No paintings here
“If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint"
Wasn’t gonna write something up and then I ran in the woods yesterday. And I guess that’s becoming my M.O for these newsletter intros. It was around dusk and in Great Meadows, Concord. I ran on the boardwalk for a double.
My fingers held the key to my car in between my pointer finger and my middle finger, without sensation. More of a habitual thing, a thing my mom taught me. Then I passed by a guy and the metal ridges in my key sharpened. The red button that said ‘PANIC’ in white letters underneath the Unlock button blared in all its’ boldness. The minutes on my stopwatch passed by like time was obese, every turn in the trail offered another chance to pass him again. I cut my run early and we crossed paths again; this time, on the road. He was behind the driver’s seat in a pick up truck— with automatic lights on, while I was still on my feet— with a pathetic automatic key as self defense.
If I were a guy, would I think about how to escape a wrist hold, or would I think about how to wrist hold?
Would I grip my key and rub the metal as a way to self soothe before I got in my car?
If I were a guy, would the fear monster grow like Fluff in the microwave? Or would my brain not radioactivate?
Would I separate my thoughts from sticky situations and hear stillness in the woods?
If I were a guy, would I have played with Fear as a mindfulness practice?
I wonder if this guy’s imagination ran more wild than his feet.
Short stories
a. Dundun, Denis Johnson
Speaking of being afraid. Johnson teaches us not to listen our our gut and give everything multiple perspectives. “Somebody shot somebody.” At first, no one seems to care, or they pretend not to care, which is easier because of the anesthetizing effect of taking drugs. I imagine somebody who is sober while reading this, will feel nothing other than blame for these characters, but Johnson turns drugs into a symbol: they’re an antidote to a lack of human connection. Sober people get that. Anyone in pandemic times— meaning everyone— gets that. And when Dundun seems to express a little remorse at the end, you can’t help but like him a little, and our narrator, F*ckhead, who feels for him too, because finally they both feel something, and feeling was everything they tried to escape.
“It was only that certain important connections had been burned through. If I opened up your head and ran a hot soldering iron around in your brain, I might turn you into someone like that.”
Denis Johnson had three rules—
1) “Write naked. That means to write what you would never say.
2) Write in blood. As if ink is so precious you can’t waste it.
3) Write in exile, as if you are never going to get home again, and you have to call back every detail.”
b. Old Babes in the Wood, Margaret Atwood
honestly got the saddest pay wall block on the new yorker sooo— You’ve read your last complimentary article— and can’t read this until next month :/
Books
g. Greenlights, Matthew McConaughey
Make fun of this book allllll you want. McConaughey writes with delight(!) and casts insightful one-liners. He says something like it’s better to be interested in someone else, than try to impress to someone else. McConaughey graduated high school in Texas and roughed it in the Australian outback for a year… he’s both interesting and impressive. He brings us in to have a literary beer, despite his movie star fame. Alright, alright, alright. It’s not Baldwin, but it’s fun.
Just give the book a chance, will ya?
h. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin
Wow. Devastating and beautiful. In simpleton terms, what’s shame got to do with love?
Baldwin writes about David who really loves Giovanni but he’s tangled up with a long distance Hella. Then the walls close in, everyone is together and no longer apart and then everyone is apart. David only understands love as having "merciful distance" and that’s maybe why he can’t love himself more closely. But Giovanni offers David an antidote to shame (which maybe feels like a brief stint of freedom). Unfortuantely, Giovanni also suffocates David (psychologically and spatially) because he can’t access love very closely, as aforementioned, so of course this happens. Baldwin’s lyrical prose makes the actual storyline less important than what the characters experience because Baldwin tells us what’s gonna happen pretty early on. I felt gutted for Hella, she fell in love with a secondary experience, with David’s dishonesty, and the idea of himself— and she suffers the loss of this idea, which was her reality. Damn. One of the best lines in Baldwin’s novel comes from Hella:
“Americans should never come to Europe,” she says. “It means they never can be happy again. What’s the good of an American who isn’t happy? Happiness was all we had.”
Film
c. Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devils
If you’re gonna watch a docu-series on Youtube, let this be the one. Demi brings us into what her life looked like before/after a heroin-laced-with-fentanyl drug overdose and offers the audience more vulnerability than anyone deserves to see. I look at this film through three major prisms:
The Subject’s Unreliable “I”
Major props to Michael D. Ratner for centering the docu-series around Demi, our protagonist, as being an unreliable narrator. Ratner cuts back and forth between clips from his original film of her in “Simply Complicated” where she tells the audience, everything is fine. Everything is notttt fine, but it’s apparent that this time around is different. There is no narrative arc where Demi reaches a fully transformed state. Ratner includes her inconsistencies; allowing his subject to be an ever-changing character, like she is.
“I wish I could say the last night I ever touched heroin was the night of my overdose, but it wasn’t.”
The Filmmaker’s Unreliable “I”
Based on Demi’s unreliable statements, Ratner has an even greater responsibility to tease out her motivations for the film, before he interjects with his. Given the year 2020 was a time of financial strain and unemployment for many, to lower costs and increase productivity, the ethics of documentary filmmaking is not easily articulated using the ‘I’ for the filmmaker either. Without clear ethical standards, Ratner has more freedom, but greater opportunity for distortion, misrepresentation, coercion, or betrayal outside his lens of awareness, even if the act of filmmaking appears to serve a virtuous goal such as ‘getting her story told.’ I’d love to know how much money he made. $$$
Dancing with Herself vs. Anyone Else
Instead of dancing back and forth between herself and others in dialogue, Demi dances with her “authentic self” and then her “real story.” Her documentary resists relational functions— there’s rarely a filmmaker or secondary subject involved, other than in a few scenes. Where is the dialogue!?! Ratner chose an outright self-examination rather than a pas de deux between herself and her assistant, Jordan Jackson, security manager, Max Lea, ex bff Dani Vitale and her mom and sister. Anyone can say anything they want in a monologue. Doesn’t make it true…
d. This Is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist
Partly because I’ve been dying to visit the The Isabella Gardner Museum and partly because my roommates wantedta watch. Not as satisfying as I’d hoped—thankfully, hopes did not start off too high, there was little anticipation for the film beforehand.
e. The Holy Mountain | Alejandro Jodorowsky
Not hipster enough to understand this, appreciate the recommendation from a friend. The Alchemist, played by Jodorowsky himself, leads eight people on a quest to conquer the Holy Mountain. They seek reality through physical and spiritual discipline. They don’t make it to the top— that’s not the point, or maybe that is. We learn that happiness, or transcending a shiti society comes from what we do with the poop, not escaping it. A classic trope but cinematically bonkers. Figured out where Wes Anderson got his wacky style.
“We came in search of the secret of immortality, to be like Gods. And here we are mortals, more human than ever. Goodbye to the Holy Mountain. Real life awaits us.”
Lastly, Jodorowsky has a pretty rockin’ digital persona on Twitter in case you’re not into his films. These days, it’s hard to distinguish between real life and the digital web.
And that’s a sign to call this a wrap. Time to get outside.
Toodaloo friends <3