited to see the genuinely stale jedi vs sith contruction cast aside in favor of more nuanced depictions of light and dark. I think there is such a thing as good and evil, but SW has long been constricted by overly-simplistic mythologies and losing those to some degree will enable more interesting discussions of good vs evil. Is it still Star Wars if you stop talking about Jedi and the Sith? I honestly don't know.

Beyond that, I have no idea where they're going with Ben Solo from here. He's one of the most well-developed characters of the new series, extremely sympathetic, and seemingly as unbound from the Sith as he is to the Jedi. He may have grabbed the helm of the first order, but to what end? He doesn't strike me as the type who wants to rule the universe, just to do as he wants when he wants to. He's an interesting character, but I'm not sure I buy him as the new prime evil of the series. The next movie needs to add something here, in terms of characterization or motivation or new villains (or a surprise resurrection and exploration of his relationship with Snoke or something).

Of course, there IS actually a short redemption arc in this film, but it's not Ren, it's Luke. Rey brings Luke back the way Luke brings Vader back. Luke nearly fell to the dark side in trying to be a Jedi Master, and it scared him so bad he shut himself off from it and went into exile. Here, Rey faces the dark unafraid and without letting it diminish the light in her and Luke, in the end, does the same. I think if there's any powerful emotional core to this movie, it's that.

Not only that, but Luke's final duel is most powerful in what it fails to give Kylo, and by extension the blood-thirsty fanboys in the audience:  violent revenge. The movie does a good job in implying Luke is there to kill Ben, or that Ben is going to kill Luke like Vader killed Kenobi. Luke, finally a Jedi Master, shames them all by solving the problem elegantly and non-violently. He admits he fails him, says he's sorry, and saves his friends and family; all without wasting a life. The last act of the last Jedi Master is probably by far the strongest argument for the existence of the Jedi Order in the history of the franchise. Yoda said the hardest part of being a master was being the thing his students grow beyond and he was talking about Rey, but he was also talking about Luke. Not even Yoda did so much good with so little violence. I was unsure I liked what they did with him as I left the theater last night, and now I think I love it.

With that in mind, I'm still not sure this trilogy won't end with the redemption of Ben Solo. His two most important father-figures leave him with kind words and looks of love on their faces. Han touching his son's face before he falls and Luke with a gentle "See ya 'round, kid." (or somesuch, expect to see Luke as a force ghost in the third act). Moreover, he's still not committed to the dark side. He's abandoned the sith as much as he's abandoned the Jedi. I'm not saying it should end with his redemption; if he relentlessly and continually chooses evil it cannot. I harbor a suspicion that Ren is a stand-in for the angry ostracized man-children in the fanbase, who may choose evil but who we have also failed to bring into a healthy adult community. These are also the most vulnerable recruits to fascist movements anyway, so maybe SW is exploring "how to fight fascism" more in Kylo Ren than in the First Order vs the Resistance.

As far as the Wars part of the Stars goes, I don't know what the new series is doing.  The world-building in this new trilogy is awful. The First Order are just fascists who have not been fleshed out at all. Okay. They couldn't figure out how to depict a functioning democracy so they just nuked the Republic in the first movie(again, this is a big weakness in western civ right now). Leaving a tiny resistance that only gets tinier over the course of the second movie. I mean the entire arc here is the Resistance fleeing from one base, and a slow-ass chase to a new planet which they again flee. Call him all the names you want, but Lucas was significantly better at world-building in the first 6 movies, for all his failings with dialogue and how people work. Details matter and there are not enough details here. The First Order is bad and the resistance is good is all you really get, with not even a sketch of how the rest of the galaxy looks at this point. This part of the plot exists without any context whatsoever and that is frustrating.

So, while I am excited for all the new directions hinted at in this film, it's still kind of a mess. While I enjoyed a lot of it, it resolves too much and has almost zero forward momentum going into the third act, which is a, um, bold choice. There's no question of Rey's parents going forward, there's no question of "will Kylo turn?" (or is there?), the rebels are flying free and happy to their friends in the outer rim (although no one answered, so maybe?). Snoke is dead. The First Order and Ren still plan to take over, but that's how the first movie ended. The resistance is weak and on the run but that's how the first movie ended. There are no characters in dire peril that will need to be rescued, unless we're still talking about redeeming Ben Solo, Luke is dead (but not gone!), and all the series regulars are safe for now. What tensions run taut between them? What ill wind blows them to destruction or salvation? I have no idea and the movie doesn't either. And that's, frankly, very disappointing.

All that said, beyond Luke's redemption, there are some things that really worked for me. Laura Fucking Dern. Her dramatic lightspeed sacrifice that was such a stunningly powerful and beautiful moment that I gasped out loud. Leia force-pulling herself back to the ship. It worked for me and my only question for those who hated would be: Would it have worked for you if Luke had done it? why or why not? My suspicion here is old women in dresses are traditionally coded as helpless so to see an old woman in a dress save herself strikes people (*coughes* men *coughs*) as a ridiculous spectacle. I just liked the reminder that Leia is a Skywalker.

The battle on Crait was great, if anti-climactic. Like I said, I ultimately like it as a powerful end to Luke and the Jedi, but in terms of the actual battle, it kind of fizzles.  Although those speeders were cool. Visually lovely though, in traditional star wars fashion.  Finn's battle on the ship and vs Phasma was pretty great. BB-8 generally kicking ass, especially in the AT-ST, worked very well for me. Bencio Del Toro's codebreaker guy was interesting. The New Han Solo ladies and gentlemen! The alien creatures were good and I wanted more. The throne room fight scene where Rey and Ren face off against Snoke's goons was fun and I like how they eschewed the traditional lightsaber tropes in general in this film. I thought the humor generally worked. Poe on hold for Hux was probably Poe's best moment.

In terms of things that could have worked better, Chewbacca should have taken a bite. Finn's side adventure interrupts the flow of everything. Seems more appropriate for a rogue one style spin-off (honestly, they didn't know what to do with Finn in this movie, which is a shame because he's great). Not enough material for Finn and Poe slashfic. Finn and Poe are in love and I won't believe otherwise. Not quite enough star-fighting for my taste.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I think Finn should have been in a healing chamber the entire film as a macguffin as one of the vulnerable the resistance was trying to save, and then brought him back in the next movie when Rey returns. It would have brought more tension to the escape from crait and would have been more of an emotional anchor for the resistance to rally around. You can easily translate the Rose/Finn "we're here to save what we love." line to an argument about whether an injured and unconscious Finn should be left behind or saved. He's a great actor and a great character, but his character off on hijinks side adventures just doesn't work in this story arc.

This trilogy is weird. Johnson took a right angle from Abrams and Abrams will probably have to take another sharp turn to save it. The lines leading from movie to movie will probably not end up lining up too well. A lot of complaints about modern cinema revolve around flashy cinematography that essentially doesn't go anywhere, promising the meat will be in the next installment. These movies are always leading somewhere great but rarely great in and of themselves. There's lots I like about the Last Jedi, but I think that critique holds some water here. Too much hinges on where the next movie goes and this movie should hold up better under its own weight than it does.

I'll watch the next movie both because I love Star Wars and I'm curious how they'll resolve any of this. I'm hoping it will still have that one good line worth holding on to. But I'm not expecting it to save me, or turn back time, or usher us into a bright new Star Wars paradise and neither should you.

Frasier^2

Upon this, the occasion of my second full watch through of Frasier, a few thoughts.

Still great. Soothing. Excellent to drift off to sleep to.

Niles is creepy about Daphne for many seasons, but they do try and pin it on him. There's even a whole episode about him having to see her as a real person. Still, not my model for a healthy relationship.

I hated what they did to Daphne's character post-marriage. She loses all her quirky charm in favor of being Niles' dream wife. She doesn't do the psychic thing or horrifying tales of life in England at all after and it's a shame.

Wendie Malick is great as Ronee in the final season, and I wish she'd been added years earlier. She plays off Frasier very well and is funny in her own right.

I hated how they wrote Felicity Huffman out of the show. Her character goes from tough as nails and smart to vulgar buffoon in her last episode and it feels totally out of character.

Cheers and by extension Frasier are some of the funniest TV I've ever seen but the underlying tragedy of all the characters depresses me. The cheers reunion episodes. These are characters who spend their time skating next to the abyss and laughing into it. It would be depressing if it wasn't so funny. Frasier ends on a hopeful note, but as a guy currently in a low spot, watching Frasier spend his 40s failing to find love or purpose was bleak. When I wasn't laughing out loud and holding my belly, that is.

I still love the "party goes horribly, horribly wrong" formula. The best one was the episode that started with the end of the party as it spirals out of control, giving no context for any of it. The writers weren't afraid to poke fun at themselves and I appreciate that.

Black Corridors

The Black Corridor by Michael Moorcock
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I was looking for a little escape in the year of our lord 2017, and then dropped into this fresh hell of all our fears made real. Which isn't to say I didn't like it.

The Black Corridor, not to spoil too much, is the chronicle of the world's descent into madness, mirrored in the experience of one man. The entire world is swept by a wave of racism and paranoia and proceeds to tear itself apart, leading one small band of refugees to flee to outer space. Have they really escaped, or have they been followed by the madness destroying the Earth?

The most intriguing part of the story is why? The story leaves it ambiguous. There is an uptick in UFO sightings and rumors of aliens at work in human culture, it's left unresolved whether aliens are too blame or it's just another delusion suddenly gripping human society. It's not at all important to the story, but I thought a lot about it.

All in all it's a fairly chilling look at a human society that goes all in on xenophobia, racism and paranoia. Some lovely light reading!

View all my reviews

Thor! Bulletpoints

I really love Thor as a marvel character and mythological deity so I've wanted to love the previous two Thor movies more than I did. I also wanted to love this one a bit more than I did, but it's the best and by far the most fun of the 3.

My prose is failing me these days, so I'll just list some thoughts in bullet points for now.

• While genuinely very funny throughout, the quippy whimsy feels forced at times. I also have mixed feelings on every character needing to be an awkward mess at talking to people. Maybe some people can be confident and have a distinguishable personality.
• I continue to have a huge crush on Cate Blanchett. I love her presence and style in all her scenes. A weirdly likable villain.
• The Thor/Loki dynamic has never been better than in this movie. Loki starts off as pretty bland in the early movies but he was more interesting here. The Thor/Loki rivalry has largely been driving by a fundamental misunderstanding which was laid out here in a surprisingly open scene. Loki and Thor know who the other is now with no deception, or plot-driving misunderstandings. The issue now is who they are both going to choose to be moving forward. I like that.
• The Jack Kirby homages are wonderful.
• I wish they'd gone in on the 80s theme harder, especially in the soundtrack. There are a few scenes where they should definitely have cranked up the 80s synth and minimized the traditional symphonic score. I think the film overall suffers for not quite committing to the 80s revival, which is a shame, because it could have been one of the best trips in an expanding ocean of mediocre nostalgia.
• There are some incredible scenes that are more or less visual art. I wish there had been more of that.
• "Asgard is a people not a place" is pretty harmless as far as statements go, culture is always a people not a place after all, but I can't help but feel uneasy using that slogan in an era where nazis who idolize norse gods are massing in the streets shouting slogans of racial purity. I'm not saying it shouldn't be in the movie, just that it reminds me uncomfortably of white supremacy forcibly asserting itself as a culture that has a valid place in our society and the elements of our common culture they are exploiting to do that. There's probably a whole post to be written on this.
• I still love that Marvel's Thor is a mishmash of mythology and SF and there's plenty of that here. They don't quite achieve what GotG achieves, but it's still great.
• If you like Jeff Goldblum, he is in full Blum here. A lot of the comedy that works best starts with him.
• I'm still frustrated by the misguided decision to shave Thor's chest hair. Thor is hirsute. I know there are plenty of women who like chest hair on men, so I don't quite understand it. I blame hairless young people who see body hair as an indicator of age and therefore an uncomfortable reminder of decay and death. Embrace the abyss kids, and give Thor his hair back. Although his new haircut is sharp.
• I adored the ending and the new status quo. Interested to see where they go with it.

This is a Good Title

And this is a thoughtful, nuanced post that is exactly as long as it needs to be.

The Virtuous Circle

Read this from Ian Bogost today, and the second to last paragraph was a gut punch:

The compulsion of apps and the escapist fantasy of TV combine in a self-destructive cycle: Apps make the consistent attention paid a TV show seem like a virtuous kind of focus, and constant television makes the escape back into apps seem worldly.

This is my life right now, honestly. Rationalizing virtue when in reality I feel like I'm living a shadow of a life. I wanted to shrink my life until the world made sense, but I may have dug too deep. Or at least, I have not cleaned up my habits enough to make a monastic existence worthwhile. The value in life as a monk is contemplation, not the isolation necessarily.

As it turns out, isolated but mostly dissociative gaming/binging/feed browsing is not a recipe for spiritual renewal.  Who knew?

Sleeping through it

I have a couple drafts of a story about sleeping through the apocalypse I keep tinkering with. I like it, but it's super cheesy so far. It could turn into some sort of HG2G-style adventure if I'm not careful. It's largely me grappling with my two favorite strategies for not dealing with life problems: dissociating and sleeping through it until it goes away on it's own. I talk about gaming/devices a lot but probably the #1 thing I could do for myself right now is develop a regular sleep schedule that gets me up reliably before 8am.

So when I slept through the eclipse this morning it wasn't a surprise. I got going on a lot of things late yesterday and when it got very late last night and I had to decide whether I wanted to watch Twin Peaks or go to be and hope to get up for the eclipse I just said "fuck it." and settled down for another episode (to be fair, Twin Peaks: the Return is probably the best thing on TV right now).

I've noticed when I'm depressed and isolated I tend to do a lot less. Things that really interest me I'll motivate myself for, but it's always a little surprising to me how important "sharing this with a like-minded person" turns out to be in deciding to do a thing. The catch-22 here of course being I'm likely to meet more like-minded people if I can summon some tiny fraction of self-control and do it anyway.

But I didn't see the eclipse today and I only kind of regret it. I wish I'd looked for a viewing event or had built a social network that would have naturally wanted to watch something like that together, but  while I do like astronomy, I'm not sure how much an eclipse excites me. But it does put a fine point on wanting to build something better for myself. I can enjoy things on my own, but it's nice to enjoy things with other people, you know?

Looking forward to not actively sabotaging myself in the near future with a stupid sleep schedule and poor self-control.

Personal Update

I keep meaning to write here and have yet to summon the willpower to create a routine that leaves time for it.

The short update is the personal trajectory of the last couple years is not good. I have been having a crisis of spirit that more or less leaves me dissociative and paralyzed. I want to say it started with the end of my last relationship, but I think the problems that led to the last 1.5 years of inaction were a partial cause to the break-up, not a result of. 

In any case, change is coming. My research job of two decades is going half-time come July and will probably only be a few hours a week maintaining old products a year or so after that. This is worrisome in that it punctures my bubble, and extremely good in that I have been needing some positive change for quite a while now.

The habits I have been cultivating recently have not prepared me for positive change, which I am working on this month. I think I'm about to undergo some serious emotional and cognitive whiplash in hitting the job market again. I think in a year my life and habits will be much better or much worse. Fingers crossed for the former!

I still don't know what I want to do next. My skills are all in science and coding but all I want to do is write, philosophize, learn languages and play music. I will likely continue in tech/science in some fashion and try to develop those hobbies on the side. I should probably still try volunteering at a hospice or two and see if that's something I really want to get into.

I also desperately need to find a place and a community I belong to. It is surprisingly easy to completely isolate yourself in the modern, connected world and I have done a staggeringly good job of that the last couple years. Isolation makes you crazy as it turns out. Tom Hanks and Wilson tried to warn me.

I think it will probably be an extraordinarily good thing to find work locally where I see people every day. Telecommuting can be a quiet hell if you don't have a local community and social/support network to rely on, and I have been absolute shit at finding those things since leaving Adventism, coming out of the closet and moving to Portland.

I have been waiting for some sort of divine revelation about what I am here for on this planet and what to work for and why to work for it in a world ruled by selfish, amoral people, but I have yet to find it. Depression and some sort of ADD have resulted in me largely dealing with this by dissociating, largely with video games which may genuinely qualify as some sort of addictive disorder for me.

I have been making progress, just slower than I'd like. The philosophy book I'm reading is already helping me past some mental roadblocks. More on that later. I'm a little irritated that change is forcing discipline upon me rather than getting ahead of it myself, but ultimately, my absolute terror and lack of clarity about the unknown aside, this is probably a good change. I think it may be true that connection to other people in some fashion may be requirement for personal willpower.

In the meantime, I have a lot of story ideas, and a lot of blog ideas that I'm not writing and that has been making me crazy by itself.  It is not healthy for someone who needs to write not to write. I think even a massive decrease in job status coupled with a massive increase in writing output would be considered a win at this point. 

Anyway, change is coming. I have been quietly dysfunctional for quite a while now and I would dearly like that to change. Perhaps at last I shall.