captain's log

for the first time ever

June 2021

Crystallize - Tokyo Shoegazer

Bright, in particular, is the song that opened the world of shoegaze music to me. But it's a beautifully constructed album, and it has felt like such a long time since I listened to an album that was put together in that way. The songs are a part of each other and belong to each other, but are also individually worlds unto themselves.

Hinamatsuri - Otake Masao

one of the funniest manga i've read, easily. ok maybe the funniest. belly laughs

stereochrome - She Her Her Hers

I can't stop listening to this album. they really know how to start a song. The thought that comes to mind: it sounds like the way deep breaths feel in your chest!

Like Grains of Sand (1995) - Ryosuke Hashaguchi

What a gorgeous, tender movie. The same sort of tenderness I feel when Lorde sings about a girl stroking her cheek, like people are gossamer, that their souls should be gently held. The central trio are completely compelling: Ito, Yoshida, Aihara. The supporting cast and characters are all important, without taking away from the gravity of the central three.

The Fallen Crimson - envy

It’s very strange that I feel like I am learning how to enjoy things again. Stunning. A faint new world into Rhythm is the violence of noise, followed by a contrast showing how soothing and sweet it can be. There’s something primal and alive about the music, while maintaining melodic lines that glow and feel golden. The music crests and it feels like the sun breaking through the clouds, a turning point with joy, something bitter, something free.

The Story of A Brief Marriage - Anuk Arudpragasm

I went online and read some reviews after I finished this one, and there was an anecdotal consensus that it had taken a surprisingly long time to read, despite not being such a long book. It's true, it's heavy reading. The paragraphs are dense and contemplative, and the subject matter is uncomfortable, as much as carving the fragility and strength of life at its core, which are also its contours, into your consciousness is uncomfortable. Being alive means shitting, it means pissing, it means breathing. It is drinking water and eating food and clinging to one another. The human core, the ability to care for another, to not be alone, to hope. Exists no miracle mightier than this: to feel. Somehow, despite the death, suspended and released grief, we see that even the most rudimentary actions and experiences are worthy of marvel. It's the hushed awe and horror of being a living thing with consciousness, grasping among other living things for one another.

Lot - Bryan Washington

These stories make me feel like a series of exclamation marks as I move through them. ! . !!. !!!!!!. !!!!!!!!!!!!!! ! even within one sentence, there's barely time for breath (which means there is, but its gasps).

July 2021

Uncanny Valley - Anna Wiener

I pre-ordered this in, what, 2019? So it's been sitting on my shelf a while. I suppose I am too online, and spent too much time among exactly the types of people the author writes about for this book to offer me anything new or revelatory. It's another reminder that working for a technology-internet company, knowing what I know, is more sin than I care to bear: it is empty for me except for the promise of money, but worse, deeply cynical about humans. I think it's another kick in the pants to move out, to find a new job, to find a way to live with myself, or at least take the journey away from my present job more seriously. The book itself is easy enough to read and caters well to the sort of cutting devastating observations I aspired to make once upon a time, but then I read somewhere that hating yourself and laughing at yourself is not only not a virtue, it is empty, means nothing, if what you perpetuate is ongoing. Identifying your weaknesses absolves you of nothing, is not an achievement, though I understand how it can feel like more than enough these days. Plus, if you're already a victim of yourself, it kind of is an effective defense; isn't it bad taste to kick people who are down? These days I wonder if people just don't feel bad enough to stop, maybe people should feel more shame about their weaknesses so long as that shame motivates change for the better. I don't actually think I believe in shaming people as an effective motivator to pursue action, since it seems more likely than not that shame-fueled action is done in part out of self-hate rather than self-respect. At the same time, it seems bad that we reward people for their neuroticism doubling as insight about the world. Of course, all of the author's observations feel mostly accurate, and mostly generous, actually. It's just the author's own role in it all that makes it feel all a little helpless. "I was a believer, I wanted to believe, I became disillusioned, but also I must admit I profited off of all of this. It's an easy endeavor to love, if you let yourself love it, but of course I cannot because it eventually became impossible to ignore everything awful, which is easy enough to ignore when you are emotionally and financially trapped in it all. Of course it goes without saying that most people in the industry feel discomfort to some extent, but most are happy enough to reap the rewards in spite of the personal punishment and lack of regard for any sort of consequences." I could say the same about everything I've experienced these last 5 years, so a lot of this is a projection of myself and my experiences. I am grateful to this book for reminding me of and observantly and diligently cataloguing an experience that I hope to escape and never return to.

City of Quartz - Mike Davis

Inspiring and revelatory. Inspiring in the way threads of history are traced, and in the way the author talks to other people. I want to be able to talk to other people, to ask them about their story and how they got here and care, because their dreams aren't empty, and they do matter. I'm probably looking too hard for a narrative that's right in front of me. All people want is a stable life, with a little glitz and glamor, the respect of their peers and loved ones. Is that projection, too? I think I'm looking too hard for narratives where the stakes are higher, where these things haven't been achieved yet, trying to identify where the barriers are, looking for the problem to fix. Because I grew up knowing mostly the success stories, but also because it feels very true that everyone I know works for a corporation or is at the studio gates. It's depressing to me how much people don't care and/or feel too helpless to open the gates for greater stability for everyone, but I don't know how to go about doing this, or I do but don't know how to be a part of something bigger than myself anymore. Revelatory in the sense that I have not really been able to describe the emptiness I felt about Southern California and why I wanted to leave the state so badly, but the author has done so within the first chapter of the book. Revelatory also in the sense that I hold love for the place, still, but don't know if I want to go back, if there's a way of living that I'd actually want to live for me there.