I'm drifting on a cloud, I'm drifting on a cloud, I'm drifting on a cloud: Installment 8.
In text:
- I'm reading T Fleischmann's TIME IS THE THING A BODY MOVES THROUGH: AN ESSAY, which is an extremely gay book, and which, like many gay books I love and read, prompts within me the question of how it is that I come upon and closely read and love so many gay books. This one melds personal narrative and art critique and poetry in a way that's beautiful and genuinely exciting to me.
- I spent probably nine total hours this week picking away at a research project I started in the spring of 2022 about the history of the Arizona Snowbowl, the ski resort a few minutes outside of Flagstaff. I say this not because it's interesting, necessarily (though I think it is), but because that was most of my reading and editing this week.
- I also spent a bit of time this week handwriting some letters, which I think might be one of my favorite things to do? My newfound love of the mail began when a student-turned-friend of mine told me she'd spent most of her summer writing all kinds of notes to friends who'd left for the summer, including some 12+ pagers. I can't quite muster that--I think in response to a 12-pager I wrote maybe 5 back--but even just a half a page long note is special. I won't outright put out a penpal request; but if you want to send me a letter I will not object.
In video format:
- I finally saw PAST LIVES as my inaugural viewing at the Austin Film Society, a place I see myself frequenting... The whole experience called to mind, weirdly, my experience watching HEREDITARY for the first time; I felt duped by the trailer, which was clearly an elaborate misdirection (the plot in the trailer was decidedly not the plot of the film, and it also contained many of the most visually striking moments). I guess I just mean that the trailer for PAST LIVES didn't really preview what it turned out to be: a very slow, very quiet movie with little intrigue, and in its place lots of introspection about The Immigrant Experience. I tend not to like movies about writers, and so maybe was poised not to like this one; I feel like I can see the aspirational (unrealistic?) nature of making a character a writer, and it glaringly stood out for me. A playwright? Since the ripe age of 20? The entire struggle of the film, all of the tension, turned out to be the ambient quality of Being an Immigrant--how one feels displaced permanently by their status as not from a place. This is a less interesting plot than, say, a woman caught between a childhood love she still has feelings for and her white husband, which is what the trailer mislead me to assume would be the plot. Critic/writer/internet friend Sam Bodrojan tweeted, at some point before I saw the movie, something which in the theater I kept recalling as: "this is the first movie shot entirely in the cadence of an Instagram ad." (This is the actual tweet--not far off!) Maybe that is the reason I couldn't fully submit to its antics after all.
- Riley and I finished NEVER HAVE I EVER, the Netflix original which made a brief appearance in last week's post. I don't want to belabor the point here: I know practically no one who I'm friends with (and therefore who reads this) watches this kind of trash TV, the kind made for teenagers by millennials (or even Gen Xers) that feels like a genuine time-suck. But watching shows like this--which in their final form almost seem self aware of their status as trash, which in turn makes me wonder if the whole time everyone knows they're making a bygone object rather than a lasting piece of art--feels like being in on a secret, like watching something that can easily become a case study of our cultural moment in twenty years time. The show is audacious in its insistence on diversity, wokeness, and feminism, so much so that it becomes distracting to watch, overrunning old characters and interesting plot points for seemingly no reason other than to have more people onscreen. A good example is the addition of Aneesa, another Indian character, to Devi's (the main character's) friend group; Aneesa is central to most of the conflicts for (I think) the entire third season, largely because Devi feels in competition with her as another Indian woman. Aneesa virtually disappears in the fourth and final season despite being integral to Devi's character development, seemingly swapped out for a Latino "bad boy" who, I don't know, steals a wallet and defaces school property for fun. I haven't watched many of the other teen shows on Netflix besides this one, which happened to catch my attention at the right time, but my educated guess is that most trash TV designed for teenagers works like this now. (I'm thinking of WEDNESDAY or THE CHILLING ADVENTURES OF SABRINA, or maybe even SEX EDUCATION--though I've heard that one is not bad.) Is this Hollywood's crisis of self in real time, now exacerbated by strikes and profiteering? Is it Gen X-Millennial anxiety about the ostensible progressive slant of young people who are "terminally online"?
- In a distinct turn away from the hyper-woke world of Netflix originals intended for teens, Dylan and I have slowly been watching VICE PRINCIPALS, a Danny McBride-Walton Goggins-Jody Hill joint about two vice principals vying for the top spot. We started it after THE RIGHTEOUS GEMSTONES ended somewhat pathetically, and that ending actually makes me wonder about how VICE PRINCIPALS will end, and whether or not the feel-good conclusion is McBride's go-to or not. The show is set at a school in South Carolina, and I think that must be the reason why the writing frequently errs on the side of offensive. I read a (picket-crossing, for the record) interview with Goggins, where he's asked a question about how McBride catalogues a specific type of American masculinity, and since then I see a sheen of self-awareness on even the most atrocious jokes, a sheen which may not really exist half the time. Still, read in that great of faith, the show is funny and absurd and great largely because it captures what it feels like to work at a school, how the politicking of administration can be boiled down to one long bit.
Other:
- I listened to the new Yves Tumor, the new King Krule, Loma's DON'T SHY AWAY, Angel Olsen's MY WOMAN, Jessy Lanza's ALL THE TIME, Liz Phair's WHIP-SMART (for at least the hundredth time), Fiona Apple's WHEN THE PAWN..., and many, many other albums while copyediting and cleaning and writing this week. I can't anymore distinguish which have lasting power and which don't, what's work music and what's regular music. I recommend them all.
- For undisclosed and frankly unbeknownst-to-me reasons I've stopped drinking coffee, an endeavor that started independently but was then bolstered by some woman on TikTok saying it changed her life for the better. I suppose it has also changed mine: until today, Friday, I was waking up at ten or later, and rolling around in bed until eleven sometimes, smelling Dylan's coffee (freshly ground and all!) and knowing I wouldn't have any, miserable. Today I sense a turn. I woke up well before nine, had a big herbal tea, ate breakfast, and did all manner of adult behaviors after that like sweeping the living room. Things are looking up here at the end of summer.