#Is a lot of joy to be taken from a now familiar narrative told from such a unique and under represented point of view

[rachthepoet]

Matilda Analysis

A poignant narrative delving into themes of self-liberation, healing from past traumas, and a journey toward healthy love for the sake of oneself and nobody else. It's a testament to the resilience of the human spirit, delivered in an intimate and comforting atmosphere soundtracked by gentle instrumentation. This eloquent reminder to whoever needs to hear that it's never too late to seek the love you deserve and cultivate a life filled with joy and acceptance. Even if one must do so independently and abundantly.

The listener may not know the character of Matilda personally, but they know of her intuitively, anybody who can spare a few minutes to listen is invited in miraculously, as the song's configuration allows. And, what waits inside for those who venture? Harry sitting with his guitar, a concerned friend right as you need someone to be.

Here's a deep dive into Harry Styles' Matilda, from a poet.

Roald Dahl's 'Matilda' + Harry's Take

Roald Dahl (1916-1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, and screenwriter. He has composed many children's books, and has been bestowed the title of "one of the greatest storytellers for children of the 20th century". His knack was for writing children's books interlaced with rather dark, adult themes — like 'Matilda'.

If you didn't grow up with the book and/or haven't had the chance to read it, here is a summary for a bit more familiarity, which will lead to a more engaged discussion here! But, also, if you're familiar with the 1996 film, as many are, you should be just fine! As mentioned before, much of Dahl's works covered much darker themes. The children's book 'Matilda' speaks clearly of the following: emotional and physical abuse, tyranny, misogyny, scamming, attachment theory, and, the most obvious, child abuse and neglect.

In short, attachment theory believes that every child needs to form a relationship with at least one primary caregiver to develop, healthily, emotionally and socially. In 'Matilda', our main character lacks that primary caregiver until she meets Miss Honey. The impact of Miss Honey's warmth, care, and understanding on Matilda is so grand that trust is built (she reveals her telekinesis power to Miss Honey) and leads to a happy ending, as Matilda's attachment to Miss Honey wins over the weaker attachment of her parents — and Matilda moves in with Miss Honey, finding a loving and caring home/family at last.

Now it's time to circle it back to Harry's Matilda. I believe that Harry has taken on the role of Miss Honey as a complementary to the subject to whom he's disguised as quote-en-quote "Matilda" — a stylistic choice I have no doubt was heavily influenced by Dahl's tale. Not only is Harry a friend giving advice and refuge, but also a welcoming sense of care and a second home, which further ties into the third album's theme as a whole — debates of a house versus a home, and what home means to a person.

In the song Matilda, Harry alludes to similar situations, with direct connections to attachment theory and child abuse/neglect. As the audience solely, we don't know the specifics of the problem, but these are the main issues I grasp from the lyrics alone. Roald Dahl's Matilda, as told in the book, has much intellectual prowess — she's too smart, almost an adult in a child's body, most likely an effect of her circumstances' cause. Yet, set aside the knowledge of her adventurous nature and wits, there's no clear yes or no to answer if Matilda needs comfort. For she never cries, adamantly refusing to do so, and never seems to show weakness. She's too smart for that, after all. The single time she outright exhibits sadness about not feeling the love from her parents is when she's four and confiding in the librarian. I'm going somewhere, by the way, I promise you.

With Harry's Matilda in Matilda, lots of the same traits resurface. An adventurous spirit and a bright mind, but also the tendency to keep sucking it up and not letting one fall to tenderness, because it's been perceived in the brain as a weakness. None of what happened seemed wrong to her until a certain point. This is, apparently, no big deal, or so she says. Harry's Matilda speaks of her experiences like it's nothing at all, but it's everything. She's mighty like her fictional character namesake, so bright and lively that she can light up even the darkest days.

Upon a delicate, sadly playful melody of strings, Harry takes on the role of a friend but also a caregiver to show love to his character of Matilda. The Miss Honey, as alluded to before. In Matilda, Harry makes it a point to show Matilda the love she never received from those who should've given it freely. He expresses that, while none of this is his business, he's been thinking about it in concern. He tells her that she can start a family that will love her, will care for her, and there's nothing to be sorry for. With a wide, bright smile and a sharp mind, Matilda, you can let it go, and you don't have to be sorry for doing so. Let us show you what healthy love feels like.

Lyric Pull Apart

[VERSE 1] You were riding your bike to the sound of "It's No Big Deal" And you're trying to lift off the ground on those old two wheels Nothing 'bout the way you were treated ever seemed especially alarming till now So you tie up your hair and you smile like it's no big deal

You were riding your bike to the sound of "It's No Big Deal" / And you're trying to lift off the ground on those old two wheels: Here a little scene is set, and provides the listener with so much context and information. It's an idyllic childhood moment to picture, riding a bike, but there are cracks already. Cracks in a carefree childhood, cracks in what should've been. The line to the sound of "It's No Big Deal" had people frantically searching for a song to connect, but, from the language used, I never thought of it that way. Rather, it's the soundtrack of dismissiveness, instigated by those Matilda is surrounded with. There isn't a soundtrack of laughter or encouragement, but rather a shrug. It's in the frame of something heard, not something spoken, or, extending, something felt. To the details, the image of the bike is given as those old two wheels — tired, worn, maybe even inadequate. Strong symbolism there.

Then, trying to lift off the ground gives many implications and layered feelings. There's the literal, with a kid trying to play about and do cool tricks, alone on their old bike, maybe dangerous tricks, leaning into the absent parental presence, and maybe seeking attention. There's the symbolic, the imaginative, the evoking of childhood nostalgia and yearning. There's the metaphorical, to fly, rising above where they are stuck, an ache to escape.

Nothing 'bout the way you were treated ever seemed especially alarming till now / So you tie up your hair and you smile like it's no big deal: Those who've experienced trauma may feel or are told that their mistreatment is normal, and/or they shouldn't be the ones to complain because others have it worse. Therefore, they won't speak out because their minds have been conditioned that their issues are nothing to speak of. An internalization. But, as distance and time are gained away from the situation, realization becomes stronger than internalization.

Then, So you tie up your hair and you smile like it's no big deal curates a heartbreaking image of Matilda, self-sufficient and positive because she had to be, tying up her hair with a smile because she never saw the way she was treated as anything but status quo. It's a tragic echoing of the first line of the verse and also parallels Dahl's Matilda with the ribbon in her hair. It relates to the idea of putting on a mask, covering something up by pretending like everything is fine. Matilda, maybe, doesn't want to burden him with her problems and repeats rehearsed mantras in place of it. But, he sees straight through this, and the speaker assures Matilda that she doesn't have to hide, for he's there to listen and care.

And then we get another heartbreaking image, of Matilda as self-sufficient and positive, tying up her hair with a smile because she never saw the way she was treated as anything but normal, and a tragic echo of the first line, where she smiles “like it’s no big deal” - because it’s all she’s heard, the sound of her parents saying it’s no big deal, and she believes them.

[CHORUS] You can let it go You can throw a party full of everyone you know And not invite your family 'cause they never showed you love You don't have to be sorry for leavin' and growin' up, mmm

But the chorus is telling Matilda directly: you can let it go. It's so comforting and beautiful. He is reassuring the character of Matilda that she can drop the smile and acknowledge the inevitable pain caused (see verse 2), and then let it go and let herself grow. It's a gentle, validating way of saying that she didn't deserve the pain back then and doesn't deserve to hold onto it now. The speaker suggests that Matilda, and by extension the listener, has the power to create a new life for herself — one filled with people who have genuine care for her and those who provide the love that has been missing. Attachment theory.

You can throw a party full of everyone you know and not invite your family 'cause they never showed you symbolizes a break from the past and the forging of a new path defined by one's autonomy. Her family, the site of all of this complication and guilt and hurt, whom she now acknowledges caused her pain and never showed her the love she deserved. But now she can go out and seek that love. A reminder to Matilda that she can seek happiness elsewhere and build a chosen family based on love and respect.

Then, the ending line, You don't have to be sorry for leavin' and growin' up, is so important. When trying to extract oneself from an abusive environment, the blame will be twisted and put on the victim. They might try and make Matilda a stranger as a repercussion for her spreading her wings and thriving in the absence of their negative influence. And, here, the speaker is reassuring Matilda that you don't have to feel sorry for leaving and growing up. And, the language choice is interesting, for saying growing up akins it automatically to something natural, something that's bound to happen. Something you shouldn't feel guilty over. He says to Matilda that she should never feel apologetic for her growth.

[VERSE 2] Matilda, you talk of the pain like it's all alright But I know that you feel like a piece of you's dead inside You showed me a power that is strong enough to bring sun to the darkest days It's none of my business, but it's just been on my mind

Matilda, you talk of the pain like it's all alright / But I know you feel like a piece of you's dead inside: This is the only time within the song that there's a direct address to Matilda, although there's an underlying assumption that the song is being spoken to her throughout. This direct address serves a purpose though, as I believe it amplifies the words that follow it, you talk of the pain like it's all alright. While verse 1 framed Matilda as a child, this verse (verse 2) frames Matilda as an adult. She is doing the same thing, the same coping mechanisms, that were instilled in her when she was a child — "it's no big deal" and "it's all alright".

Closely followed by but I know that you feel like a piece of you's dead inside is where the speaker, in one of the few lines in the song to reference an "I", acknowledges Matilda's pain for her. He makes it known that he can see the pain that she's in, even as she tries to dismiss it. It also acknowledges a major recognition of the loss of self due to this past trauma and pain.

You showed me a power that is strong enough to bring sun to the darkest days: This line is just so gorgeous. I have such love in my heart for it. And I feel like many overlook the intention with the word choice, which lends to its touching nature. Choosing the words you showed me a power versus you are the sunshine in the darkest days (or something along those lines) changes the meaning, and makes more of a splash. The meaning shifts from you are sunshine, you are goodness, you deserve to be loved — which is not without its own lovely connotation, of course — to being around you, you radiate this energy and you can teach other people how to love.

In companionship to what's been told about Matilda, to imply that she has this power to bring the sun to the darkest days, to teach someone how to find the sun in their darkest days when she has experienced dark days... it's beautiful. And it's so important to notice that detailed difference and reiterates the notion that as sad of a song as Matilda is, it's also incredibly empowering.

It's none of my business, but it's just been on my mind: And then, the speaker takes a step back. It's not about his experience, and he acknowledges that separation, but does not withdraw his care or concern. It's none of my business is a delicate way to respect Matilda's boundaries regarding her past and the choice of what her relationships look like. He doesn't want to tell Matilda what to do and deny her agency, for then he would become just another one of the people who mistreat her. But it's just been on my mind illustrates the care of the speaker once more, a complement to what precedes it and to the song entirely.

"It's a weird one, because with something like this, it's like, 'I want to give you something, I want to support you in some way, but it's not necessarily my place to make it about me because it's not my experience.' Sometimes it's just about listening. I hope that's what I did here. If nothing else, it just says, 'I was listening to you'." — Harry Styles

[CHORUS ADD ON VARIATION 1] You can let it go You can throw a party full of everyone you know And not invite your family 'cause they never showed you love You don't have to be sorry for leavin' and growin' up You can see the world, following the seasons Anywhere you go, you don't need a reason 'Cause they never showed you love You don't have to be sorry for doin' it on your own

This is the first variation on and second iteration of the chorus, and it hits on the same themes as the first iteration. The first new line is You can see the world, following the seasons. Matilda can leave, not just her family but where she's from, and she still doesn't owe her family justification or reasons. The latter comes from the following anywhere you go, you don't need a reason. The sentiment is continued by the line you don't have to be sorry for doin' it on your own which is the repeated parallel to the previous you don't have to be sorry for leavin' and growin' up. It's so good. In one sense, it applies to the lines immediately preceding it — you don't have to be sorry for traveling and seeing the world on your own. Yet, because of the repetition, there's this parallel created that also refers to growing up. Matilda doesn't have to be sorry for growing up on her own. A grand acknowledgment that Matilda raised herself, and that comes with both sorrow and pride. The sorrow that she had to raise herself alone, but the pride that she is who she is as an adult because of herself.

[BRIDGE] You're just in time, make your tea and your toast You framed all your posters and dyed your clothes, ooh You don't have to go You don't have to go home Oh, there's a long way to go I don't believe time will change your mind In other words, I know they won't hurt you anymore As long as you can let them go

This whole ballad is truly a tour de force, but the bridge is the one to knock me off my feet every time. Much like Harry has done for the listeners with 'Harry's House', the speaker invites Matilda into his home. In the song's case, both literally and metaphorically.

You're just in time, make your tea and your toast: Tea and toast is such a cozy and homey image, and indicates this welcoming, specificity in welcoming into routines, like a fresh pot of tea and a nice piece of toast in the middle of the afternoon. There's no push or rush, as indicated with the you're just in time, as it was and will always be based upon Matilda's timeline. It's a sense of found family and a safe place to land after she's previously seen the world, followed the seasons, and all that. Welcome home, welcome to the party, welcome to the place where you can be you without begging for the allowance to do so.

You framed all your posters and dyed your clothes: I think this is a beautiful way to signify that somebody grew, focusing on the smaller details. But, additionally, there's a full circle moment, calling back to childhood — experiencing the small joys she never had the chance to, as her childhood was spent in a survival state. You framed all your posters and made this new house a home with favorite things from your childhood, now with an added sense of sophistication that was missing previously. You dyed your clothes, changing them to better fit a new stage of life. Parts of Matilda's childhood can be brought into adulthood with her, and reinvented to be rid of the negative connotations that may still be attached. You can let it go.

You don't have to go / You don't have to go home: The speaker reintroduces himself in the song to speak and bring more reassurance to Matilda, with nurturing and welcoming at the forefront. You don't have to go away from where we've invited you, Matilda, with your favorite teas and the way you like your toast, you don't have to go away from this place of people who love you for you. You don't have to go home reminds Matilda that she doesn't have to go back to the people and place she cut ties with, and that's okay. the use of the word home has intrigued me for quite a while, but I think it indicates that Matilda is still presently on the journey to let go of her past.

Oh, there's a long way to go / I don't believe time will change your mind / In other words, I know they won't hurt you anymore / As long as you can let them go: These last lines of the bridge importantly acknowledge the journey — not just of life, and not just the growing up and traveling and exploring — of healing. It's a bittersweet moment here, gently saying there's a long way to go. It isn't solved, it isn't over — for nothing ever is packaged up that neatly in reality. I don't believe time will change your mind, to me, is him saying that it won't be as simple as letting time fall between her and what happened. A lot of blood and tears is going to have to be shed to truly get to the point where it's not a constant background ache. Leading into, I know they won't hurt you anymore as long as you can let them go. Matilda, you need to give yourself permission to let this all go, both the situation and the facade you've been putting on. Let yourself feel, then let it go.

[CHORUS ADD ON VARIATION 2] You can let it go You can throw a party full of everyone you know You can start a family who will always show you love You don't have to be sorry for doin' it on your own You can let it go You can throw a party full of everyone you know You can start a family who will always show you love You don't have to be sorry, no

The shift in the final chorus can be undetectable if the listener isn't paying attention. But, once it's caught, it's impossible to miss again. This is a second variation of the chorus, on its third iteration. In the earlier verse of the chorus, the third line was And not invite your family 'cause they never showed you love. But, after Matilda has worked to let them go, it evolves to You can start a family who will always show you love — highlighting the beauty of found family, a family of choice. And with this evolution in the chorus, the meaning of doin' it on your own has changed, because rather than a reference to growing up or leaving and traveling, but starting a family, one who will love you, and Matilda has done it with her own autonomy. It's the next step on the road to healing, and there's always this reassurance that Matilda can do this on her own. He gives the power back to her and puts it in her palms, for she is strong and she is resilient.

Therefore, the whole message, the thesis statement of the song, lies in the final line: you don't have to be sorry. The song of Matilda is a conversation between her and the speaker, and in response to her unspoken guilt. In the various forms and layers, the repeated lyrics and parallels, context stacked on context, the listener — us, the spectators — is enveloped in the depth of Matilda and her journey. But, in that final line, all specificities and complexities are stripped, to simply conclude it all: you don't have to be sorry, let go of the guilt, and you can be happy.

Matilda left me reeling in a puddle of tears on the first listen, and my emotions are instigated with each listen after. Pieces that send me into a wave of emotions set off a green light, they'll always be my favorite. In a way, Harry has become our Ms. Honey in times we've felt like Matilda, gifted us a chosen family with those who bond over his music. Much like this song, beautiful and evocative it is.

A grand indicator of a great writer is the ability to write so deeply about experiences not necessarily connected to them and their own experience. The times where Harry is the 'outside looking in, narrator of other people's experiences' songwriter has always been something I admire, and the songs I find the most intriguing to study. There's a full narrative, and we are brought into the same emotions Matilda was experiencing at the moment, therefore fully enveloping us in the story. I don't know, you just feel it. And I love that you just feel it.

And he takes such care and consideration with this delicate story. He doesn't have to name them specifically or be overbearing with identifying details, but cleverly uses well-known themes of the Dahl children's book to explore feelings and show understanding. It's a warm song full of strength and bursting with love. A seldom promise to always be there and understanding to a friend who's felt alone and misunderstood in a time when they should've been heard. Making sure they know their power and the power of care and nurturing. And Harry, in Harry's House, will always show you love.

dedicated to this anon <3

Thank you for reading, you’re absolutely incredible! If there are any songs you’d like me to make an analysis of, please send your request to my inbox! along with any questions or insights you might have yourself!

[lacrimaomnis]

BRF Reading, 5/7/2021

I am planning to continue reading for the rest of the BRF members on how their July would be, but I had this question popping on my mind when I had my tea earlier today, so I feel like I need to draw on this. I've been seeing allegations and teas of Meghan did this, Meghan did that, she's crazy jealous towards Catherine, she's overly obsessed with William, she is abusive towards Harry, she wants to be the Queen Consort, etc etc yadda yadda. This honestly had me wondering, how does Meghan look at herself? What does she see when she sees herself in the mirror? How does she perceive herself? This is also one reading I'd like to try a new spread of cards, so there is also that.

As written, this is merely a speculation and therefore must be taken with a grain of salt. This speculation is not true until proven otherwise.

Naturally, my question is, how does Meghan perceive herself?

Cards drawn: Six of Pentacles, Three of Pentacles, Five of Wands, King of Wands, Three of Cups, The High Priestess, The Fool, Temperance, The Hanged Man, Knight of Pentacles

Remarks/Comment: I tell you, working with a spread where half of the cards are major arcana is honestly shit. So many energies to read from, so many energies pulling the reading this and that way.

To make it more digestible and bearable to read for us all (and for me to type), I will divide the cards I've drawn into two parts. I will start my analysis with the first part, and then I'll be going over to the second part, and then the conclusion will be an overall overview of the spread.

First part: Six of Pentacles, Three of Pentacles, Five of Wands, King of Wands, Three of Cups, The High Priestess.

This section of the spread is the so-called "the cross" part, where these cards represent the happenings of the subject's life, internally and externally.

Now, the cross part itself can be divided into two parts: the axis and the wheel. The axis is the two centre cards, which are the heart of the matter, the foundation of the reading, the energy of the reading, whatever the semantics are. The rest of the cards are the wheel, the events that revolve around the central issue.

First card: Six of Pentacles. This is the so-called "present situation" card, mostly about what is currently happening at the present time, and also reflects someone's state of mind and how they perceive the situation (or themselves). Now, this is interesting, because this reaffirms what I have been seeing a lot with other readers: that Meghan and Harry are in debt. Six of Pentacles is generally a card of generosity, self-care, sharing wealth, and charity -- but one of its meanings is also unpaid debts and that meaning just jumped out of the cards. As one of the two cards of the axis, this tells me that this is one of the two parts of the heart of the matter. Meghan and Harry are in debt and they cannot pay for it.

Second card: Three of Pentacles. The so-called "problem" card. Generally, this card represents teamwork and collaboration, but because of its place, this card tells me that Meghan perceives herself as working alone and without allies. There are disagreements, or to be more Shakespeare-ish, disharmony. Combined with the Six of Pentacles, this tells me that Meghan and Harry are in disharmony, probably because of the outstanding debts that they cannot pay.

Third card: Five of Wands. The card of fighting for the sake of fighting. This is the "past" card, and as such, this is also similar to the card of "past influence". There have been fighting in the past. There is a change. There is tension. This card tells us that everyone is fighting to be heard, but no one is listening. This is how Meghan viewed herself: that no one is listening to her. She has told herself in the past that she was a victim, that no one listened to her when she spoke, and she used it as a weapon in public. Remember how she told Oprah in that interview that she was not "heard"? That she was "belittled" and "bullied"? That the Royal Family "bullied" her by allegedly asking what Archie's skin colour would be?

Fourth card: King of Wands. This is the so-called future card. Along with the tenth card, this usually speaks about how the near future would impact the final resolution/the outcome. King of Wands is a card about someone who is a natural-born leader, a visionary, honoured, and an entrepreneur. So, this card could mean that in the future, Meghan perceives herself and wants to be perceived as all these good things. But in reality, she is someone who is impulsive and ruthless. She doesn't think things through and cannot decide which lies to keep feeding the public with, which is why her stories are riddled with lies and holes. And the more she gives in to her impulsiveness, the more that everyone can see those holes in her stories. And even if she decides on one lie to keep and feed the public with, that can be debunked. Very easily.

Fifth card: Three of Cups. This is the "conscious" card of the cross part, talking about assumptions and desires. Cups are the suit of emotions, and Three of Cups is strongly associated with celebration, and it is an interesting card to come up with, to say the least. She desires to be celebrated. The centre of attention. But, this could also say that she's been partying very hard or is just overspending in general, which could answer why she had those outstanding debts she cannot pay.

Sixth card: The High Priestess. This is the so-called "unconscious" card, the underlying reasons for the manifestation of desires/assumptions seen in the fifth card. The High Priestess is a feminine card, speaking about intuition, the subconscious mind, secrets, withdrawal, and silence. This is interesting because at least for me, the cards do not match. When we celebrate something, it is because of something that has been answered. A birth, a promotion, a big event that brings such joy that it is worth celebrating. The High Priestess is the card of being quiet, trusting your intuition, and discarding all the unnecessary influence in order to understand your mind and what your intuition is telling you. This tells me that Meghan's desires and her underlying unconscious, the things she cannot control, are not matching, meaning she does not even understand what she wants.

But, as I am not confident in this interpretation, I decided to draw a clarifier on The High Priestess.

Clarified by: Three of Wands. Man, what's up with the Threes today? This card is about progress, expansion, foresight, but also about the lack of foresight. This tells me that Meghan lacks the foresight to see ahead, and so she doesn't understand what she wants and how to get there.

This part explains the second part of the spread, the so-called "staff" section. This part is given context by the cross-part, and this part is generally about someone's life outside of the situation presented by the first part of the spread.

Second part: The Fool, Temperance, The Hanged Man, Knight of Pentacles.

Honest to god, I do not like working on this part. The energy here is confusing, it feels like four people are pulling me in different directions at the same time. I've tried my best.

First card: The Fool. This is the card of beginnings, innocence, holding back, recklessness and risk-taking. Position wise, this is the card of the so-called "influence of self", so this card shows us that Meghan put herself in the situation represented by the six earlier cards by being reckless.

Second card: Temperance. This is the card of balance, moderation, patience. This is also the card of imbalance and excess. As the card of external influence, this led me to believe that people close to Meghan may have been advising her (and probably advising Harry as well) to not live excessively. To temper their emotions and not to get set off by the slightest of things. Now, as we all know, this is not their forte.

Third card: The Hanged Man. The card of waiting, stagnancy, resistance, indecision, and sacrifice. This is the card of hopes and fears -- so this card can be interpreted two ways. First is the interpretation of hope: this card might be interpreted that Harry and Meghan are hoping that people would be waiting to hear from them (aka positive PR), that everyone would bend their backs and knees at their whim, available at their every beck and call. That everyone would sacrifice everything for them.

The second interpretation would be that the fear of sacrifice. They feared sacrifice, particularly Meghan. Meghan does not want to leave Hollywood and the US, the reason she moved back to California soon after Megxit. I am thinking that she wants to be a non-working royal while she still has those juicy royal connections, something that we are all familiar with. She is asking for benefits but does not want the sacrifice that comes with it.

Fourth card: Knight of Pentacles. The so-called card of "possible outcome", this card is closely tied with the fourth card of the first part, the King of Wands. The Knight of Pentacles is the card of hard work, productivity, routine, self-discipline, boredom, and perfectionism. The King of Wands tells us that Meghan is way too impulsive to be able to be productive and do something more worthwhile other than doing PRs attacking BRF and sending out the same narrative again and again (productivity). She is too impulsive to have any kind of self-discipline and to accept responsibility.

Conclusion: This is one long and exhausting reading. Meghan and Harry are presumably in some kind of situation, money-wise, most probably outstanding debt. But instead of acknowledging that, Meghan still insists on pushing the narratives to make her the Diana 2.0, the People's Princess, the person that BRF throws away because she stands against "injustice", and above all, a victim. She desires to be celebrated, but she doesn't even know why she wants to be celebrated; she doesn't even know what she truly wants. She lacks the foresight to get what she desires. She wants the benefit of being a working royal but does not want the sacrifice that comes with it. So yes, she perceives herself as someone so important that she must always get what she wants, but she doesn't even know what she wants.

[phoebosacerales]

The 6th house in Astrology

I thought I'd just share this excerpt from "The Plague", which feels like a whole lesson on the 6th house, while also being very relevant in these times of covid-19. It says a lot more than I could ever try to say and explain about the joy of Mars.

"The word 'plague' had just been uttered for the first time. At this stage of the narrative, with Dr. Bernard Rieux standing at his window, the narrator may, perhaps, be allowed to justify the doctor's uncertainty and surprise, since, with very slight differences, his reaction was the same as that of the great majority of our townsfolk. Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.

In fact, like our fellow citizens, Rieux was caught off his guard, and we should understand his hesitations in the light of this fact; and similarly understand how he was torn between conflicting fears and confidence. When a war breaks out, people say: 'It's too stupid; it can't last long.' But though a war may well be 'too stupid', that doesn't prevent its lasting. Stupidity has a knack of getting its way; as we should see if we were not always so much wrapped up in ourselves.

In this respect our townsfolk were like everybody else, wrapped up in themselves; in other words they were humanists: they disbelieved in pestilences.

A pestilence isn't a thing made to man's measure; therefore we tell ourselves that pestilence is a mere bogy of the mind, a bad dream that will pass away. But it doesn't always pass away and, from one bad dream to another, it is men who pass away, and the humanists first of all, because they haven't taken their precautions.

Our townsfolk were not more to blame than others; they forgot to be modest, that was all, and thought that everything still was possible for them; which presupposed that pestilences were impossible. They went on doing business, arranged for journeys, and formed views. How should they have given a thought to anything like plague, which rules out any future, cancels journeys, silences the exchange of views. They fancied themselves free, and no one will ever be free so long as there are pestilences.

Indeed, even after Dr. Rieux had admitted in his friend's company that a handful of persons, scattered about the town, had without warning died of plague, the danger still remained fantastically unreal. For the simple reason that, when a man is a doctor, he comes to have his own ideas of physical suffering, and to acquire somewhat more imagination than the average. Looking from his window at the town, outwardly quite unchanged, the doctor felt little more than a faint qualm for the future, a vague unease.

He tried to recall what he had read about the disease. Figures floated across his memory, and he recalled that some thirty or so great plagues known to history had accounted for nearly a hundred million deaths. But what are a hundred million deaths? When one has served in a war, one hardly knows what a dead man is, after a while. And since a dead man has no substance unless one has actually seen him dead, a hundred million corpses broadcast through history are no more than a puff of smoke in the imagination. The doctor remembered the plague at Constantinople that, according to Procopius, caused ten thousand deaths in a single day. Ten thousand dead made about five times the audience in a biggish cinema. Yes, that was how it should be done. You should collect the people at the exits of five picture-houses, you should lead them to a city square and make them die in heaps if you wanted to get a clear notion of what it means. Then at least you could add some familiar faces to the anonymous mass. But naturally that was impossible to put into practice; moreover, what man knows ten thousand faces? In any case the figures of those old historians, like Procopius, weren't to be relied on; that was common knowledge. Seventy years ago, at Canton, forty thousand rats died of plague before the disease spread to the inhabitants. But, again, in the Canton epidemic there was no reliable way of counting up the rats. A very rough estimate was all that could be made, with, obviously, a wide margin for error.

'Let's see,' the doctor murmured to himself, "supposing the length of a rat to be ten inches, forty thousand rats placed end to end would make a line of...'

He pulled himself up sharply. He was letting his imagination play pranks, the last thing wanted just now. A few cases, he told himself, don't make an epidemic; they merely call for serious precautions. He must fix his mind, first of all, on the observed facts: stupor and extreme prostration, buboes, intense thirst, delirium, dark blotches on the body, internal dilatation, and, in conclusion... In conclusion, some words came back to the doctor's mind; aptly enough, the concluding sentence of the description of the symptoms given in his medical handbook: 'The pulse becomes fluttering, dicrotic, and intermittent, and death ensues as the result of the slightest movement.' Yes, in conclusion, the patient's life hung on a thread, and three people out of four (he remembered the exact figures) were too impatient not to make the very slight movement that snapped the thread.

The doctor was still looking out of the window. Beyond it lay the tranquil radiance of a cool spring sky; inside the room a word was echoing still, the word 'plague'. A word that conjured up in the doctor's mind not only what science chose to put into it, but a whole series of fantastic possibilities utterly out of keeping with that gray and yellow town under his eyes, from which were rising the sounds of mild activity characteristic of the hour; a drone rather than a bustling, the noises of a happy town, in short, if it's possible to be at once so dull and happy. A tranquillity so casual and thoughtless seemed almost effortlessly to give the lie to those old pictures of the plague: Athens, a charnel-house reeking to heaven and deserted even by the birds; Chinese towns cluttered up with victims silent in their agony; the convicts at Marseille piling rotting corpses into pits; the building of the Great Wall in Provence to fend off the furious plague-wind; the damp, putrefying pallets stuck to the mud floor at the Constantinople lazar-house, where the patients were hauled up from their beds with hooks; the carnival of masked doctors at the Black Death; men and women copulating in the cemeteries of Milan; cartloads of dead bodies rumbling through London's ghoul-haunted darkness, nights and days filled always, everywhere, with the eternal cry of human pain. No, all those horrors were not near enough as yet even to ruffle the equanimity of that spring afternoon. The clang of an unseen streetcar came through the window, briskly refuting cruelty and pain. Only the sea, murmurous behind the dingy checkerboard of houses, told of the unrest, the precariousness, of all things in this world. And, gazing in the direction of the bay, Dr. Rieux called to mind the plague-fires of which Lucretius tells, which the Athenians kindled on the seashore. The dead were brought there after nightfall, but there was not room enough, and the living fought one another with torches for a space where to lay those who had been dear to them; for they had rather engage in bloody conflicts than abandon their dead to the waves. A picture rose before him of the red glow of the pyres mirrored on a wine-dark, slumbrous sea, battling torches whirling sparks across the darkness, and thick, fetid smoke rising toward the watchful sky. Yes, it was not beyond the bounds of possibility....

But these extravagant forebodings dwindled in the light of reason. True, the word 'plague had been uttered; true, at this very moment one or two victims were being seized and laid low by the disease. Still, that could stop, or be stopped. It was only a matter of lucidly recognizing what had to be recognized; of dispelling extraneous shadows and doing what needed to be done. Then the plague would come to an end, because it was unthinkable, or, rather, because one thought of it on misleading lines. If, as was most likely, it died out, all would be well. If not, one would know it anyhow for what it was and what steps should be taken for coping with and finally overcoming it.

The doctor opened the window, and at once the noises of the town grew louder.

The brief, intermittent sibilance of a machine-saw came from a near-by workshop.

Rieux pulled himself together. There lay certitude; there, in the daily round.

All the rest hung on mere threads and trivial contingencies; you couldn't waste your time on it. The thing was to do your job as it should be done."

"The Plague", by Albert Camus.

[gregorygrim]

Dragon Prince Hot Takes

!!! Full Spoiler For “The Dragon Prince” Seasons 1-3!!!

So I finally got around to watching The Dragon Prince. Timely, I know, but better late than never i guess. I’m not completely caught up yet as I only got as far as S3E7 “Hearts of Cinder” in this first sitting. Considering I haven’t binged any series in almost two years, I think that’s pretty respectable. This means I won’t discuss the last few episodes here, except for a couple of things I was unfortunately spoiled for already, hence full spoilers.

These are basically my first thoughts and opinions after the binge and a good night’s sleep. It’s gonna be a lot so if you don’t care or don’t want spoilers…

TL;DR: 7½/10. Generally enjoyable, there are some aspects I’m not exactly fan of, but no dealbreakers

Firstly to everyone who told me that this was the new ATLA: you all need to rewatch Avatar stat! Like seriously. There are definitely parallels and given the cast and crew I think that’s what they were going for too (which is why I think it’s fair to compare the two), but still, no.

Secondly I love most of the worldbuilding and love that the series at least tries to give it to us in a bit of a non-linear fashion, even if it is kind of clumsy at times. I know some people are put off by expository dialogue and flashbacks, but I’m an epic fantasy nerd, I need that sweet, sweet lore to live as much as you mortals need food.

I like that there was clearly an effort made to integrate the worldbuilding in more subtle ways. For example you may initially find it kind of weird that all these different human ethnicities are existing perfectly integrated in what looks like a medieval society, until you remember from the opening monologue that the Human Kingdoms are the result of a massive diaspora following the human exodus from Xadia, so obviously people got all mixed up everywhere. It’s representation with an excellent in-world reason and that just brings me joy.

I also love the magic system(s) even though we haven’t really gone into that just yet. it really feels like there was a genuine effort made to create underlying mechanics for the magic rather than just making each spell a vaguely elemental themed ability. I really hope we’ll dive deeper into that in coming seasons.

I also like the little nods to other works of fantasy: Ezran’s ability to talk with animals is a reference to Tolkien’s world where some royal bloodlines had the ability to speak with animals, specifically birds; Primal Magic and its spells being cast with Ancient Draconic runes and words might be reminiscent of the Ancient Language from the Inheritance Cycle etc.

Thirdly the main cast is great. Callum, Ezran and Rayla are all interesting and relatable characters in their own right and as a group. I’m not going into each of them individually here, but while I think the series as a whole falls short of ATLA, as protagonist parties go I dare say this one is nearly on nearly on par with the gAang.¹

And yes, I love Bait, which I really did not expect following the first few episodes. I love his weird pug-toad-chameleon design, I love that he works like a flashbang whenever somebody says a quote from Scarface (I wish they hadn’t dropped that later on) and I love how done he is with everything and everyone at all times. I’ve only had him for 25 episodes, but if anything happened to him I would kill all of my followers and then myself.

On top of that, and speaking as someone who god knows is really not into shipping, I love Rayla and Callum’s relationship. It’s believable, it’s refreshing and it brings out the best in both characters without changing basically anything about them. Just two good friends who fell in love. A++, maybe even S tier.

Unfortunately though I can’t sing the same kind of praises about the villains. None of them are terrible (as in terribly written, most of them are pretty awful people), but with one exception they just don’t stand up to the protagonists in quality.

I could simply not take Viren seriously. Even now that is probably the single most powerful magic user in the world, he just has such strong Karen energy, every time he finishes a speech I am overcome with the urge to say “Sir, this is a Wendy’s” and it does not help the mood. I’m not even sure why. It might’ve been the voice because the guy who did Viren (Jason Simpson) also does a lot of kinda slimy characters in various anime dubs, it might be that over-the-top walking stick, idk.

What I’m saying is that as a primary antagonist he simply did not work for me. Which is doubly a shame because this kind of tarnishes the real “Big Bad” of this story by proxy. Aaravos, even as an invisible ghost, with his voice coming out of a caterpillar and next to no info on his backstory, has more style and gravity than all the human antagonists combined. It helps that he is by far the best designed character and Erik Dellums has the voice of a young god, but I’d argue even without that unfair advantage he has the potential to be a top tier villain. While he is stuck as Viren’s “little bug-pal” though he is just being dragged down.

(I’m aware that as of the final episode the caterpillar familiar is undergoing metamorphosis, probably to create a new body for Aaravos’ spirit to inhabit outside of the magic mirror, so I’m definitely hyped for more of him in the coming seasons.)

As for Soren and Claudia, I’ve got mixed feelings. This was one more aspect of the show that a lot of people compared to Avatar and while I see the parallels to Zuko & Azula, they are still very different, at least where Claudia is concerned. I’d also just like to mention that a lot of people told me that they thought the direction in which their storylines went were really surprising and I can’t disagree more. I predicted that Soren would defect to the protagonists on episode 5 right after Viren told him to kill the princes and I knew Claudia was going to stick with her father from episode 12 onward. My point is, it didn’t feel like some kind of plot twist, the way some people made it out to be, and which I don’t think was the intent.

I definitely got the sense that Soren was at least a Zuko-type character, though still not a Zuko clone, and as with Zuko I was consistently able to empathise and sympathise with him and his predicaments. I also appreciated that his dilemma is the result of his convictions and not him being kind of dense, which would’ve been all to easy and probably would’ve ruined his character for me. As it stands he is extremely milktoast, but perfectly functional for his purpose in the story and I can definitely see him evolving further and getting more interesting as we go on.

Claudia is where it gets complicated. Again, I can see the Azula parallels. But unlike that character, who is her father’s animal 110%, Claudia doesn’t strike me as a victim of Viren’s manipulation the way Soren undoubtably is. The way she talks about and uses Dark Magic, how she talks down to Soren and how even Viren finds it difficult to communicate with her, tells me as an audience member that she is an independent person. Which tells me that the cruelty and enthusiasm for causing harm she regularly displays is her own will. And that was before she straight up leads Callum on to manipulate him.

On the other hand I can absolutely relate to her devotion to her family, her big sister role (even though she is younger than Soren) and the way both the separation of her parents before the story and Soren’s injury in episode 16 must’ve affected her because of this. I know that, if my brother had become paralysed from the neck down and I knew a way to heal him, I would not have hesitated to kill that fawn either. Then again her relationship with her father is very different from parental relationships I am familiar with, so I can’t really say I see why she is so devoted to him, other than she promised her mother to stay with him years ago? ¯\(o_Ō)/¯

So basically Claudia falls into an emotional grey space for me. I can’t really tell how to feel about her either way and I’ll just have to see where she goes from here, which, while fine, isn’t necessarily great for an end of season cliffhanger imo.

Seeing as I’ve already talked about some of the show’s shortcomings, I think it’s time to dive into some of the what I would consider flaws.

Firstly this show needed at least 12 episode seasons. I have never made a secret out of my dislike for the modern short seasons and while I recognise that in the current climate in the industry giving everything full 25 episode seasons isn’t really doable, the pacing of this show, especially for the first season is just outright bad at times. It works as of the second season, but the first season alternately feels like it’s either rushing through or crawling along the whole way through.

The believability of Rayla’s and the princes’ relationship really suffers from this the most. It comes a bit out of nowhere on the boat ride and is then taken for granted way to quickly. Like Callum, seriously, this girl tried to kill you and your brother not even a day ago and you are currently cut off from all allies you have ever had until now. A little skepticism isn’t misplaced here. I also wold’ve liked if we’d just gotten a bit more of a sense of movement with the characters. I get that this is not the kind of show where we can just make an entire episode about the characters travelling and camping, intercut with plots centred around a more expansive supporting cast, but still I really would’ve preferred if Xadia didn’t feel quite so around the corner.

Another issue is with setup and payoff, which I think is partially a consequence of the pacing as well. A lot of smaller plot points are set up within the same episode as the payoff just wreak havoc on the narrative structure. A good example is the episode where they ride down the river in a boat and Bait tires to go into the water, but is saved by Ezran, who then explains the story behind Glowtoads and how they are pefect bait for large water predators. Then Bait falls into the water and is attacked by a massive water monster. This happens within five minutes of one episode and never comes up again. To me that looks like sign of rushed editing, which is probably not entirely the crew’s fault, given that they are on a schedule from Netflix, but it’s still a point of critique.

It unfortunately also manifests in the occasional line of horribly forced dialogue, often for things we can literally see happening on screen. Again, this is mostly the case in the earlier episodes, but it never completely goes away.

Finally, and this is where i get into serious issues that made me want to write this, we gotta talk about representation in this show.

First: disabled representation, meaning Amaya. Why is Amaya deaf? Because it’s good to have disabled representation.

Why is Amaya deaf and a high-ranking military officer? Because they didn’t think it through.

I know this may be a contentious opinion, but it is my belief that the purpose of representation, particularly of disabilities characters may suffer from, in fiction is to, y’know, represent people as they are in life. That includes especially the struggles they face and have to overcome, sometimes their whole life. This is not just me talking out of my ass either. A couple years ago I discussed this with several people that are disabled, specifically blind or otherwise severely visually impaired, in a different context obviously, and the general consensus was that it’s better to have representation that shows their life and their abilities as they are, rather than how they might wish they could be.

A mute or deaf person cannot be a medieval fantasy army general, no matter how good they might be in melee combat or who’s sister they are, because at the end of the day, they’re not able to give commands while they are holding a sword and shield. That such a massive logical oversight, especially in comparison to the extremely well done example of representation I mentioned above, and has so little impact on the plot that it leads me to believe, this aspect of Amaya’s character was tacked on in the last minute without being given any thought for the sole reason of the story having a disabled person in it. All this does is necessitate the existence of two otherwise entirely unnecessary characters, Gren and Kazi, both of which achieve nothing, aside from sometimes being literal set dressing.

That is where representation ends and tokenism begins.

And unfortunately this generally lacklustre attitude also extends to the LGBT+ representation on the show.

As of S3E7 “Hearts of Cinder” we have had two onscreen gay couples on the show (onscreen in the sense that both partners were onscreen and they were somehow confirmed to be in a relationship on the show). One of these, the queens of Duren, literally die in the same flashback they are introduced in, which incidentally also features them invading a foreign nation to poach a rare animal and subsequently starting the conflict at the series’ core. Not a great look.

Aside from serving as a tragic backstory for their daughter, the most impact they had on my viewing experience was that they made wonder how the fuck royal succession works in Duren. (People who know me are rolling their eyes right now because I’m bringing anarchism into this Dragon Prince review, but I’m telling you, this why fantasy monarchies aren’t compatible with LGBT+ politics in the same setting. Dynastic governments are inherently bigoted, you can’t have it both ways.)

The other couple are Runaan and Ethari, Rayla’s caretakers, although if I’m being honest you wouldn’t be able tell based on Runaan’s treatment of Rayla in the first episode. By the time we actually meet Ethari and find out about their relationship with Rayla, Runaan is suffering “a fate worse than death” (direct quote from the show) trapped in a gold coin.

I mean come on. That’s about as “technically not ‘bury your gays’” as it gets.

I think I need to reiterate here that my point is not that this show or its creators are somehow malicious. As i stated in the TL;DR: I don’t think this is a dealbreaker for liking this show. But it does demonstrate that they are prone to slipping to some potentially harmful tropes and this needs to be criticised and pointed out to them.

In conclusion, I really love this show. It’s not ATLA, it never will be, nothing else will ever be ATLA no matter how badly (and terribly) Netflix tries. But it does and should not have to be.

What it has to do though is improve. A lot of the building blocks are already there, such as Aaravos or Claudia’s development, Callum’s father, the origin of Ezran’s ability, the purpose of the “Key of Aaravos”, the true fate of King Harrow (we all know his soul is in the bird, right?) etc. Some things like the treatment of Amaya’s disability unfortunately won’t be fixable as far as I can tell, but if they at least manage to fix the gay representation I can make my peace with that.

¹ I know I said I wouldn’t go into each of the characters individually, but a) you should never trust a stranger on the internet and b) I really want to talk a bit about Callum. Specifically the “mystery” of why the hell he is connected to the Sky Primal. I write “mystery” because I think it’s fairly obvious from whence this talent came: there is only one humanoid species we know of with innate access to the Sky Arcanum and one of Callum’s parent’s is unidentified, presumed dead. 2+2=4. Callum’s father was a Skywing Elf. That’s why he recognised Nyx’s boomerang weapon. He remembered one like it either from his very early childhood (remember that he has photographic memory) or Sarai kept one and he found it at some point.

On top of that the name “Callum” or at least the pronunciation is clearly derived from Latin “caelum” meaning “sky” or “weather” and I already mentioned that Ancient Draconic is just bad Latin. It’s not very subtle. Unless they pull a complete 180 concerning the lore about Primal Magic he’s definitely going to be a half-elf, which would also just so happen to make him the perfect mediator between the Human Kingdoms and Xadia. Hmm, it’s almost as if they are planning ahead.

My question: How the fuck did that happen? Or rather: how did that fuck happen? I don’t think even Harrow knew or he probably would’ve a) paid more attention when Sarai advised against poaching the Magma Titan, because obviously she’s gotten around Xadia more than him, if y’know what i’m sayin’ ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) or at least b) put it in his final letter to Callum. Unfortunately we know basically nothing about Sarai except that she was a soldier alongside Amaya and already had Callum before marrying Harrow. So does Amaya know? This is probably the most interesting plot thread in the whole story and as far as my friends told me it’s not going to be touched on anymore in the last two episodes than it already has thus far, which is basically not at all.

[letterboxd]

Best of SXSW 2021.

From properly good Covid comedies to an epic folk-horror doc and an Indigenous feminist Western, the Letterboxd Festiville team reveals their ten best of SXSW Online.

We dug out old lanyards to wear around the house, and imagined ourselves queuing up the block from The Ritz (RIP). We dialled into screenings and panels, and did our level best to channel that manic “South By” energy from our living rooms.

The SXSW festival atmosphere was muted, and that’s to be expected. But the films themselves? Gems, so many gems, whether shot in a fortnight on the smell of an oily stimulus check, or painstakingly rotoscoped over seven years.

When we asked SXSW Film director Janet Pierson what she and her team were looking for this year, she told us: “We’re always looking for films that do a lot with little, that are ingenious, and pure talent, and discovery, and being surprised. We’re just looking for really good stories with good emotional resonance.” If there was one common denominator we noticed across this year’s SXSW picks, it was a smart, tender injection of comedy into stories about trauma, grief, unwanted pregnancy, chronic health conditions, homelessness, homophobia and, yes, Covid.

It’s hard to pick favorites, but here are the ten SXSW features and two short films we haven’t stopped thinking about, in no particular order.

Recovery Directed by Mallory Everton and Stephen Meek, written by Everton and Whitney Call

“Covid 19 is in charge now” might be the most hauntingly funny line in a SXSW film. In Recovery, two sisters set out on a haywire road trip to rescue their grandmother from her nursing home in the wake of a severe Covid 19 outbreak. There’s no random villain or threat, because isn’t being forced to exist during a pandemic enough of a threat in itself? If ever we were worried about “Covid comedies”, SXSW managed to flush out the good ones. (Read about the Festiville team’s other favorite Covid-inflected comedies, including an interview with the directors of I’m Fine (Thanks for Asking).)

Alex Marzona praises the “off-the-charts chemistry” between leads Mallory Everton and Whitney Call. Best friends since they were nine, the pair also wrote the film, with Everton co-directing with Stephen Meek. Every laugh comes from your gut and feels like something only the cast and crew would usually be privy to. “You can tell a lot of the content is improvised, which just attests to their talent,” writes Emma. Recovery doesn’t make you laugh awkwardly about how awful the last year has been—rather, it reminds you that even in such times there are still laughs to be had, trips to be taken, family worth uprooting everything for. Just make sure you’ve packed enough wet wipes for the road, and think long and hard about who should babysit your mice. —EK

The Spine of Night Written and directed by Morgan Galen King and Philip Gelatt

Don’t get too attached to any characters from its star-studded cast—nobody is safe (or fully-clothed) in The Spine of Night’s raw, ultra-violent and cynical world. Conjured over the last seven years, directors Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King’s rotoscoped epic recaptures the dazzling imagination and scope of their influences Ralph Bakshi and Heavy Metal. Approaching an anthology-style structure to explore how ‘absolute power corrupts absolutely’—a proverb more potent now than when Gelatt and King began their project—the film packs a franchise’s worth of ideas in its 90-minute runtime. Though the storytelling justifiably proves itself overly dense for some, it will find the audience it’s after, as other Letterboxd members have declared it “a rare treat” and “a breath of fresh air in the feature-length animation scene”. For sure, The Spine of Night can join Sundance premieres Flee and Cryptozoo in what’s already a compelling year for unique two-dimensional animation. —JM

Kambole Campbell caught up with Gelatt and King (who are also Letterboxd members!) during SXSW to talk about animation inspirations and rotoscoping techniques.

The Drover’s Wife: The Legend of Molly Johnson Written and directed by Leah Purcell

Snakes, steers and scoundrels beware! Writer-director-star Leah Purcell ably repurposes the Western genre for Aboriginal and female voices in The Drover’s Wife. Molly Johnson is a crack-shot anti-heroine for the ages, in this decolonized reimagining of a classic 1892 short story by Henry Lawson. And by reimagining, we mean a seismic shift in the narrative: Purcell has fleshed out a full story of a mother-of-four, pregnant with her fifth, a missing husband, predatory neighbors, a mysterious runaway and a young English couple on different paths to progress in this remote Southern land. Purcell first adapted this story for the stage, then as published fiction; she rightly takes the leading role in the screen version, too.

As a debut feature director, Purcell (Goa-Gunggari-Wakka Wakka Murri) already has a firm grip on the macabre and the menacing, not shying away from violence, but making very careful decisions about what needs to be depicted, given all that Molly Johnson and her family are subjected to. She also sneaks in mystic touches, and a hint of romance (local heartthrob Rob Collins can take us on a walk to where the Snowy widens to see blooming wildflowers anytime). Judging by early Letterboxd reviews, it’s not for everyone, but this is Australian colonization through an Indigenous feminist’s eyes, with a fierce, intersectional pay-off. “Extremely similar to a vast majority of the issues and themes explored in The Nightingale,” writes Claira. “I’m slowly realizing that my favorite type of Westerns are Australian.” —LK, GG

Swan Song Written and directed by Todd Stephens

Udo Kier is often the bridesmaid, rarely the bride. Now, after a lifetime of supporting roles ranging from vampires and villains to art-house muse, he finally gets to shine center-stage in Swan Song. Kier dazzles as a coiffure soothsayer in this lyrical pageant to the passage of queer times in backwater Sandusky, Ohio. “He is absolutely wonderful here,” writes Adrianna, “digging deep and pulling out a mesmerizing, deeply affecting and emotionally textured performance, proving that he’s an actor with much more range than people give him credit for.”

A strong supporting cast all have melancholy moments to shine, with Linda Evans (Dynasty), Michael Urie (Ugly Betty) and Jennifer Coolidge (Legally Blonde) along for the stroll. Surreal camp touches add joy (that chandelier, the needle drop!) but by the end, the tears roll (both of joy and sadness). Writer-director Todd Stephens ties up his Sandusky trilogy in this hometown homage, a career peak for both him and Kier. Robert Daniels puts it well, writing that Swan Song is “campy as hell, but it’s also a heartfelt LGBTQ story about lost lovers and friends, vibrant memories and the final passage of a colorful life.” —LK

Leo Koziol spoke with Todd Stephens and Udo Kier during SXSW about Grace Jones, David Bowie and dancing with yourself.

Islands Written and directed by Martin Edralin

Islands is a Mike Leigh-esque story that presents a Canadian Filipino immigrant family full of quirk and character, centered around Joshua, a reticent 50-year-old homebody son. The story drifts in and out of a deep well of sadness. Moments of lightness and familial love make the journey worthwhile. “A film so Filipino a main plot device is line-dancing,” writes Karl. “Islands is an incredibly empathetic film about what it’s like to feel unmoored from comfort. It’s distinctly Filipino and deals with the psychology of Asian culture in a way that feels both profound and oddly comforting.” In a year in which we’ve all been forced to physically slow down, Islands “shows us how slow life can be,” writes Justin, “and how important it is to be okay with that.” Rogelio Balagtas’s performance as Joshua—a first-time leading role—won him the SXSW Grand Jury Award for Breakthrough Performance. —LK

Ninjababy Directed by Yngvild Sve Flikke, written by Flikke with Johan Fasting and Inga H. Sætre

Ninjababy is as ridiculous as its title. When 23-year-old Rakel finds herself accidentally pregnant, scheduling an abortion is a no-brainer. But she’s way too far along, she’s informed, so she’s going to have to have the baby. The ensuing meltdown might have been heartbreaking if the film wasn’t so damn funny. Ninjababy draws on the comforting and familiar (“Lizzie McGuire if she was a pregnant young adult,” writes Nick), while mixing shock with originality (Erica Richards notices “a few aggressive and vulgar moments [but] somehow none of it seemed misplaced”).

An animated fetus in the style of Rakel’s own drawings appears to beg and shame Rakel into motherhood while she fights to hold onto her confidence that not wanting to be a mother doesn’t make her a bad person. Ninjababy’s greatest feat is its willingness to delve into that complication: yes, it’s righteous and feminist and 21st-century to claim your own body and life, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy to turn away from something growing inside of you. It’s a comedy about shame, art, finding care in unlikely places—and there’s something in it for the gents, too. The titular ninjababy wouldn’t leave Rakel alone, and it’s unlikely to leave you either. Winner of the SXSW Global Audience Award. —SH

The Fallout Written and directed by Megan Park

Canadian actress Megan Park brought the youthful wisdom of her days on the teen drama series The Secret Life of the American Teenager to her first project behind the camera, and it paid off. Following the scattered after-effects of a school shooting, The Fallout may be the most acute, empathetic depiction of childhood trauma on screen in recent memory. “It sneaks up on you with its honesty and how it spends time with its lead, carried so beautifully by Jenna Ortega. Even the more conventional moments are poignant because of context,” writes Kevin L. Lee. Much of that “sneaky” honesty emerges as humor—despite the heavy premise, moments of hilarity hang on the edges of almost every scene. And Ortega’s portrayal of sweet-but-angsty Vada brings self-awareness to that humor, like when Vada’s avoidant, inappropriate jokes with her therapist reveal her desperation, but they garner genuine laughs nonetheless.

In this debut, Park shows an unmatched understanding of non-linear ways that young people process their pain. Sometimes kids try drugs! Sometimes they scream at their parents! But more often than not, they really do know what they want, who loves them, and how much time they need to grieve (see also: Jessie Barr’s Sophie Jones, starring her cousin Jessica Barr, out now on VOD and in theaters). The Fallout forsakes melodrama to embrace confusion, ambiguity and joy. Winner of both the SXSW Grand Jury and Audience Narrative Feature Awards, and the Brightcove Illumination Award. —SH

Ludi Directed by Edson Jean, written by Jean and Joshua Jean-Baptiste

When Ludi begins, it’s quiet and dreamy. The film’s opening moments conjure the simple pleasures of the titular character’s Haitian heritage: the music, the colors, the people. Ludi (Shein Monpremier) smiles to herself as she starts her morning with a tape recording her cousin mailed from Haiti to Miami, and listens as her family members laugh through their troubles before recording an upbeat tape of her own. But that’s where the dreaminess ends—Ludi is an overworked, underpaid nurse picking up every shift she possibly can in order to send money home. Writer-director Edson Jean fixates on the pains and consequences of Ludi’s relentless determination, which comes to a head when she moonlights as a private nurse for an old man who doesn’t want her there.

Ashton Kinley notes how the film “doesn’t overly dramatize or pull at false emotional strings to make its weight felt. The second half of the feature really allows all of that to shine, as the film becomes a tender and empathetic two-hander.” George’s (Alan Myles Heyman) resentment of his own aging body steps in as Ludi’s antagonist. Jean throws together jarring contrasts: George throwing Ludi out of the bathroom, followed by Ludi’s memories of home, followed by another lashing out, followed by a shared prayer. The tension is unsustainable. By interspersing the back-breaking predicament of a working-class immigrant with the sights and sounds of the Caribbean, Ludi elegantly, painfully reveals what the cost of a dream can be. —SH

Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched: A History of Folk Horror Written and directed by Kier-La Janisse

Building on the folk horror resurgence of films like The Witch and Midsommar, Kier-La Janisse’s 193-minute documentary Woodlands Dark and Days Bewitched is a colossal, staggering undertaking that should school even the most seasoned of horror buffs. “Thorough is an understatement,” says Claira.

Combining a historian’s studied, holistic patience with a cinephile’s rabid, insatiable thirst, the film, through the course of six chapters, broadens textbook British definitions, draws trenchant socio-political and thematic connections, debunks myths and transports viewers to far-flung parts of the globe in a way that almost feels anthropological. As Jordan writes, “Three hours later and my mind is racing between philosophical questions about the state of hauntology we generationally entrap ourselves in, wanting to buy every single one of the 100+ films referenced here, and being just a bit in awe of Janisse’s truly breathless work.” An encyclopedic forest worth losing yourself in—get ready for those watchlists to balloon. Winner of the SXSW Midnighters Audience Award. —AY

Introducing, Selma Blair Directed by Rachel Fleit

There’ll likely be some level of hype when this intimate collaboration between actress Selma Blair and filmmaker Rachel Fleit comes out later in the year on Discovery+, and that’s okay, because that is Blair’s intention in sharing the details of her stem-cell transplant for multiple sclerosis. There’d be little point in going there if you are not prepared to really go there, and Introducing, Selma Blair is a tics-and-all journey not just into what life is like with a chronic condition, a young son, and a career that relies on one’s ability to keep a straight face. It’s also an examination of the scar tissue of childhood, the things we are told by our parents, the ideas we come to believe about ourselves. “I almost felt like I shouldn’t have such intimate access to some of the footage in this documentary,” writes Andy Yen. “Bravo to Selma for allowing the filmmakers to show some truly raw and soul-bearing videos about her battle with multiple sclerosis that make us feel as if we are as close to her as family.” —GG

Femme Directed by Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping

I May Destroy You fans, rejoice: Paapa Essiedu, who played Arabella’s fascinating best friend Kwame, takes center stage in Sam H. Freeman and Ng Choon Ping’s intoxicating short film Femme. It’s a simple premise—Jordan, a femme gay man, follows his drug dealer (Harris Dickinson, mastering the sexually repressed brusque young man like no one else) home to pick up some goods on a night out. Except, of course, it’s not that simple. The co-directors build a world of danger, tension and electricity, with lusciously lensed scenes that lose focus as the threat rises. Frankie calls it “hypnotizing and brutal and gorgeous” and we couldn’t agree more. A crime thriller wrestling with hyper-masculinity seen through the eyes of an LGBTQ+ character, with a sucker-punch ending to boot, the world needs more than twenty minutes of this story. —EK

Play It Safe Directed by Mitch Kalisa

If you (unwisely) thought that the vulnerable, progressive environment of drama school would be a safe space for Black students, Play It Safe confirms that even a liberal bunch of actors (and their teacher) are capable of being blind to their own egregiously racist microagressions. Mitch Kalisa’s excellent short film explores structural prejudice head-on, in an electric acting exercise that rests on where the kinetic, gritty 16mm camera is pointing at every pivotal turn. At first, we’re with Black drama student Jonathan Ajayi as he receives the assignment; then we are with the rest of the class, exactly where we need to be. “Literally in your face and absolutely breathtaking,” writes Nia. A deserving winner of the SXSW Grand Jury and Audience narrative shorts prizes. —GG

Follow the Festiville team on Letterboxd

[twobitmulder]

On Spider-Man, Reboots, and the Future of the X-Men

A while ago I made a post called “Thoughts on MCU Peter Parker and Reboots” which ended up being mostly an examination (or rant) on why MCU Peter doesn’t work for me and was kind of soft on the analysis of reboots. Now, with the announcement that Sony and Marvel’s Spidey deal has fallen through, I thought I’d take another crack as examining why reboots lead to less than stellar versions of characters, and why it’s got me scarred for the X-Men to join the MCU.

Now, right off the bat I feel I should say that I’m not against reboots and re-imaginings. I think The Incredible Hulk is broadly better than the Ang Lee Hulk. I think the 1999 Mummy is better than the 1932 classic. Reboots can be a radical re-imagining, a second draft, or even an examination of different facets of the character (like how Lettier’s Hulk focused more on the lonely wanderer in search of a cure, while Lee’s focused on the father issues). This works especially for long running characters who have a lot of material to work with.

I think my problem with MCU Spidey starts with the way that Sony and Marvel approached the idea of the reboot. The Amazing Spider-Man with Andrew Garfield felt the need to be radically different from the Rami films. The Rami films played all the silver age comic book tropes gleefully straight. An old fashioned news room, his start in wrestling, and the campy villains. It exists in a sort of anachronism stew to borrow the TVTropes term, much like Burton’s Batman.

Webb’s films tried to find their own voice by pushing Peter back into high school and making them a little more deliberately modern. They used a more modern incarnation of Peter as opposed to the good natured Silver Age doofus that Tobey Maguire played. Garfield’s Peter is probably my favorite, and the one who feels closest to my ideal comics Peter, but that’s not really the point here. The point is, he HAD to be different otherwise people would accuse it of being the same thing over again.

So there we were with (in my opinion) someone who acted a little more like the Peter I knew growing up, who occupied a more familiar world, but we also had to gloss over his rivalry with Osborne because it had already been done. This was a criminal waste of Chris Cooper and Dane Dehaan, who were fantastic choices for those characters, but more to the point, it shows how this could not just be a second draft. It had to be different, which meant that even if it fixed some things that Raimi might not have hit the mark on, it also got rid of things that he had done right. The Osborne’s, the Bugle, and Mary Jane (well, he didn’t quite to MJ right, but the fact that she had already been used probably spurred the switch to Gwen).

Then when those flopped Peter joined the MCU. I remember reading that in my dorm room my first year of undergrad and whooping with joy. I thought about his relationship with Daredevil, who we knew was coming, and Captain America. Having Osborne be an Avengers level threat who battles Peter on the lawn of the White House while the Sinister SIx hold the Avengers at bay (Bendis’ Ultimate Spider-Man was the saving grace of the Ultimate Universe). Feige promised Peter would have a “non-stop wit.” It was all coming together.

Civil War came out and he seemed a little tacked on but it didn’t matter because he was there. Sure Stark gave him his suit, but he had designed the prototype and there was no way they’d make Peter the science genius dependent on Tony Stark.

“Weary sigh.”

I want to like the MCU Spider-Man so bad, Everyone else likes him. I feel like I’m taking crazy pills. I already went over why I don’t care for him, so I’ll skip that*. Once again, the point is, this one HAD to be different. Because he was back with Marvel we had been given the implicit promise of a fully realized comic accurate Spider-Man, fixing everything Webb and Raimi (read Sony) had gotten wrong.

The problem was that Webb and Raimi had gotten a lot right. So MCU Spidey glossed over Uncle Ben “because it had been done before.” He never clashed with Oscorpe or the Goblins “because it had already been done before.” There was no selling pictures to the Bugle “because it had already been done before”*. 

He didn’t make quips because everyone else was funny and he had to be the wide eyed kid, played younger and less mature than Garfield or Maguire. And (okay a little bit of whining from me) he had to rely on Tony Stark because we had to be reminded that now he was part of the MCU. 

The MCU Spidey got a lot right and some of their updates worked for the better. I love that Peter and May live in a small apartment instead of a house because they’re poor and New York is expensive. I like that his school feels like a real high school, with kids who basically act like kids. I like that he has a confidant (Ned Leeds was a weird choice, I’d have gone with Hobie Brown, Deb Whitman, or Kenny Kong, but I like the character anyway). I love love love their takes on Vulture and my favorite Spidey Rogue Mysterio. But, in their drive to be different from the past iterations they changed the character a little too drastically. It wasn’t a third draft to get Spider-Man right, it was a bottom up reimagining that (my opinion only) jettisoned a lot of what makes the character compelling.

Now he’s apparently gone from the future of the MCU and honestly, personally, I’m kind of relieved. I’m glad he’s indelibly a full fledged part of the MCU narrative, and he got to see the Infinity Saga through to the end, but I don’t think I could have taken another movie of Peter becoming Stark’s Robin just to be different from what came before.

This all brings us to the X-Men. I love the X-Men. I love Gambit, Nightcrawler, Rogue, Kitty Pryde, Iceman, Cyclops and all the rest (but them first and foremost). I love the place Mutants have in the Marvel Universe and the potential for clashes with other heroes and compelling stories to be told about the nature of marginalization and identity. The problem is, the previous X-Men movies covered those bases from a lot of different angles and my fear is that when they join the MCU they’ll be so concerned with being different that they’ll forget what makes them the X-Men*.

In the end, we still have years of comics and alternate universes, cartoons and canon that we can pick and choose from. It’s just so frustrating because we were so close to a perfect unified cinematic universe like we’d only ever dreamed of. We all have different bits of it that we wish had been done better, but I suppose the mere fact that it exists in any form is pretty damn cool.

*Except to say that, as Gail Simone so eloquently put it in an otherwise positive review of Far From Home, Holland’s Spider-Man isn’t the everyman who mocks the rich and powerful, he worships them and wants to be their friend.

*While I was happy to see the Jameson, Simmons, and the Daily Bugle return, and while I can’t deny that turning him into a lunatic pundit makes sense for the character as he’s portrayed in Spider-Man, I think that modern superhero stories have a problem with the old school journalist characters. Yes in real life print journalism isn’t what it used to be, but if we can accept superpowers, alien warlords, and good hearted billionaires surely we can accept the fantasy of a newspaper that still functions like they used to.

*I don’t have this worry for Fantastic Four (my first favorite superheroes) because while the Tim Story movies were close (and Trank’s reboot is emblematic of this whole issue on a massive scale) they haven’t been in the public consciousness and had a continued presence like Spidey and the X-Men so there’s less need to “be different” and more opportunity to actually get to the core of the FF the way they did with Captain America and Thor.

[sondheim-sex-den]

Harry Potter and the Cursed Child has thrown me into the deep end. On pretty much every possible level. And I’ve got a lot of opinions!

Disclaimer: I’ve somehow avoided spoilers of all kinds for 2 years until finally snagging tickets the show in NYC. And the following is spoiler-laden, so beware.

For some reason, this play (and rewatching CALL ME BY YOUR NAME last night, I’ll admit) has dredged up a feeling that I don’t know if I even have the ability to name, but let’s just call it a stark emptiness? I’m feeling more lost than ever for a number of reasons and being in this reflective, nostalgic (does “nostalgia” have to have a totally positive connotation? It doesn’t exactly have a positive connotation here) place, my younger Potter-obsessed self is confronting my current skeptical-critical-self and asking: what happened? How are you still this lost and lonely? How have you managed to spin your proverbial tires in the mud for this long? There are still tires to spin?

The feeling that this play exudes is warmth and nostalgia...and it’s totally done a number on me in that regard. I can so clearly see 10 year old me waiting in line at midnight for a new adventure with Harry & co and then devouring it in the next few days. This is the first taste of that in a while - and while the story itself isn’t exactly up to par - the experience of this play has taken me right back.

That feeling of being a part of something, being the outsider who makes all the difference, becoming familiar with a place and group of people. It’s the warmest, fondest memory that only the films have ever come close to touching, and along comes this play.

Reading the novels growing up, I, like everyone, identified with attributes of any number of characters. But there was never one that totally clicked with where I was in my Growing Up Journey (this is a lot to ask, I KNOW). I was on the outside looking in like Harry at times, frustrated with friends’ lack of commitment or knowledge right alongside Hermione, but observing it all with a humorous slant at all times like Ron. But there’s something just one layer deeper that was left untouched in me. The female characters eventually pine for the boys, male characters eventually play Quidditch to impress the girls; love potions, charms and elixirs abound. And this was about the time in my life when my muggle world was beginning to reflect that - but I was more lost at sea and clueless than I ever could’ve imagined.

I’ve come such a long way in those 15 or so years - owning my sexuality and identity (to an extent). I, like so many, still struggle with feeling whole, feeling seen, feeling like I’m on the right path or any path at all.

Harry Potter’s fantastical elements spun with the specificity of character and warmth is what has drawn billions of people in for over twenty years now, but I think this play is causing me to confront the fact that I wasn’t ever really a part of the universe. Of course, all readers are on the outside looking in, but let’s be real: it’s way easier for a straight girl to be a “total Ginny” and a nerdy boy to be a “Neville,” than it is for a little queer boy like I was to do the overtime work and wire-crossing in order to resolve to be a bit of “a Padma” with a spramp of “Dean Thomas” crossed with a “Molly/Tonks” combo.

And along comes this play. These two boys, Scorpius and Albus, the sons of our original protagonist and antagonist, forging a friendship 20 years later. And they’re gay. They just are. They are flat out queer and seek refuge in each other and there’s no question about it. I can’t speak for how it reads on the page, but in its staging, CURSED CHILD has the ache, the rage and the longing stitched into the fabric of the show. Yes, this applies to the parent’s relationships with the kids, but we’re focusing on the queers at hand here.

These boys have been dropped into the Potter-sphere and whoever dreamed them up cannot turn back now. Whether or not they intended this (how could they not have?) sensed a need for a whole other type of outsider to be spoken for in this universe. In Scorpius, in particular, we have a boy who cannot contain his outbursts and refuses to hide what brings him joy: books and Albus. There’s no denying this, it’s plain as day onstage. The sequence in which Scorpius is being kept away from Albus, of Harry’s volition, the torture that this causes him seeped into my pores and twisted my stomach into a knot that drove me to sit down and write now. 

We’ve followed them from their first meeting, through the development of their friendship - spurred by Albus’ choice to befriend Scorpius and Scorpius alone. They’re a duo, rather than his father’s trio, already avoiding history from repeating itself. With the introduction of “Delphi Diggory,” we fill the void that’s being created by the tension between the two boys. Slow them down a bit and give them a mission, give Albus a bit of a love interest - infuriating Scorpius. Delphi [spoiler] then eventually leads them to their probable demise, which scraps any kind of romantic promise between Albus and Delphi, allowing Albus to refocus on Scorpius.

Scorpius’ major arc across the two plays is risking everything for Albus - something we’ve seen over the course of the other Potter novels, but in much different terms. The friendship between Ron and Harry, for instance is given the weight of a close male bond that never broaches anything more. The addition of Hermione completes the set and diffuses any weirdness there. But the intentional decision to leave Scorpius and Albus as a pair to begin with is already suspect. They crave each other’s company in a way that we’ve never seen explored in a male friendship here. When it seems that Albus might be lost to time forever, this is the moment we see Scorpius really kick into high gear and makes it clear that he’s willing to risk his own life and suffer through the worst version of the world imaginable to get his “friend” back. The extended hugs and awkward discussion of them afterwards, the love in their eyes and motives as instructed by the stage directions - it ALL adds up to lead to an infatuation and interest that lies beyond the male bonds that we’re used to in Rowling’s writing.

And then along comes the end of the second play. Our hands are swatted away. Our instincts are laughed at. The rug is pulled out from under our feet and this carefully, tenderly crafter courtship of sorts evaporates with the introduction of ~hetero infatuation~. Not to say that these boys couldn’t fall on the spectrum of sexuality and, in turn, be exploring that - but the aggravating part of this situation is that the women presented to these boys as the objects of their affection are just that: presented. Props. Devices. I don’t believe they’re brought along maliciously, but their presence is an insult to the queer audience at large’s intelligence and the Potter World women’s agency. The laziness in the writing of these sudden bursts of need for female attention - when as far as we’ve known, all they’ve ever needed was each other - leads me to believe that the suspect relationship between the boys is something the writers became aware of or were made aware of and then proceeded to hastily erase after roughly 4.5 hours of play.

Obviously, this has eaten away at me and really done a number on my perception of Rowling’s world and intentions. But the thing that would cause me even more pain and distress, is the thought of some little queer seeing or reading CURSED CHILD and seeing themselves in one of these boys in a way that the original series never gave them the opportunity to - only to have their hopes and instincts squandered by an all-powerful voice declaring otherwise. 

Let these boys be queer. Let them have a moment of intimacy without commentary. Let them have the love story that other characters have had bestowed upon them. Don’t dangle this in front of a hungry audience and tell them they’re reading this wrong - we’re told that more than enough in our lives. I can’t imagine the strides, no matter the size or form, I would’ve made in my life with a character to emulate and identify with and get angry with and look up to and grow up with in that way. 

I don’t see giving a queer child agency as “sexualizing” them or “putting something on them.” When a character has these inclinations and the material is just brimming with opportunities to explore those - WHY NOT. It baffles me that we’ve been strung along for years on end with character backstory reveals - with minimal contextual details to back them up - in the Harry Potter world. And here we have a perfect opportunity to get ahead of the hypothesizing and preparing to explain later - do it NOW. Engage an eager audience before they’re disinterested and frustrated. We’re starving for these characters, especially in this world which could so easily lend itself to queerness but has never done the real work. It’s more than warranted to give the queer audience a taste of what it’s like to be seen in a beloved story that has taken on such an enormous life that we all feel ownership over a piece of it. That alone warrants the authorization of queer narratives. We’re right here and tired of being pushed away and teased.

[ollyarchive]

Years & Years star Olly Alexander: 'The landscape has changed for queer artists'

Growing up in Blackpool, Olly Alexander lived next door to a church. As a young gay man, that presented him with a dilemma.

"I was always aware that, in the bible, homosexuality was viewed as sinful and that's always stayed with me," says the singer.

"But I really love religious iconography and religious language because it's so powerful and so evocative... so now I love to play around with that and subvert it."

He certainly achieves that goal on Years & Years' recent single, Sanctify, which characterises being gay as a sacred act. ("Maybe it's heavenly," sings Alexander in the bridge.)

"I love a bit of drama," laughs the singer, "and it doesn't get more dramatic than sanctifying your sins when you pray."

The 27-year-old was inspired to write the song after a brief relationship with a straight man.

"He told me was straight and we became friends, and at a certain point the relationship tipped over into something more intimate - and it felt like we were becoming lovers," explains the singer.

"And suddenly, there was just an explosion of pain and conflict."

The lyrics acknowledge the central tension of the relationship - with Alexander playing both the devil who tempts his lover to "sinfulness" and the angel who "walks through the fire" to help him explore his sexuality.

"I've been out as a gay guy for nearly 10 years, and I know how that journey of coming to terms with your own identity can be really painful," he says.

"I wanted to write something that spoke to that experience."

The single - Years & Years' first new material since 2016 - forms part of a larger, mainstream cultural movement addressing sexuality and gender fluidity; via films like Call Me By Your Name and Love, Simon, and the lyrics of gay and queer artists such as Frank Ocean, Christine & The Queens, Muna and Troye Sivan.

"The landscape has changed dramatically for queer artists," says Alexander.

"In the past, we've all been familiar with pop stars coming out in the middle of their careers, or after they've become huge and that feels like a heavy narrative to queer people.

"Now it seems to be really changing that artists can be out from the start of their career; and it's not some sort of sensationalised headline.

"Of course, there are people who still really struggle with being out, and I know some artists think it might damage their career - but I don't think the tabloids making a splash about sexuality would still happen.

"I think - I think - we can call that progress."

'Barriers to overcome'

Alexander made headlines himself recently, after revealing he was advised to keep his sexuality hidden at the start of Years & Years' career.

Was he surprised at how widely the comments were reported?

"I understand why it's a story," he says. "I think lots of people are shocked when they hear about homophobia, because they think, 'Oh, it's 2018, surely everything's fine now?' But queer people know that it's not.

"There's so much stigma still around being who you are, and there are still so many barriers to overcome.

"So it's an exciting time - but we've got a long way to go, and I think we need to stay vigilant".

Alexander has emerged as one of music's leading voices on sexuality and mental health since Years & Years won the BBC's Sound Of 2015.

"A lifeline to troubled young people," is how the Observer described him in 2016; while Gay Times wrote he was "one of the most influential gay pop stars of this generation," adding with a flourish: "All hail the King!"

The singer has spoken candidly about being bullied at school, and how he was burdened with anxiety and depression because "society taught me being gay was not normal".

Even now, he says "romantic relationships [are] quite hard because there's a lot of emotional trauma and emotional baggage that is kind of present".

"I'm kind of a self-sabotager," he says. "And there's so many reasons for that - but I should save those for my therapist."

Or for his lyrics...

Years & Years' second album, Palo Santo - launched this morning with a short film featuring Dame Judi Dench - is an intoxicating brew of streamlined, kinetic electro-pop that's haunted by bad relationships.

From the boyfriends Alexander dumped or was dumped by, to his estranged father and the "enemies" he battles on a song called Karma, it sounds like the star's been put through the wringer over the last couple of years.

"Oh, does it?" he says, surprised.

"I always present a confident, optimistic front in my daily life, and I try not to let negativity come through. But in songs, that's how I process those emotions and complex feelings. So I don't know that I've been through the wringer, as much as this is just how I process my experiences."

Still, there are quite a lot of break-ups on the record.

"Actually, you're right. It's quite a petty album," he concedes. "When I listened to it all the way through, I was like, 'Wow, I was so angry!'

"But it's good to show that stuff, you know? I think it's human."

Not everyone agrees. Someone close to the band recently told Alexander his lyrics were "not accessible enough".

He won't say who - but they're wrong. Alexander's unvarnished account of his demons, desires and doubts is what makes fans clasp Years & Years to their hearts.

The best pop music, after all, is written by outsiders for outsiders.

"I think so," he agrees. "Pop can be a Trojan Horse. You can dress it up as a dancehall banger but actually it can have a deep meaning inside of its shiny coating."

That's exemplified on Hallelujah, a frisky disco track about the joy of dancing with strangers that also looks at the loneliness of random hook-ups.

"I used to go clubbing a lot, and a lot of that time it was because I wanted to meet somebody," explains Alexander.

"I just wanted to find a connection and it didn't matter who it was, sometimes. There was a real, almost dark energy that was propelling me to keep going out. But there was also a redemptive quality to doing that.

"I think a lot about how clubs are almost like queer churches. You go and congregate and you dance. That's always been a sacred experience for me, although it's been both positive and negative. I wanted to write a song that flitted between those two things."

Does he still go out clubbing, or has fame made it impossible?

"Not as much as I used to, for sure. There have been a couple of times where people just want to take pictures of you.

"And the last place I want to have my picture taken," he says, a grin spreading across his face, "is when I'm embarrassing myself in a sweaty drunk mess in a club."

As for relationships, Alexander says "all options are on the table" - but one in particular stands out.

"What I think would suit me was if I was in a thruple and the other two guys lived in a house nearby," he laughs.

"I could visit them every now and then and they'd cook me dinner, and then I could just go home and watch TV by myself."

[that-curly-haired-lesbian]

Can you do an analysis on Haunted and You’re not sorry?

Hello and welcome tothis week on Theo The Taymily Trash!Yes friends, that time has come again, apologies for it now being almost Tuesdaywhen Sunday was promised; thesis times sure are crazy, huh? #plzkillme

Anyway today’s songthat anon asked for and will of course receive is Haunted (promptlyfollowed by You’re Not Sorry whichwill go up later today.)

As you may haveguessed from my little alliteration game above I’m under the impression that Haunted is yet another song for Taylor’steenage love Emily Poe (here’s a refresher on that relationship for those whoneed it although I’ve talked about Taymily so much on here and linked this veryhelpful post to such a degree that I doubt there’s anyone in my audience stillconfused)

I also however believeit can be seen as a metaphor for Taylor’s wishful compulsory heterosexualityclashing with her homosexual reality. This is something that the wonderful @all-my-possessionspoints out here and if you’reinterested in that perspective please go read that post as I won’t touch toomuch on that here.

What’s written inthis analysis is built on my own theories and speculations and thus what isstated here is in no way meant to be taken as factual. I’m just trying to putan interesting queer spin on a TS song, after all that’s what I do over here.

Credit for the lyricsdisplayed here goes to AZLyrics as always.

–

You and I walk a fragile line

I have known it all this time

But I never thought I’d live to see it break

–

In the opening lines Taylor introduces us to “You” whois traditionally the conveniently gender-neutral love interest in her songs. Forthe sake of this analysis we’re going to assume that “You” in this case isEmily while “I” of course is Taylor herself.

What she’s establishing here in these first few linesis that on some level she always knew her relationship with Emily was fragile andthat it wouldn’t last forever. Working together and being in love in such aheteronormative environment (country music industry) both ladies likely knewthat outside forces (aka Team Taylor and the homophobic industry in general) werelikely to tear them apart sooner or later. As we all know by now though Taylor isn’texactly a realist when it comes to love, she’s a dreamer and a romantic and assuch she likely didn’t exactly enjoy thinking about the day her blissful relationshipwould eventually come to an end. She pretended that day was somewhere far offin a distant future and that her and her girlfriend would be able to push itforward even further with the sheer power of their love. Taylor wanted them tobe together forever so she made herself believe that they could be. (“The line”that symbolized their relationship wouldn’t break within Taylor’s lifetime becausethey’d be together forever and keep their balance on that fragile line throughany storm.)

–

It’s getting dark and it’s all too quiet

And I can’t trust anything now

And it’s coming over you like it’s all a big mistake

–

This may very well just be Taylor trying to give ussome eerie imagery for a song called Haunted,I mean it does fit with the aesthetic wouldn’t you say. Girl alone in acold and dark, quiet graveyard can’t trust what she’s seeing or hearing, she’shaunted. What this truly makes me think of though is “the rest of the world was black and white but we were in screamingcolor” in my opinion Out Of The Woodsdoes have a lot of parallels to Haunted.In OOTW the screaming-color-line as Isee it is clearly a metaphor for Pride and rainbow colors typically associatedwith the gay community. She’s saying “the rest of the world was straight andboring, but we deviated from the norm and our pride colors shone bright incontrast.” In Haunted when she says “it’sgetting dark” I almost picture all of the colors draining from a rainbow prideflag (or you know, from the world in general) leaving it grey and boring, blackand white if you will. Of course this is a bit of a reach and the line likelyjust symbolizes how the color and happiness seem to drain from the world whenyour heart is broken as you’re too sad to see any joy such as pretty colors. Whenyou’re in love the whole world shines bright and when it’s over it’s grey andmeaningless and boring. Just thought the pride/”screaming colors” thing was aninteresting reading given the community’s strong association with colorfulrainbows. 🌈🌈🌈

She then says it’s “all too quiet” maybe this refersto the “zero contact rule” Taymily was put under after Emily was fired? It’sassumed they weren’t to interact anymore on orders from Team Taylor due toEmily’s “damaging influence on Taylor’s image” 

So basically Emily had disappearedfrom Taylor’s life (at least “officially”) they were no longer working togetherand Team Taylor had made sure of it, I wouldn’t blame Taylor if she felt likeshe couldn’t trust anything being told to her. After all the people who’d “gottenrid of” (god, that sounds sinister, sorry) Emily were the once who was supposedto look out for Taylor and now they’d done this, also keep in mind that Taylorwas underage at the time so she likely didn’t have much of a say either.Horrible situation, really! 😞

Then she says “it’s coming over you like it’s all abig mistake” in previous analyses I’ve done around the Taymily narrative I’vesort of tended to assume Emily was the one that insisted they could still betogether post-firing while Taylor opted to walk away in favor of her careerlike the people in charge were “advising her” but this song almost seems toimply it was the other way around.

I think the line can either refer to “it” coming for(or “over”) Emily in the sense that she got in trouble due to her relationshipwith Tay and got fired for her “mistake” (defined that way by Team Taylor.)

OR that Emily herself actually personally thought the wholething had been a mistake after being fired. Maybe losing her job made her realizebeing in a relationship with Taylor was unwise for several reasons (age gap, professionalism,the fact that no longer working together would prevent them from seeing eachother as often and thus from working out in the long-run, maybe?) and she endedit and hurt Taylor  in the process causingher to question if Emily was hit with doubt of some sort (or a good old “I’mnot gay, this was a fluke”-panic) and viewed their entire relationship as “justsome big mistake.”

–

Oh, I’m holding my breath

Won’t lose you again

Something’s made your eyes go cold

–

What’s causing me to relate this song to Emily is the continuousreferences to breathing and breathe (y’all may be familiar with Taylor’s song Breathe largely assumed to be aboutEmily?) In Breathe Taylor says shecan’t breathe without Emily but she has to, here she seems to go back on thatstatement. She’s only holding her breath temporarily, suggesting she hasn’t yetfully lost Emily and doesn’t have to breathe without her just yet. In my BackTo December analysis (x) I speculate that Breathewas written pretty much directly after Emily was fired, I further theorize thatmaybe they hadn’t even broken up yet at the time that song was written, or atleast Taylor was holding onto hope that the breakup was temporary.

“Won’t lose you again” indicates that she’s alreadylost the girl once and I don’t think that’s referring to a breakup actually, I thinkthat’s referring to the firing. When Emily was fired her and Taylor lost animportant aspect of their relationship (after all they did spend most of theirtime together on the road) so them not working together anymore must’ve feltlike they were losing each other in a sense. Even though they weren’t professionallyseen together in any sense they could’ve still been dating post-firing thoughand Taylor didn’t want to lose Emily “again” in the sense that she didn’t wantthe romantic relationship to end. She’d already lost Emily professionally and didn’twanna do it again by going through a loss of their personal relationship aswell. However the next line seems to indicate that despite their best effortthe love (at least on Emily’s side) seems to have faltered pretty soon, perhapsdue to having more limited time together or just not being able to get over thefiring or feeling like Taylor picked her career over her girl? (I won’t pretendI know why they broke up) somehow though Emily’s eyes “went cold” she wasn’t inlove anymore and Taylor noticed in the way she was suddenly looked at by thoseeyes who used to adore her, but no longer did. This is so upsetting and I wannahug baby Tay!! 😭

–

 Come on, come on, don’t leave me like this

I thought I had you figured out

Something’s gone terribly wrong

You’re all I wanted

Come on, come on, don’t leave me like this

I thought I had you figured out

Can’t breathe whenever you’re gone

Can’t turn back now, I’m haunted

–

We’re into the chorus and Taylor’s begging for hergirl to stay, to give them another shot, to no avail though it seems. She’ssaying she thought she knew Emily and that she could trust any promises offorever she might’ve been given, but now something’s gone wrong in the relationshipand Taylor’s desperately clinging to hope that it won’t end like this, it can’t.There’s another Breathe referencehere, even more obvious than the first. The last line of the chorus seems topoint to the interpretation that Taylor is the one to walk away in the enddespite all her begging she does pick the career in the end and that decision, thatlittle voice whispering “what if you’d pickeddifferently or done more to fight for her?” will always haunt the singer. Maybeespecially at the point when she wrote this song, she was a little older andhad presumably had time to reflect on how things turned out, she’d had time tounderstand the industry more and been given more of a say in PR decisionsperhaps. What if she was faced with the choice today, knowing and understandingall that she knows now, would she’d picked differently? The possibility thatshe might have will always haunt her.

–

 Stood there and watched you walk away

From everything we had

But I still mean every word I said to you

–

Now it seems Emily is the one to have made that finalchoice to walk away after all and that Taylor tried to persuade her not to. Sheclaims she still meant every word she said in her attempt to get Emily to stay,but what exactly did she say?

–

He will try to take away my pain

And he just might make me smile

But the whole time I’m wishing he was you instead

–

I think this may show us what it was that Taylor said(that she meant every word of) you see I don’t think “he” is a person (or evenTaylor’s compulsory heterosexuality) at least not if we’re to stick with ourTaymily-centric narrative. I think “he” is the music, maybe the art itself ormaybe the industry. Taylor’s saying that getting to practice her art will takeaway some of the pain of picking her career over the girl she (at least at thetime) thinks the love of her life. The music will make her smile and make thepain of staying closeted worth it, but deep down she will still always wonderwhat it’d be like if she was able to be openly gay, what would it be like ifshe’d been married to the girl and not to her work? As much as Taylor lovesmusic and preforming I can’t imagine that thought not crossing her mind fromtime to time, especially in her pre-glass closeting days.

–

Oh, I’m holding my breath

Won’t see you again

Something keeps me holding on to nothing

–

Taylor’s starting to realize she won’t get to seeEmily as often if they’re not working together, but she’s still hoping they canstay together so she doesn’t have to try and breathe without Emily. Despite therelationship seemingly heading towards the end Taylor holds onto their love andhopes that is enough to keep them together even through trying times.

–

 (Chorus)

–

I know, I know, I just know

You’re not gone. You can’t be gone. No.

–

This is pure agonizing denial and the way she singsthis part always makes me want to cry and breaks my heart, she doesn’t want tobelieve that Emily has broken up with her and simply won’t be in her lifeanymore. How can that be when the thought of what Taylor could’ve donedifferent will always haunt her? Emily will always haunt her so how could shebe gone? 💔💔💔💔

–

(Chorus)

–

Hope you all enjoyedreading that, You’re Not Sorry willbe up  later today (it’s 1AM here now)for now I need to get some sleep 🌙 Thanks for reading and don’t hesitate to sendme requests for future analyses 😊

[dailyaudiobible]

06/04/2018 DAB Transcript

2 Samuel 22:21-23:23, Acts 2:1-47, Psalms 122:1-9, Proverbs 16:19-20

Today is the 4th day of June. Welcome to the Daily Audio Bible. I am Brian. It's great to be here with you from the rolling hills of Tennessee. And I'm excited to take this journey through this week and this portion of the Scriptures with you. We began the book of Acts yesterday so we're just getting going there. But before we even get to that, we need to dive back into David's story in 2 Samuel. We're reading from the Amplified Bible this week end. Not weekend. Week. And. First, we'll read from 2 Samuel 22:21-23:23.

Commentary:

Okay. So, in the book of Acts, we read the story of the coming of the Holy Spirit, the descending of the Holy Spirit upon the apostles on the day of Pentecost. And if there is a flashpoint, if there is an identifiable moment that we can say that the church began, this would be it. And we see several things. We see Peter truly step into a new era in his own life. We see change in him as we witness the power of the Holy Spirit in his life. We also read that those in the upper room who were speaking in these languages, in these tongues, they were speaking foreign languages from all the people who had pilgrimaged to Jerusalem. A clear call from the spirit of God summoning every tribe and tongue and nation into this new thing that God was doing in the world. And it's a beautiful moment to witness this. The church, later, and we'll get to all this in the writings of Paul, especially in the book of Romans and forward, that the church had to figure out what this was gonna practically mean because Jews and Gentiles, they didn't mix. So, this beautiful thing that we're witnessing at Pentecost is gonna become an issue that has to be grappled with. But on that day, that flashpoint day, Pentecost, three thousand people began to follow Jesus and were baptized. And that baptism part, that's also an issue of speculation because, you know, three thousand people. That's a lot of people to baptize. And so where could they do something like this? And so, there's been plenty of ideas put forward. And one of those ideas that actually could have handled that capacity would have been the ritual baths at the temple, which is where they were meeting and fellowshipping with each other, which is where Jesus had taught. So, when we go to Israel we usually visit over there and take a look at that because the early church was for sure meeting in that area first. So, this is sort of like the birthplace of the church. So we're coming out of the gospels. We're coming out of walking side by side with Jesus and being in his presence in the narratives in the gospels and moving into what comes next. But we see that what comes next is full of the power of the risen Christ and we'll watch how that begins to materialize and spread because what we're telling now is the origin story of how it is that we came to faith. How it is that we got here in the first place. Had what we're reading about now not happened, our story would be different.

Prayer:

So, Father, we rejoice. We rejoice in this day and in today's reading, going back over the territory that began all of this and has impacted the world until this very day and has impacted our lives until this very day. And we are grateful. And we thank You for sending Your Holy Spirit, the comforter, the advocate, the one who can lead us into all truth, the one who will guide us on the narrow path that leads to life. And, so, we love You Holy Spirit. We thank You for all of the work that You have done in the world and we witness this in the book of Acts today and we witness this in our lives today. Come Holy Spirit we pray. And Father, we also pray along with King David, with the psalmist. I pray for the peace in Jerusalem. May all who love this city prosper. O Jerusalem, may there be peace within your walls and prosperity in your palaces. For the sake of our families and friends, we say, may you have peace. And Father, we pray particularly for our brothers and sisters who are all part of this community who live in this city and the surrounding areas. You are not forgotten. We remember you in our prayers. We may be oceans apart, but we are praying for you. And we pray for you in the name of Jesus Amen.

Announcements:

dailyaudiobible.com is the website, it's home base, it’s where you find out what’s going on around here.

I made a big announcement on Friday and if you haven't had a chance to listen to that story, go back to Friday and listen at the end. I announced the Daily Audio Bible Family Reunion, where the global campfire comes together. And I just told the story of how things came to be back in 2012 and the next eighteen months, how we went around the world on the Family Gathering Tour. Some of you were at some of those events. And we went all over the world just bringing people together in the community that they live in. And that was a lot of work, a lot of miles, but it was just an amazing time in my family's life. The kids were a a lot younger then. And, so we just traveled around all over the world together, bringing community together, and, you know, all things come to an end so they came to an end and we've been moving forward since then. But this is kind of circling back. It is the brainchild of my wife and Mike, one of our guys here that we love very much. They kind of dreamed this up. That was such a wonderful, wonderful moment in the Daily Audio Bible community and its life. Why don't we circle it back? Why don't we invite everyone to come to the rolling hills of Tennessee for a family reunion? And so it's taken a lot of preparation and a lot of thinking through, but we're gonna do it. It's the first time we've ever done anything like this, but it's gonna be great. We've got a great place to do it, some great ideas, wonderful opportunities to truly come to the rolling hills and visit one of the hottest cities in the United States, which is the Nashville area and allow you to find hidden treasures. We've got adventures that you can pick and choose and go on, depending on what it is that you're interested in. You may be like Get me to Nash-Vegas, get me some cowboy boots get me where the tourists go. We'll show you. Or you may be like I'm a die-hard country music fan and if I'm going to Nashville, I'm going to country music. We'll show you where that's all at. Or maybe you're like, what you just said is the one thing I try to avoid. We'll show you peaceful serene places to be all out in them, the rolling hills of Tennessee. Little hills and hollers, little nooks and valleys, places that we go, we're gonna show those to you so that you can go on an adventure and then we'll come together at night. Two different nights, September 1 and September 2 as a community, just sharing time together. And we'll have a campfire burning afterward so that that can continue into the night. There's just all kinds of stuff to do. The place that we're doing this is called Deer Run. And there's all kinds of stuff to do out there, all kinds of things to play, all kinds of things that you can get together and play together. There's just plenty, plenty, plenty to do over Labor Day weekend. And I hope you can come. It will be so much fun. You can get all the details for the Daily Audio Bible Family Reunion at dailyaudiobible.com in the Initiates section.  So, there's a little navigation bar at the top of the website. One of those buttons is Initiatives. You'll find it there or if you just scroll down the homepage, you'll find it there as well. So, hope you can come. I hope you can come to the south. Hope you can drink in the inspiration of the rolling hills. I hope you can drink in incredible encouragement from your family at the Daily Audio Bible and I hope you leave with phone numbers and email addresses of brothers and sisters who will become lifelong companions in your relationship with the Scriptures. So, dailyaudiobible.com is where you find out about the family reunion and I'll look forward to seeing you there.

If you want to partner with the Daily Audio Bible, you can do that at dailyaudiobible.com. There's a link on the homepage. Thank you for your partnership in allowing the global campfire to continue to burn each and every day and then we can all come in community and allow God's Word to wash over us. If you're using the Daily Audio Bible app, you can press the give button in the upper right-hand corner. Or if you prefer, the mailing address is P.O Box 1996, Spring Hill, Tennessee, 37174.

And, as always if you have a prayer request or comment, 877-942-4253 is the number to dial.

And that's it for today. I'm Brian I love you and I'll be waiting for next month, which is tomorrow.

Community Prayer and Praise:

Hello DAB. I need you. I’m asking you to help me. Will you help me respond to my wife with love? And how do I not bond with the putdowns and the hurt and her anger and her, just, attack over and over. Will you help me love myself? We help you love her? God, will You help me save us as a couple? Will You help her own, will You help her see what comes out of her mouth? Have mercy on me not to respond in anger. Please God, I’m asking You. Help me. In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Hi Daily Audio Bible family. This is Heather, Joyful Spirit in Georgia. This is my first time calling and this is my first year in the Daily Audio Bible readings. So, I just wanted to say hi. And I just…as I wanted to recognize everyone’s voices, I wanted to let you know how beautiful those voices are to me.  Get joy, even on the first word of hearing a familiar voice as you start to present your request or your encouragement. And that just means so much to me. I think our voices are something special to the Father as He spoke the world into existence and power comes from His voice and we are created in His image. That means that each of our voices must be very special to Him. And Sean, I think her name was, in San Jose California called during the community prayer last week and she said that she didn’t like to hear the sound of her voice. And I just wanted to say that your voice is beautiful. It’s your fingerprint almost. Like, we recognize who you are by your voice in this format. And, so, thank you. Thank you for calling Sean and each of you for sharing your voice. It just means so much. God bless you all. Bye-bye.

Hello. My name is Frank. This is my first call. I’m kind of nervous about this. Anyways, I’ve been married for 25 years and our marriage is kind of in a rocky patch at this time. I’d like to ask for your prayer for that. My wife has fallen away in her faith. If you can pray for her and also please pray for my adult son who is about to make some very difficult decisions and I am hoping that he will make the right decision. So, if you could please pray for me I would greatly appreciate it. Thank you. All right. Bye.

Hello DAB family. This is Trusting in Him in Colorado Springs. __ I will be back in my hometown of Fort Wayne Indiana. I am a first-time caller but I have been listening faithfully every day since the end of August and I had the great blessing of meeting Brian briefly at a gathering for his Sneezing Jesus book. It was really fun to put a face with the voice who shares God with us each day. I’m actually calling to give a brief testimony of how this podcast has deeply impacted my life. I had a very rough year, filled with many kinds of grief, including the death of a man whom I thought the Lord had given me for marriage. But through all the ups and the downs, God has been so faithful and has used this daily podcast to speak tenderly to me as the Scriptures say in Hosea 2:14. Specifically, I was seeking direction for the next chapter of my life when God used the Scripture readings and three of the prayer requests from the March 3rd podcast to confirm His leading back to my hometown. I so wished I had more time to tell you the entire back story because it truly is divine, but perhaps we can share a cup of coffee in heaven someday or even the DAB family reunion in September. So, on June 5th I will be driving 1200 miles with my mom to start a new adventure. I would really love your prayers DAB family for the move as well as what the Lord has for me in this next season of life as there are many unknowns. But what I do know is that God is indeed faithful and I can trust Him, we can trust Him. What a sweet privilege to be on the journey with each one of you, my dear brothers and sisters in Christ. Blessings to you this day.

[emmetohboy]

Favorites: The 2020 Conundrum

Illustration credit: Orkenoy

I’ve heard it from numerous colleagues, friends and family members. The sentiment along the lines of "...can't end soon enough." or " Worst year ever." I don't disagree. Along with virtually everyone I know, this year has meant personal loss, crippling angst and the missing of loved ones. But do I wish 2020 had not happened? Along with the uncertainty and hardship, would I wish away everything else that the years has brought? I don't know.

I'm not one to pontificate what the pandemic has taught us or accelerated or revealed. But I am interested in drawing it as a frame around the creative work that was generated in the context of it. At the close of 2016 I hoped that the lemon of the new political environment might bare the lemonade of generational creative output. That may or may not have been the case. We’ll have to wait longer to assess that from a more objective distance. But the last 10 months have been a concentrated, intensely focused, if not simply harrowing time. Has the pressure been so intense, in such a short period, that we graduated from lemonade to forging cultural carbon into diamonds at an unprecedented speed? Are these gems be so luminous, that they will one day be viewed as heirlooms? Was the pain of 2020 worth its blessings?

Listen

Released right at the onset of quarantine was my absolute favorite record of 2020. Waxahatchie's St.Cloud is a stunner first track to last. Some hook you instantly ("Can't Do Much"), and others slowly worm their way into your soul ("Witches"). Several year-end best lists included the latest from Lucinda Williams, Katie Crutchfield's musical hero. I disagree with its inclusion, finding the tracks a little flimsy and familiar.  Katie's St. Cloud, however, is as close to prime Lucinda as anyone has gotten in quite some time.

Termed "Hip-Hop's first pandemic masterpiece by Exclaim magazine, Oddisee's Odd Cure brought a lot of joy this year. A tidy mix of R&B tinged hip-hop intertwined with calls to friends and family, the record has broad appeal and a narrative that only 2020 could supply.

The Remote Tiny Desk concert Oddisee performed with his band, mostly present, is fantastic.

Every year I can count on being introduced to one or two new artist via the New Music Mix that Apple Music serves me every Friday. This year I was pulled in to the track "Safe in Sound" by Orlando Weeks. I dropped it into a growing playlist that I have for background music while working. Each time it came up on shuffle it begged to be replayed. Eventually I tapped the entire record and googled Mr. Weeks. He is not a new artist to me at all. The former frontman for the U.K. band the Maccabees had ventured into a solo career. And it is so strikingly different from the Maccabees record I love, 2007's Colour it In, that it is no surprise I didn't recognize him. Weeks’ A Quickening is transformative and almost spiritual at times. He contemplates fatherhood ("Milk Breath") and community ("St. Thomas") and an aging seafarer’s relation to the elements that surround him ("Moon Opera"), in such ways that the record works in prioritizing what is important during difficult, if not odd times. 

I came late to Natalie LaFourcade and I’m a little angry at ignorantly depriving myself of this joyful talent for so long. She is a prolific dynamo. 2020 brought Un Canto por Mexico Vol.1. And so as the tile suggest, there will be another volume on its heels. Natalia had similarly released the wonderful Musas as two volumes spread over 2017-18. These three records along with 2015's Hasta la Raiz have supplanted the Trio Los Panchos records I played for cooking  accompaniment.

One of the most creative and infectious records I heard all year was Buscabulla's Regresa. The husband and wife outfit returned from New York to their native Puerto Rico following the tragedy of hurricane Maria. The environment made for joyful and melancholic results musically.

Buscabulla’s remote performance for NPRs Tiny Desk, from the back of their car at the beach in Aguadilla, Puerto Rico makes me smile the entire 13 minutes. Here’s to the resourcefulness of creativity.

I've been a fan of White Denim for some time. They are also quite prolific, generating new records almost yearly since 2009. So who could have blamed them after releasing Side Effects in 2019 if they had taken 2020 lying down. Not James Petralli and Michael Hunter. When faced with Austin Texas' pending stay at home order, the band wrote and recorded the entire record in thirty days. World as a Waiting Room is among the band's best. 

2017 Juno award winner William Prince is a huge star in Canada and should be stateside as well. His voice is as unique and warm as any I can recall. And his songwriting is as earnest, if not as clever as fellow Canadian Ron Sexsmith. "Wasted" is an unintentional anthem for 2020.

I am hooked Frazey Ford's vocal delivery. There is a Van Morrison quality to it, so nonchalant to almost be conversational. It as if the lyrics might be different every time she sings the song. U kin B the Sun is laden with grooves and a casual coolness that  always set me down lakeside on a summer day.

Circles feels like it was released a lifetime ago. The loss of Mac Miller was devastating and his partnership with Jon Brion is was one the most visionary collaborations of all time. This record feels timeless.

Lianne LaHavas is one of the most talented musicians alive. This year’s self-titled release is as close to a Sade record as we've had in a while.

Its great to see local acts get such national acclaim. Even better when they demonstrate creative growth. DEHD's Flower of Devotion expands the bands previously bare bones approach to music making with lovely Cocteau Twins-esque shimmer.

Orkenoy in the daytime.

Speaking of things local, I have been rooting for Orkenoy since finding out the Humboldt Park brewery was in the works back in 2019. What a journey it has been for the folks behind it all. Brewing equipment, transported from a distance, tumbles off of the truck as it nears its new home. It was damaged but not irreparable. It was nothing compared to what was to come. We may have hit the tipping point on craft breweries, but can you imagine readying your passion project for the world and the world snaps back with a global pandemic. They admirably soldiered on.

Turns out they are not just another brewery. They bill themselves as a "creative enclave operating as a brewery, kitchen and synergetic haunt for local artists." Their offerings, from brews to food, are a delicious blend of the rare and traditional, Norwegian Smørrebrøds and French Farmhouse, to new and experimental. Their branding is charming and narrative. We've taken carry out of cocktails and beers. Both were fantastic. Very recently Orkenoy has added even more allure to their footprint in the Kimball Arts Center by stringing lights from their facade to the elevated Bloomingdale Trail. As the nights have grown to their longest, my morning runs begin in darkness. So when I came upon the illuminated Orkenoy early one morning last week my path became a bit merrier. I was also struck by how much the scene reminded me of Van Gogh's Cafe Terrace at Night. 

Orkenoy at pre-dawn run.

Lulu Miller has worked as a producer for Radiolab and is a co-creator of the NPR show Invisibilia. Her book Why Fish Don't Exist was my favorite read of 2020. Told in Miller's quirky voice, the pages navigate herculean scientific achievements, our country's racial history, murder and ultimately love. While this may all  sound a frantic lot, Miller weaves it together tersely and with self-deprecating humor.

One of my favorite books of years' past is Michael Pollen's lesser known, Second Nature. It was in my initial reading of this that I learned from Pollen about Aldo Leopold's Sand County Almanac. I purchased a copy and thumbed through it when I finished Second Nature. A recent interest had me recall the work, so I set about our house to find it. It's a short book and so it took me a couple of looks to locate it behind thicker, stacked volumes on our bedroom bookshelf. I've been immersed in it ever since. I'm intentionally taking small bites, savoring every page, even highlighted passages—something I haven't done probably since reading Pollen. Leopold was an American philosopher and naturalist long associated with the University of Wisconsin. His writing is keenly observational, almost poetic. As he winds through the seasons on his Wisconsin farm, he introduces us to the behaviors of migrating geese, defensive plover and elusive trout among other inhabitants. Leopold is almost always alone with these creatures and his thoughts, save occasionally his dog. And while I wish I had a printing that contained the forward by Barbara Kingsolver, Leopold's original forward from 1948 suits me just fine. 

Aldo Leopold

"...the opportunity to see geese is more important than television., and the chance to find a pasque-flower is a right as inalienable as free speech...But wherever the truth may lie, this much is crystal-clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to stay healthy. The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even turn off the tap. Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings."

[junker-town]

Giannis Antetokounmpo vs. James Harden for MVP is even better this year

The MVP race is back to where it was last season.

It’s time for round two of the Giannis vs. Harden MVP debate.

Last September, James Harden blew off some steam about the 2019 MVP award he lost to Giannis Antetokounmpo. “But they [the media] for sure got some teams they locked in on,” Harden told GQ. “We all know. That’s just what it is.”

It was one stop of Harden’s offseason-long venting tour about last season’s race. His gripe, best as I understand it, is that his historic season was ignored because the parameters of last year’s MVP debate were decided early in the season. None of Harden’s second-half exploits mattered because Antetokounpo was the early favorite and did nothing to lose his status.

Suppose Harden has a point that’s not colored by sour grapes. Suppose he is genuinely upset that the MVP discussion coalesces too quickly rather than letting things play out.

If so, I have some bad news for The Beard. The parameters of the 2019-20 NBA MVP race have already been decided, and the tropes should be familiar too all.

With apologies to LeBron James, Anthony Davis, Kawhi Leonard, Luka Doncic, and others, there are only two real Most Valuable Player candidates this season. One may average 40 points a game. The other is on pace to post the highest player efficiency rating in league history. The league’s pecking order changed so drastically this summer, yet the conversation around the MVP is exactly the same: Harden, or Antetokounpo?

All of the same themes we hollered about for months are there again. Both are leading teams to the top of their respective conferences. Both are thriving despite losing critical sidekicks in the offseason and key supporting teammates to injury in-season. One raises his team from awful to good; the other from functional to great. One plays both ends of the floor; the other doesn’t. One is unschemeable; the other has an obvious weakness nobody addresses. One plays a style we’ve never seen; the other performs an exceedingly familiar role more effectively than anyone before him.

Remarkably, both are even better versions of themselves. Harden got off to a ghastly three-point shooting start, but has made up for it by getting to the line even more, and not as often by the cheap means his reputation suggests. Harden is drawing a shooting foul on 29.2 percent of his two-point attempts this year, his highest mark since 2012-13. Meanwhile, he’s only drawing a foul on 7.4 percent of his three-point attempts, which is high for a normal person, but actually his lowest mark since 2015-16.

Harden still holds the ball plenty and will still bait defenders into a cheap foul, but he’s been more decisive once he makes his move this year. He’s driving through defenders more once he gets the advantage, rather than jumping into them. This layup against Brooklyn’s Jarrett Allen is a textbook example: rather than breaking off his straight-line drive to go straight into Allen once he got the step, Harden kept Allen on his hip with a more normal path to the basket.

The difference is subtle, but significant. Because of that, more of his drawn fouls look legitimate. This looks more like a player trying to score normally that got slapped on the arm, not one trying to hack the rulebook.

Harden will always draw cheapies that’ll infuriate purists, just as he’s created tons of legitimate fouls in the past. But the more he drives to actually score, the more he’s ended up drawing fouls as a byproduct. It’s a lot easier for officials to blow the whistle when he’s actually impeded instead of having to decide if he’s faking it.

Harden has also benefited from the Rockets going from slowpokes to speed demons by swapping out Chris Paul for Russell Westbrook. That has an obvious effect on Harden’s production when the two share the floor, because more possessions means more chances to score. Yet Harden has been lights out when Westbrook is off the floor, scoring an ungodly 57 points per 100 possessions in the time Westbrook sits. Without Westbrook in the game to muck up space and steal shots, Harden can be the best version of his 2019 self. This sequence is unguardable.

At the same time, Harden is playing faster even when Westbrook is on the bench. Lineups with Harden and without Westbrook are averaging 100.45 possessions per game this year. That’s significantly less than the nearly 109 possessions per game the Rockets average with Harden and Westbrook sharing the floor, but it’s also higher than the 96.2 possessions per game the Rockets averaged last season when Harden played without Paul. He’s attacking in secondary transition more often, which allows him to collect more cheap points he didn’t get last season.

That’s why 40 a game is attainable for Harden, especially now that his jump shot is coming around.

But before you give him this year’s MVP, consider that Antetokounmpo’s game has also taken a jump this season. In fact, I’d argue Antetokounmpo has made more material additions to his game than Harden, even after winning MVP last season.

The most obvious: Antetokounmpo (kinda) has a perimeter game now. His three-point shooting, which perked up near the end of last season, is still adequate on more volume this year. Antetokounmpo is launching more than four threes a game this year while hitting 32 percent, which isn’t great, but is much better than the 26 percent he nailed on only 2.8 threes a game last year. He’s releasing the ball more on the way up than at the top of his jump this year, which means his motion and follow through are more fluid rather than disjointed.

Yet Antetokounmpo has also become an even more diverse driver to the basket, a scary-as-shit thought. In anticipation of teams learning to sit on his Eurosteps across the lane last year, Antetokounmpo has varied up his post-gather steps. He’s going the same way with his final large steps more often, rather than always across his body.

The end result; more shots converted at the rim and (somehow) more fouls drawn. Antetokounmpo is shooting 78 percent in the restricted area this year while drawing 11.7 fouls per 100 possessions and 6.87 two-point shooting fouls per 100. All of those marks are better than what he posted last season, when he led the league in all three categories. He has somehow become even better at the skills that he already performed better than arguably any player of his type in league history, despite not having Malcolm Brogdon as a teammate anymore and seeing Khris Middleton go down due to injury. Discount his candidacy at your own peril.

If there’s one a difference in this year’s two-man MVP chase, it’s Harden not playing catch-up. Unlike last season, when his Rockets dropped to 14th in the West in November before surging late, Harden’s gigantic early-season numbers have sliced precious early attention away from Antetokounmpo. Perhaps we’re in for a role reversal this year, with Antetokounmpo’s more consistent brilliance working against him in comparison to Harden’s novelty.

If so, Harden will benefit from the very narrative force he constantly decries. Wonder if he’ll complain about it again. Gonna guess no.

Regardless, this two-man MVP race will be a joy to watch all season long. Instead of rehashing the same arguments from last year, let’s just sit back and enjoy the battle this time.

The stats in this piece do not include Monday night’s games.

[letterboxd]

Life in Film: Levan Akin

“Someone told me, ‘You are one person when you make the film, another when it’s over’. And that’s really the case with this film, it’s changed me fundamentally.” —The writer and director of And Then We Danced talks to our London correspondent Ella Kemp about masculinity, queer love stories, Georgian cinema and the ever-quotable joys of Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion.

Love stories come and go, but few have the golden warmth of Levan Akin’s dance-romance, And Then We Danced, which has captivated Letterboxd members enough to garner an impressive 4.0 rating out of 5. The film follows Merab (Levan Gelbakhiani), a dancer who has grown up training at the National Georgian Ensemble, and is moved to examine the structures and traditions he exists within when the charismatic Irakli (Bachi Valishvili) arrives at the company.

Akin was born and raised in Sweden, the son of a Georgian family who emigrated in the 1960s. Following the attacks at the 2013 Pride parade in the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, the solidarity among the country’s gay and queer communities became more urgent. Akin was moved to turn away from the big-budget Swedish TV productions he has made a name directing, in order to connect back to his roots for this project. But And Then We Danced isn’t solely a political commentary—it moves and feels freely.

Akin’s film gives audiences a long-overdue education on traditions far outside Hollywood: we see the rigid rules of Georgian dance, the way a body is taught to bend and extend and survive, and how spontaneous feelings have no place in that education.

If the film, told from such a unique perspective, also feels somehow familiar, it’s because Akin, who wrote, directed and co-edited, is a magnanimous cinephile. He’s been watching and understanding love stories since he can remember, and speaks of them with immense enthusiasm. There are years of wisdom and observation in the details of And Then We Danced. Every time I admit to him I haven’t seen a film he mentions, he looks sincerely happy for me that my world is yet to experience it.

Answering our Life in Film questionnaire, Akin shares memories of ABBA as a national treasure, the first film that blew him away in cinemas as a child, and why Tarkovsky could have done with being a little more queer.

This is quite a departure from the scale of your television projects. What drew you back to Georgia and those difficult circumstances? Levan Akin: I come from a background of making bigger projects, and this wasn’t obviously what a person like me should be doing next. I did a lot of Swedish TV, but I had grown tired of working the way I did. I started working for [Swedish film and commercial director] Roy Andersson when I was 22 and then I went into TV—I never went to film school. I applied twice and I didn’t get in! I was brought up in the SVT [Swedish public broadcasting service] way of making TV series. You have a script, you break it down, sometimes you write it yourself, sometimes you don’t, you do the shot list, you work with the actors, you block the scene and you move on and that’s all fine and good.

But after my previous film I was very tired. I was 36 then, and had sort of forgotten why I was making films. I had seen this Pride parade, the one where they were attacked in Georgia in 2013, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it. So I went to Georgia and did some research with my own little camera, and it very organically developed into this film. I never sat down and thought I’d write a story about this dancer. I used what happened around me, and I found a lot of real people. We often weren’t allowed to film in places a lot of the time—we made up stories about what we were doing. We had to have bodyguards, we’d lose locations on a day’s notice. It was insane, so I couldn’t plan out the movie like I would normally.

I wanted to make a very classical story, a very universal story and have the motor be [Merab’s] first love for Irakli and that setting him free. And then I filled it with things that happened while I was working. I’ve never worked like that, but I think it’s the best film I’ve made, and it’s really been a rejuvenation of my creative energy. Someone told me, “You are one person when you make the film, another when it’s over”. And that’s really the case with this film, it’s changed me fundamentally.

One character in And Then We Danced says, “Georgian dance is based on masculinity”. What are the defining traits of masculinity in Georgia? The definition of masculinity is so different in different cultures. In Sweden, where I live, if two men just hug too much or walk arm in arm, it’s considered super un-masculine. It’s like the whole thing about how young boys fight each other because that’s the only way they can be close in Western society. Whereas in Georgia, you can sit in someone’s lap and it’s not considered gay or un-masculine. Over there, traits like being very poetic, being a dancer, being a good singer, things that might be feminine in our culture are considered very masculine.

I thought that was interesting for the film because the regular story might have been, “I want to be a dancer but my family doesn’t want me to because it’s considered to be a feminine job”. Whereas here it’s the opposite, it’s, “I am a dancer, and I can’t be gay”.

Why was it important to use dance as a narrative vehicle to show these changing identities? What they say in the film is that Georgian dance has evolved. It’s based on old folk dances from different regions of the Caucasus, other Caucasian countries too, as well as Georgia. The dances from Batumi have a lot of oriental influences, originally even more than now. And the Kintouri dance was originally created by a queer group of people who lived in Georgia 100 years ago, and they were people working in service jobs.

Men wouldn’t take those jobs because it was considered unmanly, so the ones who worked in those jobs were gay guys or queer, some were even trans. They developed this dance and it’s sort of like a Paris Is Burning. Everybody knew they were gay. That’s what the teacher says in the film, when he says “they were softer but we made them harder”, because then these dances were appropriated by three big ensembles, and they did alterations to them.

Levan Gelbakhiani in ‘And Then We Danced’.

How did that influence the message you ultimately wanted to share? The film is about finding your own place in a traditional society, and not letting anyone tell you what your traditions ought to be, or how you ought to define yourself, to be accepted as a Georgian. That discourse is all around us now. I’m really frankly tired of people telling me that, for instance, I’m not really Swedish because my parents came from Georgia, and I have a Muslim background. Also, Georgia is 90 percent predominantly Christian Orthodox now, so a lot of Georgians think you can’t be Georgian if you’re not a Christian.

There are two major contemporary music cues in the film—ABBA’s ‘Take A Chance on Me’ and Robyn’s ‘Honey’. How did those two come to be? During the Soviet Union, there was an ABBA concert on TV and I think that was one of the only one Western pop concerts that was broadcast in Soviet. I think it had to do with Sweden being social democratic, and we had sort of a good relationship with the Soviet Union so they thought, “Ok, we can show this, at least it’s not American”. It would be on every New Year’s Eve and it would be like a tradition.

So when the Soviet Union fell, ABBA had a new market with new people who also loved ABBA. So ABBA is actually very popular in Georgia! Of course ABBA is super-expensive to [license], and we had literally no money when we made this film—it was a very hard shoot. But one of the producers of the film is the son of Benny Andersson of ABBA… I figured if he likes the film, for them it’s not a big risk. I thought, I’ll try it in the rough cut and either he’ll like it and say yes or he won’t—but he loved the movie, he was crying afterwards.

Levan Akin.

I’d also taken a risk with Robyn because that album had just come out, and we all love Robyn. We just hoped she’d like it and accept it, because we couldn’t pay her very much. Thankfully she did, and also we actually got help from Jen Malone. She’s a music supervisor and she’s so talented, and she’s the one who does the music supervision for [bands including] Euphoria, Creed and so on, so once she also got in touch she made it work for us. I’m eternally grateful to Jen.

[The following answers contain spoilers for several of the movies mentioned by Akin.]

And Then We Danced has many beautiful dance sequences. Which specific dance scenes, or dance movies broadly, inspire you? I love The Umbrellas of Cherbourg as a whole, and it has dancing in it, so that’s an easy one. In Dirty Dancing, I love the last dance, I can watch it over and over. It’s an amazing scene in every way. I also love the scene in Ex Machina where [Oscar Isaac] is dancing. It’s so nice, and so sexy.

I don’t know if there was dancing in it but I really want to mention this film—I love The Diary of A Teenage Girl. Marielle Heller is a genius. And Bel Powley and Alexander Skarsgård, they’re just so good in those parts. He was incredible! That should have won all the Oscars. In my films I never have clear antagonists, even if there are characters antagonizing the main character. I love them all, there’s no clear moral compass, everyone is just trying to do their best with the circumstances. It’s the same with this film. I love that you understand and love Alexander Skarsgård, and the guilt Minnie must have been feeling. It’s just so sensitively directed, with such a precise feeling of how to not veer in any one direction. If anyone is just shaking somewhere in that film, let’s put it in this ranking!

There’s this amazing documentary made by a Swedish documentarian, Martha & Niki. It’s about two friends who are dancers, two black girls from Sweden. Their friendship is really complicated, and they’re competing in a special dance, and you just follow them as they’re touring and competing. One of the girls is from Uganda, if I remember correctly, and another one is adopted, so they also have very different social backgrounds. I saw it in cinemas and I was just sitting and crying.

Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon in Bound (1996).

What are your favorite on-screen gay love stories? Brokeback Mountain. I saw that movie in New York in 2005 and I was so shocked. I just thought, “What the fuck have I just been through”? The ending… Nowadays, I would never want to kill off a character in a gay movie, but then, it’s so vague that you don’t even know what happens to them. It breaks my heart, it still does.

I really enjoyed God’s Own Country. I thought it was really moving and touching. Josh O’Connor is a revelation, and the other guy [Alec Secareanu] is amazing too. They have great chemistry. It’s just so delicately made.

I also love the Wachowski sisters’ Bound. I remember when I saw it, oh my god. Back then, seeing that was really something. I love Jennifer Tilly, what a star!

In terms of a movie that gay communities really love: Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion. I’ve seen it literally a thousand times, I just rewind it and watch it again. It’s so amazing. When we were younger, 50 percent of the lines we would say would be lines from that film. It’s hilarious. It’s such a great story about friendship. If you haven’t seen it, congratulations, you have so much to look forward to!

And how did I almost forget My Own Private Idaho?! I saw that as a kid in the 90s, and it’s just so amazing. River Phoenix. What a movie.

Could you give the Letterboxd community a primer to some great Georgian films? I love My Happy Family, a film by Simon Groß and Nana Ekvtimishvili. They’re a directing couple. They did another film called In Bloom; about a teenage girl, it’s sort of autobiographical I can imagine, as it feels very lived. It’s about a Georgian girl in the 90s. Both films were at Sundance—My Happy Family was there three years ago and I think it won an award. [It was nominated for the Grand Jury Prize, and was Georgia’s entry for the 2013 best foreign language Academy Award]. Netflix bought it, so it’s on there now.

My Happy Family (2017).

It really shows this thing in Georgia where there is no private sphere. Families live together inter-generationally for life for many reasons—financial ones for sure. It’s the story of this woman who lives with her mother, her father, her children, everybody is in that house. She decides that one day she wants to move into her own apartment, and it’s the most shocking thing anyone has ever heard of. She says she just wants to sit alone and read books and have her own space, and everyone is so provoked by that because that can’t happen in Georgia.

There’s another Georgian film I love called Street Days, by Levan Koguashvili, which came out in 2010. It was one of the first new-generation movies in Georgia showing the reality of Georgia the way it was then. It’s the story of a man who is struggling to support his family, but he’s also a drug addict. It sounds really bleak but it’s made with such dark humor.

To go really far back to the directors working through the Soviet time, there’s The Wishing Tree by Tengiz Abuladze. So many shots from that film are so, so beautiful. It’s set in the rural parts of Georgia, and it’s about a young girl who falls in love with a boy, but they can’t be married because she has to marry an older person because it’s better for the family. And the boy she was in love with was killed by the husband. She goes insane, because she keeps thinking about it all the time; she’s talking to his ghost. This old woman in the village hears her and thinks she’s cheating on her husband, so they decide to do this ritual where they stone her. It’s so sad and so beautiful, and there’s a woman in the village who’s like the town fool but she’s the only one making sense. It’s so poetic.

Sergei Parajanov is another of my all-time favorite directors—I love The Color of Pomegranates and Ashik Kerib. He’s a great surrealist director and has inspired many directors since, such as Tarsem Singh and Mark Romanek, who did a lot of music videos in the 90s. Madonna’s video for ‘Bedtime Stories’ was really inspired by Parajanov. He worked a lot with tableaux, and it’s so queer. [Parajanov] was gay and he was imprisoned for it many times. He was very close friends with [Andrei] Tarkovsky and he attributes his artistry to being inspired by him, saying that Tarkovsky released his creativity. They were close, but they’d also fight a lot. One time Parajanov told Tarkovsky, “You can never be as amazing a director as me, because you’re not a homosexual”, which is funny!

Finally, what was the film first made you want to be a filmmaker? I love that question. It feels like I’m closing a circle because I think the movie I’m thinking of has some similarities with my movie. It’s Some Kind of Wonderful, [written] by John Hughes and directed by Howard Deutch. It’s not one of the most famous John Hughes movies but it’s one of the first ones I saw in the cinema. I think I was seven years old, I went with my older sister who was eleven at the time.

Mary Stuart Masterson and Eric Stoltz in ‘Some Kind of Wonderful’ (1987).

It’s a love triangle between Eric Stoltz, Mary Stuart Masterson and Lea Thompson. Stoltz plays this working-class kid, he lives on the wrong side of the tracks, the classic perspective that’s always in John Hughes movies. He’s in love with the popular girl in school, Amanda Jones. She is also from his part of the town but is dating the rich guys. He’s really in love with her, and his best friend is played by Masterson, she’s called Watts but her nickname is Drummer Girl, and she’s a tomboy. When I was little I thought she was a boy who was a gay character. I didn’t understand that she was a girl because I’d never seen a girl like that as a kid. It’s just a great movie, it was a love triangle before love triangles were boring. I don’t know if it consciously made me want to direct films, but it was the first film that I saw that that stuck with me.

We didn’t have a lot of movie culture in my house, my parents emigrated to Sweden in the late 60s. My father read a lot, but we didn’t come from any culture. The films I’d find were the ones you could rent in the local store. Mostly American movies. The more highbrow stuff came later when I was older and could search them out myself.

‘And Then We Danced’ premiered in Director’s Fortnight in Cannes last May, and has won several prizes at other prestigious festivals since. The film is currently showing in select cinemas on the east and west coasts of America, and opens in UK cinemas on March 13.

[whitestonetherapy]

Back to School...2 (1.10.17)

The next couple of months are going to be busier than normal for me with some large projects that I’m responsible for all happening at the same time.   This is not a complaint at all, because I prefer being busy to the alternative and a lot of my work through WhiteStone is deeply interesting and rewarding.  It does mean the weeks are flying by, and as I’d already started to outline Boarding School Syndrome (BSS) in my previous blog I wanted to complete the outline before more time passes.

Let’s get right to it and talk about some common things that are encountered in a clinical setting.  I mentioned emotional encapsulation in my previous post as a central feature of BSS.  This refers to a form of psychological splitting, where emotional vulnerability is eventually disowned by the young boarder as a defence against finding herself in a situation where this vulnerability might single her out from the pack.  This is the child’s adaptive attempt to survive in her changed environment, and can be either a gradual process or marked by a specific moment that might be recalled within therapy.  Being sent away from home is an event where many of the conditions that are associated with healthy psychological and physical development are suddenly disrupted – this includes the total and sudden loss of the family unit, familiarity (a home, a bedroom etc), pets, places, people and things – these are replaced instead by strange staff at a strange school with confusing customs and traditions, surrounded by other strangers.  This requires urgent adaptation, and the child has to abandon her biologically programmed need for attachment.

The web of relationships, into which we are born and on which we rely for healthy development, is traumatically disrupted by this experience in a number of ways.  Instead of secure attachment, which is fostered in children through attuned care-giving from parents (summarised mightily), the sudden loss of family increases the chances of the child developing an adaptive attachment style to deal with the traumatic event she has undergone.  This may involve emotional encapsulation, a dismissing style, where she learns that it is safer and much less painful to dismiss or minimize her own emotional experiences than to feel them, as she learns her needs will not be met and perhaps do not deserve to be met.  Alternatively the child may instead form an adaptive strategy that involves amplification of her need for caregivers and comfort - a kind of hyper-activation of the need to be close to others.  Instead of developing a secure attachment style marked by flexibility, a growing ability to experience herself as ‘good enough’ and a capacity to understand the emotional experience and intentionality of others, the child may instead develop strategies that shut her off from her emotions (dismissing) or lead her to become overwhelmed  by them (amplification).  In some cases she might switch between both of these adaptive strategies in what psychologists call a ‘disorganized’ way.

These adaptive patterns of being can remain with us throughout life and can run very deep.  What starts out as a survival strategy can quickly become a representational filter that limits the extent and nature of access to our own thoughts, feelings and desires.  And so adaptive patterns begin to influence and shape how we see the world, the predictions we make, how we see ourselves and others.  Much work in psychotherapy is to provide the type of reparative relationship where the flexibility I mention above is encouraged and adaptive strategies can be spotted and some of these ‘filters’ perhaps even changed. 

You’ve probably already guessed that a dismissing style is particularly common for ex-boarders.  Joy Schaverein has outlined various clinical markers for this.  Here are some examples:  problems with intimacy and difficulties being fully open and honest about feelings even with a loving spouse or family;  difficulties identifying such emotions in the first place, which may register as anger and yet mask other emotions which are hard to accurately name; difficulty talking about these things even in the safety of therapy; a tendency to make very dependent relationships but then to ‘cut off’ emotionally (either as part of a repeating pattern within relationships or permanently); difficulty creating or sustaining intimate friendships, or sustaining situations such as employment or education etc;  a tendency to be more comfortable time-tabling family life, and perhaps holding fixed views of what ‘should’ happen; a tendency to struggle dealing with vulnerability in others, (if your own vulnerability has been dissociated, it is tougher to acknowledge it in others).  Interestingly, as Duffell points out, ex-boarders in therapy may not at first recognise these things of themselves, even though their spouse or family may see these issues very clearly and indeed have encouraged their loved one to seek help.  Often these issues manifest as a depressive episode for ex-boarders, and this is a common trigger for entering therapy and eventually seeking help.

What is the psychological process that such people have gone through to get here?  What happened to them at school?  Duffell talks of a ‘privileged abandonment’ and Schaverein talks of the moment of abandonment itself.  The moment of being taken to boarding school and parents departing is a moment for which no young child can be prepared or give consent.  Many ex-boarders can remember this moment clearly, as for example I can.  Others report a sense of amnesia, a dissociation of feelings and a sense of numb shock.  As Schaverein says, this is the moment “the child becomes lost for words”.  Remember that young children need adults to give words to their experiences – particularly emotional ones -  as this is what allows children to metabolize their powerful emotional experiences and make sense of them.   This cannot now easily happen as reliance falls on a house-master who is looking after many children, and has limited experience or training in these respects.  In later years children may develop a sibling bond and take on some of these parental tasks and ‘parent’ each other, but this will not be possible for young children arriving at a boarding school. 

It can be common from this point for children to feel homesick, which is really a proxy for feelings of bereavement.  This is often a gradual process of realisation, from initial alarm, to searching behaviour (anger and guilt), then hope of rescue, then mourning, grief and feelings of internal loss.  As well as grieving, children may experience their new school as a form of captivity.  They are taken to a place they cannot leave and where all activities are regulated and time-tabled - food, clothes, work, play, censored letters, lessons, and so on.  As Schaverein says, ‘private reverie‘ is discouraged, and unsanctioned spontaneity may be frowned on.  Whether this is just an enduring extension of the Victorian idea that boarding schools are a place to ‘unmake the child and make the man’, I cannot say, but I think it’s a fair bet.  Here is a quote from a Mr Woodard, founder of my own public school, who in 1858 said the aim of the place was to, “remove the child from the noxious influence of home and home comforts”.  Hmm.

Younger children often experience a powerful and troubling internal incongruence too.  Perhaps they have been told school will be fun, possibly (these days) a little like Harry Potter, and that they will be enjoying lots of activities, and that the whole experience will be good for them – as Duffell says “the making of them”.  So the child is placed in an internal double bind.  She ‘knows’ that this is ‘good for her’, but it does not feel good.  She may also have a sense that financial sacrifices have been made so she can go to boarding school and that she is expected to be grateful… yet it does not feel good at all.  The child’s experience inwardly is at odds with what her caregivers have told her it should be… and thus she may come to experience herself as unworthy or a failure, and to doubt her own perceptions.  She may have a sense that to share these things will be deeply upsetting and that caregivers will be angry, and so she may come to feel responsible for maintaining the emotional equilibrium of her parents at a very young age .  These are things for which small children have no words and only a limited understanding, and so cannot verbalise.  The child increasingly becomes separated from a coherent narrative of her own life. 

As an adult a further double-bind is that such an upbringing is considered a ‘privilege’ and so discussion of any of these serious things can feel like a dangerous flirtation with being considered an ingrate,  fair game for ridicule rather than compassion from a society that considers them to have been born lucky.  This is common. The same process works internally too; ex-boarders may hide from themselves (and their therapist) the traumatic nature of their boarding school experience, such is their sense of shame at admitting such a ‘lucky start’ might actually have caused some problems – there can be a feeling it would be deeply ungracious, a bout of navel-gazing and quite unmanly to ‘whine’ about such things.  So as adults, ex-boarders may trivialise the tough experiences they had as young children, especially if they came to associate closely with (and attach closely to) the school in which they spent many formative years, and where some good friendships and good times were also had.  It can be hard to consider the cost at which these things have come, even when facing troubling issues later in later life.

For the young child at boarding school there follows, in time, a choice point.  Either the boarder must adapt and find a way to navigate her new environment and begin to dissociate from her need for her (now unavailable) family and home, or continue to suffer and take the chance of being singled out as a target onto which other students can project their own fears.  Eventually the child dissociates from the pain and protects a nucleated self from experiencing further trauma.   In short, she must adapt or find herself alone and singled out.  Here is emotional encapsulation. “He wears a mask and his face grows to fit it” (Orwell).  I will link to a documentary at the end of this post, where this process is shown in some detail.

Finally, the sense of loss young boarders experience is repeated many times with return trips to school over many years, and so loss is re-experienced routinely in a way that reinforces adaptive strategies.  This further crystallizes a split between the ‘survival personality’ of the boarding school self and the ‘home self’ which is fundamentally changed too.  Those suffering with BSS often report a sense of ‘no longer being known’ at home when they returned for school holidays, and so having a sense of not belonging anywhere, they had changed in ways not recognised by their parents and so were now alone here too.  Many ex-boarders remain with a sense of exile throughout their lives, a sense of non-belonging as if they are not really participating in their own life.

Nick Duffell spends a lot of time at the moment lobbying for the abolishment of boarding schools for the under-16’s.  I am not sure I would go that far.  I can think of plenty of examples where home-life may be far more troublesome than an upbringing in a good institution.  For children in their teens it is important to also begin to individuate and this seems a more natural and much less damaging time to consider this type of education.  I also think that technology such as mobile phones, and much greater emphasis on pastoral services in schools should not be ignored – it is obviously much easier to maintain a meaningful contact with children at school in recent years with phones and email, and schools have become much more sophisticated in terms of considering the wellbeing of children in their care.  That said, I want to be careful not to diminish the suffering that many will be experiencing right now who are at boarding school – an institution is absolutely no replacement for a good family - but general trends in a better direction must also be recognised. 

I’ll be coming back to this topic, no doubt, and I hope this blog is at least a useful general overview and a start point for readers who are interested to know more. 

As promised, here is the Cutting Edge documentary “Leaving Home at 8”.  It tells the story of four boarders who we meet just a few days before their departure to boarding school.

www.whitestonetherapy.com

[kissingwithcannibals]

Jan 10, 2019

“Jesus, has every one of us in the group been depressed at some point?!” 

I’m paraphrasing a good friend of mine here, but that’s generally the observation he made. And, holy shit, he’s totally right. I don’t think anyone in our little gang of friends has been immune to feeling depressed, lost, and burned out at some point since high school. I wondered: is it just our group? Or is everyone out there in our generation feeling this? Can it be a coincidence that everyone in our hometown crew has or has had serious depression? Something like that doesn’t happen by chance, right? 

I’ve been puzzling over this for a while now. The grip of depression has been so pervasive, so total, and complete across my friends that, I would argue, something larger is going on. Like, some seriously wicked shit is afoot. So my friends and I were brainstorming what kind of big, bad cultural forces might be at work. 

Now, gotta be honest here, the specifics of what we discussed are gone from my memory (sorry guys!), but this problem was still at the front of my mind when I noticed this article from Buzzfeed News making the rounds on Twitter. It’s called “How Millennials Became the Burnout Generation”. It’s a long essay, but I can promise you that it’s half-decent and worth a read. (Though what is up with author sprinkling these humble brags throughout the piece? Girl, I ain’t gonna read the book you published!) 

I think if you are a masochist and enjoy reading articles about millennials, many of the author’s points will be familiar to you, so I don’t think I want to repeat them here. But to hastily summarize with a quote: 

“We’re deeply in debt, working more hours and more jobs for less pay and less security, struggling to achieve the same standards of living as our parents, operating in psychological and physical precariousness, all while being told that if we just work harder, meritocracy will prevail, and we’ll begin thriving.” 

If you would indulge me to be an obnoxious ideologue for a moment, I’d like to get up on my high horse and yammer that the capitalist forces of efficiency and optimization have contributed to this freakishly bleak economic reality. (Actually, I think the author pretty much says this in so many words.) 

Okay, that sucks, right? But, wait, there’s more! The author also considers how these same forces rooted in capitalism are exerting pressure in our private lives as well. A familiar critique of Instagram is that it encourages people to craft a “personal brand,” which is to say, turn themselves into a marketable product. People craft a narrative of their lives on Instagram that presents an “optimized” life: exotic travel, endless festivities, and unquestioned happiness. This is the scourge of optimization. As the author notes, there has been a blurring or destruction of the line between work and play. We now expend precious minutes or hours of our free time each week to consider, craft, and sculpt a presentation of our life outside of work, all in the service of narrative and branding. 

And not to put a bow on it, but this terrible treadmill existence is fueled by an addiction to phones and the internet. I don’t know if the research is conclusive yet, but everything I’ve heard and read so far has suggested, at times pretty damn firmly, that phone and internet addiction makes us more distracted, miserable, and lonely. 

I don’t think I’m saying anything novel here. (Honestly I’m just regurgitating what the article stated.) I did, however, find myself gelling with this one sentence I read in the article. Here it is: 

“The modern Millennial, for the most part, views adulthood as a series of actions, as opposed to a state of being,” an article in Elite Daily explains. “Adulting therefore becomes a verb.”

Not a state of being, but a series of actions. I absolutely feel like this most days. There are days when I trudge from one task to the next, often not as means of finding joy or accomplishment, but simply to pass time. I could very easily lounge around all day like a cat, but I need to create busyness for myself to ward of feelings of guilt or self-loathing. I wish I could have a stronger sense of my own self, my own being. I wonder why I don’t have a strong sense of identity. I chalk that up to a lack of self-confidence on my part, I think. Ideally, though, I’d like to be like one of those wildly self-motivated people; to live a life in which it is a strong sense of self that drives my actions, as opposed to one in which I drift from task to task, hoping to cobble together some marginal sense of accomplishment at the end of each day. Am I making sense? I’m not so sure. This got depressing, fast. 

So, listen, here’s what I think: there are a lot of things going on that are making us all want to jump off a cliff just to feel something. Maybe you’re drowning in student loan debt, or social media is making you hate yourself, or you have to work multiple part-time jobs because businesses don’t want the expense of a full-time employee. 

Those things alone are awful. The thing that makes me want to scream, I think, is that we live in a world of sensory overload. There’s just too much shit going on, and it’s happening all the god-damn time, and I feel powerless to break away from it. I mean, the fucking crush of news and politics every single day is too much for any sane person to absorb. And, of course, there is the daily avalanche of content on Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, Youtube, etc. It’s information overload. It’s noise. So much noise. My brain cannot keep up. I feel like I don’t retain information as well these days. My memory is worse. I can’t pay attention as well, or read a book without quickly feeling distracted. Taken together, this is burnout. 

A person in the comments section of the Millennials article noted something called “Directed Attention Fatigue”. I don’t know if this is considered legit, but it rings true for me. Perhaps this is similar to decision fatigue? It certainly takes brain power to seek out, scan, and quickly process all the content on news sites and social media, and I imagine that this does cause a kind of draining effect on the brain. I mean, working a full-time job can be physically and mentally demanding enough- now consider all the extra stimuli that we must process on top of that! Our brains are being bombarded with an insane amount of information (and noise) every hour of each day. It doesn’t surprise me at all that people are feeling burned out. 

Here’s something else I wonder: are there people out there who are not feeling burned out? Is this just something that my clique of white middle class friends are experiencing? How can we measure burnout across racial, socioeconomic, and age lines?  Did twenty-year olds in the 1830s feel burnout? (I need to know this!!!)

Well, anyway, I’m gonna stop here. I know- such an uplifting blog post! I’ll circle back to this topic again, I’m sure, especially because it’s worth brainstorming some concrete, pro-active solutions to combat burnout. 

Thanks for reading! Until next time! 

[clubofinfo]

Expert: While supporters of our two-party system wring their hands over the sensationalist nonsense reported by the mainstream media, we thought it might be worth touching on the most dangerous lie of all-time: capitalism. It’s an all-encompassing delusion, including: the myth of continual technological progress, the mendacious assumptions of endless economic growth, the lie that constant bombardments of media and consumer goods make us happy, and the omissions of our involvement in the exploitation of the planet and the resources of distant, poorer nations, among other things. We’ve taken the time to hash out some of the most pernicious mendacities we’ve come across in our (relatively) young lives, in the workplace, in our private lives, and in the media. *** Please share these counter-arguments far and wide, in order to educate your fellow citizens, and, if necessary, to provide the intellectual beat-downs needed when arguing with pro-capitalists. So without further ado, here is our list of the most devious “Lies that Capitalists Tell Us”: 1) Wealth will “trickle down” It’s hard to believe an economic policy that conjures images of urination could be wrong, but the idea is as bankrupt as the lower classes who have been subjected to the trickling. Less than ten people now have the financial wealth equivalent to half the planet, and the trickling seems a lot more like a mad cash-grab by the (morally bankrupt) elites. Rather than trickle down, the 1% and their lackeys have hoovered up the majority of new wealth created since the 2008 crash. After 40 years of stagnant wages in the US the people feel more shit on than trickled upon. It’s not a mistake that the elite reap most of the profits: the capitalist system is designed this way.  It always has been, and will be, until we the people find the courage to tear it down and replace it with something better. 2) I took all the risks It can be argued the average employee takes far more risks in any job than the average person who starts a business with employees. The reason being is that the person starting a business usually has far more wealth, where most Americans can’t afford a 500 dollar emergency; meaning if they lose a job or go without work for any stretch it means some tough decisions have to be made. A person with even a failing business cannot be fired, but the employee can be fired for almost any reason imaginable. They are operating without a net at all times. The capitalist uses all sorts of public infrastructure to get his/her company off the ground. From everything to the roads to get you to your job, colleges, public utilities, tax breaks, electricity, etc. Even the internet itself was created from public research. Yet elite business owners still have the audacity, and are so full of hubris, that they believe in the hyper-individualist, macho, rugged-cowboy/pioneer facade they affect. 3) I could pay you more if there were less government regulations Many capitalists argue that layers of government bureaucracy prevent them from paying their employees a fairer, living wage. This is a huge whopper, as our regulations (like no child labor, a minimum wage, disability and worker’s compensation, basic environmental impact studies, etc) actually provide safety against the worst type of exploitation of workers and destruction of the land by corporations. Without these minimum regulations, an age of even more outright neo-feudalism would occur, where employees could be laid-off and rehired ad-infinitum, based on downward market wage forces, at the wishes of ever-more capricious owners, management, and CEOs. 4) If you work hard, one day you can be rich like us (We live in a meritocracy) America is not a meritocracy, and no one should think it is. There exists no tie to the intelligence of work done or the amount of it that guarantees success. Rather to be rich depends more on either being born into it, or being exceptionally good at exploiting others so one may take the bulk of the proceeds for themselves. This is the magic formula for wealth in this ever so “exceptional” land – exploit, exploit, exploit. Inheritance and exploitation is how the rich get rich. To understand the exploitation aspect takes some understanding of how the rich function. Next to none of the super rich become that way solely by meritocracy. Their income is created through complex webs of utilizing leverage usually to extract some form of passive income. They are the rentier class or con artists, or both. You only have to look at what the rich are dabbling in. Like Robert Mercer, for instance, who made his money via “a hedge fund that makes its money by using algorithms to model and trade on the financial markets.” Skimming money off corrupt financial markets hardly seems like a worthwhile activity that contributes anything to humanity. It’s a hustle. Or take Bill Gates, who did some programming for a few years, poorly, and became rich by landing a series of deals with IBM initially, and then by passively making money off the share values of Microsoft. The late Steve Jobs may have been one of the more hands-on billionaires, but even he required thousands of enslaved Asian hands to extract the kind of  profits Apple was able to make. Casino magnate Sheldon Adelson almost certainly has organized crime links, as if owning a casino wasn’t enough of a con to begin with. Rich DeVos became a billionaire by running a pyramid scheme most are familiar with called Amway. The Walton family, owners of Wal-Mart, pays a median wage of 10 bucks an hour (far below a living wage), they strong arm vendors, and also rely on products made with working conditions that resemble old world slavery, while having more wealth than the bottom 40% of Americans. There’s just no way to make that kind of money without having a major market advantage and then profiteering off it. Lie, cajole, coerce, manipulate, bribe, rig, and hustle. These are the tools of the rich. No one is worth this kind of money and everyone needs each other’s help to function, but in the minds of the rich they consider themselves the primary cogs in the machine worthy of their money for doing not much else than holding leverage over others and exploiting it. 5) This is as good as it gets (there is no alternative, TINA) Through a process of gaslighting and double-bind coercion the choices we are fed are propagandized via controlled media outlets owned and operated by elites. We are told our choices must be between the democrats or republicans, attacking the Middle East or face constant terrorism, unfettered capitalism or state run communism. We are given binary choices that lack all nuance, and nuance is the enemy of all those who seek to control and exploit. They feed us a tautology of simpleton narratives which unfortunately do exactly what they hoped, keep people dumb and biting on their red herrings. Capitalists make it seem as if there is no alternative because they hoard all the money, have all the hired guns, and pay off teams of servile lawyers, judges, and lobbyists to write and enforce their anti-life laws. Capitalists demand “law and order” whenever their servant classes get too restless. In general, the most hardened, dogmatic capitalists exhibit bewilderment and/or disgust at genuine human emotions like joy, creativity, spontaneity, and love. Many capitalists have an unconscious death wish, and want to drag the rest of us and the mother Earth down with them. Capitalists have stolen all the farmlands, hold all the patents to technology, and don’t pay enough to mass amounts of citizens to get out of the rat race and get back to live off the land. The screws are turned a little tighter every year. If we are not done in by massive natural disasters or an economic collapse, expect a revolution to occur, hopefully a non-violent one. 6) We give back to the community Corporations set out to create non-profits as a public relations move. They cause the problems and then put small band-aids on the gaping wounds they have directly contributed to and use the charity as a source of plausible deniability to obscure the fact that they are exactly what we think they are: greedy. Handing out bread-crumbs after you’ve despoiled, desecrated, and bulldozed millions of hectares of valuable habitat is not fooling anyone. The elite one-percenters are the enemies of humankind and the biosphere itself. 7) The system (and economic theory) is rational and takes into account social and environmental costs People tend to think someone somewhere is regulating things to keep us safe. They look around and see sophisticated technology, gleaming towers in the sky, and what they believe to be is a complex intelligent world. But in truth no one is running the show. The world functions as a mad cash grab driven by neo-liberal ideology. Our leaders are driven by power, fame, and money, and exhibit strong psychopathic, sociopathic, and narcissistic traits. The problems of modern industrial capitalism and its impact on the world are clear – our exploitation of the resources, people, and other species are a direct result of our consumer-based infinite growth model. Just a few of the problems we face are species extinction, climate change, ocean acidification, and a toxic carcinogen filled trash dump of a planet that reached population overshoot decades ago. If the system was rational, we would begin planning to lower birth rates to decrease the world’s population, and voluntarily provide education, decent, dignified jobs, as well as birth control and contraception to women worldwide. We live by money values, and think in money terminology. When we discuss healthcare the topic arises about how to pay for it before nearly anything else. The priority isn’t on saving lives but how to pay for things. Yes, how will we pay for healthcare when banks can create money on a computer through the magic of fractional reserve banking, which they often use to bail out their crony friends. The money isn’t real but the implications of restricting it from the populace are. Money is created out of thin air by the magic of the Federal Reserve, yet we have all heard our bosses, and the pricks in Washington complaining that “we don’t have enough money for that” when it comes to healthcare, improving schools, and humanitarian relief for the poorest parts of the world. Again, if the system was rational, world poverty would be solved within a few short years. Money destined for weapons and “defense” could be used domestically as well as abroad to Africa, South Asia, and Latin America, and there is more than enough money (75 trillion is the annual world GDP, approximately 15 trillion in the US alone) to pay for a good home, clothing, and food for every family worldwide, with an all-renewable powered energy grid. 8) The future will be better When Trump’s slogan “make America great again” was on the lips of every alt-right fascist, most of us stopped to ask, when was it great? The truth is that politicians have been promising something better since the inception of this country and “better” has never arrived. There is always another expensive war to fight and another financial meltdown occurring on average every eight years. Wait, you might say, what about those sweet post-WWII growth years brought about by the New Deal? The sad truth is those years were only materially beneficial to white, middle-class men, who were highly sexist, racist, and complicit in incubating today’s consumer-driven Empty Society. The post-WWII era was an aberration in our history and the result of having more jobs available than people, but as the country rapidly exploited its natural resources and reached the limits of linear growth while the population exploded the leverage that allowed people to have higher wages receded. Even though efficiency increased enormously, the people lost leverage to demand higher wages. Without leverage held by the people capitalism will return to its status quo goal – exploit, and that’s just what it did. In the US, corporations grew richer and the people grew poorer starting from the mid 1970’s to the present. 9) It’s Just Business Employees devote years of their lives to companies and when they are let go they are told it’s nothing personal, it’s just business. This is how all bad news is delivered even when personal. It says we are cold-hearted organizations that adhere to a bottom line first and human needs second. So know when they say “it’s just business” what they are saying is understand we are sharks, and acting like a shark is just what we do. This is also the logic behind defending war crimes and similar atrocities. Nations like the US claim they have a “responsibility to protect” civilians from terrorists. Then, when American bombs kill civilians (or their proxies use US-made weapons), they are referred to as “collateral damage”. 10) Financial markets & debt are necessary The health of the entire economy is too often gauged by the stock markets. But the reality about financial markets is they are extraneous gambling machines designed to place downward pressure on companies to post good numbers to elevate share prices. These financial markets funnel capital to a smaller and smaller number of multinational corporations every year, and perpetuate non-linear economic growth (and therefore more pollutants, CO2, pesticides, strip mining, razing of forests) that is killing the planet. Debt is the most fundamental lie in our economy. Money is only supposed to be a tool to move goods efficiently around a market, but for money itself to be a wealth engine is a Ponzi scheme. And we all know how that ends. *** For a wider taste of our oeuvre, visit Reason Bowl Radio to watch Jason expose the Trump administration for the sorry sacks of shit that they are and discuss current events, as well as Jason and Bill’s commentary and ramblings about topics such as psychedelics, the nature of consciousness, and reflections on how to effect social change. http://clubof.info/