Neighborly Covid

This was going to be the occasional writing amnesty dump to start the year (it may still be, let’s see what my mood is by the end of the document!)...

 

Hi! I’m alive! Most of my family is still alive. My maternal grandfather died earlier this month from Covid complications. One uncle has it, but last I heard, he’s recovering. A couple of other family members are very ill and refuse to get tested. The family grapevine tells me someone is taking Ivermectin.

 

I don’t wish to spend any more of my life play-acting at my own emotions – these things grieve me. I’m not angry or scornful, I’m barely even confused. Parts of my family live lives I hardly understand, so I don’t get surprised when they make choices I wouldn’t make. 

 

Given the United States is at one million new diagnosed cases of COVID-19 a day and taking few measures to slow that down in any significant way, perhaps you’d be interested in trying on the mindset I’ve been wearing for a while, dear reader:

 

There will be no “return” to “normal”. Covid is our neighbor, and it’s never moving away. More significantly, there is nowhere you or I could move that would count as “away,” either. (This applies to vaccines and viruses, but it also applies to things like trash, borders, people. There is ultimately no such thing as “away” in this life.) I do not mean it’s time to get a case of the “fuck it”s and give up – I mean it’s time to stop doing breath-by-breath coping skills and think about longer-term strategies to live actual lives that have pleasure and connection in them and to have realistic expectations about what that looks like when seen through the lens of safety in actual reality. 

 

Regardless of what we thought we needed before, we have each other now.

 

My former neighbor has started a newsletter about low-key prepping, and the most recent one included a link to this gdoc from March 2020 that is itself so full of information and other resources that really, you could spend at least a week in a hyperfocus tornado and still not be done. Also, March 2020 was a ride, and I could only read about a quarter of that doc before I had to tap out for my mental health. Take your time; part of my point is that survival is an endurance race, not a sprint.

 

With wearing a KF94 so much of the time (I thought quitting my job on the ambulance at the end of February would mean less time with heavy-duty masks! And I did appreciate the periods when it was safe not to be doing that.) I lose a lot of sensory perception via smells, which is a bummer because I love how green and fresh Portland smells, block by block, year-round. I’ve taken to getting candles and just leaving them open to perfume the house and wearing cologne high up on my neck so I can smell it a little inside my mask to compensate. (I don’t burn candles or incense indoors; I’ve been a weirdo about indoor air quality for a while, and I’m genuinely excited that attention to what we breathe when we’re inside may be a long-term learning to come from Covid joining our ecosystem.) The brain gets a lot of information (translation: joy) from smelling, so I try to feed my brain some of the stuff that’s getting lost by protecting my airway with a mask.

 

The other significant thing I want to mention is that after over seven years, my writer’s block is gone. I won’t share the story of how; I’ll just say that I’m finishing up a little zine of poetry (poetry! Of all things!) that’ll ideally be ready to go in February. (It’s love poetry, so that seems like appropriate timing.) It’s not even about whether it’s any good or not, I’m just so relieved to be producing any work again at all. You can follow me on Instagram for the quickest announcement about when and how to buy that once it's available.

 

In fits and starts, I also occasionally did manage to manufacture opinions about popular culture and then write them down, because I’m still me. Here are my journal notes, in reverse order and unedited. Enjoy, and welcome to 2022, the only time available for us to live. As a rather cranky Buddhist friend of mine likes to say, you could be peaking right now.

 

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In other news, went and saw the new Edgar Wright. New-ish, I never see anything new. It fell apart at the end the way almost all supernatural horror does…why does everyone insist on there being a “real” reason for things, why deflate all magic and psychological tension from the story. But other than that it was decent, although it was never going to be as good as the opening shot, riffing on the James Bond opening but with a girl in a dress made of newspapers. As a metaphor for dissociation, it was much more effective than as the plot it told, I kept waiting for the twist to be that everything had happened to her and she’d created the time travel as a way to keep herself separate from the experiences…you know, *actual* reality. But that’s stranger than what audiences will accept. Better make it a serial killer. Yawn.

 

I also saw House of Gucci a while back, and if I can even set aside that it just made me lonelier…although I think that’s part of it – I don’t quite understand the reaction I’ve seen from other people. There’s a sweetness and genuineness throughout the film, the script, the performances, it wasn’t camp or kitsch or smirkingly over the top for the most part. I’ve thought about it and what soured it for me was the clashing moments that felt, at the time, false because they were so unmodulated. Al Pacino’s frenetic paper signing, for one example (but there are many). But given that the whole film was beautifully constructed (I didn’t look at my watch once for two and a half goddamn hours…that almost never happens anymore…for that alone, how can I bring myself to complain about a single thing about a movie, my god, shame on me), these were clearly intentional choices, I have to credit Ridley Scott for asking of them from the actors and choosing these takes to put in the film. So then I’m left with why. I’m curious how this film’s reception will age, and what it will be like to watch it when the aura of the performers isn’t (over)shadowing the story being told, and when we haven’t all been going through something that will become a unit in a high school history class. And I think about the fact that humans are shitty actors when we’re in extremis (we scream all our lines), and that sometimes it’s preferable to go for the interesting take not the “realistic” one, because that’s what brings out the uncanny, the deeper truth, the thing that stays with the audience because it’s inside the audience. I don’t know that I enjoyed House of Gucci, but it has stayed with me, because it was already inside me.

—

 

I really like The Green Knight. I’ve seen it twice so far. Some loose notes: I’m watching a film, which is a story. Shortly into the film, Arthur calls for someone to tell a story. We see Gawain’s mother doing the work to create the Green Knight -- the character but also the script that accompanies him -- and he appears before Arthur and his court. Guinevere reads the Green Knight’s invitation to the game -- created by Gawain’s mother, at the behest of Arthur -- and Gawain accepts and plays, badly. 

 

Throughout the film the little interstitials of Gawain’s story -- the puppet show, the painted murals -- which both show what is assumed will happen (Gawain dying) but also don’t necessarily exist literally within the world of the film -- they are stories in the film telling the same story we are watching, the story of Gawain as it unfolds, which we are watching unfold.

 

Gawain’s insistence that he doesn’t need to do anything further after playing the Christmas game, despite seeming to feel unfulfilled by his daily life and disconnected from those around him -- to me this works as a metaphor for the frustration experienced when we refuse to engage with art. The film itself tells us and shows us how to find something inside the self through experiencing works of art: it is in the seeking. It is a wider general metaphor as well for life experiences, but it feels especially elegant to have a film adaptation of a very old story, focusing it to be about the transformative potential of storytelling upon the listener when the listener is willing. 

 

At one point when Gawain is hanging out during An Exchange of Winnings, he’s wearing what is basically a velvety faux chain mail sweatshirt, and of all the costumes, that might be my favorite in terms of “ways to dress the dude up like a knight while making it super clear he absolutely is not at all a knight and is instead a poser”. I also, like everyone else, adore the yellow cloak, although more because Gawain is a coward and yellow is a really, really obvious color choice for that. 

 

It’s not a subtle movie! I appreciate that the film is very clear and straightforward but is not at all heavy-handed or spoon-feeding information to the viewer. It just shows you what is going on and expects the viewer to use your goddamn brain to put that information together in your head.

 

Back to the color, given that “Green” is in the title, I deeply appreciate the spectrum of yellows and blues.

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Notes on The Expanse season 1

 

One of the things I like best is the title, which isn’t so much about a particular fact or feature of the world of the show, but about the larger theme of the show, and also the engine that drives the show’s plot forward (and is also the metaphor/future-casting activity that the show is using to comment on contemporary society). If it was more literal, I think the show would be called The Decay, as that is the inevitable conclusion of imperialist, capitalist expansion, and is the actual setting of the show (and our present). 

 

Everyone I’ve ever seen talk about the show mentioned that season one was slow and that the show got better in season two, but I very much liked season one, although it started to stumble in the last few episodes in some ways that, based on what I’ve seen from the first episode of season two, I’m unsure whether they’re aberrations or signs of things to come. The first twenty minutes of episode nine that gave me no new information and just rehashed everything the viewer had already concluded from the single shot of Julie Mao’s dead body at the end of episode eight...that was insulting to have to sit through. If I wanted to watch something that assumed I was on my phone the whole time and half paying attention, or as if I couldn’t keep track of a plot, I’d watch, well, just about anything popular. So much of everything is so goddamn awful.

 

Anyway, the other glaring problem is the writers slipping into the misapprehension that putting a man and a woman in proximity to each other several times is the same thing as doing any sort of work to develop sexual or romantic tension between the characters. Part of this is an error in casting; the actor playing Holden is like the human equivalent of a chemical neutralizer, he makes every scene he’s in less dynamic just by being there, it’s sort of fascinating to watch. The character as written has a really juicy backstory and they’ve got him making interesting choices all over the place and yet I do not find him or whatever he’s grappling with compelling. (Meanwhile, everyone else he’s surrounded by is deeply interesting, even when they’re unlikable; I cannot stand Alex as a type of person but his actor makes him magnetic.) Ending the season by putting Holden in so many scenes with Miller really threw the disparity in acting ability into stark relief...just yikes. But back to the problem at hand -- I’m never going to especially like a show that does Compulsive Heterosexuality to interesting women characters, especially not right after they’ve had to give a speech to the boring white guy about how much more comfortable they are letting said boring white guy be in charge. It felt like character assassination and Naomi deserved far better. She went from being the de facto boss of everyone to explicitly telling Miller she didn’t like being in charge? And then fucking him?? Because…????????

 

Does season two end with a reveal that this Naomi is a protomaterial clone thing, because I would find that more plausible.

 

There are other things that felt “off” -- Holden’s mom’s weird “sure we’re a poly commune *but I’m his real mom because my uterus*” speech to the UN undersecretary; the casting of the UN undersecretary...she’s such a good actress and I’m really enjoying her performance, and I love every sari she wears, but it’s just so weird to have the most Iranian woman in the world, with the thickest Iranian accent in the world, rocking these saris without a single line explaining to me why. Either a LOT has changed in Iran in 200 years (or whenever this is set, I don’t remember), or the casting team really thinks the viewer is just that fucking dumb. Maybe most people are! But it would be like casting Marion Cotillard as the Queen of England; it’s not morally wrong, it’s just so weird as to be stupid. (Her performance really is good though, it’s such a great role, and I think a lot of people would do a rehash of Mary McDonnell or somehow land on a bad Thatcher impersonation or just...there are a variety of ways that role could be played unsurprisingly. Her performance is often a surprise, it feels very fresh to me, like the character is discovering herself as we are.)

 

On the whole though, I liked season one as a season of TV. I really enjoyed that it started as a series of set pieces which are very informed by previous genre media; and not just books, films, or even television, but also (maybe especially) videogames. My husband and I started joking about all the equipment characters started finding and then dropping as the plot continued -- I remember laughing a lot when Miller finally lost the extremely large wrench that apparently wasn’t required to actually accomplish anything in the plot, but was very much a “here’s your first combat weapon” weapon in every videogame on a space station. Every firefight on the show is like watching someone else play a level of Mass Effect. I’m not sure if that’s good or bad. (Lie: I think it’s bad, but I also think most action sequences are a mess these days, so at least I can follow these, even if we’re all the way back around to movies and TV copying videogame cut-scenes which were copying movies and TV.)

 

But what I enjoyed about it was that very quickly, the story started to feel risky. The writers weren’t afraid to add tension and make people desperate. For the most part, the writing was good. (However, there are certain lines that I am very ready to be fully retired from all media, everywhere. “We’ve got company” and “[This mission/job/whatever] just got more interesting” are very high on my list of nominees. It’s like my Time To Crate measure, but for dialogue.) 

 

(Speaking of dialogue, I am somewhat thrown by the accents...I feel like a lot more thought went into the Belters and their creole/how people would sound in the Belt than on Earth and Mars, and I’m not sure if it’s because they didn’t have the resources or if they just generally didn’t have the talent pool that was capable to do accent work. In season two, what seems like another main character is introduced, who is I guess from Martian Australia? I don’t know if I’m supposed to just be ignoring all the different accents, but instead, it’s confusing because Mars is ostensibly One Colonized Place with one very coherent culture, while Earth is still a big mishmash, so shouldn’t native Martians all have one accent, while immigrants retain some of where they learned their first language, and then the Belt has their creole (which I still can’t quite tell how that’s supposed to sound…?))

 

The fact that I’ve written so much criticizing this thing is a sign that I liked it a lot, why is my brain like this. 

 

My point is, the season started seeming like maybe a so-so pastiche of a lot of sci-fi tropes, but it quickly tore those all to shreds and let them cook on the dirty sidewalk of a hardboiled noir, and it mostly worked. My hope is that season two will similarly set up more science fiction nonsense and then rend it limb from limb while contrasting it with other genres and having characters doing color commentary about their situation again. My favorite parts of the season mostly came from Amos, hands down my favorite character. He knows his limits, he knows what he’s good at, and by my count, he’s...always right? He definitely saved everyone’s lives multiple times, he’s got good instincts (including knowing when his own instincts aren’t what he should listen to), and when he does say what he thinks they should do, that ends up being the thing that they should have done (I’m mostly thinking of “we need to get off Eros NOW”). Also, he respects sex workers and understands that corporations and politicians don’t love you. Amos and I can hang...and yet at the start of season two, the show has every other character talking about Amos like he’s a psychotic version of Lennie from Of Mice and Men. Am I supposed to agree with them or am I supposed to dislike most of the people in this world? (There goes art imitating life again...)

 

So I don’t know. Literally everyone says I’m at the part where the show “gets good” but so far it’s *been good* and it’s starting to get really bad. We’ll see, I suppose. 

—

I was out with friends last night and talking about the way I listened to music in middle school, and I’ve been thinking off and on ever since about how art is supposed to push you and teach you how to like it, or good art is. As a kid I bought Bjork’s first album, Debut, and went home and listened to it all the way through and didn’t understand it or like it at all, and I thought to myself “well, I guess I just have to listen to this every day while I do homework on repeat until I do like it” because I was going to become the kind of person who liked Bjork. And it worked and I did. The problem wasn’t with the album, the problem was I was 13 and my tastes needed maturing. Art isn’t supposed to be something that already meets your expectations, it’s supposed to push you.

There’s been a trend for a while in discussion of media online, which feels brought about through YouTube to me but I’ve spent very little time actually studying it to back up where it started, of performing a kind of logical montage; placing a statement next to another statement, and another and another, and treating this chain of information as if the things in the chain are related to each other simply by being mentioned together, and as if it has the same quality of analysis and insight as to actual criticism. Generally, the statements have the level of depth of “fun facts” that one would find on the back of a cereal box or another place children would get information. As in the example above, often the pseudo-analysis will take on a heavily narrativized language: foreshadowing, predicting, etc – as if real-life events have a script at all.

 

(Obviously, trying to impose a narrative arc onto the chaotic mess of reality isn’t new. It’s satisfying to do, and it’s a great part of why people enjoy all sorts of things, from sports to religion. Your individual life can currently be a nightmare, but as long as your team is winning or your god is with you, things can’t be *that* bad.)

 

What strikes me about this in a larger sense is how this feels familiar to the wider, seemingly global (?) intellectual apophenia many, many people are currently experiencing. I’ll stick to the United States since that’s where I live, but it doesn’t seem to only be an issue here. The human mind is hungry to find patterns, and this thing of placing facts and events alongside each other, even though they are not related, creates a drive in the mind to seek relations between them, which creates a felt sense of meaning -- and since the meaning is only in the mind of the person (and not anywhere in fact), it’s very difficult to dismantle the idea that they are related. Once you see a shot of the stairs and you see a shot of the baby carriage, it’s impossible to think the two aren’t connected somehow. Once you’re convinced an election was stolen when it wasn’t, it’s likely impossible to persuade you otherwise.

 

When I think about how I try to avoid getting drawn into these types of modes of thinking, I think about being made to write research papers in middle school, which I hated; having to find three or more sources for certain statements or else I’d get an entire letter grade taken off because that’s how important it was to learn that you had to get a lot of information from a wide variety of sources before thinking you knew something about something.

 

I think about how we’re all being shaped all the time by everything we experience, whether we’re actively trying to be shaped or not.