lend me ur eyes 085
“Can we say that all lives, works, and deeds that matter were never anything but the undisturbed unfolding of the most banal, most fleeting, most sentimental, weakest hour in the life of the one to whom they pertain?” - Walter Benjamin, Picturing Proust
I had three weeks off work over Christmas. I did very little, but at no point did I feel like I had little to do. I acclimated quickly to the rhythms of what I imagine retired life would be like: waking up, pottering about, doing odd tasks of low importance, eating things, drinking things, going to the toilet, going to sleep. It was very satisfying. In the past, I’ve found myself needing greater stimuli to maintain a good mental state. But during this period, for whatever reason, I had no such complex needs.
It felt very good to complete small missions that did not need to be conducted: getting a bus a long way across town to try to get a particular book from a shop whose website suggested they might have in stock (the website was wrong); reorganising my bookshelves (small books sorted alphabetically, sub-divided into film, games, poetry, non-fiction, and fiction, large books, divided into art , film, photography, comics, and magazines); playing one or two hours a day of Red Read Redemption 2 (sort of pointless, but a fun escapist fantasy of being a wandering gunslinger who spends 80 percent of each day riding a horse.) All of these things felt kind of like a holiday inside my own mind—a staycation of the brain.
Sometimes I feel like I can’t remember what I used to do with my time—what my life was like at a certain moment, or what my yearnings were. It feels like who I am now is who I have always been, but that can’t be true. Some kind of progression must surely have occurred. In this current moment, all I seem to want to do is organise, and catalogue, things—to sort and categorise. A cursory psychological reading of this would suggest it was all about seeking order within the chaos of everyday life, but I don’t believe this is accurate. It feels more like a gesture of gratitude—creating relational databases of appreciation as a means to articulate all the nice things that make up the spiral galaxy of a boring little life. Sitting here among piles of tapes and records, logging them one by one, I feel like a little badger man sitting in a rich hovel of his own creation, content with the choices made.
PERSONAL
Five photos from Paris from a two day visit last week. It was good to be under blue skies for a bit, and for the sun to stay up until just after six.
WORK
For a new “cutscenes” column on Notebook, I wrote about how video games feature in the films of Jonathan Vinel and Caroline Poggi. When I saw Jessica Forever at CPH:DOX back in 2018, I was really affected by it. It seemed like a movie made just for me. Rewatching it, I wondered if the effect would be the same. It more or less was. Such a good film, full of bold ideas and singular images, with such a good command over tone.
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.