lend me ur eyes 075
[ 26 / 02 / 24 ]
I met a Freemason the other day. He was bragging about going to member dinners and staying out in private bars until 4am. He had emailed the central organisation, and after a short interview, they had let him join. I compulsively said something about the Stonecutters and he looked kind of annoyed. He informed me that the two main requirements for entry were having no criminal record and saying you believed in some kind of "higher power." He then told me he didn't actually think God was real but to say he didn't believe in a higher power would suggest that he felt himself to be the highest power of all, which seemed like an arrogant thing to admit. Then he said something about Spinoza that I couldn't fully hear. I asked him if the members seemed lonely, which in retrospect was probably an impertinent question because it suggested that he was also lonely himself and that was why he had sent that email asking to join. He said that some certainly did, and that lots of men signed up in their retirement in order to have more frequent social contact and something regular to do. My question probably said more about me than him however, because I have been thinking about the topic of male (a)sociality as I approach the age risk category in which men seem to have to meet in sheds in order to connect. I've never really had any problem making friends, and I've stayed close with the ones I have made for years, and in some cases, decades now. I have seen my school friends every two to three weeks for exactly half of my lifetime now, and I need to continue doing this until the last one of us is dead, buried in a cemetery plot that we all own together, matching headstones set all in a line. This said, I've not really made many new friends in the last few years, at least outside of work. Some friends have left the city, some will soon have kids. Next thing I know I may be looking to join the Freemasons in order to fill in a few available slots. Probably not, but you need to keep watch because life shifts slowly, often without you noticing anything has changed at all.
During the pandemic I was walking the dog with JC every week in Walthamstow, a routine act of sociality that enabled both of us to keep a grip on our sanity during an uncertain time. I remember telling my parents this and then talking about what people do together and why, and this idea of activities and contexts, with the walk being the most straightforward context available as a background for chat. My dad then said that "men don't go on walks," which made my mum burst into laughter, reciting this absurd five word sequence back at him so he could hear how ridiculous it sounded. He held fast, claiming it as fact. My mum asked him what exactly men did do then, and he said, "mainly, they go for drinks." To be fair, he wasn't really wrong. When looking for a context to facilitate a social connection of a fixed duration, going for a drink is often the default, tried and tested within the western heterosexual social order, set in stone due to a failure of imagination as much as anything else. "Men don't go on walks." They go for drinks, listen to podcasts in which two or more men who are friends talk about subjects of low import, use their barber as an unqualified therapist, build crude things in sheds, or join the Freemasons.
PLAYING
"Summer will come again, with or without me, and I will do it right. Should I live to see another of these fleeted seasons, I will live it well, and with truth to my ancient wishes." I have been watching CQ slowly play Boku no Natsuyasumi 2, a PS2 game released in Japan in 2002 that was fan-translated into English for the first time late last year. I learnt about the series via a six hour video review of the first game that the video games journalist Tim Rogers uploaded to YouTube in which he details the strengths of the simplicity of the series and makes an argument that more games should be designed in this way, without linear progression and strict structure, and without the need for violent actions or input requirements that require dexterity and skill. (Yes, the character he portrays in these essays is extremely annoying, but the video is actually quite sincere and beautiful––should you have six hours to spare.) The game is most comparable to Animal Crossing in that it has a day-by-day structure and because you play a character in a rural setting that has free choice of their actions, and can complete a number of small daily tasks like bug-catching or fishing or else just wander around. “Not much happened today. But it was a day I'll never forget," says a diary entry in the game at on point. You play a Japanese boy on his summer vacation in the 1970s, sent to stay with family in a small seaside town. This not being the present lends the game a nostalgic tone, meaning that as an adult player you are will inevitably be reminiscing about your own childhood, different but also somehow reflected in some way by the one seen here. Each day you must have meals with the family, but other than you are free to roam around. As you talk to characters around town, a story slowly develops, focused specifically on your relationship with an older girl. There is not so much to it, but the game is relaxing, atmospheric, and, as you can see from the pre-rendered background artwork included above, very beautifully illustrated. The writing is also good.
I also came across this blogpost chronicling the game's advertising campaign, archived here across 26 different clips totalling 12 minutes of footage. The ads "take place from the perspective of a father writing in a series of journal entries about his son begging him to buy Boku No Natsuyasumi 2. The father describes his family not having a PS2, let alone a color TV. He turns 40, wants to buy a DVD player, but realizes it is not proper for an adult to buy a PS2. The following ads document his trepidation with getting over being a gamer, his difficulty at work, inevitably culminating in playing the game with his son and wife. By the end he is so enraptured with the experience that he wished, like a summer vacation, it could last forever."
PERSONAL
Above are some odd pages of my scrapbooks and photo albums. I've been cataloguing things in these paper archives for years now, and I have about twelve photo albums and five or six scrapbooks that are exploding at their seams. They sit under the bed, but soon I will have more mass of materials than I can store away there. Some of this stuff dates back to when I was fourteen, so it is always strange to sift through them and get portalled back to that place and time. It's nice too to see that not so much has changed. Things I was into then, I am still into. Friends I had then, I still have contact with. Feelings I felt then, I still feel now. There is no comparison for physical matter, for pages to leave through, pictures to look at, and papers to touch. Everyone should do this sort of thing, I think, should they find the time.
lend me ur eyes is a linkdump of what i'm into month by month: music, books, games, movies, and other internet detritus, with misc editorial misgivings in the intro. lend me ur eyes friends, so that i can see.