Long time no talk… Life has been a little chaotic 4 ya boy these past few months, but I am back in a place of peace & my Saturn return is over next week. This RX is a lot of music. Let’s go :)
if you like:
Doing It Yourself, giving a fuck, the personal being political, the political being personal, systems, critique, art, being fucking foreal
you will love:
CARE WHERE NO-ONE DOES
We are in the midst of a global idgaf war. Shell-shocked, we scoff at the idea of “winning”. There is no winning, only seeing your enemy suffer worse than you, even if just a little. We are jaded. We are joyless. The ijbolympics have been indefinitely postponed due to the intensity of the idgaf warfare. Even the pro-gaf activists are beginning to relent, some resigning to idc under the guise of self-care, others growing more stingy with their fs by the day. We are in crisis. This is where Care where no-one does comes in.
Freek Lomme (yes, that's their name. Remember you are reading a newsletter from Jaboukie Young-White) maps out the battlefield. Though Lomme writes about the socio-political climate of The marginalized (through identity or ideology) artist is flanked by two imposing figures: first, the risk-averse Dying Neoliberal Institution that is only powerful supporter of the arts; and second, the Far Right, which is hostile to marginalized people and thought and/or any art that isn't blonde children on horses. Then, Freek examines common pitfalls and traps an artist may encounter trying to thrive in the face of these two powerful entities.
I started reading this disillusioned but left somehow reinvigorated and hopeful despite It All. There’s obliqueness in the way Lomme tackles late-stage capitalism that I found so refreshing. Lomme writes from personal experience navigating life as an artist in Europe (specifically the Netherlands), but I found this perspective applied well to America (the book is dense with ideas, and English is not Lomme’s first language, so close reading is rewarded). Care where no-one does reminded me that chaos creates millions of possibilities that spark off each new inflection point. So, the game right now is endurance. Acknowledge that things are damn near impossible. Deny your spiral-prone urges. Resist indifference and the dull comforts of indifference so that when a flash of hope appears, you’re alert enough to grab it and run with it. Unprecedented times demand unprecedented measures, whether or not you gaf.
if you like:
independent cinema, Criterion, film history, race relations, the discourse around Hailee Steinfeld in Sinners, “too ____ for the ____ kids too ____ for the ____ kids”
you will love:
SHADOWS dir. JOHN CASSAVETES
I admittedly haven’t seen a good deal of Essential cinema just because it somtimes doesn’t feel as Urgent as, say, watching the festival darlings from our current year. I will read about the Important Film’s impact on society and filmmaking techniques, and then feel like I get it for the most part.
As much as I have read about Shadows, I could have never gotten it. First of all, Shadows is bad, technically. There are times the sound is terrible and the ADR performance is so absurdly out-of-sync with picture that you can’t help but laugh. I say this not to shit on the film but to inspire: Shadows is hands down one of the Most Important Films of All Time. Cassavetes invented independent cinema as we know it with Shadows. The subject matter—race relations in the Beatnik era—is a subject Hollywood probably wouldn’t even touch today. Cassavetes said fuck it, I’ll do it myself, and did. Shadows is far from perfect, but perfect ideas don’t change the world—messy actions do.
if you like:
intricate, personal electronic music; homosexual yearning; gay shamelessness
you will love:
GUT BY BATHS
Some gay men struggle with enjoying any art from or about other gay men. We often eye-roll these accusations away, but when asked, we scramble to name a gay male artist we like who is alive. (Might have to do an entirely separate post to unpack this phenomenon.) In short, to enjoy a person’s art requires empathizing with their point of view, which is something a gay man might be incapable of doing with a gay artist if he has no compassion for himself, or, rather, the queer parts of himself the gay artist asks him to acknowledge. The homoallergic consumer likely blames his queerness for his misfortune instead of external, tangible reasons: