Everything is connected
I just finished rewatching the German series DARK and if you haven‘t seen it yet, why are you wasting time reading my shit? Seriously, go watch it now. Avoid spoilers if you can and then come back so we can talk about it.
I like to think of DARK as Quantum Noir. The harder you try to fix your first fuck up, the more deeply fucked you are. Your fuck ups start multiplying exponentially and before you know it you‘ve become what you hated most and murdered the only person you ever loved. Also, there’s this pesky apocalypse that keeps happening. More than one, actually.
There are so many things I love about this series. It’s visually gorgeous, emotionally grueling and flawlessly executed like the gears inside a Swiss fucking watch. The ensemble cast is terrific and it‘s got some of the best matching of actors playing the same role at different ages that I‘ve ever seen. The music is superb, both Ben Frost’s instrumental score and all the other songs that were woven into the storyline. It‘s so well written it hurts, but you know, in a good way.
I‘m not gonna to go into all the details of the labyrinthine plot itself. If you watched it like I told you to, you don‘t need me to do that anyway. But, hey, feel free to email me if you want to talk more about all the twisted mysteries, the Easter eggs and that epilogue. Because I have Thoughts, and I bet you do too.
What I really want write about here is how it feels to watch a series like this. How it feels to me, anyway.
I had already watched and loved DARK when it first came out, but watching it again made me realize how good it felt to stretch and challenge my atrophied attention muscles. To take a deep dive into a series that defies casual “second screen“ viewing. A series that requires you to focus, to notice and remember every tiny detail, because you better believe it‘s all gonna pay off somewhere down the line. Like Adam and Eva, I already knew everything that was gonna happen but I still found myself beguiled and awestruck by its intricate clockwork construction. I noticed a hundred things I‘d missed the first time, fell in love with every single character all over again, and got my heart broken a hundred times.
Watching (and rewatching) a series like DARK is the kind of experience that is increasingly rare in this age of vestigial attention spans and endless entertainment-overload. You can‘t scroll TikTok, swipe around on Grindr, online shop and/or keep up with all your group texts while watching something like this. I mean, technically you can, but you might as well be watching OW, MY BALLS.
Why yes, I am old. Thanks for noticing!
Look, I‘m not trying to attention-span shame here. If you want to be the center of a multi-screen dopamine gangbang at all times, I love that for you! Go live your truth, babycakes. Not that you need me to tell you that because you probably already clicked away to some AI slop spider-cat video seven paragraphs ago.
What I am trying to talk about here is my own wonky brain. (I’ll get back to DARK, I promise. Because of course, everything is connected.)
When I was a kid, I got diagnosed with what was then known as ADD. I refused to take meds for it and told anyone who would listen that I was just fidgety because school was boring and the tests were too easy. I read voraciously, made up complex stories constantly and chased the same kind of topic crushes that obsess me to this day.
As an adult, I made a life for myself that didn‘t involve doing much of anything that I didn‘t really want to do, so I was no longer troubled by what was perceived as a deficit. None of my fetish clients or readers seemed to mind that I was aggressive, hyperactive and intense. If anybody was annoyed by my staccato vibes, well that was more of a you-problem than a me-problem.
Then, several things happened in rapid succession. Unrelated, yet weirdly intertwined in my head. The first thing was my hysterectomy. The second, the fucking pandemic. Third, my stepfather died suddenly and I had to leave Los Angeles for Gig Harbor, WA.
In the long shadow of that personal trinity knot, shit got weird. Social media got weird. Publishing got weird. Politics got weird. Basic human interactions got weird. My body and my brain got really fucking weird.
The engine that had been driving the last Angel Dare book inexplicably stalled out. What had previously been mild perimenopause symptoms grew Kaiju-huge seemingly overnight and started attacking the city. I couldn‘t work effectively but I couldn‘t rest either. I was perpetually exhausted but I couldn‘t sleep. I felt trapped in this antsy, frustrated brainfog, scattered and irritated all the time.
I eventually managed to finish that book and I’m really proud of it. Achieving that closure, not just for Angel but for that chapter of my life, should have been exactly what I needed to help me move the fuck on to whatever is next. Yet my wonky brain feels wonkier than ever.
I‘m on HRT now, which has helped a bit but not as much as I had hoped. It’s like something long dormant inside my brain got unlocked by all these hormonal shenanigans and now it’s just knocking shit off the shelves up there and adding to the chaos. Research and understanding of ADHD in adults has come a long way since the 70s and so I‘m giving low-dose Strattera a try. (I hate taking any kind of medication at all, so I wanted to give a non-stimulant type a shot before going with the big guns.) Jury is still out on that shit for now. Mostly I‘m trying to be more mindful and understanding of the weather inside my head and trying not to be so hard on myself for not being perfect all the time. I‘m spending more time alone outdoors without any kind of digital distractions. I‘m doing more challenging reading and watching more films and series that don‘t let me off easy. Like DARK, for example.
Now maybe that kind of intellectual bench-press is a piece of cake for you, but if you‘ve been finding yourself struggling with concentration and focus like I have, you could do a lot worse than watching DARK again. (You have seen it by now, right?) And when you‘re done with that, you might also want to check out 1899. Tragically cut short after a single season, because we can‘t have nice things, but still worth watching.
While I was at it, I also wanted to try another mental hack to help me break out of this sticky menopausal brainfog. I decided to see if I could learn a new language. And because I was halfway through my rewatch of DARK at the time, I picked German.
I picked up most of my Spanish from Lucha Libre announcers and vintage Santo movies. Using DARK as a teaching aid has given me quite an unusual vocabulary for a beginner. My pronunciation is atrocious but I‘m working on it and having fun and not taking it too seriously. As of now I sound kinda like Robert De Niro reading a German children’s book written by Werner Herzog.
“Mein Hund ist nett. Der Elefant ist groß. Das Leben ist Schmerz und Dunkelheit. Auf Wiedersehen.“
I‘m in my Scary German Guy era!
The legendary Black Gravel (stares into the distance) will always be my favorite, but there are a couple of other German noir flicks I’m dying to see. Especially Siodmak’s „Die Ratten!“
Also „Die goldenen Pest,“ and „Abenteuer in Wien.“ None of these three seem to be available to stream with subtitles, but please correct me if I‘m wrong! I‘ve got a long way to go before I‘m able to understand well enough to watch without subtitles (if ever) but hey, goals are good.
Meanwhile, it‘s practice practice practice. So hit me up, thick German Frauen! Let‘s teach each other things.
Also, shout out to my CRIME INK: ICONIC anthology-mate Marco Carocari, a crackerjack crime writer and all around excellent human, for offering to help me with this mental weight training. I suspect he’ll be questioning his life choices when he realizes how utterly abysmal my current Konversation skills really are. I‘m still working on being able to say “I can‘t wait to read your new book!“
Here at the Fausthaus, the Lady V still remembers some of her German, so we‘ve been amusing each other over the breakfast table. She also sent me what is probably the single best German teaching tool of all time.
Gern geschehen!