Me when I wake up on a Friday morning:

(yo this berserk comic is fucked up, who knew)

🥲🫣

but, minor damage aside, “The Passion of David Lynch” is incredible, one of my favorite critical works ever. Highly recommend it. I’m about to start Nochimson’s “Swerves” which takes up where “Passion” leaves off, with Lost Highway.

I don’t feel capable of communicating the vast, subterranean complex of emotions that subsumed me as I watched the film “The Elephant Man” for the first time tonight.

True tears at the delight in simple human kindness. How much kindness has been burned away in me. How much of life’s color has been drained. And yet how little it takes.

I want to sleep soundly, awake refreshed, and calmly pursue the action of a day. This hardly ever happens. And yet I have so much. No family on the mantlepiece. To admire one’s mother without having met her. To be regarded, with kindness, in a world where people do speak to each other. Our horrible nature, bred pestilent by scarcity and utter lack of dignity for so many. “How else is he to make a living?” Appearance, a prison, but some get to be cathedrals. None of this is right.

“Never. Oh, never. Nothing will die. The stream flows, the wind blows, the cloud fleets, the heart beats. Nothing will die.”

If only.

jimmy eat world — criminal energy

this album is still chef's makeout

bill wurtz - meet me in september

"is this bus voluminous?" lol

Again, just fragments here. So I can "reflect" on "the page."

I'm about a third of the way through Martha P. Nochimson's The Passion of David Lynch, and just love the way she's found to look at and interpret these works. She doesn't seem to be concerned with... something. I'm not sure what to call it. Solidifying? Pinning down. Hang on.

I re-watched Twin Peaks: The Return a few weeks ago. I'd watched it as it aired in 2017, and mostly left it sitting off to one side since. 5 years. I felt lots of things about it, had conversations with friends, but in the end honestly couldn't tell if I "liked it." I mean, I liked it — I think it's one of my favorite things I've ever watched, and way better than the original series for my own personal taste. But what was it for? What was its heart? There was intense negativity portrayed, alongside a bizarre approach to the possibility of joy. What did David & Co think the story was for?

I've been really hung up on the artist's intent for many many years. I could only feel confident about my feelings on a work when I thought I understood what its makers were "really" going for, and how that aligned with the object. I'm trying to stop doing that. I do want to know, but I also think that most massive works exceed their makers. Not in a "death of the author" way. It's hard to say what I mean, and hard to say that it's "hard to say." I think intent matters a lot. But it's not the endpoint, it's an ingredient. I also don't think all interpretations of a work are valid. That might be unpleasant to hear. But I sort of think it's important that we be reminded that people can be and often are incorrect in the way we see things.

"Let the reader decide" about the ending of most media is weasel wording! It has risen to prominence as a capitalist excuse for making works that refuse to ultimately challenge the audience. If you tell the audience they're wrong, you don't make as much money. If you imply they might be wrong, but ultimately give them an opening to avoid that conflict, I think you de-fang a work while also making it more palatable and profitable. "There's no one answer" is literally killing us politically, as the people who are supposed to be broad-minded and open-hearted on our behalf instead refuse to resolve. Quantum morality that refuses to be observed.

So then what to do with David Lynch? His works aren't "open-ended" in that capital-driven way. They are maybe, instead, "unresolvable," and that has a very different effect and reception. It's deeply upsetting and off-putting to most people. It doesn't make a ton of money. DL obviously has plenty of money, but none of his movies have done well in the big picture of Big Pictures.

...

I just got distracted looking up how much money the movies made, and then thinking about buying them on Blue Vel— I mean, Blu-Ray. Ha, ha.

...

oops I got tired of thinking

...

"Let the audience decide" about climate catastrophe

First, the only way I can approach anything right now is by not taking it seriously. Or not giving it personal weight. This is one of many contradictions I experience constantly. Until I was in my early 20s, I managed to believe, easily and intensely, that I need to do what mattered, to myself and by extension to the people and structures I had inherited my beliefs. It was essential and beautiful-feeling to follow that feeling. As I crossed from adolescence into adulthood (and I don't think I'm alone in this, though there are strong particulars in my story that basically nobody else I've ever met has endured), I was increasingly in conflict. What mattered to me didn't matter to the larger world; and what mattered to the world made no sense to me. I'm cursed to ask why things are a certain way, and to be unable to accept the answer if it isn't sensible.

Obviously this has made my life miserable, because "the world" doesn't make sense. Not in a way that applies to most people. Our actions and efforts are dictated as much as possible by extractive power. I don't know why it has to be like this. We can find happiness or at least quietude by finding a way to align our peculiarities with some larger power.

•

When have you ever had neighbors you talked with, let alone liked or felt close with? When have you ever been able to choose to live near enough to the people you do enjoy to feel neighborly? I've been thinking about how logistically impossible this is for most people. Houses built for just a few people, no ability to coordinate moving into nearby buildings to be closer to people you care about. Constant driving, and me carless now for... christ, over 4 years? Not even touching on the pandemic, but talking about a prior world, a fantasy world now where we can't live anymore, not a good fantasy but still unreal.

There was a period in my early 20s when 3 different friends of mine all lived in the same apartment complex. That was nice. It didn't persist, for normal reasons. For a few years around 30, I had a group of friends who would make regular plans to gather to play games or have meals. That was great, too, and also went away for me. Right now the best I can do to feel close to people is gather in a group call to play a video game together, most of which cap out at 4 or 5 total people in a reasonable way.

I have always wanted a big house where I could throw parties, have guest rooms for lots of friends. Many friends share the impossible dream of getting a huge mansion together, large enough to have space but contiguous for community. Or houses on the same street, apartments in the same building, or at least connected by simple transit — each just as impossible as the next for all of us. We all want a village, but we can't even have a neighbor.

Why?

Okay so that’s a dramatic title. But as I’ve been reading about Twin Peaks, two things I’ve seen multiple people say are just driving me nuts (spoilers of course):

1. In The Return, we see Cooper lead Laura away from her death, and then a repeat of the first episode’s opening scenes, except Laura’s body isn’t on the beach. I’ve seen more than one person assert that they DO NOT LIKE THIS because IF LAURA DIDN’T DIE, THEN THAT WOULD UNDERMINE THE ENTIRE SERIES???????

2. One of my Favorite Things about The Return is that the willful, selfish, “evil” characters are all dispensed without fanfare. The two assassins in the van are undone by being assholes to one too many people. Richard seems to be leading up to importance, but he just gets zapped and exploded. Mr C does so much harm, and in the end is just shot by Lucy. There’s no “big conflict” between “good and evil.” And I’ve seen so many people say they were LET DOWN by this; that they were anticipating some kind of battle(?) between Cooper and his Double?????

Anyway I don’t have time to go all the way into this, but it’s twisted to confer respect upon villains in a story, when they are driven by greed and callous disregard for others. I think it’s a Huge Problem that villains always get a monologue in adventure stories. Fuck ‘em. Their justifications are always horseshit, and yet giving them air time allows someone the opportunity to engage and potentially agree.

It’s fantastic that Mr C gives his justification once: “I don’t need anything. I want.” Beyond that, his only priority is survival and propagation. It’s beautiful that he is accorded no respect by the camera; that Lucy shoots from the heart and just ends him.

Fuck a villainous monologue, Thanos-ass deluded bullshit