Been a student. Been a clerk. Been a salesperson. Been a manager. Been a teacher. Been an expatriate. Am a husband, father, and chronicle.
For those who don’t understand these words, I’ll translate: driving a motor vehicle (car, truck, van, or other) with a manual-shift or stick-shift transmission.
In an automatic transmission vehicle, you have steering, gas, and brakes. The car itself decides automatically which gear to be in based on several conditions. This is the form of driving to which most are accustomed.
The rest of us can actually drive.
Ee-ahn’-aw-oh(ng)-oo(ng) for robot to vehicle. And quickly.
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It is difficult to get all of these in a single film.
However:
Art direction that makes you love design.
Cinematography at such scale and intimacy that you love light, shadow, depth of field, and the rule of thirds
Writing that makes you love language, references, and lived experiences
Casting that extols the virtues of interpersonal chemistry
Editing that forces you to feel pace, tone, and contemplation as the story demands
A plot that twists, turns, and delivers a gut punch when you least expect it
A twist-in-the-end that, on reflection (or re-watch), makes total sense.
Compelling, developing characters responding to irresistible forces that wash through their being
Murphy’s Laws in full force: failure is an option, main characters can die
e:
Good examples:
Synecodoche, New York
Michael Clayton
Sicario
Requiem For a Dream
No Country for Old Men
I’ve used this so many times. Now I need to employ Wilhoit’s composition as well.
Perhaps both, together.
Closed out Children of Men by P.D. James today.
I have a copy of the Left Hand of Darkness, but I can’t read a physical copy in the car while driving. Guess I’ll have to wait for the library to deliver the audiobook.
I think I’ll start Utopia by Thomas More tomorrow.
You make an excellent point.
Perhaps, instead of “celebrating”, the opposite of “[vicious] harassment and [ignorant] hatefulness” is virtuous identification and commitment to learning. Thoughts?
A foreword: there is no picture. The future has guidelines, tendencies, but no actual shape. There’s nothing you’re supposed to do. Life isn’t planned out all at once. Those days are dead. In fact, they nay never have existed. You will become a new person, and have a new career or focus or stage of life, about once every 11 years. That’s normal. That’s life’s uncertainty.
The piece of advice is the one I’ve given on many platforms for years: if you’re —
North American and
from any “settler-colonial” culture and
you’re able,
then leave North America for at least one year. Live elsewhere, see how others live, and break out of the bubble built by the preschool to prison pipeline, the corporate cradle to coffin collective consciousness. This advice isn’t exclusively for Gringos and Canucks, but it’s based on the particular starting square I had and most of the people I’ve encountered. Also, I don’t mean to exclude my Indigenous, Mexican, Mexica, and other Latino brothers and sisters, but my understanding is that you’ve already got reality pushing the movement narrative.
If you’re a a first-generation North American (like me), also build connections within your community. There is much work to be done to diversify these places and so many other new, and first-gens could use some support. Detachment from one another is what harms us most. The communities I’ve had outside of El Norte continue to feed me. Admittedly, the job I have and the hours I keep prevent community-building. I need to get back to it.
Finally, get smart about money. Find teachers, take meetings at banks, go to teachings at libraries. Study the jargon in your credit card agreements. Make investments in yourself and your future. I failed pretty spectacularly at this one.
As far how to choose WHAT to do with all your time, well, the only thing I’d advise is to be a crafty, insightful, decisive disruptor. Nothing else that I’ve seen works. Be the best there is at a small thing you do. Identify a critical mass for your work and work hard to get to the place where 15% of the people you talk to will say ‘yes’ to you. Gain your repeat customers, followers, students, and acolytes. You can do what want. The trick is to have people support you or believe in your doing it.
Just a digest of what Ive seen here so far:
don’t get bogged down planning too far ahead. Set yourself some achievable goals for the near future.
This is good advice.
there is a good chance that your future could look very different than what you imagine it might be.
This is not advice, but true and warrants remembering because you can bend the future.
find a good strategy for managing upkeep on whatever needs it.
Many people forget that anything and everything you obtain and want to keep working will require maintenance. Machines, subject knowledge, relationships, tools, whatever — all need upkeep. Know your shit so you can keep your shit together.
Focus on improving a single thing you can do in the short term.
I’d add to this. Short term goals should not be ends in themselves unless they are for entertainment. If you’re focusing on a short term goal, connect it to a long term goal.
get[ ] a union job if you don’t have employment figured out yet.
Unions can protect you. But, if you’re looking for satisfaction, the job has to be what you want it to be. Or, take pleasure in the union connections. If neither of these feeds you, a union can’t save you from yourself.
Anyway, you asked and I’m stuck in a waiting room.
Tr. Do what excites you.
Unless it’s heroin, cocaine, methamphetamine, or other highly addictive drugs. Also, no gambling unless you’re a mathematical genius. No extreme sports unless you’re extremely fit and a physicist. No crimes or exploitation. No killing, forcibly confining, gaslighting, or coercing people. That’d be awkward. Also, no parenting unless you already have the means to spend $1M on someone other than yourself — while keeping yourself fed, clothed, housed, employed, and pretending to be happy.
So, yeah, whatever excites you and makes you fit, smart, caring, and socially ept.
Note to the CEOs:
Which EXACT side of history are you on? What are you willing to do to help… heal this country?
CEOs, all of you, can change everything. You can (somewhat) free yourselves of culpability by abandoning this violent system. End exploitation, support communities, prioritize people. This system cannibalizes us all. Do what it takes to not get eaten.
Set a new standard.
What your people, your state, and your nation need is a new course forward. Not riches. Not power. Not influence. Not dominion. Not any of the colonial values. No more. Abandon those hopes. Build back better.
Care. Not just “Minnesota nice.” Human security for all.
Build. Sustainable, science-based solutions.
Action. Recognize, understand, apply, and create a future that depends on promoting people, not capital.
The next iteration of the American experiment awaits.
Its centered on the US because they’re harming themselves and everyone else all at once. “Flooding the zone” as it were. What’s there to be done but stand on principle and dominate the narrative.
Inception, followed by a kick.
Thanks for that. And true, Durden was not the best to offer. I meant it to be jarring. I meant it to reach out to the disaffected youth and the millennials and the middle of the road white boys. It is anachronistic. And, you might note, it’s no longer about Douglass in that last sentence. It’s us. We, now, are, and should be, pissed off.
The thing is, black anger has always been regarded a threat. My anger has always been a threat. So, I picked one of my heroes as a picture. One of the first of ‘the other’ to take command of his own photographic image. But the current state of affairs — which has never changed — caused me to co-opt the words that, in some readings (like the one you shared), spurred on the Tea Partiers, the “basket of deplorables”, and the Red Hats. An inversion, or, if you like, a suplex for those words.
It was not the smartest, or most apt move. But, it’s what I chose. And published. And am responsible for.
Thanks for your insight.
Wexit is like Brexit but way more petty, stupid, and pointless. An independent Alberta couldn’t defend themselves against ICE stationed in Montana, let alone the US military proper.
And, since America is taking custody of oilfields in this hemisphere under the Monroe Doctrine, the Tarsands are a likely target. Danielle Smith better get comfy cosy with the idea of living in a detention facility, charged with “insulting the Dear Leader under her breath” (slander) or “being a woman in power” (blasphemy).
Added it to my list of upcoming reads.
Quality over quantity, friend. I’ve promoted the Massey Lectures for over a decade to anyone who’d listen. Today, you get a detailed response and I get something to refer back to. Non-zero sum gains are the best gains.
Thanks for your original ask. I’m glad you took interest.
Ill only recommend ones from those I’ve read. Here are 10. Looking at the list on Wikipedia, I want to read almost all.
1995 – John Ralston Saul, The Unconscious Civilization
I didn’t realize this was a Massey Lecture when I read it. A fascinating insight into the business culture of management. Forecasted the runaway hit book Bullshit Jobs
2003 – Thomas King, The Truth About Stories*
This is the only one recommended that I havent read I do so on the strength of the other book by Thomas King I read: the Inconvenient Indian (which is a game changer, and I should’ve mentioned in my 1st post).
2004 – Ronald Wright, A Short History of Progress
Vital. A top 3 pick.
2008 – Margaret Atwood, Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth
This was the first one I read at the time it was released, knowing it as a Massey Lecture and before the lectures were delivered. She wrote it in early 2008. Published in the summer of '08 and the the bottom fell out of the stock market in September. She then toured Canada saying, and I’m paraphrasing here, “Well, shit. I didnt know I was this right.”
2009 – Wade Davis, The Wayfinders: Why Ancient Wisdom Matters in the Modern World
Wade Davis is a cultural anthropologist. His perspective is fascinating. For everyone who loves Moana he consulted on that film. One of his lectures is about Polynesians expanding across the Pacific.
2010 – Douglas Coupland, Player One: What is to Become of US
This, the 50th anniversary, is the first series of lectures that are fictional. Also, the first ones that I attended in person. I’m still waiting for lecture 1 to actually happen.
2012 – Neil Turok, The Universe Within: From Quantum to Cosmos
I love these ones because they’re accessible science. Top 3.
2018 – Tanya Talaga, All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward
I guess, because of the Thomas King revelations above, these are the first lectures delivered by a person of First Nations descent.
2020 – Ronald J. Deibert, Reset: Reclaiming the Internet for Civil Society
Blew my absolute mind. Top 3.
2023 – Astra Taylor, The Age of Insecurity: Coming Together as Things Fall Apart
I love this one. The first lecture, Cura’s Gift, captured my heart.
This one will make it sound like I’m a fan — I’m not — but I was a kid when Owen Hart entered the WWF and an adult when he died in the ring.
Wrestling had already lost its shine and appeal to me, early in the 90s. The characters, storylines, and action bled fake. And, as I grew up, I came to understand it was no different than any other staged play, entertainment, or storytelling. What really bothered me wasn’t the fake drama, or the dumbing down of storytelling. It was serial betrayal, shameless advantage-taking, and the smooth-brained jingoism of it all. It became the refuge of every shameless American impulse.
Then Owen Hart died on camera. There was a brief reality check. Then, on with the show. The change, though was an acceptance that real death was no reason to stop, slow, or change directions on the machine. If anything, the show, the drama, the merch, and the culture became the basis for an entire political bloc.
Lest we forget: Linda McMahon is now Secretary of Education. Hard to think of a person worse than Betsy DeVos, but here we are.
Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century by Kim Fu.
Its a fast read, 12 short stories and I’m a bit more than half way through. I’ve been taken in by several of them.
Please enjoy.
Along with Naomi Klein and Ta-Nehisi Coates works, plus John Ralston Saul’s The Unconscious Civilization, Rutger Bregman’s Utopia is for Realists and several Massey Lectures, these have shaped my outlook on the world as it is.
Because this came last, for me, it recast this human experiment of ours and the depth of misdirection that is going on now.
Skateboarding. Wingsuit flying. BASE jumping.
All seem like SO much fun. But, Im entering middle age with two kids. Broken bones are not fun. Nor are risks not covered by my insurance, apparently. That’s what my partner tells me anyway. She gets final say on fun.
Or, the insurance company does. Whichever. They’re on the same side: against injury. And fun.