Category: Uncategorized

A classic video for a classic holiday. Have a wonderful break everyone!

After a short hiatus from this here blog scene (for which I apologize, I’d retreated into the depths of my mind for the month due to anxieties and lack of sleep) I return to transpose the latest happening put forth by the Tenet Collective which has accumulated a momentum and reputation and a solid base of groovy dudes and gals and everything in between, who are down with what the group can do and has done so far this year.

It was the core group of aforementioned hooligans that kept things together this time around, as the temperature drop into degrees reminiscent of the dreaded polar vortex must have (understandably) anchored other attendees to the warmth of their homes and couches. The third progressive revolution began again at the Fuck Boys’ Lair, with vijjy screenings showing a variety of bohemian types: there was one perplexed custodian with an iPhone taped to his welder’s mask, recording himself sweeping up the remnants of a gingerbread house, his real-time vision impaired by the mask so that he ended up taking much longer than necessary to clean up those crumbs, a metaphor for vision if I ever saw one; there was a girl who painted convulsively, sporadically, rolling and throwing reds and blacks onto canvas repetitively, the video a layering of this process so that at certain points there were two or three of her painting and overlapping and swaying into one another – the composition and process having to do with psychological tendencies and actions that come up without us knowing, things bubbling to surface subconsciously, her acknowledging this loss of control over own body, coming to terms with control; lastly a lone naked spiky haired lanky fella with only his boots and gloves and a pair of glasses on, dropping a monologue about a trip home to his parents’ house in a dream while the vid cut between him speaking and boxing with a big red balloon, where after confessing his broken heart due to a love affair gone sour the dad, in perfect form, went into how there’s a lot of heartbreak in this world and a lotta sad people out there with cracks in their sad hearts, but also how there is also a lot of joy and love and sunshine around if you look for it right, and maybe that’s what life’s about – and the naked man in the boots and glasses having it out with the balloon that just might have been his own cracked heart, telling his tale and rubbing his face and growling out his syllables in such a way that the whole story was genuine and honest and not played out or cliche or washed up, and I shed more than one tear at this point here and a wave of emotion swept through the room.

There was a small procession over to a house on N. Division where the living room had been transformed into a cuddle fort with blankets draping from the ceiling in the fashion of a billowy circus tent, there were pillows and blankets all around layered on the walls and floor and in the entrance hung one particular old holy worn out blanket from someone’s childhood years, whose sentimental qualities emanated from its softly ragged folds and provided an entrance to this parallel dimension with glowy lights and sounds seeping in from the corners, and the room was full of good vibes and people sharing stories and touching each other in friendly affection, and there was no judgment there, only the kind words and feels remained. And downstairs the music played, Yada Yada stringin along smooth melodic jams, a comfortable kind of funk that made me think of nights on the beach or out in some greenfield at dusk, and the crowd swayed and dipped in agreement of the jive they laid down – and when the sounds of Yada faded into the voices of the crowd more bands took that corner stage which sat in front of a Thomas the Train tapestry, and into the night the music went and the ups and downs of the party people on the stairs mirrored the noises down there, all becoming the Night, all parts of the Time.

And I suppose the moral of the story here is that you don’t need two hundred people chanting and stomping down the street to have an effect, that sometimes a low-key interaction leads to more intimate relationships and connections with old friends and new friends alike, that despite what the commercials and television faces say maybe less can be more, and maybe building up our expectations about how big or how many something is only ends up ruining the outcome, that maybe we can be content just going with the flow, and quietly shake things up in our own kinda way.

Have you ever looked at the sidewalk during an intense storm? An amazing thing happens to those sheets pf droplets as they plummet to the ground; they start to group together into vein-like formations from the disparity of concentration of those droplets. It’s almost as if the storm is helping to show us the natural blood-network of the Earth. This is how we are all connected, through the Earth and its ordinarily invisible network. This is the beauty of the Earth and nature and the everyday.

It breaks my heart to hear people make stark distinctions between science and art. There is no distinction, one blends into the other in a perfect gradient. No art exists without some orderly science behind it and there no science without some beautiful art to observe. Creativity and fact exist in all things. Look at the branches of trees, they grow in orderly fractals, but there is also beautiful randomness that dictates their growth. Nature is the existence of art and science in harmony. Humanity is the only force trying to separate the two.

I don’t understand why we try to categorize life like this. The brain thrives on both the chaos of creativity and the regularity of fact. Chaos allows us to relax and emote, regularity allows us to predict and react. Both are necessary and both complement one another. Humans can live with this notion of gradience, but we refuse to accept it. We love contrasts and categories because it often allows us to function more easily, but this should be the one thing that isn’t categorized. We should witness the beauty of the everyday and also see the stunning order. Life isn’t lived in categories and nature won’t exist that way either.

We should learn to appreciate Nature and its creations. The veins of rain and its connections show us this interaction of art and science. We could perhaps form some sort of explanation for this occurrence, but we could never truly predict its artistry. Let’s all take a moment to appreciate the wonders of the world. It is perfectly ordered with rules, but also incomprehensibly chaotic. Look at the ordinary and marvel at its extraordinary existence.

In Alejandro Gonzalez Iñárritu’s new movie “Birdman,” Michael Keaton plays Riggan Thomson, a washed up actor who had played the flying superhero ‘Birdman’ three times and refused another sequel, only to watch his career fade and disintegrate over the years. Although Iñárritu insists that the story is intended as a reflection on his own insecurities, the casting is seems far too referential to be coincidental –  Keaton, of course, played Batman twice and, largely disappeared from movies after turning down a third installment.

We find Thomson backstage, scrambling to prepare for the premiere of his first Broadway play, which he has written (adapted from Raymond Chandler’s “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love,”) and is directing and starring in. For Thompson, this is a last ditch attempt at legitimacy and relevance, an effort to salvage his sadly diminished reputation (“I’m a trivial pursuit card,” he moans) by establishing himself on the stage.

The deep mess of Thompson’s personal life is quickly revealed through interactions with his cast and crew as they clamber to prepare for the three opening previews: his girlfriend Laura (Andrea Riseborough) reveals that she is pregnant, his ex-wife visits and makes tragicomic, regretful allusions to their chaotic shared history, his daughter Sam (Emma Stone) has recently emerged from rehab and works as his sulky assistant, her presence serving as a frustrated living rejoinder to her father’s self-centered career obsession.

Meanwhile, a falling light fixture immediately knocks out Thompson’s bumbling lead actor, and he must replace him with the conceited but talented Broadway star and method actor Mike Shiner (a brilliantly overbearing Edward Norton), whose histrionics threaten to derail both the show and his relationship with the lead actress (Naomi Watts).

While the camera weaves through the labyrinthine backstage (a set artificially crafted on a soundstage to make the halls appear narrower and more claustrophobic), catching glimpses of the increasingly entangled cast arguing, flirting, smoking and rehearsing, the frazzled Thomson retreats to his sparse dressing room, where he monologues to himself in the disembodied voice of Birdman, levitates, and moves objects with his mind (generally to smash them). “Birdman” never decides whether Thompson’s powers are ‘real,’ even as our hero eventually flies through the city streets and conjures up blockbuster style explosions with crazed despair/delight. The surreal conceit works largely because Keaton’s intense, personal performance anchors us to the fantastic: Keaton’s Thompson is by turns brokenly self-reflective and fiercely manic, both burned out and crazily sustained by the mission to perform.

Much like the occasional fantastic departures from reality in Louis C.K.’s Louis, whether or not we think the fantastical moments in Birdman are taking place in Thompson’s psyche or actually happening, we follow because we understand how the preoccupied mind can inadvertently project itself outwards, how weirdly personal the world can get when we accidentally experience it through the lenses of our own consuming inner messes. At one point, as Thompson stumbles drunkenly down the city street, the homeless man who has been ranting about God in the background turns to Thompson as he passes and makes the plea of an auditioning actor – did that sound good? Should I try it differently?

Though “Birdman” explores deeply personal themes (aging, relevance, legitimacy of different art forms, parenthood), it does so with a flashy stylistic melding of the theatrical and cinematic: in constant motion, the camera follows the cast through the theater hallways in a series of lengthy, carefully staged and choreographed takes, which Iñárritu has spliced together through a mix of clever editing and CGI to create the illusion of a single, long take. The style isn’t just an impressive gimmick –  the perpetual motion of camera and actors creates a rattled, exhilarating energy, while quietly evoking the foreboding feeling that Thompson has lost control of his personal life and his art. Antonio Sanchez’s excellent, sharp percussive score keeps the feverish energy up as the show’s previews go comically wrong, conflicts between characters come to a head only to get weirder, and the narrative practically spirals towards opening night.

By the time I exited the theater I was wound up and mildly exhausted, but also soothed by the lingering, poignant catharsis that  comes from watching a truly great comedy. It’s a serious feeling, mostly because it’s one of the basic bummers of being human that we’re going to be periodically, upsettingly disrupted from the necessary assumption that we are Important by the basic suspicion that life might just be completely ridiculous. “Birdman,” centers around this deep, tragic need to be important, acknowledging that we are ridiculous but endearingly so, invoking serious empathy with the flailing ex-superhero, making us laugh.