February 2018

And here's my list for this month. I was less adventurous this time and found myself wending back to familiar stuff I've already seen. Seeing old stuff again is weirdly comforting, especially if I liked them the first time around.

Once again, anything in bold, I've not seen before, normal bold is a film, bold italics is a tv show with the amount of episodes next to it, bold underlined is a book and I popped a gig I went to see in caps just for kicks. Much less writing which is a shame.

1/2 Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962)
3/2 Confessions of a Dangerous Mind (2003) Choke (2008) Sampha: Process (2017) The Wine Show (2) Altered Carbon (3) (2018)
4/2 Sunday Politics (1) Dazed and Confused (1993) Vanilla Sky (2001) Writing Session (802 words – blog)
5/2 Jane the Virgin (1) University Challenge (1) Writing Session (699 words – novel)
6/2 In Bed With Victoria (2016) Man Bites Dog (1992) Riverdale (1) Altered Carbon (1) Cowboy Bebop (2)
7/2 Altered Carbon (1) Writing session (1,029 words – novel)
11/2 Queer Eye (2) (2018) John Wick (2014)
12/2 The Wine Show (1)
13/2 The Rise and Fall of the House of Medici, Christopher Hibbert (1979) 311p
14/2 The Structure of Crystal (1969) It’s Complicated (2009)
15/2 Altered Carbon (1)
17/2 Cat People (1982) Riverdale (1) Family Life (1971) Crimson Peak (2015) Love & Friendship (2016)
18/2 Black Panther (2018) Not One Less (1999) The Road Home (1999) The Baftas 2018
19/2 FRANZ FERDINAND
20/2 Queer Eye (1)
21/2 Fifty Shades Freed (2018)
22/2 Medici Money: Banking, Metaphysjcs and Art in Fifteenth Century Florence, Tim Parks 2006 247p
23/2 Moon (2009) Wine Show (1) Queer Eye (3)
24/2 Illumination (1973) Before Summer Ends (2017) Queer Eye (1) Ugly Delicious (1) The Joel McHale Show With Joel McHale (1) Dr Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964)
25/2 Collateral (2) (2018) Wings of Desire (1987) Sideways (2004) Writing session (400 words – blog)
26/2 The Lost Weekend (1945)
27/2 University Challenge (1) The Joel McHale Show (1) Ugly Delicious (1) Altered Carbon (1)
28/2 UnReal Season 3 (1) Lover for a Day (2017) Six Shooter (2004) An Education (2009)

Dream States

Reading a book about 23 year old regaling her life story and affair with being a bit of a drinker. It's called Smashed. She seems to be confident that she wasn't an alcoholic and she didn't drink alone so I guess that's something. I thought it would be a fun read. 

Why do I assume I can laugh at other people's misfortune? I get quite invested and emotional and then tie it all into my my own experience. Why do I make comparisons? Is it particularly myopic? It probably isn't anything, nothing to worry about. I assume most people do this subconsciously, hence the vicarious thrills of reading about other people's lives, be it a biography, confessional or gossip mag.

It took me back to my recollections of my teen years. They are an amalgam of memories where things happen and I can't remember the feelings or sensations. I can remember some pretty weird things. My mind takes me to places where I've walked. I can roam the streets of my hometown, like Google Earth but slower and more deliberate and completely empty of cars and people. 

I prefer to pick across the cliffs and walk the gravelled paths by the sea. I'll wander familiar places and find the spot where I can see the most coastline. It could be a clear day, a drizzly one, a golden sunshine. I can feel the grass as I lie in it. I feel the sea breeze on my face. I can hear the rolling waves.

All those hours I spent exploring my hometown, riding my bike for miles to the outskirts, up and down the coast, along the river, to landmarks I could revisit in my dreams, where was everyone else? Why was I alone? What were my family doing? My friends? Why did I spend so many hours just roaming alone? A part of me misses the adventure. I used to love riding my bike and exploring and feeling the sensation of existing within a whoosh of wind.

I can't remember my first drink, unlike this girl who can describe her experiences in adjective laden clarity. She can't recall her first time having sex (she claims this is the case, but I have a feeling we'll get to that soon enough in some hindsight laden exposition). My first time, I turned it into a punchline. It was a shameful idiotic experience and hindsight just colours in the loneliness quite explicitly but wow... As a formative experience it was terrible but a big part of me tried with some sheer desperation to chalk it up to one those things that just happened. Then I felt guilty about it for many years subconsciously fuelling my self loathing.

Maybe my lack of filter goes back to my lack of being able to read a situation in any given moment and engaging with people without being to sense how to react. Hindsight is 20/20 I suppose. I just can't keep up with my mouth before my brain kicks in.

Anyways, this musing nonsense is brought to you by lazy Sundays and aching brains. 

Good Day Ennui

The title of my memoirs.

Can't write my novel, won't read my history books, watching Vanilla Sky with one eye and scrolling through the inter-webs with the other.

I was looking through my hidden draft entries on here last night and through today which stretch back to 2010. So many are depressed anxious ramblings. I did a heartbreaking poem about how disconnected I felt. I think  it counts as a poem anyways, I edited a grammar error out of habit.

There is a lot of Vanilla Sky happening right now which has completely washed over me. Apart from the obvious bunch of well knowns I feel pleased to have correctly identified Michael Shannon in a minor role of the prison guard and W Earl Brown as the barman sinking tequila with Cruisey. Noah Taylor is also there and looking suave.

Thinking about W Earl Brown reminded me of The Last of Us (he mo-capped Bill and is a busy working actor) and that led me into a search for info about Part II which will likely be out in 2019. Then to Troy  Baker singing existing songs which were pleasant and sorrowful songs he had written himself which weren't so good. There is an earnestness he presents that I feel a connection to but is that because he's a really good actor and is selling me a potent ideal of reality?

My feelings are all so familiar, so similar. I figure I'm confused but I'm certain these sensations are emulated in other people with different lives and circumstances. This isn't unique. I am not alone, but I feel isolated and desperate to distract myself from this cavern of aching emptiness which, on occasion, can threaten to overwhelm my carefully constructed distractions.

My efforts to take action, to continue, to breathe. If I pause, that's when the creeping realisations inch forward and remind me that all my daily efforts are in vain. I haven't changed, I haven't grown. I am still a lonely confused teenager. I am still waiting to be more, to learn more, to understand more, but it's not enough when I feel the void of emptiness gnawing away at my insides. When I can't hold on to the people around me apart from one person who can see something I cannot fathom, or there are familial ties.

Am I feeling when I'm experiencing things I have told myself to engage in? Is it real? When I'm joking and laughing and engaging with people and somewhat enjoying myself why do I feel so much shame afterwards? Why do I feel like I'm lying to them and myself. In the moment I'm so happy and confident and delighted that I'm making a connection. Then I'm aware that my excitement and delight isn't shared by others and in fact I'm a nuisance. I'm not important or even worth having around. Then I feel like I shouldn't have said anything, I shouldn't have tried. At the end of the day, I don't matter.

Why can't this hopelessness disappear? Why is it still here festering inside, undermining my efforts every day of every month of every year endlessly?

Some blessed days I barely acknowledge it's existence but then it appears. I've stopped crying about it because... well nothing ever changes. It's just a fact of my life. It doesn't matter what I do or far I go. It's a part of me. Sometimes it's enough to acknowledge it and move on. I hope at least. I can't get sad about something which as much a part of me as my eye colour (still debating that though...) well maybe my hair colour (that is also a debate sometimes...) my weight? (inconsistent). I guess it's like everything else then... a part of me but as evolving and changing and debatable as anything else.

I've spent so long trying to grow out of it. To change and fix what it is. Maybe it'll never go and finally accepting that there is nothing wrong with it and just getting on is fine. These concerns will forever cycle through my brain but it doesn't mean I should be ashamed. Perhaps, shame is something I fall back on when I'm uncertain about how to move forward. I shouldn't feel guilt or shame for something which is a part of me.

Maybe some day I'll find a way of accepting who I am. Maybe some day I'll be okay with this loneliness and just be happy with myself. Happy seems like a stretch but maybe I'll accept it and spend less time worrying. One day I might see clear skies ahead and an open sea of possibilities. The fog of fear that something terrible is going to happen might lift and I might just be okay... I can be sad and optimist.

January 2018

My list of keeping busy from the past month.

Anything bold only is a new film, anything bold italic is a new TV show, and any bold underline is a new book. I've also added my writing sessions. Anything which isn't bold is something I've seen before.

1/1 Mulberry Street (2010) Antiporno (2016) Lost City of Z (2016) Feud (2) (2017)
2/1 Lovesick Season 1 (2014)
3/1 Writing Session (novel - 2,500 words)
4/1 Lovesick Season 2&3
5/1 Before Sunrise(1995) Being John Malkovich (1999)
6/1 Ava (2017) Reprise (2006) Before Sunset (2004)
7/1 Something Different (1963)
8/1 The Pleasure of Being Robbed (2008)
9/1 Feud (6)
10/1 Writing Session (novel - 1,551  words)
11/1 Fracture (2007)      
12/1 The Wine Show series (1) (2018) Fargo (1996)
13/1 Queen Victoria: A Life of Contradictions – Matthew Dennison (2014) 154p Tomorrowland (2015)
14/1 The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989) Self-Criticism of a Bourgeois Dog (2017) Jane the Virgin (1) (2017) The Coronation (2018)
15/1 Devilman Crybaby – 4 episodes (2018)
17/1 Jane the Virgin (1)
18/1 Queen Victoria – A Personal History – Christopher Hibbert (2001) 502p
19/1 Dyketactics (1974) Superdyke Meets Madame X (1976) Drive, He Said (1971) The Wine Show (1)Riverdale (1)
20/1 Hot Milk – Deborah Levy (2016) 218p, The Crimson Kimono (1959) Devilman Crybaby (6) Midnight Run (1988) Cowboy Bebop (2) (1998)
21/1 Peston on Sunday & Sunday Politics, Jane the Virgin (1), Cowboy Bebop (1) Blue Collar (1978) Good Time (2017)
23/1 I am Not Your Negro (2016) The Promise (2016)
24/1 Valerian: The City of a Thousand Planets (2017) University Challenge – 1 episode
25/1 Cowboy Bebop (1) Writing Session (1,386 words - blog)
27/1 Riverdale (1)  The Bick Sick (2017) The Power Rangers Movie (2017) Girls Trip (2017)
28/1 Sunday Politics, The Night of the Hunter (1955) McMafia (3) (2018) Say When (2014)
29/1 University Challenge (1) Charlie’s Angels (2000)
30/1 Mr Right (2015) Colossal (2016) Harmless Like You - Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (2017) 320p
31/1 Writing Session (1,112 words - blog)