#i am incapable of making coherent art lately | Explore Tumblr posts and blogs

tae-cup · 4 years ago

Text

Fragments of Lace and Ribbon | PJM

Pairing: Park Jimin x Reader

Summary: You don’t remember much, but you remember them...

Genre: Choose your own adventure, amnesia au, fluff

Warnings: N/A

Rating: PG

Word Count: 3k Words

A/N: Forgive me for not having a dancing bone in my body

Header by the talented and amazing @dnrequests

Timeline Place: 2

Other:

Series Masterlist

Masterlist

The sweat rolled down your cheek, raced across your neck, and fell to the ground with the grace of a cheetah. Or perhaps a swan would be a better analogy here. Lisa, the choreographer, clapped her hands together, a tight lipped smile on her face. You hesitantly stepped off the raised platform. Jimin stepped around from it as well.

“No, no, no, you guys need to be able to capture the emotions of this scene.” Lisa snapped, massaging the crease between her brows.

“Listen, this scene is where, for the first time, the black swan trusts her lover enough to let herself fall. Yes, it’s a metaphor, yadah yadah, that doesn’t matter.” The woman sighed. “Come on, just get it together.”

“I can’t help it, I’m nervous. You’re asking us to do a trust fall on stage. How do I know he’ll be there to catch me.” You whispered softly.

“Is that not the point of a trust fall, Y/N?” Lisa snapped shut her notebook and shouldered her bag.

“Class dismissed, don’t forget to stretch.” Then the teacher turned to you with a sour expression. “Really, Y/N, it’s not that bad.”

You just dipped your head, not one to argue with the teacher. A warm hand landed on your shoulder and you jumped, having forgotten you were not alone. Also, Jimin was known for moving rather quietly. The other students were stretching and packing up.

“Can you help me stretch?” He asked, his voice sweet and soft. Jimin was always soft.

“Yeah, sure.” You quickly agreed, following him to an open space. He stretched out his legs in front of him and you pressed on his back. He groaned in relief.

“That’s good, thanks.” He praised you, making your stomach flip for an unknown reason. You pressed a little harder and he released a long breath.

You were busy thinking about the routine in your head. You needed to leap onto the raised part of the stage, Jimin trailing behind, and fall backwards, trusting he’d be there. The problem? You didn’t trust him. It wasn’t that he was a bad dude or anything, you just didn’t really...understand him.

“You can trust me, Y/N.” He said softly as you readjusted your position. His words pulled you from your thoughts.

“I know.” you answered hesitantly. He seemed pleased with that and slowly stood up. You eased off his back.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, Y/N. Take care.” The man smiled sweetly and shouldered his bag, exiting the room.

“5, 6, 7, 8,” Lisa clapped to the beat. Her shouts were drowned out as you focused on the routine. You knew your routine, you just hoped Jimin did as well.

You leapt onto the raised platform, the heat of the lights beating onto your sweaty forehead. A few wisps of hair curled onto your forehead. You did a pirouette and then sharply inhaled. You better be there. You thought to yourself as you pretended to lose balance.

You gracefully tipped backwards at the other end of the platform, only to yelp in surprise. The music cut and, in a daze, you slowly sat up. You had fallen. Well, not really. Jimin was uselessly holding onto your arm, just a few moments too late.

You blinked a few times, seeing his face peer into your peripheral.

“Oh my god, are you okay? I’m so sorry.” He sputtered. “I’ll practice it more. I swear you won’t be dropped again!”

Your eyes scanned his distraught expression and you decided to forgive him, though the seed of doubt had been planted. Lisa was calling for a water bottle and to turn down the lights, probably thinking you were a little out of it.

In contrast, you were wide awake, alert, and aware of yourself. Could you trust him to catch you? The thought was swallowed and rested uncomfortably in the pit of your stomach.

“It’s fine, Jimin, just practice.” You said lightly, standing up and dusting off your tights. “But seriously, work on it. It could cause some serious issues later.” You tried to say as nice as possible, but he got the message.

If you were injured, there was no way you could major in dance. It was like how when you seriously break a bone and it’s never quite the same. Your art required it to be the same.

The performing arts had always been your dream once you had gone to college and you were thankful for the scholarship considering your awful grades. A twinge of melancholy pricked at the back of your mind. Namjoon and you hadn’t exactly worked out once college forced you your separate ways.

It never would’ve worked anyway. You had long since gotten over him and you were friendly, but, like a broken bone, it would never quite be the same. You just tried to ignore the same flutter of excitement that Jimin gave you. But trust was important and right now, it just wasn’t there.

Jimin was a nice boy, you had seen him around. He was always the one to hold open the door, help you carry things when your hands were full, and the first to check in if you seemed gloomy.

He was a perfect angel. So you just had to trust that he could execute. Lisa rushed over with a water bottle, but upon finding you standing upright and looking only a little startled, she calmed down significantly.

“You guys should practice this move outside of class.” She instructed. “I’ll leave the keys in my office. Please just practice it, otherwise you’re going to give me a panic attack on stage.”

“Can’t we just...change it?” You suggested sheepishly. The woman looked appalled.

“No way, Y/N.” She said firmly. “I know it’s tough, but this is a good challenge. Besides, this is the most important part of the show.”

She continued on her rant and you didn’t want to interrupt so you stood quietly, nodding to her points.

“So, you see why you need to do this?”

“Yes, ma’am.” You dipped your head, having tuned out long ago.

Her hand landed softly on her shoulder. Her face was gentle, kind. She understood your hesitation.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have casted you if I didn’t think you could do it.” She said quietly and your pride swelled. With a proud smile, you watched her walk off to critique the others.

“Wanna continue working?” Jimin’s soft voice said. You turned, having almost forgotten he was there. You nodded.

“Yeah. Let’s get this thing down.”

You collapsed to the wooden floor, exhausted and disappointed in your lack of progress. So far, you’d practiced the same thing about 20 times. 10 of those he was too early, you were, sadly for your bottom, dropped five times and you had only managed to execute it five more times.

It wouldn’t be so worrying if those five times that worked were all together and at the end. Alas, they were spread out between your attempts and it felt like a guess and check sort of method. It was like you were gambling and Jimin was an elusive object, an uncertainty.

You wanted it to work so bad, you had no idea what had gotten into him. He was usually so level headed, picking up moves faster than you could even imagine. And yet, you were starting to lose faith, beginning to check if he would be there in time when you ran it through. Here he was now, collapsed on the ground beside you.

“I don’t know what’s going wrong.” He started after catching his breath.

There was a long pause, his voice bouncing off the walls. Your eyes remained trained on the white concrete ceiling. After a taxing day at practice, you often found your mind numb and incapable of forming coherent sentences. As frustrated as you were with him, it wasn’t like you could force him to be on time like a puppet master.

“Uh huh.” You drawled, taking a deep breath as you felt your adrenaline fading.

It was after dark, the fluorescent lights of the studio seeming just a little too bright. Your internal clock was fucked, especially considering the lack of windows.

“You alright? I’m sorry I dropped you, I swear I’ll continue practicing.”

“Continue practicing?” You sit up, running a hand through your sweaty hair. “Park Jimin, you’ve practiced a ton, with me and without me, we both know it.”

You took his silence as defeat. Jimin was the kind of person that worked until they dropped or their body gave in. He was a perfectionist, you could tell simply from observing him in class. So that got you thinking about...what if the issue laid within you? What if he was off because you were off?

There was also the possibility that you were messing with his timing by doing something off and he was worried about dropping you. You massaged the crease between your brows.

“Jimin, I think the issue lies inside your head.” You said. Then you groaned at the implication. “I mean, I just think you’re psyching yourself out. You can trust me to keep time, just focus on yourself.”

Jimin sat up as well. You both faced the mirror. You saw your sweaty and disheveled reflection, wincing at how messy you looked. His hair was sticking to his forehead and slicked at the sides with glistening sweat.

Yeah, you both looked horrid, but together you made quite the picture. You smiled a little at the thought and maintained eye contact with yourself in the mirror. In your peripheral, you saw him glance at your reflection.

“I know.” He said softly, steepling his fingers. He rested his elbows on his knees and remained looking in deep thought. “I don’t know, Y/N, I’m scared of letting you fall.”

“Then don’t.” You answered quickly.

Then you sighed and your eyes flicked to his in the mirror.

“I trust that you won’t let me fall. You don’t have anything to prove. Anyway, you’ve already dropped me like ten times...what harm can ten more do? As long as it’s not the performance, I’m fine with it.”

He nodded, rubbing at his forehead angrily. Jimin took in a shaky breath, feeling his eyes water a little.

“Why am I like this?” He said miserably. You remained silent.

“I don’t understand why I can’t just get it right. It’s not even that hard.” He whispered, his voice barely audible. The static of the room was suffocating, the air stale.

“Sometimes perfection is in the imperfections.” You said softly.

Your hand left your side and instead reached out to rub his back. You felt the heaving of his chest and the stutters of his breath.

You closed your eyes for a moment, thinking back to your practice. Yeah, it had been hard, even annoying, not knowing if he would catch you, but there had been little moments you could appreciate.

The brush of his skin on yours, the soft and apologetic smiles, the laugh that rang like a sweet bell. You had a lot to be thankful for in this practice. You got to see how Jimin worked, the way his brain behaved. There must be something that wasn’t clicking. You both knew that he was capable, more than capable.

You opened your eyes, letting your gaze move to him. He was still pulling himself together. Now, you had seen, quite literally, blood, sweat, and tears, shed in this dance room. You shifted to your side slightly and gently tugged him into a hug. He didn’t resist.

You held him for what felt like ages. The warmth of his body flush up against yours made your temperature rise. The room felt like it was getting hotter, but you knew it was just that he was clutching onto you like you were his last hope.

“Jimin, you’ve got to cut yourself some slack. Take it easy, okay love?” You said tenderly. “I’ll figure it out, just leave it to me.”

You listened to the music again, and once again, you were thrown off. You were sure you had figured out the issue, but you needed to double check. Again, the question of why would this throw off such a seasoned dancer? Came to mind. But, everyone had their weakness. You wrote down a few notes and then called up Jimin.

He picked up on the first ring.

“Yeah?”

“I think I may have figured out our small issue.”

“Oh?”

“Practice room A, 6:00 P.M.”

“Great, see you then.”

You paced, playing the music once more. Jimin sat on the wooden floor, his legs crossed and head tilted curiously. You paused the music that pulsed through the speakers.

“Do you hear it?” You demanded.

He just quirked an eyebrow, looking at you like you were a mad woman. And in his defense, it did look like that.

Your hair was a mess, strands flying in every direction, as you spoke to him. Your eyes were wide and alight, having figured out the issue. He slowly shook his head, watching your face turn to a scowl.

“Okay, well, here’s the issue,” You sniffed, placing your hands on your hips. “The time signature.”

He didn’t seem convinced so you continued on. You waved your hands like mad and in all honesty, it had been a while since you slept. You had always had awful time management skills.

“It’s in a 5/4 time signature, but your brain is trying to compensate by moving to what feels right; 4/4 or some multiple of two.” You explained. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice before.” You huffed, stopping your wild pacing to get a good look at his face.

The room was dimly lit after you burst in, complaining about the horrendous lighting first thing. He watched you, amused, but also his eyes alight with the epiphany.

“Wow! You’re a genius, I have no idea why I didn’t notice before!” He leapt to his feet and scooped you into an unexpected hug. You refused to let your cheeks heat up, but your heart was beating like crazy.

“Ah, it’s not a problem, you would’ve figured it out.” You said sheepishly. “You can...put me down now.”

“Oh...right.” He awkwardly cleared his throat, setting you down. “I don’t know, Y/N, you’re smart and I had...other things on my mind that distracted me.” He said vaguely, rubbing the back of his neck.

“Do I want to know?”

“You’ll find out.” His angelic face morphed into a sinful grin. You playfully shoved him, resulting in his overexaggerated protests.

“You’re such a dummy.” You chided, waltzing over to the ipod. “Now, let’s run it again.”

God, why were you sweating so much? Why were you so nervous? You had practiced the routines a million times, every step was memorized, every beat was ingrained in your very being.

There was no way in hell you should be getting stage fright. The applause of the crowd gave you pause, your heart leaping into your throat as the overture began. Lisa appeared on stage, giving a few words.

The Black Swan was a new performance, a spin on the classics.

Dressed in an inky black top with satin shorts, the swan makes her first appearance. In the kingdom of white swans, she is scorned, tossed aside. Her feathers are dirtied, her pride wounded.

You spun, extending your hands, letting the movement flow from your fingertips to the ceiling.

The swan comes across a large puddle of white clay one day, and in a desperate cry of anguish, slathers herself with the white clay, staining her feathers an angelic white, just like her peers. She’s considered beautiful, taken in by the villagers, who do not recognize it is her, and presented to the prince.

You curtseyed as the prince made his solo entrance.

The prince takes a liking to the white swan, yet every day leading up to the wedding, she must awake early and leave to cover herself in the clay. She can feel her facade crackling.

One day, she sneaks away, days before the wedding, and runs into another black swan.

Jimin appears on stage, leaping his way into the bushes and rolling in the metaphorical clay. He gingerly watches you.

She drops her handful of clay, surprised to see another black swan.

Day after day, long after the wedding, she returns to the puddle. And day after day, he greets her until she feels herself falling. The black swan is unsure of how to continue living her lie.

The two get into a disagreement. He protests, claiming he would love her with all his heart, the color of her feathers does not bother him. She calls him a liar and runs away, unable to allow him to see her vulnerable.

Again, the next day, they argue. The black swan cries, throwing herself into the clay to hide herself. He reaches out for her, she pulls away.

You ran around the raised platform, dread building. Yes, you were out of breath and running on fumes as the climax of the performance began, but you were more concerned about the trust fall.

Could you trust him? Your brain said no, your gut said yes.

The man reassures her that she should love herself, she should let herself be like him, be with him.

The music crescendos, building and sweeping the audience up in its loving arms. The suspense continues to a dizzying climax, the strings falling down the scale as you spun onto the platform.

You listened to your gut, taking a deep breath, and tipping backwards.

The swan falls into her lover’s arms, confessing herself, opening herself up to him.

You stared up at him. The bright lights casted a shadow over his beautiful features, but you could feel the rise and fall of his chest. His sparkling eyes peered into yours.

The swan is no longer alone. The swan has been caught and she can finally breathe easy. The worst is over, now it’s time to let her true colors show.

Want to try another path?

Go Back To The Beginning

#bts #bts x reader #fluff #Park Jimin #Jimin #Jimin x reader #PJM #PJM x reader #dancer!au #fragments of you #choose your own adventure #non idol au #amnesia au #PG #castlebangtan #bangtanuniversity #ficswithluv

28 notes · View notes

laurafrayz · 5 years ago

Text

it felt like an eternity

(i don’t ever say much, but sometimes it doesn’t take much, so maybe a trigger warning about depressing, abusive relationships goes here...)

the last post i made was october 2018. it feels like longer ago than that. i didn’t know i was still making attempts then, to faire semblant, to keep it all up. it feels like it’s been years since i was ok, since i was creative, since i was alive. i’m not kidding, i dramatize things for the sake of the art, make it sound more astounding or profound. but this needs no talking up. all i felt anymore was the crushing weight of perpetual loss. that’s what happens when you love someone who doesn’t love you back. when they say they do, and you decide to believe them, because you want to be loved, but then they show you a thing that no one should mistake for caring. no one should accept that kind of love. but you do, for so many reasons that are all mistakes. they lie to you every time they tell you they love you, and you lie to yourself every time you accept it, every time you convince yourself that better isn’t out there anywhere. you start to believe that if this person loves you, and this is how they treat you, then this is how you deserve to be treated. you start to believe that this is all you’re worth. and you believe that somehow everything that goes wrong is your fault. so if you can somehow be better, you can fix this. or you recall who they were when they first wooed you, and you just keep waiting for that to come back.

i lied to myself so hard i was so desperate i was so destroyed

because i wanted to believe in love, see. i wanted it so very badly. and i didn’t believe that love was perfect or beautiful or easy. i believed that it was hard work. so no matter how hard it got, i thought, i can handle this. this is just the rough patch we get through, we come out of it stronger together. but we weren’t in it together. he wasn’t in it with me. i told myself i could suffer through anything for the person i loved, until i wondered how long you were supposed to keep doing that. i believed very hard, that love survives anything and everything, if you are determined enough. But i was running on empty, everything in me desert dry. (well, no, i cried all the time). i told myself i could not leave him because he needed me. because i wanted to be the one person in the world who refused to give up on him, so he could have something to believe in too. i told myself i could never love anyone else. i didn’t want to be alone again. (even though i was, either way). i didn’t want to think of trying to fall in love again. i didn’t think i could handle it ever again. because if this is love, love tears you up. i told myself i couldn’t even be attracted to anyone else. feel anything for anyone else. i told myself that even if i tried to find a new love, it would turn out just like this one, because this is love, this is what always happens to it. and this is the love i deserve, i can’t hope for better. if i found better it would be out of my league, and it would leave me.

i was wrecked. i was depressed. i was anxious all the time. i laid on the floor and never wanted to move again. didn’t think i was even physically capable of getting back up, i would just lay there until I died. i wanted to self destruct. i wanted everything to be over. but i didn’t want to have to be the one to pull the trigger. i wished one of us would just die, except not really, i was totally losing my mind. he was incapable of being there for me, incapable of feeling, incapable of coherent conversation. he was conscious a few hours out of a day, he was cruel, he was dangerous. and i was afraid for his downward spiral, his recovery, his ruin, his losing everything, his death. i lived constantly afraid. and constantly questioning why. why him, why me, why i could do nothing about it, why he chose to do nothing about it, why i was never enough.

friends and family begged me to get out. i watched opportunities pass me by, even when they lingered extra long to give me a really good chance. i could not do it. every time i said, i choose to believe in him, i choose to believe in love, in someday, i can wait. i adjusted, acclimated to ever more pain, fear, disappointment. i was hurt, angry, confused, unstable. friends and family started giving me space. lots of space. i was hard to be around. i lost people who really loved me, waiting for someone who never would. he had made it very clear. but i did not want to accept it. besides, he still told me he did. it took talking it out with a psychiatrist. hearing myself confess everything, all of my fears to a totally neutral listener. the biggest hitch being that if i gave up on this, i would be giving up on love, and i wanted so badly to believe that love could survive anything and everything, and if i left i would be admitting that it couldn’t. that love really does just go away eventually, inevitably. she pointed to all of the red flags. she pointed to all of the lack of love. until i could admit that i wouldn’t be giving up on love at all, if it wasn’t there. i had clung very, very hard to potential. a potential future. his potential. the love we could have had, should have had, if he had come back around. i was afraid of losing things that did not exist. i was afraid of losing things i had already lost a long time ago. how long do you wait, before you realize it’s never coming back.

for me, until you are absolutely, completely destroyed and can’t feel anything anymore. until they finally cross that one line you can’t forgive, because you will never feel safe with them again. and then you tell them it’s over and they say no. and then it gets even more complicated. they try to find ways to run you down even more somehow, so you won’t even be capable of leaving. but you’ve got your convictions, and your therapist now, and you drag yourself through to the end, that he keeps dragging out. the attacks on you, on your family, privately and publicly. the attacks from him, and his family, who never even knew you. they call you worthless. they call you weak. they call you a whore. they say you will never be loved. they say it was all your fault. that you are toxic and you will destroy everyone who ever tries to love you. they say things that were already creeping doubts inside of you, so that your fear finds them believable. reality becomes totally lost.

i was traumatized. i lost reality, i lost friends, i lost my ‘love’, i lost myself. and i could not find it in me to believe in anything anymore. that things might be ok again someday. that love might exist and i could have it. that i was worth anything at all. that there were still people who existed who cared about me, genuinely, not just pitied me. i was building back up from nothing. maybe less than that. for the first time in my life i was having legitimate anxiety attacks. and so many things were triggers. i was afraid they would start ruining my life, i was a performer, a teacher, i needed to be able to operate under pressure. and then, of course, i found myself, and still do find myself, sometimes, terrified of men. they are not safe. i cannot breathe around them. they cannot be trusted.

it’s been about a year. a year and maybe a couple of months, and i feel tentative like a turtle or a snail, very slowly coming back out after you’ve poked it. i slowly re-collected parts of me. i believe in good things. i hope. i dance and sing and draw. and i almost write again. i meet people. and i believe that they are good. and i feel more like me, and believing in me too. and i have someone who says love to me, gently, like he knows i’m a forest creature that’ll spook at foreign sounds. i find it impossible to think about the future, or love on a long term scale. i find it difficult to fathom why anyone would love me at all. but i am learning to accept it again.

i never imagined i would be taking time to heal from something so honestly, profoundly devastating. (and that even this gives me an impostor syndrome, like my hurt is not as big as anyone else’s, so i should not be so affected).

what i mean is. please don’t ever let it happen to you. with all of my heart, and every fiber of me. i hope that you always know how much you are worth, and what you deserve. that you will not settle, or suffer. that you know what love is, and when it has left, and where to draw the line, before it gets so late. that you can be a romantic, but some things should not be romanticized. please, please, don’t let anyone run you down, or steal everything from you. destroy you, and steal you from yourself. please only give your all to people who will not abuse it. please let yourself be cherished, supported, appreciated...

1 note · View note

spoilerandalert-blog · 8 years ago

Text

Case Study: Adam Curtis

Context: released on 16 October 2016 on the BBC iPlayer in the political climate of Brexit, the rise of Trump and the persisting turmoil surrounding the events in the Arab World.

Reception: IMDb rating: 8.3/10, received praised reviews from the Guardian (1 & 1) and the Independent (1).

The Hollywood Reporter warned its readers that “it remains highly debatable how much of this counter-historical narrative is demonstrably true and how much is pure conspiratorial smoke and mirrors,” tried to diminish its documentary value through an emphasis on its work-of-art qualities such as powerful audio-visual style, and even made an unnecessary and nonsensical comparison of Curtis’s figure to that of Donald Trump: “A singular figure in modern filmmaking, Adam Curtis would not enjoy being likened to Donald Trump, but there are some crucial parallels. He may be maddening, arrogant and highly subjective, but he is never boring.”

James Delingpole of the Spectator wrote a very hate-driven review mocking Curtis’s figure (yet not particularly criticising the film) where, first and foremost, he offers a YouTube video of “Ben Woodhams’s brilliant 2011 Adam Curtis-pastiche mini-documentary The Loving Trap” for his readers.

The Little White Lies posted an article that questioned the ethics of Curtis’s “shady tactics,” compared the filmmaker to Henry Kissinger, and wished Curtis was more like “Patricio Guzmán, Mark Rappaport and... the late Chris Marker” - arguably, figures of highbrow documentary culture.

Method (and why?): The majority of negative reviews seem to ignore the activist function of HyperNormalisation, except James Delingpole -- who through a quotation of Ben Woodham’s mini-doc acknowledges but then mocks Curtis’s activist ambitions: “Adam Curtis believed that 200,000 Guardian readers watching BBC2 could change the world. But this was a fantasy. In fact, he had created the televisual equivalent of a drunken late-night Wikipedia binge with pretentions to narrative coherence…” The film is highly accessible through its release on the BBC iPlayer and unsolicited redistribution on YouTube by private channels. In the light of this wide accessibility, HyperNormalisation is not akin protected and cherished “works of art” but a work of activist media practice aimed to reach the biggest number of audience possible. As Christopher Hooton from Independent writes: “If your various news feeds present a reality you don’t recognise, and scrolling through them leaves you desensitised, this documentary goes some way in offering the explanation you’ve been seeking.” It is an educational piece, an informative lecture with entertaining elements designed to sustain viewers’ attention, and the story put together functions as a tool to deliver more abstract messages to its audience - not force-feed indisputable facts.

Questions raised: Do we have a vision for an alternative future? In a post-political society, are politicians still a useful target for grassroots organisations trying to achieve change? What do we do with the media? Is it alright to try and escape from the political and social turmoil to our safe URL bubbles, or is it just a trap?

Ethics: Due to its educational activism the film, in truth, does not present the audience with the hidden complexity of each issue, each building block of the counter-historical narrative. It also leaves little room for the multiplicity of interpretations: viewers do not get the raw information, but the information that is processed, cut and tightly fit into the narrative --- hence, the filmmaker does most of the assessment for the viewer. The Little White Lies pointed that out, as well as Curtis’s questionable use of a video clip of girls dancing to a hip-hop song: “this clip feels like it’s been included as something to laugh at, a rather caustic and disagreeable attempt at comedy rather than an honest depiction of humanity at play.”

Relation to culture and technology: Thanks to the streaming platforms, such as BBC iPlayer and YouTube, web users are able to access Adam Curtis’s research and consume it in an accessible form of an entertaining essay film. Through the repetitive use of images of violence in HyperNormalisation Adam Curtis proves our desensitisation -- I am sure many people, in the same way as I, were able to peacefully nibble on snacks while staring at footage filled with blood, death, and suffering (to our defence the film is 3 hr long).

My project: The documentary addresses the subject I wish to explore in my project: escapism, numbing and avoidance. The film informed me about these issues, as well as posed a viable question: “what is the point of waking my audience up? what am I agitating them to do?” as in many ways the current state of democracy denies any real power to the active subjects and politics are being proved incapable of changing the world.

At the same time, the medium and approaches of my project are different from Adam Curtis’s. HyperNormalisation exists online (in private/domestic spaces) and communicates the message through a straightforward lecture-like text. I am hoping to make an intervention into public spaces and do it through art, as opposed to didactic verbal discourse.

Episodes or quotes I found particularly useful and striking:

1. Archive video of Patti Smith describing people in NY who would watch Z on the little screens near construction sites “they have no dough, but it’s some entertainment” 2. Ideas of new radicalism of the 1980s where former radicals retreated to artistic work, trying to change what’s inside people heads (and not the outside world) 3. Term hypernormalisation and its origins: 1980s Soviet Union where “everybody knew that whatever their leaders were saying was not true” yet everybody had to play along and pretend that the fake vision/version was real. 4. “Perception management” programme -- the political construction of the fictional world, blurring of fact and fiction where reality was something to be manipulated and shaped into whatever you want it to be. 5. The montage of Jane Fonda as a symbol for the new system where trying to change the world is too difficult and the only thing left to control was your body. People are still craving for stability and reassurance, and the drugs like Prozac provide a medical solution. And that’s another way population’s perception can be altered. Moreover, in the age of individualism, having themselves reflected back to them (social media as a mirror) also made people feel secure. 6. Frequent use of the term “complexities of the world” and how we protect ourselves from them 7. Disillusionment and lack of belief in politics, pessimism in regards to dark uncertainties about the future. 8. Surkov turning POLITICS INTO A STRANGE THEATER where nobody knew what was true and what was false any longer (using avant-garde theatre ideas)... “unstoppable because it’s indefineable,” “constant state of destabilised perception” 9. Trump defeating journalism

#week 2 #case study #adam curtis

0 notes

juniorkoyama · 3 years ago

Text

How this blog came about

To be completely honest, I am incredibly hesitant to even write this post. Even now, I am quite literally debating whether or not to erase this and change subjects. I have to consciously force my fingers to type these words. But I made a promise to post at least once per day, and I have not had the time or inspiration to churn out a bulk production of material as of yet. So, as the digits on my monitor tick steadily closer to the midnight deadline of a new calendar day, I find myself at a loss as to subject matter. A couple of hours ago, I toyed with the idea of casually letting just this one day slide. “I can make it up tomorrow by posting twice...”. But a promise is a promise and I made the promise of posting daily in order to better myself and in the hopes of making writing (something I have always been attracted to, and feel fairly capable of) into a habit. As I was simultaneously persuading and dissuading myself in regards to posting today, I found myself wanting for subject matter. Nothing seemed fun, inspiring, intriguing. So, I thought, maybe I should just provide a little background on myself and how I found myself in this situation.

The quick version (I promise I will post more on this and elaborate heavily in the future, think of this as an introduction) is that I absolutely hate to appear vulnerable, show weakness, or feel incapable. I also despise using any disability or setback as a crutch and an excuse to not be the best you can be, and to not accomplish what you want in life. The reality is that over the past 5 to 6 years I have felt an ever increasing presence of all those things which perturb me, as well as much other pain and hardship. You see, on my 33rd birthday, I was finally diagnosed (after several years of unknown and ever increasing physical ailments, and waning physical performance) with Late Stage Lyme Disease, which becomes known as Chronic Lyme Disease or Post Treatment Lyme Disease Syndrome if the symptoms continue to persist one year or longer after antibiotic treatment.

Before becoming infected with borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria which is responsible for Lyme Disease, I was carving out a career in the restaurant industry. I hesitate to say “I was a chef”, because that term is thrown around all too often and far too gratuitously. I got my first restaurant job at the age of 17 as a dishwasher, and moved my way up through the ranks (not at the same establishment, but through many different restaurants) to eventually be a lead cook. I attended and graduated from Le Cordon Bleu with a degree in Culinary Arts. I then worked at several other restaurants and held various positions, from Prep Cook to Sous Chef, and eventually opened my own food business. Notice, at no point have I even said I was a ‘Chef‘... yes, I held a couple of positions as Sous Chef, but, in case you are wondering, or perhaps do not know, CHEF is a position, a title, an earned demarcation which entails lots of blood, sweat and tears, and it denotes a certain element of respect within the restaurant community. So, yes, I have held a position as a chef, but I am not a chef. I unapologetically state, right here and now, that it is a personal pet peeve of mine when ‘Chef’ is thrown around willy-nilly. I know, many people do it because they think they are being respectful or polite, and some companies call all cooks ‘Chefs’ in order to.... well I don’t really know why, except maybe to make their company seem more prestigious than it really is? Perhaps this is a skewed and negative perception, perhaps it is the truth. At any rate, if you are someone who calls anyone in the professional kitchen ‘Chef’ please refrain from now on, as it is not as respectful as you perhaps intend, and likely makes you seems much less knowledgeable than you surely are. Don’t worry, there will be plenty more rants and raves about restaurant industry happenings in the future of this blog, so, if it is something you enjoy, stay tuned!

I digress, and to bring things back round to the crux, I was a career restaurant employee, and it is a highly demanding job, physically, mentally and temporally. To sum things up (as I said earlier, I will elaborate on everything in much more detail in upcoming posts), I ended up having to routinely quit new cooking jobs after only a few months, sometimes only a couple days weeks, of work. I became worried about my health, as it felt like I had the flu (minus the gastrointestinal issues) for nearly two whole years, and it had taken a toll on my physical, mental and emotional well being. It certainly didn’t do anything positive for my résumé either. I didn’t have health insurance, and was quickly finding it difficult to pay my bills. Finally things got to the point that I was unemployed and essentially bed ridden due to chronic fatigue and constant peripheral neuropathy - you know, that fun feeling of all your nerves and muscles constantly burning. I found this particular peculiarity highly intriguing, and it got me to researching possible diagnoses of my symptoms (self diagnosing is NEVER a good idea, just don’t do it... seriously, don’t... you’ll make things far worse than they really are) and set me on a quest to obtain consistent medical evaluation for the uninsured and broke. Eventually I came across a clinic which met these criteria, and I ended up telling my physician that I basically felt like I always had the flu, and that my muscles always burned. The best way I could describe this was being akin to when you are doing a heavy toning workout lifting weights, and you near the end of your final set, when your muscles literally feel like they are on fire and you push through those last, glorious few reps which make you feel so incredibly accomplished. It turns out, as a matter of fact, that there is a very specific biological reasoning to this highly descriptive feeling of this very specific symptom of Lyme Disease.

And so there were many schedulings of appointments at various places, I was insanely fortunate to get an absolutely incredible medical team who actually wanted to get to the root of my problems and figure this thing out. After three rounds of blood work, for a total of 10 vials of blood, and several months (all heavily laden with doctor’s appointments) of waiting for results, I got the diagnosis. It was a bittersweet discovery, on the one hand it felt great because now there was a course of action to combat a known enemy, on the other hand it was almost worse than not knowing, because so little is known on a clinical level regarding the treatment of Late Stage Lyme Disease.

You see, most Lyme Disease cases are diagnosed within 3-6 months of contraction. If this is the case, a short course of antibiotics and a small bit of follow up evaluation, and Bob’s your uncle, you’re back to your old self. If, however, you remain infected and undiagnosed for years rather than months, well, then the bacteria really wreak havoc on your body and play a little game of their own called “your symptoms are gonna go ahead and persist even after you kill us”. So, basically, even after diagnosis and treatment, I am still unable to function ‘normally’, as I used to. I am unable to work a ‘normal’ job like a ‘normal’ person. I can’t be relied on to show up for scheduled shifts or appointments with any sort or regularity due to my continuing symptoms. I had to figure out something to do with my life to give it purpose again.

Writing is something I have always enjoyed, it’s been something that I have always found a comfortable creative outlet, and it has steadily rode sidecar in my brain throughout my life; constantly, though gently, pushing me to dedicate myself to it in one way or another while my conscious brain made all sorts of excuses why I shouldn’t pursue it. After a bit of thought, and a few brainstorms of various writing avenues, I decided to start this blog. I like the idea of the freedom it offers. I don’t have to write about only one thing for any length of time or number of characters, which is ideal because I love learning and sharing knowledge about so many things. I don’t even have to stick to one style of writing, and can fill in posts with pictures and other media if fitting (or if I’m lazy!).

I thank you for bearing with me for this bit of a ramble. I usually am very disciplined about editing my work, I hate for anything to go out with errors. Today is an exception. As I finish writing this, my mind is clouded, I am about twice as tired and sore as I was an hour ago when I began this post, my forearms are burning and I find it increasingly difficult to keep track, keep course, and stay on topic in any sort of coherent and naturally flowing fashion. My vocabulary steadily declines, and my focus diminishes. I normally read through and re edit anything I write which meets another persons eyes with dogged determination so as to present my best possible work. I re-read through for continuity and flow, check for grammatical, syntactical and punctuation errors. I am my own worst enemy when it comes to proof reading an editing. But, as I said a bit ago, today is an exception as I feel the Lyme Disease winning this fight. I want to go on, to clarify points, to expand on particular events, it takes all my self restraint to NOT proof read and edit, but there will be plenty of time and opportunities for all of this later. I know this post is a bit of incohesive and semi- stream of consciousness writing. But thank you for reading, and, hopefully, not judging too harshly. Enjoy this rarity of unedited spew of speech placed in to text, for I am not going to read back through or edit this before posting. Hopefully I do not read it back tomorrow in a pool of regret, but c’est la vie, non?

Junior

0 notes

maxwellyjordan · 6 years ago

Text

Tribute: Justice Kennedy’s genius

Michael C. Dorf is Robert S. Stevens Professor of Law at Cornell Law School. He served as a law clerk to Justice Kennedy during the October 1991 term.

During the course of over three decades on the Supreme Court, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy appeared to be the most important jurist in the country and, at least with respect to hot-button domestic policy questions, maybe even the most important government official in the country. He either wrote the key opinion or cast the decisive vote to strike down laws on abortion, affirmative action, corporate-funded political speech, the death penalty, gay rights (including marriage), gun control, school prayer, states’ rights and more. Justice Kennedy has been so central to the contemporary understanding of the Constitution that it was big news when, in the 2012 decision mostly upholding the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, Chief Justice John Roberts rather than Justice Kennedy cast the deciding vote. The case was the exception that proved the rule, and the rule has been the rule of Justice Kennedy.

Or at least so it might appear. The reality is somewhat complicated.

Justice Kennedy (Art Lien)

Professional basketball player Shaquille O’Neal was a notoriously poor free-throw shooter, but, he used to say in his own defense, “I make them when they count.” What he meant was that late in the fourth quarter, with the game on the line, he was a reliable free-throw shooter. That wasn’t really true, which is why the NBA changed its rules regarding intentional fouls in response to the “Hack-a-Shaq” strategy that opposing coaches had deployed to exploit the big man’s weakness. Still, even if Shaq were right and he had been a generally mediocre free-throw shooter who rose to the occasion in the clutch, his argument would have been flawed, because they all count. The final score of a basketball game reflects the points each team puts on the scoreboard over the course of the entire game.

So too with the Supreme Court. A majority comprises five justices. They all count. When observers would say that Justice Kennedy cast the deciding fifth vote in this or that case, they were taking the other four votes for granted. But those other four votes counted too. In any given case in which Justice Kennedy has been in the majority, he was no more responsible for the outcome than the other justices with whom he joined.

To be sure, we understand why court-watchers focus on Justice Kennedy. From his appointment through Justice Sandra Day O’Connor’s retirement in 2005, he was one of two “median justices,” and since 2005 he was the only median justice. With the rest of the Supreme Court split evenly among generally reliable conservative and generally reliable liberal justices, it made sense to treat the justice(s) in the middle as pivotal.

Yet even that account oversimplifies. On many issues, Justice Kennedy had quite firm views, so much so that observers should have taken his vote for granted. For example, on free speech questions, he may well have been the most libertarian justice in the Supreme Court’s history. Meanwhile, it cannot have been a coincidence that Justice Kennedy authored the majority opinion in each of the four landmark decisions protecting liberty and equality for gay and lesbian Americans. Those assignments, and the way in which Justice Kennedy fulfilled them, speak to his firm convictions on these matters.

That is not to deny that there were questions Justice Kennedy found difficult or that some of his firm convictions happened to be roughly midway between the equally firm convictions of his colleagues to his right and to his left. It is simply to say that anyone who thinks that Justice Kennedy was generally a kind of jurisprudential wild card cannot have carefully studied his record.

Nor would anybody who knows Justice Kennedy the man describe him as mercurial. I got to know Justice Kennedy when I served as one of his four law clerks in the October 1991 term. He did not relish, but neither did he recoil from, the power he and his colleagues exercised over the nation.

Justice Kennedy was also comfortable exercising power in chambers. He was a gentle boss, who never raised his voice or made unreasonable demands — which is not to say that he did not demand top-quality work of himself and his staff. He respected tradition, but also valued a certain kind of informality. One of his work habits illustrates the point.

As a law clerk on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, I had grown accustomed to writing bench memoranda on the cases for which I was tasked to assist. As the Supreme Court term began, Justice Kennedy told us law clerks that he didn’t want bench memos, because he would read the briefs himself. We were to compile loose-leaf notebooks containing the most relevant Supreme Court precedents for each case. Justice Kennedy also instructed us to make audio recordings of our thoughts so he could listen to them on his drive into work each morning. That should have been easy for me. After all, I had been an extemporaneous debater in college. Yet I was flummoxed by this assignment. For some reason, sitting at my desk alone, I could not just talk into a microphone. I solved the problem, I thought, by writing a short bench memo and then recording myself reading it. That was not what Justice Kennedy wanted, but he was too kind to tell me as much, so he asked me if instead of making recordings I could just talk to him about the cases. I readily agreed, although it meant that he would gleefully pepper me with tough questions as I talked. To this day, I model my Socratic teaching on the kinds of questions he asked.

Justice Harry A. Blackmun, who was counsel for the Mayo Clinic before becoming a judge, almost became a doctor rather than a lawyer. I have sometimes wondered what career path Justice Kennedy would have followed had he not been a successful lawyer, then judge, then justice. Politics would have been a possibility. He can work a room, he can give a heck of an after-dinner speech, and he was a successful lobbyist in California. His moderately conservative libertarianism would have made him a formidable candidate for governor of his home state and then perhaps even the presidency.

In yet another parallel universe, Justice Kennedy would have been a high-school history or civics teacher. Seeing him as a teacher does not require any great act of imagination. Both before and after becoming a justice, he taught constitutional law at the McGeorge School of Law in Sacramento and at the school’s summer program in Salzburg, Austria. Justice Kennedy especially enjoys talking to still-younger audiences. He can boil an issue down to its core without dumbing it down.

In a sense, Justice Kennedy was a teacher even in his role as a justice. His critics sometimes point to those of his opinions that do not strictly conform to hornbook categories as evidence of a kind of sloppiness or even lawlessness. In Romer v. Evans, Justice Kennedy wrote for the Supreme Court that a Colorado ballot initiative stripping localities of the power to protect gays and lesbians against sexual orientation discrimination “defies” the conventional threshold equal protection inquiry into whether a law triggers heightened scrutiny. The provision’s “sheer breadth,” he wrote, “is so discontinuous with the reasons offered for it that the amendment seems inexplicable by anything but animus toward the class that it affects.” Critics, including the dissenters, pointed out that under conventional rational basis scrutiny, courts do not inquire into the actual motives of lawmakers. They asked what was wrong with animus anyway, so long as it was not based on an invidious classification.

Was Justice Kennedy incapable of applying the doctrinal framework? Hardly. He is a master of legal classification. During my clerkship, as Passover approached, I asked Justice Kennedy whether he would be willing to “purchase” my bread products (“chametz”) in keeping with a Jewish tradition. He had never encountered this practice before and, after happily agreeing, began a discussion of the fine distinction between legal formalities and legal fictions. I do not remember all of the details, but I am sure they involved the sale of Blackacre for a peppercorn.

What Justice Kennedy’s critics miss about those of his opinions that operate outside of the doctrinal pigeonholes is his understanding of the Supreme Court’s role as expositor of the nation’s fundamental values. Sometimes it is important for the court to draw fine distinctions for lower courts to apply. At other times, however, the People are the primary audience for the court’s rulings. Justice Kennedy’s most important opinions spoke directly to the People.

The message he conveyed was simple but potent. Professor Ronald Dworkin famously argued that, contrary to a commonly held view, liberty and equality, each properly conceived, do not conflict. Justice Kennedy did not go quite that far. He recognized that life and law sometimes present tragic choices. Still, his work on the Supreme Court gestured in Dworkin’s direction in reconciling liberty and equality, indeed, in recognizing, as he put it in Obergefell v. Hodges, a “synergy” between the two.

“The Framers split the atom of sovereignty,” Justice Kennedy famously wrote in a 1995 concurrence praising the “genius” of federalism as a means for serving and protecting the People. His own genius is the mirror image. In his opinions reconciling liberty, equality, and other core values, Justice Kennedy fused the nuclei of disparate constitutional elements into a coherent whole.

The post Tribute: Justice Kennedy’s genius appeared first on SCOTUSblog.

from Law http://www.scotusblog.com/2018/06/tribute-justice-kennedys-genius/ via http://www.rssmix.com/

#law #justice

0 notes