On Freedom, Take II
The feeling of being free is one I now know to be fleeting, its sheen never brighter than the sharpness of the world that cuts back.
The feeling of being free is one I now know to be fleeting, its sheen never brighter than the sharpness of the world that cuts back.
But what this anecdote reveals to me upon reflection is not the gleeful victory of one consumer against the upcharging corporate hegemon nor a testament to my sleight of hand.
What Thunderbolts* represents is faith rewarded, a return (even briefly) to a tradition of blockbuster competence that seemed lost to a proliferation of nightmarishly digital and dumbly unfunny slop.
We reach out towards it and it reaches back.
Minutes after it concludes, six Letterboxd reviews ranging from half to one-and-a-half stars appear in rapid succession.
While nearly everything we see is not reducible to merely perceptual phenomena, all of it is at a minimum a perceptual phenomena.
Look, sometimes pop music is good at its job.
To be clear, I have nothing against Mary Oliver.
There are days when it seems that all I can think about are people who have seemingly moved on from me.
I like hiking, earthy tones and station wagons—should I go full granola?
I have only been told that I am free, but not what that is for.
I don’t talk as much as I used to on these walks.
One views art as a platform by which they speak, the other sees it as a process by which a voice is explored and perhaps revealed.
I want to believe it was by accident.
There’s no reason to think that the thing we are doing now, or might be doing in the future, isn’t the thing we could be best at.
Look for this one come the Oscars (not that they matter).
I try not to take Letterboxd too seriously, but I do anyway.
I think everyone should be allowed to have a few things on their mind, so long as they get sorted out eventually.
It seems something has shorted in its circuitry.
I’m trying to capture the same curiosity that led forty-two men westward to see what exactly the world was that unfurled for miles ahead of them.
I imagine telling my story to someone; spin a future where there wasn’t a pandemic anymore, and I wasn’t working at a warehouse anymore, and I wasn’t alone anymore.