1. Eavesdropping is the second most pleasurable thing you can do in a public place. The pleasure doesn’t - as some might think - come from gleaning little details about the lives of strangers or anything as tawdry as that (though that, too, is nice) - but rather because it’s only by eavesdropping that you really see how most conversations have nothing to do with communication or, really, language of any kind. Most people, you’ll find if you eavesdrop long enough, are really just affirming some kind of connection or bond (friendly, romantic, sexual, professional, civil) by using literally any assemblage of words that come to mind in that very moment. For example, we overheard the following exchange between two adult people:
“You know the tallest tree in the world is called Hyperion and the third tallest is called Menara.”
“What’s the name of the second tallest tree?”
“I don’t know.”
“...”
“I guess I could look it up.”
“...”
[Consults phone] “It doesn’t have a name.”
“...”
If you found yourself inside this conversation, you’d maybe think nothing of what’s happening here. You’re just talking. The topic of conversation doesn’t really matter. You’re just sharing things you know or learning things the person you’re with knows. Maybe you both really like tall trees, maybe neither of you care about trees at all. Irrelevant. You’re affirming proximity of some kind. If you’re in this conversation, the pleasure (or displeasure) has more to do with who you’re engaged with than what they’re using words to say. The conversation is all about some hidden quantum, some unsaid thing between people that seems to force them to say any old thing. But if you - like us - are surreptitiously listening to this conversation without being involved, then the superfluous language-y part is all that shines out. The eavesdropper can only attend to what’s said. And what’s said is often fucking hilarious and/or baffling. Dude flexes inane facts about tall trees and, without missing a beat, their conversation partner ignores what they said and homes in on what they didn’t say. Amazing. And then to try to acquire the requested trivia only to fail? More amazing. All conversations are, from the outside, like the conversations children have on playgrounds - mostly non-sequiturs and a desire for connection disguised as a desire for expression.
2. There is absolutely no difference between caring about or taking an interest in what politicians are doing, what celebrities are doing, or what random people who share videos of themselves on the internet are doing. These are all pseudo-strangers and your engagement with them has more to do with you than it does with them. Whether these are people negotiating trade deals, people who (behind closed doors) behave in ways contrary to their wholesome public image, people who gather unfathomable speed while going to a children’s slide in Boston, or people who do NPC livestreams in various guises doesn’t matter. They’re people you don’t (exactly) know doing things at some remove from your life and you, for whatever reason, are provoked to think or feel something regarding them. There is no gradient of moral or political significance. The kind of fervent devotion, temporary endearment, or knee-jerk annoyance we each tend to feel about people who exist outside our immediate social spheres is an important emotional and psychological part of situating ourselves within the complicated and overdetermined chaos that we call a world. It all matters or none of it does.
3. The above holds true, also, for dedication, care, interest, etc. towards fictional people or people-type entities. There are differences between caring very much about Oscar the Grouch and caring very much about Malcolm X - but those differences are not really premised on the ontology of either figure. It is what your care or concern in regards to these figures helps you understand or do that matters.
4. People spend too much time worrying about what to do with all the good art made by bad people when we really need to be worrying about all the bad art made by good people. This latter situation is far more widespread than the former. Art affects more people than people do directly, so we really ought to concern ourselves with that side of the equation more than (it seems) we presently do.
5. Baby Assassins (2021) and Baby Assassins 2: 2 Babies (2023), written and directed by Yugo Sakamoto, are the most astute and entertaining pieces of art yet made about our present moment. In roughly ninety minutes (and with barely a budget at all), these films somehow capture the total and wild character of our anhedonic, overwhelmed, cavalier, lost, bewildering, and epicurean epoch. They - legit - offer far better insights into life under late capital than anything else we’ve read, seen, or heard in recent (or even distant) memory. These movies are so smart and so good that they make all other media look like it isn’t even trying. Everyone should watch them, love them, and tell everyone they meet to watch them and love them. Anyone who talks only about the action sequences, either isn’t paying close enough attention or isn’t capable of paying close attention at all (although the action scenes are amazing). [For real, anyone who thinks these movies are shallow or mindless or incoherent or bad in any sense is essentially announcing themselves to be poorly equipped to engage with culture of any kind. Besides being remarkable movies, they’re also - then - great litmus tests for general cultural/media literacy.] Seminars should be devoted to these movies.
6. People trying to govern the behavior of others in public settings are cops. It doesn’t matter what the behavior is or what the public setting, if you find yourself arguing for a set of arbitrary rules concerning good and proper conduct then you’re just a cop. This is especially true if you find yourself arguing over things like “being distracted.” Y’know what’s potentially distracting? Actually everything. Public spaces are full of rude, obnoxious, or otherwise terrible people. Trying to ensure that your life is miraculously untouched by rudeness, obnoxiousness, or otherwise terribleness (as you define and experience it) is an untenable and cop-like attitude. You don’t get to decide with whom you share the world or how they behave. Pretending that you do get to decide (and enforce that decision) is cop shit. Accept the things you cannot change, change the things you can, and figure out the difference between the two quickly and quietly (especially in regards to genuinely trivial shit). If you have a problem with what some stranger is up to in a public setting, talk to that someone directly. Don’t just quietly seethe, nurture a sharp little resentment, and ruin your own good time with those bad feelings. THAT SAID, being knowingly and deliberately disrespectful, inconsiderate, or solipsistic in public is called “fucking around” and “fucking around” for long enough invariably results in “finding out” and “finding out” is usually a very high price to pay for that original willful transgression. Being a dick is bad. Being a cop is bad. Don’t be either.
7. Pursuing activities that might have no positive tangible outcome is always worthwhile especially when said activities are challenging and somehow make you feel a complicated kind of good. It doesn’t matter whether the line of bespoke handbags you’re daydreaming about will ever get financial backing, be produced, get sold - if designing bespoke handbags (or whatever) is something that helps you frame the world as comprehensible and exciting then it is of incredible value even if said value is discernible to no one other than yourself.
8. Being glib or flippant isn’t usually anything other than a sign of bone-deep insecurity and this is always very obvious.
9. Festivals of any kind should always include a kind of fool or jester skipping around to make sure that things stay festive. Doesn’t matter what the festival is for - film, food, comedy - but there should always be a loud idiot in colorful costume ensuring that some kind of low-grade pandemonium is always just around the corner so that the festival itself doesn’t just collapse into the same mundane form as everything else (e.g. standing in lines, making small talk, being tugged along to events by some weird sense of obligation). Festivals are meant to be a break from or reorganization of ordinary spaces and days that prompt or enable you to reorient yourself towards something, someone, or yourself. Merely yoking a bunch of things together in a set of buildings and putting up posters doesn’t make it a festival. A fool or jester, though, would ensure that an anarchic or ecstatic mood reigns over everything. Festivals that run for longer than two weeks will need more than one fool or jester and maybe even a little dog in a hat that does tricks or something.
10. It’s sometimes hard to come up with good words on a single topic and harder still to come up with good words on a single topic that might be read as relevant or interesting or funny or whatever, but - then again - sharing words isn’t ever really at all about the words themselves or the topics they describe or anything as clear or explicit or concrete as that.
(BONUS FACT) 11: The fourth tallest tree is called Centurion and the sixth tallest tree is called Doerner Fir.
number 4 is the best&most relevant thing i’ve read in a long time. thank u thank u thank u endlessly
Gotta look up that Baby Assassin duology now…