Weeks 17-18: Re-re-re-re

In which the podcaster regresses, confesses, and redresses.

THE NEXT POD WILL BE CAST ON SATURDAY, OCTOBER 19. 

Transcript

MY 12-MONTH VIDEO FAST 

EPISODE 15 – WEEKS 17-18: Re-re-re-re

This is Richard Loranger and welcome to Episode 15, covering Weeks 17 and 18 of My 12-Month Video Fast.

Okay, so – ooooweeee this is harder than I expected. It’s not like I’m back at Square 1 but maybe back at Square 27 or something? Even though I just made up that number and it doesn’t mean anything. But they do say, I think, that all progress is twelve steps forward and six steps back, or something like that but they’re always saying something and sometimes I wish they’d just shut up and get on with things. Or maybe I’m projecting (probably) since I rarely get on with things in a patient and satisfactory manner; it’s all a dance of start-crumple-start-crumple and I wonder is everyone like that? Lately for instance or maybe to the point stress keeps making me want to check the heck out – not from the Video Fast, no stress there though it’s been suffering for it; I’m talking about all the rest of the craponzola. 

I recall Jerry Mander asserting in Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television, covered in Episode 4, that “the goal of all advertising is discontent.” Clear and succinct, and how unsettling if obvious is that? Well sometimes I think that the whole goal of America is to make people anxious. It’s been referred to in a number of ways: The American Nightmare, The Shock Doctrine (for the citizenry of Disaster Capitalism, anyway), the Great Deception – oh wait, that’s Biblical, and I really don’t wanna get Biblical here – but ultimately it’s a governing strategy. If you want them docile, keep them anxious. Easy-peasy. The thing is, I don’t wanna be anxious (can you imagine?), which must make me a bad American. What’s wrong with me? And why don’t I want that, besides all the discomfort? Well mainly because it leads to self-medication – god knows America isn’t going to calm you down! – and I’m tired of self-medicating. I’ve been medicated and self-medicated for decades, in lots of ways, and frankly I think I write better and see the world better and genuinely appreciate the positive things I encounter when I’m clear-headed and stable (whatever that is). 

A few years back I was chatting/flirting with a guy online who was in New Zealand and had grown up there. At one point he asks me, “Why do Americans do so many drugs?” Now there’s a conversation starter. At the time I didn’t have an answer for him, but I never forgot the question. One thing’s for sure, we are good at it! It’s not as if we’re an historical anomaly – I seem to recall other cultures, historic and present-time, which have been noted to enact a lot of alcohol consumption. All hearsay, of course, since I’ve mostly been abroad on television. A more local example that I have seen was along Sixth Street in Austin, which on the weekends a few decades ago could be described as a Carnival of Blackouts. And we are renowned for getting into the harder stuff, by which I don’t mean tequila. Much of America is a meth and fentanyl party these days, but it’s certainly a global issue as well. We just have a rep for it – we’re trailblazers of a sort, not to mention an excellent retail market.

All that to say I feel like I’m back at Square Jones again. It’s not that I haven’t been trying to get my petunias together – I have.  ♫ I’m getting my shit together now, yeah! Gonna make a scene everyone’s gonna hear about yeah! ♫  First there’s the bicycle, which I had so much to say about last episode. I’ve been hopping on it every other day and peddling to a sodden sweat (yay sweat!) – until this week when the temps have been mostly in the 90s (which means over 100 in my fourth-floor apartment). And here in sad old Oakland, central air is still a commodity reserved for the tech-drones and posh populi; those of us still crawling through the muck simply have to boil and bear it, which doesn’t exactly make me wanna dive into my at-home exercise regimen. I mean, seriously. I know I did mention taking the bike out and about, but (full disclosure) I’m amidst a little orthopedic issue that has one of my hands being less than reliable (and sometimes just fucking hurting), because  ♫ Aging is the funnest thing in the world, I’m gonna sing about it… ♫  (Jeez it’s like I’m like channeling existential 70s sitcoms today or something.) So for a few days I’ve been huddled in my back room – yes, there really is one – an 8x10’ office with my little portable A/C unit kicking it down into the 70s, only room it’ll work in, trying to get enough done to scribble on this blah-blah plainsong extravaganza of a podcast. In fact I’m sitting in there right now recording this in the what-climate-change-October-swelter, turning the stalwart little A/C off every time I speak, which is to be honest far more pleasurable than doing what I should be doing, namely converting my Late-Capitalist financial dungeon into a flowing river of cash.

Admittedly I’ve been working on that as well, just with a little less enthusiasm than the dungeon-keeper might prefer. After several failed attempts this year to rake in the big bucks by sitting at home being my wonderful self, I finally gave in to the Bruce-has-been-dead-all-along realization that I might have to supplement my income by leaving my house. Nooooooooooo! (Hey, I enjoy my delusions. Don’t you?) So I bit the bullet, actually several, which is hell on my dental problems, and put together a kickass mega-flex resume for part-time/temp administrative positions aimed initially at non-profits and a certain University that’s right down the road in Berkeley. (I did leave off all the farting and general dishevelment [CRITICAL VOICE: And the voices…] …and the voices, ahem, but otherwise it looks pretty sharp and reliable.) Am I mad? Do I need pants and shoes? Probably not! There must be some around here somewhere. And I’ve (tentatively) (warily) started sending it around, so wish me…shoes, I guess.

Speaking of thumbs and the entire topic I’ve been avoiding talking about today, i.e. how my anxiety has been leading me around by my opposables, I haven’t exactly been successful so far at undermining their scrolling habit. Seems those thumbs just wanna have fu-un, and despite my protests and maneuvers they keep right at it, prehensiling all kinds of content, sometimes voraciously. I find myself checking in on the latest journalistic atrocities and end up reading all the gaming and movie news. I watch upcoming movie trailers. I watch old movie trailers. My Facebook feed is suddenly full of them. I tap on Instagram to see if anyone has liked or commented on my podcast and event posts, and end up scrolling for Reels of people dancing. I catch all the animal rescue stories on my newsfeed – they’re so cute and I’m getting more and more articles from The Dodo. Played a couple more chapters of Chrono Trigger (see Episode 11). I did end up watching The Watchers on my laptop, the Ishana Shyamalan film that I had an argument with myself two episodes ago about not watching – great creature design and atmosphere, by the way, occasional tedious scenes, cool and somewhat confusing mythology, a twist because there has to be one (you can rate that yourself if you see it), and people still doing things they know they shouldn’t (including me). (Stop it!) Soon after, also on laptop I watched Civil War, Alex Garland’s recent film about journalists amidst a near-future Second U.S. Civil War, regarding which it explains very little, and which disappointed some audiences who expected it to be about the war and not the journalists themselves (uh, the title?). Still it introduced me to Lee Miller, the historical war journalist about whom there’s a fabulous film out currently. (Stay tuned for more.) And I watched the first full movie I’ve ever seen on my phone. I wish it had been The Cave, because how appropriate would that be, but instead it was the 1984 version of Red Dawn starring a young Patrick Swayze, Charlie Sheen, Lea Thompson, and C. Thomas Howell, about a bunch of high school kids who become insurgents against a Russian invasion of their hometown (why?), killing countless armed soldiers while surviving in the mountains for months and months without their beautifully coiffed hair growing an inch or getting mussed even in death. It was great! And what the fuck is wrong with me?

On top of that, as far as I’m concerned, I’ve been abusing my movie-going privileges as well. How’s that, you say? Well, since the end of August I’ve seen in theaters:  

·         Alien: Romulus a second time (review in Ep 12); 

·         Deadpool & Wolverine TWICE – I got most of the references except the all-important bookends with the Time Variance Authority because I didn’t see Loki Season 2 – ugh!; 

·         Beetlejuice Beetlejuice – they tried, they tried, and smiles were had, but “MacArthur Park” is no match for “Day-O”; 

·         Blink Twice – the only film I’ve ever seen with a trigger warning at the beginning, which they should have shown as you were purchasing the tickets – it features scenes the likes of (though not quite as traumatizing, for me at least) the unforgettably fucked-up scene in Gasper Noe’s Irreversible (which I’ll never watch again), and bravo to director Zoë Kravitz for going where she did; 

·         AfrAId – with the AI capitalized, which doesn’t manage to tell a believably scary story about AI, not scarier than what people are actually doing with it in the world, anyway;

·         Never Let Go – which I mostly loved, especially for the acting and trying to guess which genre it was, but was put off when they tried to play both at once at the end;

·         And finally, Lee – a terrific portrait of Lee Miller (homaged in Civil War), the first and groundbreaking female war correspondent who shot some of the most harrowing images of WWII – almost needed a trigger warning for those – and I could watch Kate Winslet all day long in anything – totally rec’d if you can handle the disturbing photography.

All in all I’m counting eight films in theater in a little over a month (granted a few were seen back-to-back while theater-hopping, a couple times to escape the heat, but still), plus three films at home (bad video faster!), quite a few movie trailers, and countless Reels of dancing people (not to mention those saxophone playing chickens) – all of which seems like video media to me. So friends, this is not an episode for celebration. It is not. And I am neither proud nor pleased about that. Hell, just this week, despite having the nifty (and no doubt energy expensive) little A/C unit set up in my office and dumping hot air into our already-cooked atmosphere, I went to see those last two films, Never Let Go and Lee – which I liked – when I could have, and should have (DON’T SHOULD ME) (I just did) should have been holed up crafting this missive (which may get to you lightly edited as a result) and researching more places to send my brand-new kickass fart-free resume. And I knew that. None of which remediates the looming America-anxiety that I’m toting around like a virus. If it weren’t so hot, I’d be sitting here wearing a full-head latex frown-emoji mask, face-sweating and gasping through plastic with a mug full of skin rash. And mark my words, THERE SHALL BE CHASTISEMENT. Feel free to help.

So as I grovel here lashing myself [3 LASHES FROM Jesus Christ Superstar], I’ve got one thought above all that’s really buzzing in my bonnet, and which I don’t think I’ve voiced specifically yet in this podcast. And that is: how exactly does all this scrolling and Reeling and gaming and just goddamned watching make me feel like not reading books – which, as you know, I enjoy and want to be doing. What is that mechanism exactly? Maybe it is dopamine, as suggested by my recent reading and book reports in Episode 12 (“Drink the Light”). The authors do all state that a stronger dopamine flow wants to sustain itself, and isn’t interested in anything of lower volume; and they also suggest that multimedia (video and gaming) and even phone-scrolling have an advantage over much traditional reading by “virtue” (yeah, right) of their pacing, their shifting colors and sound (even somewhat in scrolling), and their often sensational and constantly changing tones and scenarios with surprises always around the corner. But there’s one issue that they all skirt a bit, but which Jerry Mander gives plenty of focus to (with unfortunately outdated examples), and which is also a concern of author Neil Postman in his 1985 not-quite-sequel to Mander, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, which I came across recently and am just now looking into. (No book report guarantees but we’ll see.) And that is, that these media are designed to keep you watching, playing, and scrolling, and I don’t mean keeping you mentally engaged with their plots and characters, but designed with your brain in mind, with the same research that Lieberman and Long and Dr. Lembke cite in The Molecule of More and Dopamine Nation respectively. Which wouldn’t be so insidious (there’s a good movie for you) if it weren’t all about making money. And which leaves our poor authors who are trying to connect with your mind through beauty (take that word broadly, please) more or less in the dust. And that pisses me off. (Well, most things do.) 

But is it really that simple? Things rarely are. What about, for instance, the social and cultural and psychological components of spectacle that staunch our interest in language – so I did a few internet searches (okay, Google searches on my phone, god help me) along the lines of “why does phone scrolling/gaming/streaming make me feel like not reading books” – thinking somebody must have written something about that. Turns out they did, in lots of Reddit threads, which I scrolled through for about twenty minutes – yeah there were a few incisive perspectives in there – until I realized I’d been led into another sand trap. [BIG SIGH] So that’s another aspect of all this that is to mind, and I’ll see over time what info on it, if any, I can leach out of the loam.

In the meantime, this past week I’ve taken my own advice from the end of Episode 12 and replaced a bunch of the more insidious (Insidious 2 is also great, by the way, kind of like the Godfather Part II of the Insidious franchise), anyway I’ve replaced the eviler apps on my front-facing phone pages – Netflix, Max, YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram – with beautiful blue Kindle app logos. The only real distractor I left on there is the Newsfeed, so I can follow certain (ahem) court cases and make sure the Russians don’t invade Colorado. If you’re able to see the logo for this episode, you’ll find a particularly pretty mockup of my new Kindle heaven (so blue!); some of my phone pages really do look like that.

True I could still dig for all of those fun little icons in my app list, except I can’t. Because New Rules. I hate to do it but somebody has to take charge. So no opening a streaming app on any device anywhere (exceptions given only if I need to look at something for paid work or in developing this podcast). I can look at Facebook and Instagram on my laptop only, and only for promotional or organizational business. And NO movies or video anywhere, including theaters, for the month of October (which as everyone knows is the best movie month of the year). [WHIMPER] Now that’s some chastisement if I’ve ever seen any. [1 LASH]  I’ll give you an update in my next episode on October 19, and reevaluate the situation on November 2. And that’s final. [LITTLE WHIMPER]

Since this has become such a disheartening and confounding episode, I’ve saved a little load-lightening for the end. Which is, to wit: Books [comma] I Have Been Reading. (Yay!) In fact I devoured a fantastic novel made of paper and everything last month, In the Distance by Hernan Diaz from 2017. It follows a young and unworldly backwoods Swedish fellow in the mid-19th Century, who is sent with his brother to find their fortune in New York. They get separated at the port and he ends up on a boat instead to Gold Rush era San Francisco with no knowledge of English or the continent. That’s the setup really and I won’t give you spoilers, but he spends years wandering a brutal and surreal Old West in an attempt to get to New York to reunite with his brother. It’s a strange and grim tale with moments of enlightenment that flirts with magical realism and I couldn’t put the damned thing down. If that sounds of interest, I can’t recommend it enough. It may leave you awed and reperspectived. I should have a full review on my website at the start of November.

After that I picked up another novel that I’ve been curious about for some time, this one on Kindle so it opens up any time I press one of those many, many icons. (I tend to choose a different one each time.) That is The Overstory by Richard Powers, which the blurbs and such suggested is about the communication of trees. And it’s 500 pages, which could put some people off – but don’t let it. I’m about 100 pages in (so sayeth Kindle), and it’s got my full attention. So far it’s a series of vignettes about various people with very different lives who each have some relationship or important interaction with a tree or trees. I just know they’re going to come together later in the book and though I have no idea how, I can’t wait. Meaning that Richard Powers has me trusting him. DO NOT BETRAY THAT TRUST, MR. POWERS. I’m just sayin. I can’t give a full review of this yet but so far I’m pretty thrilled and recommend a gander. I should add, for those of you with overworked eyes like myself (I spend a lot more time looking at words now that I’m not busy hunting robots and demons), that I picked up the paperback first and found the font-size to be painfully small, so an electronic format might be better for some. And if you have read it, DO NOT SPOILER or I’ll have to come after you with the fury of a live oak scorned. Which is pretty bad.

Okay, so here we are. I’d thought at the end of the last ep that we were stepping into a health-filled new chapter of this…whatever it is. But sometimes chapters start with a snakebite, don’t they, or a tumble down a hill, or somehow regress, revolve, revive, or reperspective to earlier in the tale (though it’s never quite the same). It’s not done often, and I think that traditionally those plot points usually arrive at chapter’s end, so technically it might be against the rules, but – What rules? This isn’t a goddamned plot, and apologies if I’ve tried to impose a literary form on it. This is breath and blood. Simple as that. It’s an attempt to flail around in a generally hopeful direction. But we’re only human, aren’t we (whatever that means – and you know I mean that), so there’s delusion and hubris and fuckups. Still we do what we can, don’t we? [ME: Yes we do.] [EXCITABLE ME: Yeah we do!] [STERN ME: WE ABSOLUTELY DO.] [CRITICAL VOICE: We sure doooooooooo…] [ME: Yes, we do.]

This has been Episode 15, covering the rather precarious Weeks 17 and 18 of My 12-Month Video Fast. Look for the next episode in two weeks on Saturday, October 19.

It’s been kind of you to listen.