Month: October 2024

the past week or so I’ve been working out what exactly it is I’m trying to do. as an artist, as a person, as a wage laborer who probably needs more money. this last one’s come back to the fore, after many months of not looking for a new job, because my boss is leaving for a new position on the other side of the country. this was expected, because he’s an ambitious go getter with lots of big ideas, and the library system I work for is dysfunctional, mired in inertia, and woefully underfunded. what I didn’t expect was him telling me, after breaking the news, that I should apply for his position, and that people in the administration seem interested in me taking the job. am I interested in it? if I’m going to be at this library, I don’t really want someone else to be my boss. and if I want to move somewhere else for a library job, it would help to have “city librarian” on my resume, to make me a more attractive candidate or whatever corpo-bureau-careerist bullshit phrase it is.

what I’m actually interested in is having less job, not more. because I’m trying to determine where to place my ambitions, because, contra the slacker in me, I am an ambitious person. does that mean being ambitious in my career? library work is pretty much the only field where I feel I could be ambitious without sacrificing too much of my soul. sacrificing some of it, to be sure, but if there’s one field of democratic spirit left in America, it’s in libraries. however, while I have a knack for public library work (not that it’s hard, though of course if I have a “knack” for it I wouldn’t think it’s hard, so idk), I just can’t seem to get excited about any aspect of it, maybe because it’s still ultimately wage labor, maybe because I have artistic ambitions I can’t shake, maybe because I want to be a layabout and I resent any sort of external obligation. probably all three in varying proportions.

the question then is, what does it mean to have artistic ambitions in America in 2024? the outlook for life as an artist has never looked so grim. the options are abject poverty without any social safety net, a series of compromises in service of becoming a cog in the culture industry (compromises that are increasingly detrimental to the ability to hold onto a sense of individuality and originality, given the dire state of publishing, the music industry, the film industry, etc.), or totally selling out and approaching the prospect of being a “creative” as cravenly and psychopathically as possible. the middle path is the one most people with any measure of success (“success”) try to walk, and I don’t mean to cast (many) aspersions on anyone with the desire to see their book published by a big 5 publisher. but the demands placed on artists hoping for traditional forms of “success”—self-promotion, constant hustling, little support from institutions supposedly “backing” you, poor financial prospects—amidst the meat grinder of the “attention economy” seems to have stripped away the faculties in artists that are necessary to create truly countercultural, visionary, strident, original work. there are some artists, none of wide renown, creating nowadays whom I respect, but even them….when was the last time it felt like an artist under 45 really fuckin went for it, made a genuine stab at the heart of life, with an eye to the complexity of the modern world, and landed a critical blow? maybe I’m not reading enough contemporary work, but I also don’t read much contemporary work because I sense a failure of nerve among artists nowadays.

all of which is by way of thinking through what I want from the artistic life. I’m developing these ideas more rigorously (and artfully) elsewhere, so be on the lookout, but one upshot I’m trying to internalize is that I need to take art making a seriously as possible, while all but abandoning any hope of being “famous.” “fame” once meant achieving a certain level of recognition from the world that bolsters the possibility of the work reverberating through posterity, but now, “fame” mostly means earning the fickle support of a system that runs entirely on the evaluation of things in the most vulgar terms, those of the market. (adorno argued that this was true even in the 19th century, with “posterity” being a product mostly of the proto-advertising efforts of publishers, but we can’t discount the fact that the already debased workings of the culture industry have become so endemic as to threaten the very possibility of something like “culture” with meaning outside its worth to shareholders).

i’m not articulating this well, and i sometimes think i need to be more “dialectical” in my thinking, more specific in my examples, and more ranging in my scope. but this is my blog, so whatever. the point is, what I care about is making good art, uncompromisingly; using art as means of approaching the Sublime, of examining the conditions of reality, of figuring out “how to live a moral life a culture of death” (Charles Bowden). which is almost directly opposed to the idea of being “discovered” by the culture industry.

that leads me back around to needing to make money in a way that best supports this attitude towards making art. (also developing a certain discipline, but that’s a discussion separate from this one). whether that means taking on more responsibilities for slightly more money and something on my resume that might lead to work in a more interesting city…idk. when i put it that way…

last week I was doing some research on gangstalking for a fiction project I’m working on. gangstalking is a phenomenon where people, who call themselves “targeted individuals,” are convinced they’re being subjected to a form of coordinated harassment and surveillance by a group, usually, though not always, members of a government agency. if you search “gangstalking” or “targeted individual” on youtube you can find videos from people, clearly disturbed, describing their experiences with this harassment. people break into their homes and rearrange their belongings; people call them at strange hours from unknown numbers; people drive by their houses repeatedly; signals are sent to their brains via local cell towers; their friends and families are convinced they’ve lost their minds and cut off contact.

The U.S. Department of Justice charged [Ebay] with stalking, witness tampering and obstruction of justice as part of a “harassment and intimidation campaign” that targeted David and Ina Steiner, two private citizens who deigned to criticize the company online….

The couple used their spare time to publish EcommerceBytes, a newsletter focused on ecommerce that was often critical of the company’s business practices. The small newsletter was such a large thorn in the side of some of the higher ups at eBay — which has a market cap of more than $21 billion — that they decided to respond by sending anonymous deliveries to the company’s home in an attempt to intimidate them.

The deliveries included a book on surviving the death of spouse, a bloody pig mask, a fetal pig, a funeral wreath and live insects. The company also sent the couple private messages using sock puppet accounts on Twitter threatening to visit the victims home. 

The harassers eventually made good on its threat and sent people to surveil the couple’s home and put a GPS tracking device on their car.  

source

later in the week, bored and procrastinating, I checked in on an online social space I no longer participate in. someone had shared a screenshot that morning from a newsletter describing, as though commemorating a great civil rights victory, how a US city had declared the month of October “Havana Syndrome Awareness Month.” Havana Syndrome is a purported affliction, experienced primarily by American diplomats, caused by directed energy weapons or weaponized radio frequencies. symptoms include those “associated with a perceived localized loud sound such as screeching, chirping, clicking, or piercing noises…visual disturbances such as blurred vision and sensitivity to light…intense pressure or vibration in the head, ear pain, diffuse head pain, and cognitive problems such as forgetfulness and poor concentration.” whether or not Havana Syndrome is “real” is a matter of dispute, and is experienced by some 10,000 people total, so the idea that a US city would deem it something worth being “aware” of, as we should be of “autism” or “hepatitis,” was likely meant as cause for mockery. I myself might ridicule the idea.

what caught my interest, however, is that the city in question is the one I live in, Ventura CA. a strange coincidence, perhaps. being a active and engaged citizen, I did some searching to determine when my city would have made such a declaration. strangely, no such proclamation appears in any of the official channels. the image of the official municipal declaration looks pretty convincing, and even has the correct name of the mayor on it. only problem is the colors are not the ones usually used by the city for its official communications. the only place I can find anything like press coverage for this important issue is on a website that seems to be one where anyone can submit a “press release.”

the organization making a big fuss over this, of course, also advocates for targeted individuals to be taken seriously. I’m starting to wonder if maybe I want them to be taken seriously as well.

how many things needed to have gone exactly the way they did for you to be here, now? how much of a shame would it be to not live up to that great honor? at what point does the opportunity you’ve been afforded become missed? what if everything isn’t conspiring against you, but for you, and your fear is all that’s keeping you from the life you want?

An American Werewolf in London (1981)

there are moments in Werewolf where a much better movie shines through. the scenes in the Slaughtered Lamb are both funny and unnerving, working on the trope of creepy insular rural community to great effect. John Landis has the good sense to make you wait almost 2/3rds of the runtime before witnessing the (still shocking) transformation David suffers under the full moon, but he dangles plenty of grotesque and gory fun to keep you entertained along the way: Griffin Dunne’s decomposition, the absurd dream sequence where monstrous shock troopers with Uzis mow down David’s family. but I wasn’t crazy about this one. right from the start, the dialogue between Dunne and Naughton felt too artificial, and not in an expressionistic anti-realism way that sometimes heightens the effect of certain films. the two had chemistry but maybe were directed poorly?

right after finishing the movie I felt satisfied by its abrupt, anti-Hollywood ending. it’s a pretty funny joke to have Alex tell David she loves him, and, for just a second, suggest that maybe her expression of love got through to the monstrous wolf that’s been terrorizing Piccadilly Circus, only to immediately shoot such a saccharine ending down with what would actually happen in such a situation, namely, the police shooting down the murderous werewolf. but then I started to think that it wasn’t particularly well delivered, given that the mechanics of the plot felt a little rickety throughout.

it’s fun, I’m probably wrong to be so critical of it. it’s certainly more interesting than most major horror movies. I would recommend it if you’re a horror fan and somehow haven’t already seen it, mostly on the strength of Rick Baker’s iconic practical effects work. it’s a real shame they don’t make movies like that any more.

Ring (1998)

a simple story, well told: a girl lives a short life and dies a violent death. her spirit, unresting, seeks vengeance on the world that wronged her. the rage she projects from beyond death can not be contained. it must spread, virus-like.

there’s a fairy tale quality to the film responsible for an international craze for horror pictures coming out of East Asia. when the dread is conjured this well, the details of the story don’t actually matter all that much. exactly what’s going on with Sadako or the Izu Peninsula is a little convoluted, as is the supernatural world that Ring inhabits (why is Ryuji also sort of psychic?). and, to offer some criticism, a lot of the dialogue tells you exactly what’s animating the plot, in a way that’s ponderous yet not terribly helpful. but what’s significant about the film is how it utilizes elements of folklore to spin a yarn about an extremely modern phenomenon: image culture, and the possibility that our new networked world can spread archaic evil. it is a parable of the Spectacle, told with all the earnestness usually forbade by the Spectacle. I place Ring alongside (not in terms of quality) such works as Videodrome, Twin Peaks: The Return, and Ghost in the Shell, films that try to grapple with how electronic media have warped our bodies, dreams, and minds. despite that warping, though, we nonetheless remain human, even as what “human” means is strained to its very limit.

I’m interested in this idea of using fairy tales or folklore to help orient us in the strange new world we find ourselves in after the detonation of the atom bomb. we are still reeling from the shockwaves that technological advances sent through the 20th century. it seems to me that maybe, rather than hoping to find new plots or new characters, we as writers and artists should find new ways to vivify those archetypes that have long guided us in the shape of stories. Sadako is a onryō, a vengeful spirit of the kind that populates every culture’s imaginary in some form or another; her videotape is a curse, dark magic that all people, no matter how secularized, fear in one way or another.

I do remember the American version being scarier, though. and I kind of wish Hideo Nakata’s version weren’t so explicit and allowed the dark enigma of the story to exist on its own terms.

Blood and Black Lace (1964)

ahh giallo. what a genre. I’m toying with how to write a sort of crypto-giallo, but my conceit effectively makes it not a giallo, in that it’s from the point of view of the would-be “killer”, obviating the element of mystery from genre. I’m also wondering if it’s a story or if it’s a film. or if maybe it’s a story, and I should write a giallo-influenced film. god, do I want to make movies. but they’re so hard to make!

writing is hard too, but at least with writing all you need is something to put words on and a room to shuffle those words around in. with a film, you need that (assuming you’re the writer-director, which I would want to be), then you need film equipment, sound equipment, actors, locations, means for editing and sound mixing, days for shooting…excuses, excuses.

I really do wonder sometimes if I’m, at heart, a lit bro, or a film bro. not that it’s impossible to be both, but my original artistic dream was to direct. novel writing and directing seem very similar to me, especially if the director is also the screenwriter. idk I’m losing the thread on keeping this interesting. just something I can’t quite resolve: where to put my energies.

I finished a draft of a story today. all it took was devoting time to writing, and what do you know, writing happened.

yesterday, the first of October, I did something I often consider doing but haven’t yet until this year: I set out to spend the month finally reading all of House of Leaves. I’ve read the first 119 pages something like 3 times, but on each previous effort, I put the book down after finishing Ch. VIII and never mustered the courage or time to dive into the notoriously bonkers Ch. IX. I’ve always enjoyed that first section, so I feel obligated to at least push through the barrier and see if the rest of the work earns my attention.

a kind of “joke” in the first chapter I never caught until this read was that The Navidson Record, the fictional film that the novel is supposedly an exegesis of, was distributed by Miramax. Harvey Weinstein is mentioned by name. it’s an interesting metatextual wrinkle to know what eventually became of the king of 90s independent cinema. not that it bears much on the novel.

by happenstance, last weekend I went to a screening of the 4K restoration of the movie most associated with Miramax, Pulp Fiction. a friend of mine once posted a review on Letterboxd of Magnolia describing it as “pulp fiction but you adjust the ‘written-medium-to-filmed-medium’ dial a few notches to the left.” I mention this only to point out what’s been pointed out innumerable times before, but Tarantino makes movie movies, films that operate on the logic of what cinema does that other mediums don’t lend themselves to. he writes tight dialogue and his narratives are well constructed, but he primarily asks “what do I want to see on screen.” this is signaled somewhat ironically by the line Fabienne delivers after telling Butch she wants a pot belly: “It’s unfortunate what we find pleasing to the touch and pleasing to the eye is seldom the same”

watching Pulp Fiction brought to mind a question I often wonder about, and have probably posted about here: why are genre exercises, or crime stories, or surrealist pastiches, more likely to make for “good” movies than novels? why are novelists expected to be more “responsible” and stick to “relatable” stories than filmmakers? I realize I’m making a generalization that immediately brings to mind a million exceptions—plenty of novels from the last 100 years aren’t exactly “relatable,” and the demand for “relatability” in art has warped the direction that non-comic book, non-horror movies have taken as of late.

it wasn’t until writing this that I realized my issue is with this idea of “relatability.” I’m desiring more freedom in what I’m making, and I imagine that filmmaking gives people greater freedom than what writing fiction does. this obviously isn’t true. I’ve internalized some norm that I should do away with. ironic that I feel this as a result of reading a novel about a movie, even more so than I did when I watched the movie about movies.

I’m frustrated with the thing I’m working on in part because I feel like the technique I’m using is too…basic. it’s also pretty close to mundane lived experience in a way I’m generally not particularly interested in in fiction. but what I’m working on is important for personal, therapeutic reasons, and I recognize the desire to throw it away just as I’m digging into something genuinely felt is me trying to self-sabotage. nonetheless, I feel the need for some project that allows for greater latitude in plot and technique.

this week is the first week where I’m being very deliberate and protective of my writing time. these are your hours, show up to work. this will involve working out what exactly my process is, and maybe it’ll be beneficial to have a couple, wildly different projects to alternate between. maybe I’ll even get around to actually writing a screenplay.

I should start taking photos again.