In case you, like me, want to hear Dan Mangan's songs from the Comedy Bang Bang show in Vancouver on Aug 12, 2022, I clipped them out!
"Melody" is really hitting for me today. I like the just-released album version, but the pure melancholy in this take is so good.
subscribe to cbb world and buy dan's albums, thanks
gender doctor asks me how it's going, say pretty good of course, we both shrug and laugh at the absurdity of assessing status in a world gone mad, it's gratis, greener in another life. well it's pretty good except that every day's a little tireder, I don't like to be awake, I hate my job and hate my days and hate my isolation, calling thrift to take the big old couch i got in '21, hoping for big group hangs and movies, but we still can't breathe each other safely. pretty good except that every day i'm watching myself be dismantled out loud and learning you can lie loud enough that hurt don't matter, they're gonna cackle while their knuckle skin splits however hard we try to be. pretty good except that nothing i do feels like it matters in the least, that if i get a week off work i start to feel alive again like half my brain's submerged formaldehyde and resurrected pulled gasping from the grave. frankenstein myself every day to stagger forward in service of everything i disbelieve. keep the job making oppressive computers wring out microdermabrasions beautifying business
reminding myself that if i can't make cathedrals, i can still paint caves. make my goals smaller and smaller. every dream achieved at my own expense, debt compressing, everybody knows it. forever aged complaints, deliberately loose and artless. nobody receiving, but if i can't scribble bullshit to myself then where do i think the? foreclosing the cave. people hating self so vicious it's catching. lean in to listen, catch a breath-based calamity or moral infirmity
doctor asks how, pretty, except that i used to run five miles and now i don't even want to walk around the block. used to make a room laugh and sing and now it's quietly trying not to bother the neighbors. outburst swallowed til no tums enough for the art burn. stupid wordplay looking at my old emails like how did anybody ever put in the effort to understand me. desperate for novelty at the expense of clarity. evidently brain strange and struggling to crack jokes if that's the only way to be heard.
when i actually say to a doctor how i'm feeling, their eyes widen and they come up short. nothing can fix the frame when its rusted out. so i'll let myself write messy feelings because i earn them
been this way the whole time. perplexingly misbroken and a step away from failure. on either side of the line. everyone eager to cast me down for one misstep, one word out of place, i've been smarter than the class and never paid a decent rate. how's your family? how's your savings? how's your future? how's your bonus? things you take for granted that i won't and never owned. i've been paycheck to paycheck since 2005. and it's stupid just to type it out because all anybody can do about it is say "sorry, wow, that sucks, hope you feel better, don't give up"
motherfucker i give up once or twice a day and decide to keep on anyway. if they tear me down for political discomfort, it wasn't jenga, it was rubble, and was barely worth the struggle
re-reading *Annihilation,” a book I really love even after I hated the movie, because who cares art is everywhere and holding the hater’s face is for mummies.
anyway, I just read this and felt a shudder of resentment and pain go through my chest. I wish I didn’t understand these feelings. I wish I hadn’t been killed at 18, then left to breathe and struggle and carry on anyway. To pretend I was alive. To keep taking on the disappointment of others while every new life withered in my hands.
“There are certain kinds of deaths that one should not be expected to relive,”
“certain kinds of connections so deep that when they are broken you feel the snap of the link inside you.”
I’ve felt too many of those links snap. I can feel the empty space where they used to sit. The genuine love and wonder that I felt for this life and world and the people in it, who were supposed to care for me and instead shoved my face into the dirt. Who convinced me I couldn’t be trusted, especially not inside myself. When all I ever wanted was to dance and sing and laugh and take care of others.
do I have depression? or am I undead?
I guess people post when they've updated their site design?
There are, of course, many things I want to change about this site. I know it's rude that I only have this dark purple theme 😉. Since I work on web code all day for my job, it's been nice to just have this site working and leave it as-is.
BUT I wanted to add some content-relevant changes for my essays. Here's what I added!
The Kirby CMS makes it really easy to add captions to figures/images. I hadn't styled them, though, so they didn't look associated with the image. So, I added a simple style:
Since I'm using so many widescreen screenshots recently, I've wanted some of them to be wider. So, now they can be:
I am breaking the news of Itty Björk.
This is what I'm most excited about! Y'all KNOW I love a footnote (House of Leaves from allway back), but weirdly, I don't love a website footnote where you gotta click a link, which jumps to the end of the page and back. It's fine, but usually feels uniquely-disorienting, versus glancing down a printed page.
But some time back, I read this fantastic essay by Tyler Vigen about a weird bridge. I really recommend it!!!
He does something I really like, and have now implemented for myself. He adds little "note" links inline:
When you click them, they just add text inline:
So I've added a version of that here,
I based this on Tyler's CSS, which very cleverly handles this without any Javascript.
which is very cool!! But I also wanted to be able to add text without any extra line breaks so I did! This text should just be added into the paragraph, with a different font and background color . Tyler's site uses a monospace font here, and in deference to both him and Mark Z. Danielewski, I'm gonna leave it there too!
This might not be the final version of this, but it's enough for now! I don't love the colors; I know it's a little bit hard on the eyes with the darker background. I'll probably play with the styles! I also want to be able to format the content more, but that'll probably be more involved. Here's a picture of the above notes expanded, for posterity!
To make this easy for me to use, I created a simple Kirby Plugin. Just to make this post MORE of a collage, and because I don't share my code often enough, here's the quick & dirty code!!!
<?php
Kirby::plugin('splendorr/note', [
'tags' => [
'note' => [
'attr' => [
'break',
],
'html' => function($tag) {
// Construct id! get first 10 characters of text
$firstChars = mb_substr($tag->value, 0, 10);
// Remove spaces
$noSpaces = str_replace(' ', '', $firstChars);
// add a pseudorandom int, just in case two notes start with the same characters
$id = $noSpaces . rand(1,50000);
if ($tag->break) {
$wrap = '<br/><br/>';
} else {
$wrap = '';
}
/* You CAN add <br> tags inline */
return '<span class="inline-note"> <input type="checkbox" id="' . $id . '"> <label for="' . $id . '" title="' . $tag->value . '"></label> <span>' . $wrap . $tag->value . $wrap . '</span> </span>';
}
]
]
]);I will probably do a pass through my Twin Peaks essays, move certain things into notes, and make the screenshots wider.
IS ADDING THESE FEATURES A SIGN OF PERSONAL GROWTH AND HEALTH? OR A "COULD A DEPRESSED PERSON DO THIS?" SCENARIO????
both :)
not me putting on Ani DiFranco's "Dilate" and flashing back immediately the summer before I turned 18, sitting in the parking lot of my job, crying softly to this album out of an inexpressible sadness that I couldn't sound like her, couldn't have the queer experiences that led to these songs, that I was so moved but felt that it wasn't for me, a dorky suburban "boy"
growing up unknowably trans was punctuated so often by moments like this. unspeakable. nebulous chasms and only embarrassment for feeling ways I shouldn't. and then going on anyway.
Everything I do is judged
and they mostly get it wrong...
But oh well.'Cause the bathroom mirror has not budged
and the woman who lives there can tell
the truth from the stuff that they say
And she looks me in the eye
and says, "Would you prefer the easy way?
No? Well, okay, then...
Don't cry."I wonder if everything I do
I do instead
of something I want to do more?
The question fills my head.
I know there's no grand plan here
this is just the way
it goes.
When everything else seems unclear
I guess at least
I knowI do it for the joy it brings
because I'm a joyful girl.
Because the world owes me
nothing
and we owe each other
the worldI do it because it's the least I can do.
I do it because I learned it
from you.
And I do it just because I want to.
Because I want to.
anyway give this album a listen, it's powerful!
I’m a funny artist musician who has been absolutely pummeled into submission by mistreatment and capitalism
I’m a trans audhd woman who was denied self-knowledge by conservative policy and culture
Every time I make a new friend, eventually they tell me how incredible it is that I haven’t given up
I have given up. Thousands of times. I’m a shadow of the self I know I could have been. But for some reason I also keep deciding to get up and do a little bit more.
I don’t always want to! But I do
New album "life till bones" from oso oso, one of my favorite current rock bands! chill, catchy, crunchy.
(Did bandcamp turn off their embedded player, or just make it harder to find??? the link isn't under the album art on any page I can see. gdi. I can't copy and paste from another post either, because I don't know the unique album code!!! I'M SO SICK OF COMPUTERS DOING SOMETHING USEFUL AND THEN THE COMPANY GETS SOLD AND IT STOPS WORKING)
(WE SHOULD HAVE SOME KIND OF SUSTAINED COMMONS WE CAN RELY ON, AND CORPORATE ACQUISITIONS SHOULD BE ILLEGAL)
(I'M SO BORED OF THINKING ABOUT THIS)
anyway the first few tracks are great, buy it if ya can :]
...Continued from Part 01b.
It's been over two months since I wrote Part 1. An entire bout of ups and downs. Day-to-day life is really hard for me at the moment; it often is, unfortunately. I think I'm often lonelier than I've ever been, find it hard to have energy to do much beyond my job each day, etc etc. I drag myself across the hot stones of corporate limbo each day, and convince myself to do it again. You know the drill. Maybe it helps to talk, but nobody can ever do anything beyond listen. We're all stretched too thin. Oh well. Thanks for listening.
I wrote several pages of digressions, realized they weren't what I wanted to say next, and then probably set my internal bar too high. I also started to think about technical changes to the site; I want to handle alt text and captions for these images better. But I'm so tired. So I took a "break" from this just to work and survive, and reflected for a while.
Reminders: this is just for fun! I'm creatively responding to art, not saying anything is the truth. These are just notes. And the only rule is that I can say whatever I want!!!
One day maybe we'll talk about Laura's painting, the fake bird at the end of Blue Velvet, the exultation of dying to be a woman in Inland Empire, or any of the other things that led me down abstract pathways. But for now, let's keep following "the text."
We've reached the trophy of Laura's head on the high school wall. I've touched on the river that splits in two, becomes waterfalls, splits again into mist and pool, crossfades into waving curtains, then fadecrosses again into a dizzying turn around the zig-zag dance floor. All of this with the credits on top, and Angelo's beautiful lullaby crooning along. Before that we saw 25 years ago, the young Dale and Laura in a red-curtained room. She says she'll see him (and us) again in 25 years, and then "Meanwhile."
Fade to black and silence. Fade up a low whooshing that wouldn't properly be called "white noise." Maybe it's black & white noise. The screen is black & white, an ungroomed carpet, moving forward.
Black shiny shoes, a black suit, hands in a lap like they're holding something hidden.
All the way up: look, it's Lurch! I love the Addams Family movies. (He's also in the earlier Twin Peaks, as a spectral Giant who speaks to Cooper while he lies dying on the floor. He was serious and cryptic then; clearly a visitor from another place. Maybe we're in his house now.)
He says, "Agent Cooper," in the same reverse-speech young Laura used in the opening scene. Cut to Special Agent Dale Cooper, still wearing his suit, but 25 years older. He's sitting in a wide, arch-backed chair with soft braided upholstery, black and white curtains behind, and a fancy lamp just off to the left. It never hurts to describe things!
The last time we saw Dale:
It wasn't exactly the same place, but it's damn similar. He hasn't... he hasn't been sitting "here" for twenty-five years? Has he????
Well... not exactly the last time anyone's seen Dale. That was the end of Season 2. In our chronology, we also have his unusual appearances in Fire Walk With Me to account for. Someday:
Laura takes Dale's place in the chair, elegant, crying, dead, and laughing. In understanding, and relief, and loss. Dale, someone she has never met, stands over her, in a position of counsel, concern, of protection. The ringed world is tiny, alight, a trinket on a table. The angel that left Laura returns, overlaid with a lamp, a source of light and comfort.
A living room arrangement, in a place outside the world. Blue flashes against the scene, like the glowing static television at the movie's opening. The angel lit blue; the world lit blue. She continues to laugh as everything fades to blue. A close-up, then a freeze on the face that never got to grow up, but here seems to get the joke.
The Giant says, "Listen... to the sounds," and directs our attention to the right. Dale turns to the left, and we see a Dr. Seuss-ass ancient gramophone, and hear a repeated scratching noise with a strange rhythm.
The camera upwards and in slowly, until the gramophone becomes just a circle, a gold-plated black hole. Before we cross over its regrettable eventuality, cut back to the Big Guy.
He and Dale exchange looks, while the sound begins to play. It doesn't sound like anything exactly, just a sound a record player might make if it reached the end of the side and just kept spinning. A loop, stuck, trapped.
Lou Ming said that some people messed with the speed of this sound, and matched it up with Laura unlocking her diary with a key in FWWM. That's extremely cool if true, and probably is! What would that mean? We're being told to listen to it; to Laura's secrets, and the mechanism of their keeping.
And then Lurch says, "It is in... our house now." Dale looks back at the record player, looks worried or skeptical, and asks, "... It is?"
The next bits are cuts back and forth between Giant and Cooper, and all the subtitles are split over multiple lines. so here's what the Giant says:
"It all cannot be said aloud now."
"Remember 4 3 0."
"Richard and Linda."
"Two birds with one stone."
Between each line, cut to Dale, listening intently. And after all that, he gets serious, and says, "I understand."
I'm afraid he doesn't.
What's all this for? Is it just to be mystifying and strange? Well, remember that we're trying to take everything literally. What if everything that's said is true, in some way, even if we don't understand it yet?
Cooper says he understands, so maybe he does. But the problem with being certain, even if you're a supernatural detective faced with cryptic clues because it cannot all be said aloud now, is... well, you know what the problem is.
From a functional story perspective, I think this sort of thing is a way of telling the audience that the details matter. That we're going to be confused, but that we should pay attention to the details. The scene with Lil and the airplane in FWWM serves a similar purpose! The perspective characters are detectives, FBI agents; we're in a mystery. It might not all make perfect sense to you, but it is decipherable, if you pay attention. If you have the training.
Lil, a woman in a red dress, standing in the shadow of a garage, and a yellow prop plane with a black lightning bolt down the side.
As she runs up to them, the Director of the FBI (and of the film!) says some cryptic stuff, and makes an unusual sign to the special agent. Agent Chet says, "Federal," and David Lynch nods slightly.
Lil scrunches up her face, flexes her hand repeatedly, and turns in a circle. She has a red wig and a blue rose. David Lynch says, "Good luck!" and leaves.
This feels bewildering, and mostly silly! But then there's a whole scene in the movie after this where Agent Chet asks Young Twenty-Four what he noticed, and they do a whole long breakdown of everything and what it means.
This is another way of telling the audience, "It all cannot be said aloud now!" But it's also telling us that while we may be about to see some wild shit that doesn't make immediate sense, there is sense to be made, if we are observant and thoughtful.
Okay okay, fine, David's telling us to watch his movie closely. BUT: let's take it literally. Why does the Director of the FBI have to sneak information to one of his Agents? Really think about it. They're standing at a tiny airport in the middle of nowhere, with the loud sound of an engine behind him. And he's still speaking in code. This is covert spy stuff. He's afraid of being overheard. By whom?
And then 25 years later in this otherworldly monochrome room... who is the Giant afraid might hear if he says the truth directly?
!!! TRANS REPRESSION AND DEFENSE MECHANISM ALERT !!!
Back at 6 minutes into Part 1 of The Return (lmao), the Giant says, "You are far away." And then a wind picks up over the mechanical whooshing, and Cooper flickers and fades, strangely out of view.
Far away physically? Or far away from "the truth?"
PROBABLY BOTH LOL
MORE TO FOLLOW...
(fragments after Part 1 that didn't go where I wanted them to. but I still wrote them, and there are no rules, so here you go!)
...Continued from Part 01a.
lol we're like 2 minutes into Episode 1, but this is my notebook so we can go in whatever order!
REMINDER: this is just for fun!! I don't care if I'm right or wrong! I'm talking about my imagination and emotions, in conversation with an ambiguous creative work. THANK YOU FOR YOUR HELP IN NOT BEING MEAN TO ME
I want to talk about the Blue Velvet bird, Lou Ming's concept of "bad transformers," and the production of lumber as it related to dream-having and meaning-making. I just followed a feeling and skimmed back through The Passion of David Lynch by Martha P. Nochimson. This is, without a doubt, one of my favorite things I've ever read, and is specifically among the best media analysis / criticism that's crossed my eyes. The book is a set of essays about DL's work up through Wild at Heart. It rules!!!
And anyway I remembered that Martha discusses the presentation of imagery as "realistic" very eloquently throughout this book. She says she had a series of conversations with David that surprised her and shifted the direction of her book, including on the subjects of control and realism. I typed up several excerpts but it's too long, so here's one useful statement (excerpt as text after the photo):
The development of Lynch's body of work is informed by a realist's optimism that there is an exit from the linguistic labyrinth and that this exit is richly available to us. [...] Lynch intuitively seizes upon logocentrism as the paradigm of cultural imbalances, but he deeply believes that they are not fatal cultural malfunctions. The Lynchian seeker, as either artist or detective — or filmmaker — can always get us out of this labyrinth.
[...]
Lynch acts upon a faith that the illusion of control that language and other cultural structures give us is not as rewarding as losing that illusion and gaining larger, less contingent truths. These truths are always present for us, unless we insist on the fantasy of control and thereby doom ourselves to the sense of disconnectedness we feel if we fool ourselves into believing only in the control that we exert over our own creations.
And, I add, the disconnection between what it feels like to be you, and the cultural constrictions applied by language. You're a boy, so you behave in this way. Your name is Nick, so you act the way Nick does. To deviate from the label is to risk violence and rejection by those who believe received concepts over material, experiential truth.
REPEAT: There are people who will choose some wild bullshit they heard over hearing and accepting the honest truth of the person in front of them. I know!!! I couldn't believe it, either.
[I feel so weird trying to navigate this "don't believe everything you're told" territory, but please understand that there is a palpable difference between a trans person saying, "This is who I am," with openness and vulnerability, and someone belligerently regurgitating "that can't be, because I was told to believe something else by a person whose only motivation is control" with malice and resistance in their hearts. It is not sufficient to say you "feel" intuitively that the world is flat, because you are provably wrong; but it is deeply important that we understand ourselves and others vividly and intimately, in order to live peacefully and operate compassionately in the world.
And it's worth noting that there is a distinct overlap between people who refuse scientific truths and those who reject the personal truths of others. Even though they have also been told that the world is flat, etc. Again, it's a question of legitimacy and trust. Why some people are hungry to refute physical consensus on our shared world, and yet will also refute another person's right to — or even ability to — be non-cisgender and non-heterosexual, which is provably true because we exist... it's a bizarre one.
Those who fail to understand themselves — or reject their own understanding because it doesn't fit what they've been told — are the people who cause the greatest harm to others. If you can't tell the difference, please, slow down and breathe... there we go... sh sh sh......... and stop talking for a couple of years.
Anyway, as we go forward, I think that assertions re: David Lynch's work "seeking intuitive truth" are about psychological, personal, and interpersonal truth — meaning, feeling, trying to be our best selves in concert with others — not about reality-denying conspiracy shit. TPoDL, page 7:
Lynch's films encourage spectators to perceive the hollowness of linguistic structure and then discover a more complex form of connection through the subconscious.
This is all a digression, but I'm allowed to digress! I originally apologized at the end of this, and then got fatigued before going on to other topics. Instead I'm just gonna post this and move on! Skipping the Bird and Wood and Bad Transformers for now.
Continued in Part 02.
[fragments of thoughts, which maybe I'll return to later]
...Continued from Part 01.
I'm responding emotionally and conceptually to things I see in Twin Peaks Season 3, not trying to deduce "the truth" or "the intent" or anything. I just think it's neat, and I had a lot of thoughts during that may or may not connect to the text itself. I'm also basically just free-writing. So there's no need for you to tell me I'm wrong about anything: I know!!!
OH ALSO: I'm gonna talk some about "David Lynch" as an artist here, but not because I think I "know what he means." When I talk about "David" or "DL," it's as the artist vector that connects all these works. I've learned a lot about the making of these things, and admire lots of the craft! But David's "intent" isn't what I care about. If I use language pointing that way, forgive me! I'm interested in what these cinematic objects do, and there are curious modulations I see across DL's work.
We're also hardly even getting to the Interesting Parts here; I'm touching on some stuff but I kinda wanna give y'all some of the tools I've gathered.
Okay, I've got a bunch of stuff pinging around right now about Art and Representation and Transformation. Let's jot these down! (I say, and then it takes several weeks of effort to get here.) Thanks for reading :)
One of the purposes of art is to reframe our eyes. Show us something, give it a new context, so that the next time it crosses our brains, we can think differently about it.
Laura stepping into the painting in Fire Walk With Me.
(This made me cry the last time I watched it. It shows an extremely clear visual of dissociation, going into the closet, and the semi-conscious decision to suppress your reality in favor of a safer fiction. Notice the crossfade; Laura looking sadly at herself, holding her sleeping self in a closed fist, and then opening it. Empty, awake, gone.)
(And still here.)
I like it when art reminds us that it isn't real, when there's an interesting reason to do so. We can talk about "media literacy" and related topics, but basically it's important to learn and re-learn that just because you see something doesn't mean it's real. Nor should we believe everything we're told. And we're told an awful lot.
That's really tricky, because this same principle has been abused by life-hating conservatives to create an alternate political reality. But they use it as a double-flip; they undermine other sources, but say we have the truth. You can't trust anyone; but you can trust us. Do your own research: but make sure you get that information from us. Confirmation bias and forced consensus under the guise of counterculture.
It's so wild to live in this infinite bind!!!
I think that's why the deliberately theatrical and unreal can connect so deeply to our emotions and ideas. "See the artifice? I don't want you to take this literally." Reminders that we are in a theater, in a film, or as he always, that we are "dreaming" together. That there's a painting, and we're in it. Okay then, what are we here for? Not just to receive a happy little story, to be transported out of ourselves for a while. Vale told me this is something Bertolt Brecht did in theater in the early 1900s (thanks, Vale!!). Remind people they're watching a play, which makes you listen differently. If I'm not supposed to believe what I'm watching... then why are you showing me this?
So let's connect that to David Lynch's extensive work promoting the idea of Peace, for him achieved through Transcendental Meditation. Whether TM itself is legit / positive / negative, I can't say. I like a little mantra-based meditation now and then, but I have no experience or opinion of TM. What I do have is what DL says about it. And he states, repeatedly, that it's a good goal to increase the amount of positive introspection in the world. Sit quietly, turn inward, feel peaceful. Cultivating peace from within. More peace in the world. Sounds pretty good to me!
People then ask, "If David likes peace so much, what's with all the disturbing violence in his work?" To which he replies, paraphrasing, there's bad stuff in the world, and in us, too. And we can't hide from it. He has asserted repeatedly that looking directly at Laura Palmer's pain is at the heart of Twin Peaks; both he and Sheryl Lee, who portrays Laura, say publicly that if seeing Laura's suffering moves you, then you should do something about it. Teen girls are being harmed by people close to them all over the country, and the world, every single day. We have to create a more peaceful and compassionate world, somehow, and stop violence where it arises. A tall order! Intimidating! Impossible-feeling!
But we have to try.
So I've come to believe David's repeated depiction of violence, particularly upon women, isn't for entertainment purposes. (You can see a hundred punches in a Marvel movie and feel nothing; a single touch, a look, in DL's work can make your skin crawl off your bones.) It isn't prurient, sexual, or exploitative. He doesn't use the conventions of film to those ends. His films put us in a state of disorientation, and then burn into our minds that these are the worst things humans can do, that we must not do this. It hurts. It might not be for everybody at all times; sometimes you already know violence too vividly.
But there are many people, including survivors of abuse, who have spoken about how important Laura's story is to them, that it engages honestly with their pain.
And it does so with deeply surreal imagery, which makes sure you never mistake the story for reality... which simultaneously reminds us that there is a reality. Often in an uncomfortable way!
And for me, as a trans woman who was abused and bullied into the closet until my mid-30s, who has lived in poverty for most of my adult life, I connect viscerally with how Season 3 depicts confusion and heartache and the struggle against the darkness we can all become. How it feels to have your true self shoved into stasis for decades.
How it feels to die, and yet live.
YEAH, ME TOO, LAURA 😭😭😭
So what can be done? If we are dead and alive... how do you go on?
FUCK IF I KNOW
Continued in Part 01b.