Rollin' Up 2019

howdy, been awhile~

a lot has changed for me (and the world) in the silence since my last round-up of wholesome goods. for a while i tried to make it fun and elaborate, getting dense and esoteric with my writing style while sharing some interests of mine throughout the year. most recently, and in the midst of my breakdown as i realized people were less and less interested in actually reading anything longer than a paragraph, i decided to write even more and dive even deeper into the weird. although i had some fun, it was at the expense of some of my dedicated few friends who still wanted to support me in my annual dalliances with recommendations and light critique. i did it for me. i liked it, i was good at it. and i was really... i was alive. anyway, i still didn't really make a ripple (for my audience, for myself) and i took some time off in the middle of the project (and indefinitely) to figure out what i actually wanted to do with my writing and my propensity to consume large quantities of media every year.

on that front, i'm not really sure i have an answer. since the beginning of facebook, i have posted recommendations of things i have consumed and enjoyed. after a while, i realized that spending too much time explaining why i enjoyed these things either created some sorta debate room or discouraged others from developing their own thoughts about said-thing by engaging with it. so i opted for a very simple imperative formula: "watch _____", "read ______", "play ______". i've had varying success with those statuses depending on the media (films always tend to get more interactions, books less so, games barely), but in recent years it's become somewhat of a long-standing joke for a lot of my friends and followers or else a "yeah thanks, i know" for those already initiated in the product. the annual blog became a side-project that was intended to alleviate my desire to elaborate and talk about a thing i enjoyed or was challenged by. in an age where people are less likely to read and would rather engage with a tweet or comment thread (or, in the mind-boggling case of Discord, participate in a perpetual scroll of increasing girth), i continued my sisyphian pursuit, rolling ever onward for attention.

anyway... blogs suck. that's why i'm happy to announce i'm still gonna try and keep this ball rolling, be it uphill or whatever. i still enjoy writing despite my periods of dormancy and blockage. this year i won't be crafting an elaborate scheme to get you to read my interdimensional-wasteland fiction (specifically, i apologize to justin and connor who would independently fund my publishing if they had the means (i know this, and i love you)). but i will have some bits about film, books, and games. in the interest of me actually producing something worthwhile, i will restrict my writing to pithy paragraphs of substance, something i will appreciate in the long-run and i'm sure whatever readers wander nearby will as well. it'll be something akin to my earlier "media i consumed for the better" posts of old, but hopefully more insightful and less.. uh, needlessly wordy. i had just received my english degree, i had to flex my junky (read: bad) grammar gymnastics somewhere.

if you've gotten this far, thanks! means a lot. i'm doing this for me, i have to remind myself that writing is a passion of mine, a passion in need of pruning and whittling and much more practice. but it means a heap and a bushel that i don't have to do it on my lonesome. so keep an eye on the horizon and we'll be in touch! i plan on having these finished and posted over the first three days of the new year, so look forward to that.

and, again, thanks.

nightmares

i'm not sleeping well these days (it's because of: the stress), but i'm having some vivid nightmares/unsettling dreams, so i thought i'd write down the gist of em here. i'll update it as i have em.

I. the room (08/19/2019)

me and three others are shuttled (literally) into space to a housing unit. it's affixed to the side of a floating asteroid, that's all we really know though. we don't know each other, and we've been sleeping for the entire flight. our heads are kinda foggy, but we're told (or rather, just know, via dreamknowing) that we're here for a job and we've been selected special due to our skills. not sure what the skills are. not sure of each other, nobody is talking, and we enter the housing unit.

the housing unit is made up of three rooms, forming a sort of T-shape. the two major rooms, a room for rest, and another for socializing and eating, are connected by a door. we spend a majority of our time in both of these rooms and are encouraged not to leave for the third room until we are sufficiently rested and get along well enough. when we are (and we do), we can leave and join one another in a hall that exits from both the rest room and the socializing room, leading down to the third room. all four of us are required to be there in order to access the room. we know nothing of this room except that the job we've been hired for has something to do with this room.

when we enter the room, it is drab. the floor is some sort of grey dirt, hard-packed, old. the walls are the same make as the rest of the housing unit. there are no windows, and there is a low light from the ceiling. when we're all in, the door locks, and there's the presence of something there. we can't see it though. but there's a definite feeling that something is in the room with us. suddenly we hear voices all over—it's nothing in particular, nothing we recognize, it's just cacophonous. it's not human, i know that. we all start to dig, with hands, small rocks, just dig, making small piles familiar to the ones we saw upon entering the room. there's a lot of fear, this was when i "woke" up and had that sensation of buzzing in my head that i get when i'm having a nightmare, along with this sensation that i'm not alone in my room. as i drift back to sleep, me and two of the people i was in the room with are returning to the shuttle and are congratulated for the hard work we did. just as we take off, i'm falling asleep. some time passes and me and three others are getting off the shuttle onto a housing unit, two of them are familiar but i can't place why. the other is unknown to me. apparently we've been selected for this job because of some set of skills we have. we don't know what it is. (the dream repeats, we are being used for some unknown purpose, and not everyone makes it out each time, it seems.)

II. the red woman in the trunk, man in the hole (08/21/2019)

this was brief, but still alarming. i'm with students of mine in wartime. they've been taught how to fire long-distance rifles, and we're making our way through valleys. we are sieged and run deep into a dirty valley where cars are littering the floor. as we're hunkered down beside these cars for cover, i see shots claim the lives of a couple of my students. then i see a series of bullets riddle a car's trunk a bit away. as i watch, a head bursts through the trunk (clear through it) and gets caught at the shoulders, but continues to rise, a bright red woman's head with black holes for eyes and the glimmer of a deep red light within the holes, staring directly at me, continues to rise and rise and rise as her mouth opens wider and wider.

i woke up and laid there for about an hour. i couldn't stop thinking about the woman, and when i'd try to think of any other women, that woman would eventually peel out of the others. i thought of, and drifted off in a lucid dream, of a volcanic expert trying to discern the reason for why lava was bursting from a flat and featureless wall. she was trying to remember what had happened before, when they were analyzing this incredibly blank and massive wall, before gouts of lava came from it. she remembered, while writing in her notes, which she was handing to me, and i was reading, in bed, that she had an associate she'd forgotten til then who was working with her on the wall. he had been coring a portion of it, looking at the core samples, making note of that, etc. but one day, he had made enough corings in a close arrangement that the wall began to crumble and gave way to a deep hole. he wandered into it, hunched over, and would not venture back out. he called to her, and she came over and told him to get out, "it must be unstable" etc., but he wouldn't. he kept inching in deeper. there was an incredible stink coming from within it, and he kept beckoning to her, hunched over, now naked, telling her how incredible it was in the hole. his eyes were the only things she could see after a while, glistening in the dark.

III. the church (8/23/2019)

this one is a bit brief, but it's tied to a fear of mine i've had recently in realizing why i'm having a hard time determining what i want to do for a living. i'm in a neighbor's house, a neighbor who moved out years and years ago, and their house now unnaturally branches back into a high hill that has not existed there prior to. this was the house where i had youth group as a high schooler, which fed into the content into this dream i feel.

there are hundreds of people scattered on the hill leasing to the house and as i make my way up it they are excited and begin to hang on me and make it much more difficult for me to get up to the house. "you're not like them, you don't sound like them," they keep saying amongst other things. there are women who, individually from one another, keep trying to pull me away for themselves. it takes days for me to get into the house.

when i get in, there is a large window overlooking the arroyo behind our neighborhood tract with a pulpit in front of it. there are spiral staircases all over the room, leading into the infinite ceiling above. i'm fluttery inside as i'm at the pulpit, like that feeling after you throw up and every cell in your body is vibrating. when i open my mouth, a language not my own comes out and i don't understand what i'm saying. but i'm excited and the room is excited and a furor is rising and rising. they're all thumping the room and i can't see the floor, there are so many more people than there were before. it's becoming very hot and i feel like the room is a heart chamber beating.

in terror i try to leave but i can't find my way out, there are so many people and they're clamoring and clinging to me and the words are still spilling out of my mouth and i'm sobbing and i can't leave. "you don't sound like the others, you're not like them." it ended there.

IV. the factions (8/24/2019)

i'm in the same house from the previous dream, but it's like it used to be. something really bad is happening outside, in the world, but i'm not completely aware of what it is. a strange militia has taken over the house, with all the people in it (there are a lot of people in the house for some reason) and i get the vibe that they're former prisoners of some sort, they're wearing black and white stripes. i'm being held prisoner, though. they won't let me leave.

suddenly another group is trying to get in and you can't focus on their shape--wings, smearing, colors, all sorts of shifting when you look directly at them. they begin to take the shape of the men and women holding us captive and within the house itself. a wolf begins to slowly push on the door, it's gigantic. it's slowly pushing the door open, which is now made of thick concrete, and someone pushes me forward to push the wolf out. i can't even touch it, the shape and form shifts beneath my hands, and it looks directly at me and the eye fills me with something sick. i don't know how to say it but it felt like nothing i'd felt before, and i still can't tell if that was the dreamself or the wakingself.

it tears into the house and the original captors are dispatched or escape, but it's difficult to tell since the group replacing them look mostly just like them aside from their shimmering outlines, i still can't look directly at them. one turns into an older woman, decked out in incomprehensible clothing and armor(?) and she takes pity on me and says that she can help me get through this. rather than beautiful, i'd say she's sublime, and in this raw power of hers i find a semblance of comfort. she holds me and tucks me into a box on my side, giving me a gap before my face for breathing and eating and holding my hands so i can make the "symbols." i'm not sure what the symbols are now, but at the time it felt like a great mercy, knowing that i would live on in some way, while the rest in that house would not be spared. she sealed the box and i laid there for a time looking at my hands in the faint glow of the box.

Film Review: The Certain Malaise of a Forest Once Glowing

by "Nebby" Siits

The Certain Malaise of a Forest Once Glowing
Director: Stev Diedrich
Writer: Yana Diedrich

The Certain Malaise of a Forest Once Glowing is a series of long-shots via crude handsets depicting a scorched forest and the men who wander through it. Some are scavenging, some are hiding, some are trying to re-cultivate. It is unintentionally very black and white, it has very little in the way of professional audio-work, and it ends nearly as senselessly ominous as it begins. The site is located at the basin of the Valley Deep in light of the fires that tore through the land some 40 years ago. Perhaps the Diedrichs' desired to respond to Paolo Limboça's seminal work, Living Fire, a series of poems grappling with the country's indifference for the Valley Deep chemical fires, which tore through Jeffersonian wilds and cities within the span of a month, leaving hundreds of thousands displaced and forgotten (Limboça among the survivors). However, if this is their goal, they are intentionally vague. At times it seems nearly found footage, depicting the urban mythical; a sequence follows a man laden with wood, walking colorlessly into a field, and suddenly stopping, the track-shot halting abruptly with the man off-screen, panning quickly back to show the man motionless, featureless, for what seems an eternity. It is as though witnessing an unearthly scene, or the margins of a natural law. A haunting.
     Handsets continue to see use in the world of horror thanks to their familiar lens, practicality, and how easy they are to hide for footage potentially unwanted, though these films often release to little acclaim (see: Pale, Cinder, or the Whole Man, Snared, etc.). Their ease of access does not necessarily inform the quality of the minds behind the lens. What the Diedrichs do is not pedantic to the genre, in fact it is wholly its own in a way that dives into the subliminal previously unawoken. In order for The Certain Malaise of a Forest Once Glowing to take root, the Valley Deep had to be burned, had to be abandoned, had to become the natural anomaly that it is today. There is no widely understood reason that the land continues to rot, is void of bacterial life, or remains constant at all in an era of incredible ecological upheaval. Neither why it draws the attention that it does. Hollow shapes wandering the ashes to their own purposes, unknown. While paradoxically, the government, the country, largely unconcerned, almost percussively so. What the Diedrichs see is the land uncensored, shutters drawn.

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Yana's writing, save its direction, is not featured for reasons unknown. As it is, it is a miracle that the film sees the light of day and has an audience at all, as this auteur couple keeps their interactions with the industry brief and often stilted, as though ambassadors for a larger purpose and this is merely a formality to a greater sequence. Within the flashdrive that contained their finished product, a readme.txt delineated Yana's discoveries while filming, curiously articulate and removed. "Stegner's New Cycle Principle demands the balance of any ecological community of practice to hinge upon the axis of relational zoning contingent upon consensual aggregation—these men are alone." Though, it is not without its obvious insights, "Where are women—men wander alone." Earlier in the notes, Yana states that her intention with the script for the film was for her husband, Stev, and Stev alone. There is not a shred of evidence that the script even existed outside of the conversations held between the couple. This checks out: the Diedrichs are most understood when cryptic.
     However, this film seems to embrace the anonymous fear that it records, and as such serves no lasting purpose but mystical intrigue. The Diedrich's refusal to set word or tongue to tape confirms as much. My fear is that public (though liminal) praise for its ethereal visage will drown its louder cry for an answer, but a world that could metastasize such a need for this vision is one that would just as soon abandon any message scrawled upon the walls, regardless of its bloodly ink.

6.8/9

This work is replicated in identical to its original, as per the Culture-Safe dictates (9.4114) of Our Lady Diaspora, by the Curator Proper of Catacombian Wells (1.445).

Film Review: The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens

by "Nebby" Siit

The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens
Director: Deren Feck
Writer: Deren Feck, Ché (consulting)

The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens is a film about loving a world that is begging to burn. This is Deren Feck's first film since The Agitates of Furor, marking some 20 cycles between the two. It runs the standard 35 minutes, but taps into something timeless. And as Feck is wont to do, ruminates on the philosophies of GYIA, regarding perpetuity (the irony is not lost here).
     The story takes place from the perspective of Menden Leavens (played by recurring character-actor and life-long friend of Feck, Servil Jen), a young man growing in a world increasingly stark; day to day the world sloughs its beauty to accommodate the fickle wishes of man. As he becomes more and more aware of the dissonance in his life, a prophetic vision comes to him on the asphalt plains of a forgotten land, giving him the direction he hungers for.
     The film follows the typical arc of any Feck film: an ingratiating world exposed through the mundane (Menden's walk), the hand that man plays in it (the asphalt plains, seeing the needlessly dead), and the call to arms (the titular "Magnificent Self-Immolation").
     One could sit to reflect on the message of this film and sum it up within a review succinctly delineating its manifold meaning (which, admittedly, would take more than a "succinct review"). However, I believe that it is a better use of my time, and one could argue my responsibility, to educate the reader through the lens of The Magnificent Self-Immolation of Menden Leavens. Besides, it wouldn't be a true "Feckian" review if it didn't stoke the coals of a harder conversation.

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Feck's Magnificent raises questions in how we, as an audience, interact with the medium. These days, as in days in the past, there is a concern with labeling a film, or any work for that matter, as "good", or especially: a "favorite". When a film tickles a certain fancy, meets an expectation, or releases with refreshing bombast, it is easy for one to lay their laurels at its mound. "This is my favorite." "This is a good film." However, it is often the case that films such as these, what garner attention almost rabidly so, contain a rather vapid or super-condensed vision of their conceit's potential. That is to say, it would prove difficult to last the test of time because the film is scaffolded for easy, present consumption. When a work of any kind is crafted solely for an immediate response, its constitution remains weak, and its legs are blown out by the next work of its kind—"wash, rinse, repeat," to quote the ancient refrain.
     And in the end, we are none the better. For film to maintain any relevancy in our increasingly illiterate world, it must pass along the wisdom our forebears have worn their knuckles to bear to light. In an age where The Lathe of Aeschylus is misunderstood for a brand of tillage, being only some 30 cycles from its debut, what hope have we to remember recent scourges that have ravaged our weary spit of land? Before the Valley Deep and Darkest Tundra are merely names, losing their significance, and the fear that wrought those names into our tongue? A time of unencumbered relativity is upon us. Feck knows it, and shows us as much in the sequence prior to Menden's self-immolation. "I do not know this land, and it knows nothing of me," Menden says. "What left here is known? And what is best left unknown? A world no longer the world."
     Feck's film is not "good", it is not a "favorite", and you will be hard-pressed to find those who would have the mind to say so (perhaps shock-auth Phoebe Korb will have their shallow retort). What it is is foundational. A hallmark to our floundering age. I would argue a wake-up call, but it seems that Feck still struggles with communicating to the everyman; perhaps I am only preaching to my own choir, my own cultivation of a dying intelligentsia, a void. But I am not without hope, for the world's pangs often precede a birth, and should we remain vigilant and grounded in our perpetuity (with no ounce of irony) we will see the night through.
     "To live, to die, we live in cyclical wonder."

9/9

This work is replicated in identical to its original, as per the Culture-Safe dictates (9.4114) of Our Lady Diaspora, by the Curator Proper of Catacombian Wells (1.445).

2017's Music That I "Liked"

Let's kick things off for my weekly recs for the last year of entertainment I consumed. This year I've decided to shoulder a bigger load and as such will be posting once a week with my recommendations for the remaineder of "January"—but perhaps we'll go further into the year cycle! Please engage! Everything is linked for your pleasure.. Please click the links of anything that interests you! This year I Seek to Impress!

Original Soundtrack to "Boxes of Glass" by Willem Setters
     In an attempt to curry favor amongst downtrodden 40-somethings (the crop-fires affected this age-bracket hardest) writer/director Geralt Spivak was hellbent on obfuscating old tales of the Old World as some sort of metaphor. The film itself was garbage. It relied too heavily upon misplaced nostalgia and was severely intentional with its disgusting "us vs. the world". It seems that Spivak still does not understand what brought down the Old World in the first place, and he settles for a masturbatory fantasy wherein old laws are worshipped and the class systems are again used as stepping stones for the elite.
     Thankfully, because he was either absent from the filming or willfully ignored instruction (of the two I lean heavily on the latter), Willem Setters' mastery of the foundant nouveau "earscape" redeems an otherwise grotesque malaise of ignorance and cheap depravity. Most enjoyable when cooking or amidst outdoor chores. An understanding yet unseen for the reviving medium.

"92m," by 92
     A seminal work of the nonagenarian crew 92 known to most, "92m," is an interesting twist on the previously tired practice of throat-singing. I slept on this one when it debuted several cycles ago, and am regretting having taken this long to grapple with it.
     Ixii, cryptic lead singer and conceptualist for the album's overarching theme "sterilization", claims the ideas and her gifts were received in a dream from GYIA. With or without arcane influence, the album is a triumph and stretches deep into the conceptual without losing its heart: THIS is how it ends.

"Eye White; Reflect" by Straw
     It's hardly a surprise these days to see Straw at the top of the charts, but the sheer volume of their work in relation to how many years they've been featured should be testimony enough to their prestige. In a way, their popularity is due in no small part to how they've become the voice of the zeitgeist.
     "Queen Scream," "Memymitica," and "GANG" are go-to's for any casual Straw evangelist, but the simple cadence of "Prophesy! Prophesy!" and sizzling ear-worm "Blistering Sword of the Landsknecht" are anthemic. With this release, Straw has solidified their placement in Jeffersonian history, but it is enough for them to remain merely celebrity?

"Forests Forgotten" by Gary
     It broke my goddam heart to see this posthumous release, due in no small part to its prophetic lyrics about Gary's untimely death. Ranging from the political to raw emotion, Gary has always sought difficulty. "Difficulty," he argues in "Satin," "is truth, and yet it's still so much easier to settle for the dust and dregs... shit."
     An intimate collection of singles and remixes lifted from his corrugated cell phone, and oftentimes seems dangerously close to triggering the artist's own seance... if only it could.

the weekly thing: mass of the fermenting dregs

hi, welcome to my fourth weekly thing. this hazy monday evening i'd like to talk about a band i've been listening to on my commutes hither and thither, japanese shoegaze phenomenon MASS OF THE FERMENTING DREGS (hereafter referred to as: motfd, for simplicity's sake, and also to encourage such a violent amalgamation of letters).

music is something i'm still learning to write about. it's a medium that, in my opinion, does everything it can to keep from being nailed to paper. lyrics are not enough to fully grasp any good song—if that were the case, let it be a poem or creed. lyrics are also unnecessary, and if present one need not always understand them to feel the weight of the music. at least, that's my fledgling opinion. growing up in a conservative christian background, i've had my fill of ham-handed lyrics, and from a young age began to avoid them altogether.

like any good web-based millenial growing up, the gateway drug of anime soon busted up and infected any and all previous hobbies and interests i had—the games i played became japanese-made (JRPG's, etc.), the cartoons i watched became anime, the movies and music i listened to, etc. etc. i was fanatical about GACKT and Utada Hikaru, had a crush on multiple anime characters (we can safely narrow down the timeline of my sexual awakening to this hazy no-man's land of pre-pubescence), etc. etc.

all that being said, from a younger age than most, i was steeped in a world of music so different from my physical surroundings'. i didn't (and still don't) understand much japanese beyond the typical bits that you learn via osmosis with years and years of subbed anime, but it never stopped me from being able to enjoy and emote with the music. it was almost as though the voice became the instrument and the language different notes and chords..

anyway, motfd is great. a shoegaze band formed in 2002, breaking up in 2010, and getting back together in 2015. the music is energetic and exhilarating. despite the language-barrier, the tunes are catchy and are guaranteed to get lodged in your head. beyond that, i don't know much of them at all and prefer it that way (to an extent, because i obviously wanna know when their next album drops, etc. etc.), because it becomes almost magical—songs that sink in your soul and speak to you in ways you might not fully understand yet. music from a far-away land that feels fantastic and surreal with its neon superflat (ironically). because the song's not telling you how to feel explicitly through lyrics, it's almost the most honest way to experience music.

i recommend it for boring drives, essay-writing, drawing, and running. i do not recommend it for conservative parents, mentioning at work, or playing aloud on your phone while you're walking on the sidewalk (which people do all the time with everything???).

my verdict: i'm not very good at talking about music at all, but you should still check out motfd.

the weekly thing: the underground railroad

hi, welcome to my third weekly thing. this (very hot and uncomfortable) monday afternoon i'd like to talk about a book i read for my monthly book club, Colson Whitehead's The Underground Railroad.

if the title was any indicator, it is by no means an "easy" book, which is simultaneously its strength and weakness. given the gravitas, it demands a certain amount of terror to even remotely begin to respectfully approach the subject matter (the enslavement of the consequently African American). though it's not the cat-of-nine-tails or the brutal punishments that await captured slaves that fills the reader with dread, so much as the feeling of futility in america; if a slave were to escape, where would they even go? what could they possibly do to secure peaceful livings for themselves and any family they might have? how could they scrub away the traumatizing lives they'd lived hitherto?

should the book have ended with this trajectory, it would have remained a brutally honest teardown of the american dream. thankfully, author Colson Whitehead's vision is not without hope, though it is certainly less "biblical" as one typically finds in accounts trying to alleviate the horrors of the early american slave-trade, openly-critical of the flawed theologies of the past and the theologies forgotten today. his answer instead: the revelation of the mythical underground railroad.

though the underground railroad in reality had nothing to do with trains or subterranean tunnels, this book has everything to do with them. cavernous mouths that defy explanation, whose origins are shrouded in mystery, filled with ornately decorated stations and their charismatic and heavily symbolic conductors. at the revelation, Cora asks a stationmaster who built the fantastic roads. ominously they reply, "who builds anything in this country?" the sublimely treacherous tunnels are shifting metaphor for many things, but perhaps the most damning is revealed in this quote from the aforementioned conductor:

Cora and Caesar climbed into the [train car] and Lumbly abruptly shut them in. He peered between the gaps in the wood. "If you want to see what this nation is all about, I always say, you have to ride the rails. Look outside as you speed through, and you'll find the true face of America." He slapped the wall of the boxcar as a signal. The train lurched forward. (p.69)

with the case for the mythic cracked open only pages before, the reader is left to interpret what the conductor meant. as Cora and co. hurtle down the tracks towards their uncertain fates, they have nothing to hold on to but each other and a hope that must defy the strength of the powers that be.

my verdict: read The Underground Railroad.