I’ve been watching New Girl. I feel like I should hate it but I don’t.
Stuff like this means I don’t really stand a chance when it comes to hating:
Cece: Who did you tell me was your perfect man?
Jess: Walter Matthau in Grumpy Old Men. I could be girl Jack Lemmon.
I tried to think of the most harmless thing, originally uploaded by poppet with a camera.
Yesterday we caught the last day of the Edgar Martins exhibition at The Wapping Project. Afterwards we drank Guinness to calm our nerves. “The Time Machine: An Incomplete and Semi-Objective Survey of Hydropower Stations” is exquisite, hyperreal and collage-like, with an intricate and detailed beauty that leaves your eyes achey. IMAX screen style, you swivel your head trying to take it all in, but you can’t.
The majority of the images show us a future that fell all too quickly into the past, now a lumbering, beautiful beast lacking the compactness of what the future entails but, damn man, the forms themselves are immense, the symmetry evokes a familiarity that makes you want to climb inside but Martins won’t let us in – there’s no room for man here, it’s all about the machines that man made.
The image below doesn’t do the work justice. I swear, there’s something almost holy about it.
Mad and brilliant.
Untitled, originally uploaded by bethfromabove.
This has been doing the rounds all across the internets but I just can’t not have it here. The Black Keys, “Lonely Boy”. I can’t wait ’til Alexandra Palace, February 2012.
In love with Little Dragon and so sad not to score tickets to their London show on 4 December. Check out the new album and give your heart over.
Here she comes, Queen of the Hipsters, swinging her lithe, kooky arms and talking about The Future, her follow-up to the critically acclaimed, hilarious and disturbing, Me, You and Everyone We Know.
On the surface this is a relationship movie, an ailing relationship, but at the hands of July we’re made to dig a little deeper. Her deft touch and abundant curiosity allows her to pull the individuals out of their togetherness, unhinging them so we can watch them founder.
Clambering against the downward sink Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) decide to adopt a sickly cat, the proverbial glue, that will bind them together and give their relationship a raison d’être, well, for six months at least as Paw Paw is a sickly puss. On arriving to scoop him up into loving arms they’re told they need to come back in 30 days to pick him up, they also discover that Paw Paw could live for five years. A discovery that cements the future into something that is already over. Sophie: “We’ll be 40 in five years.” Jason: “Forty is basically 50. And then after 50, the rest is just loose change.”
30 days.
30 days before responsibility kicks in and doors are slammed shut. A finite time to make something happen. So, it’s a talking cat who acts as the catalyst, creating the momentum that pushes the couple into action. They quit their jobs, turn the internet off and wait for something to happen.
Sophie looks out and screams. Unable to generate the momentum to choreograph her dance (“30 dances, 30 days”), she succumbs to her desire to be watched. Looking out she finds a creepy gold-chained man who promises to watch her always and she slips back into inaction, she doesn’t even have to try. Stealing away from her own life Sophie moves in with him and is watched until a part of herself comes back to reclaim her, a creeping yellow shirt, that she eventually climbs inside, reborn, dancing, she makes peace with herself.
Jason looks out and saves trees. Turning to something other than himself he sells trees door to door, knowing that it may be futile but there’s nobility in that. He meets a potty mouthed poetry making old man through the Pennysaver who tells him that relationships are tough and that this is only the middle of the beginning, and that’s the hardest part. Later when Sophie begins to speak of her infidelity Jason stops time, holding them both in their studio apartment at 03.14. The old man appears again, this time as the moon but he doesn’t offer advice – “I don’t know anything, I’m just a rock in the sky” – he doesn’t allay Jason’s fears of being alone and only invites him to create his own action, bringing the future to bear.
All the while Paw Paw waits but it’s only so long before he’s extinguished, put out by his future owners inability to look beyond themselves. They each go to take him home and each discover they let him die.
The message, for me, is don’t give up.
Don’t give up. Don’t stop trying. Don’t think your life will change if you just wait silently, clinging on to the internet, waiting to be picked up by some invisible hand and deposited where you think you should be. Stop assuming there’s something better around the corner. Make changes. Be creative. Feel satisfied. Be grateful. Stop stopping yourself. Propel yourself in the future.
One other thing – Miranda July – what a legend, full of joy and curiosity. She has the ability to unsettle by shifting between humour and sadness, allowing the fears to rise up and be considered in unexpected ways and all she asks is for us to be curious, to look to the future, spread our arms open and prepare for amazing things to happen.
Olympia Le-Tan x Spike Jonze = this very beautiful tale via Nowness. Seriously, I would do awful things for one of her clutches. Terrible things.
