the house that jack built (lars von trier, 2018)
"The old cathedrals often have sublime artworks hidden away in the darkest corners for only God to see."
I've never really understood people who exhale in one hurried breath when they smoke. As though they were forcing something unpleasant out of and away from themselves. Over the years I've come to terms with how much I enjoy smoking. I let the smoke crawl out of me slowly - in what I like to call 'giving shape to my breath.' Smoking allows you to see the architecture of an exhalation, in the same way that the ripples across the surface of a lake allow you to see the shape of the wind. Without smoking the air currents would pass out of me in the same way, but there would be no trace of it. I would leave no tracks. It would be invisible.
But how many more cigarettes am I going to smoke?
I'll either give up some day (not soon, as far as I can tell) or I'll die while still being a smoker. Either way there will one day be a last cigarette. It would be wonderful to know which cigarette is my last. That way I could savour it and give it the attention it, and our moment together, deserves. But chances are that won't come to pass.
What's more likely is that I won't know it's coming, or I won't see it happening when it happens. And it's only later, when it's too late, that it'll dawn on me. Or perhaps it doesn't happen like that. I don't know.
What I really wanted to talk about was podcasts, and how I don't listen to them. We live in the future now, and who would have ever predicted the reappearance of radio? I mean, we call podcasts 'podcasts,' but let's be honest, they're radio shows. And I often find people talking to me about which podcasts I should be listening to, and if I'm being honest I'll lean in and say 'I'm never going to listen to that' because it's true, I'm not. But more often I find myself biting my tongue and pretending to listen with interest and then ending the conversation with something like 'Oh that sounds great, I'll check that out.'
But, of course, I never do.
I just drift away when a podcast is on, I find myself falling into another activity. Perhaps cleaning, or cooking, or maybe something else. It's like poetry - after a page or two I 'wake up' and realise that I haven't absorbed any of the words that I've been reading. And is reading even the best word to use when my gaze has been merely passing over words? I don't know.
One podcast that I do occasionally listen to is Uhh Yeah Dude - America through the eyes of two American Americans (Jonathan Laroquette and Seth Romatelli). But this one is perhaps different. It's archive. I've been listening to Jonathan and Seth for years now, in a way I've grown older with them. And I like how their show is structured but unstructured (I'm no expert on this, maybe this is how all podcasts are put together - again, I don't listen to any) - how they have particular beats dropped throughout a ramble. One of their key notes is the Mind's Eye game: Seth will say three names - one the name of a racehorse, the second a strain of medical marijuana, and the third something that he has created from his mind's eye. But they're in a random order you see, and you have to work out which is which. It's a real highlight of the show for me because it's a game and I love games. It forces you out of passivity and into activity. I like that line. One where the demarcation between the passive and the active is blurred.
Perhaps I just need to be more honest with everyone, to pretend less. That is what this is all about after all - our impact on other egos. So maybe I should put less artifice into everything and not be so polite when people tell me about a podcast I should listen to. Instead I should smile, and politely interject to say that I will never listen to it. That would be cleaner, purer, yeah. But it runs the risk of hurting people. So in moments like those I frequently find myself falling back on 'the funny'. 'The funny' in this context is the idea of saying the thing that should not be said. Comedy is about contrast after all, it's about defying the expectation of the listener - surprising them, but also making sure they realise that when they get to the funny line it was always going to be that, could never have been anything but that, and then the laugh is two-fold: the first because it was unexpected, and the second (paradoxically) because of its inevitability. A is followed by B, which in turn is *not* followed by C, but by 3 - and now that you see it you know that it was never going to be C, it just had to be 3 - that's comedy.
A while ago a friend of mine suffered from extreme mental health problems. He stopped seeing himself as himself, and started seeing himself as Jesus Christ. It was terrifying. And frustrating. I kept wanting him to confess that it was all a joke and that he was absolutely fine. But that never happened. The last time we saw each other I was furious with him. It had all gone too far, and there was nothing in it for me anymore. No trace of my friend remained, I wasn't getting anything back from him, the person he had become was unpleasant, indifferent to my existence. Of course, that's a terrible thing to say because he was suffering from profound mental health problems. But it's all good and well saying that, we all know 'right' from 'wrong', and being there for people in periods like the one described above is definitely right. But it's easy to talk. It's a far more difficult thing to experience something like this, to live with it in the real world for years and years and years. Your ethics become profoundly tested. It's no longer a purely intellectual exercise any more. It's become a test of endurance, of stamina. Hindsight's a wonderful thing. It makes geniuses and experts of us all. But when you're in the moment, frozen, when you can see what is on the end of every diner's fork around the dinner table, it can all seem bizarre, unreal, and unpleasant. And that's where we live. Always and forever. It's always now.
Before I go I have a podcast to recommend. It's fantastic. It features a you-but-not-you. As the show progresses, it slowly starts to dawn on you that the voice coming through the headphones is your own. Growing ever raspier and raspier as it says things you always wanted to say but didn't because you were worried about what other people might think, how they might react. You reach a point where you didn't catch what was said so you skip back - as you do someone walks into the room and asks you a question, just as you hit 'play.' It happens so quickly that you don't notice it - but here's what happens. The answer to your friend's question is "I don't know, perhaps later, I can't say for sure" and as you say those words you also hear them in your ears, spoken by the you-but-not-you, and it's at this point that you realise that the podcast is happening now - it's the words that are in your head and coming out of your mouth, but it's only when you stand on that vast blurred line between activity and passivity that you notice this is how it is.
I've never really understood people who exhale in one hurried breath when they smoke. As though they were forcing something unpleasant out of and away from themselves. Over the years I've come to terms with how much I enjoy smoking. I let the smoke crawl out of me slowly - in what I like to call 'giving shape to my breath.' Smoking allows you to see the architecture of an exhalation, in the same way that the ripples across the surface of a lake allow you to see the shape of the wind. Without smoking the air currents would pass out of me in the same way, but there would be no trace of it. I would leave no tracks. It would be invisible.
But how many more cigarettes am I going to smoke?
I'll either give up some day (not soon, as far as I can tell) or I'll die while still being a smoker. Either way there will one day be a last cigarette. It would be wonderful to know which cigarette is my last. That way I could savour it and give it the attention it, and our moment together, deserves. But chances are that won't come to pass.
What's more likely is that I won't know it's coming, or I won't see it happening when it happens. And it's only later, when it's too late, that it'll dawn on me. Or perhaps it doesn't happen like that. I don't know.
What I really wanted to talk about was podcasts, and how I don't listen to them. We live in the future now, and who would have ever predicted the reappearance of radio? I mean, we call podcasts 'podcasts,' but let's be honest, they're radio shows. And I often find people talking to me about which podcasts I should be listening to, and if I'm being honest I'll lean in and say 'I'm never going to listen to that' because it's true, I'm not. But more often I find myself biting my tongue and pretending to listen with interest and then ending the conversation with something like 'Oh that sounds great, I'll check that out.'
But, of course, I never do.
I just drift away when a podcast is on, I find myself falling into another activity. Perhaps cleaning, or cooking, or maybe something else. It's like poetry - after a page or two I 'wake up' and realise that I haven't absorbed any of the words that I've been reading. And is reading even the best word to use when my gaze has been merely passing over words? I don't know.
One podcast that I do occasionally listen to is Uhh Yeah Dude - America through the eyes of two American Americans (Jonathan Laroquette and Seth Romatelli). But this one is perhaps different. It's archive. I've been listening to Jonathan and Seth for years now, in a way I've grown older with them. And I like how their show is structured but unstructured (I'm no expert on this, maybe this is how all podcasts are put together - again, I don't listen to any) - how they have particular beats dropped throughout a ramble. One of their key notes is the Mind's Eye game: Seth will say three names - one the name of a racehorse, the second a strain of medical marijuana, and the third something that he has created from his mind's eye. But they're in a random order you see, and you have to work out which is which. It's a real highlight of the show for me because it's a game and I love games. It forces you out of passivity and into activity. I like that line. One where the demarcation between the passive and the active is blurred.
Perhaps I just need to be more honest with everyone, to pretend less. That is what this is all about after all - our impact on other egos. So maybe I should put less artifice into everything and not be so polite when people tell me about a podcast I should listen to. Instead I should smile, and politely interject to say that I will never listen to it. That would be cleaner, purer, yeah. But it runs the risk of hurting people. So in moments like those I frequently find myself falling back on 'the funny'. 'The funny' in this context is the idea of saying the thing that should not be said. Comedy is about contrast after all, it's about defying the expectation of the listener - surprising them, but also making sure they realise that when they get to the funny line it was always going to be that, could never have been anything but that, and then the laugh is two-fold: the first because it was unexpected, and the second (paradoxically) because of its inevitability. A is followed by B, which in turn is *not* followed by C, but by 3 - and now that you see it you know that it was never going to be C, it just had to be 3 - that's comedy.
A while ago a friend of mine suffered from extreme mental health problems. He stopped seeing himself as himself, and started seeing himself as Jesus Christ. It was terrifying. And frustrating. I kept wanting him to confess that it was all a joke and that he was absolutely fine. But that never happened. The last time we saw each other I was furious with him. It had all gone too far, and there was nothing in it for me anymore. No trace of my friend remained, I wasn't getting anything back from him, the person he had become was unpleasant, indifferent to my existence. Of course, that's a terrible thing to say because he was suffering from profound mental health problems. But it's all good and well saying that, we all know 'right' from 'wrong', and being there for people in periods like the one described above is definitely right. But it's easy to talk. It's a far more difficult thing to experience something like this, to live with it in the real world for years and years and years. Your ethics become profoundly tested. It's no longer a purely intellectual exercise any more. It's become a test of endurance, of stamina. Hindsight's a wonderful thing. It makes geniuses and experts of us all. But when you're in the moment, frozen, when you can see what is on the end of every diner's fork around the dinner table, it can all seem bizarre, unreal, and unpleasant. And that's where we live. Always and forever. It's always now.
Before I go I have a podcast to recommend. It's fantastic. It features a you-but-not-you. As the show progresses, it slowly starts to dawn on you that the voice coming through the headphones is your own. Growing ever raspier and raspier as it says things you always wanted to say but didn't because you were worried about what other people might think, how they might react. You reach a point where you didn't catch what was said so you skip back - as you do someone walks into the room and asks you a question, just as you hit 'play.' It happens so quickly that you don't notice it - but here's what happens. The answer to your friend's question is "I don't know, perhaps later, I can't say for sure" and as you say those words you also hear them in your ears, spoken by the you-but-not-you, and it's at this point that you realise that the podcast is happening now - it's the words that are in your head and coming out of your mouth, but it's only when you stand on that vast blurred line between activity and passivity that you notice this is how it is.