welcome ! hang out and maybe stay awhile ;)
[1/17] I feel like I understand this film more now. I connect with the arid desert more now that I no longer live in one. I see the lines in Jason Schwartzmen’s face and they embody the existentialism in this film. Someone compared this film to Camus’ Myth of Sisyphus or even Either/Or, a scattered existential text, not by my own definition. I haven’t read Either/Or, but I read Myth of Sisyphus about a year ago, and without it right in front of me, without my underlined words, I don’t remember much of it. Except for, of course, Sisyphus’ struggle with the rock and Camus’ interpretation, which is that the rock is symbolic of life. A cyclical effort of straining and sweating for it to all be worthless as the rock tumbles back down the hill. Why bother pushing it, if you already know the outcome? There is some shred of hope, a persistent nagging immortal shred of hope, that says this time will be different. It never is. And you have to accustom yourself to that struggle, find joy in it. And maybe that is the purpose of life. That is what Anderson attempts to discern in Asteroid City. The purpose of life, the purpose of plays, and where it all leads. “Everything’s connected but nothing is working.” And it lays so bare out in the infinite Arizona California Nevada desert. The remnants of a mother in a Tupperware bowl, covered in red sand and desert flowers. Camus speaks of absurdity, it is absurd, this life, that there really is no meaning to it. That our only hope of finding an answer resides deep in our brains or in our hearts. I think our hearts. Anderson’s absurdism in this film is delicate and exaggeratedly yellow under the development of Kodak 200t film. The absurd is an alien coming to earth to steal a meteor the size of a softball (which created a crater the size of at least four tennis courts) only for it to be returned the next day. The absurd is Jeff Goldblum in an alien suit. I was bored the first time I watched this because I’m used to how Anderson uses action for comedy. I’m used to Owen Wilson’s obnoxious, golden-retriever characters. And nothing, apart from the absurdity, is exaggerated here (apart from Anderson’s signature use of color). On the contrary, the characters, the set, the dialogue. Everything is subtle. Yet the details and the acting is so immense that if you commit yourself to this world, you watch transfixed. I really enjoyed the layering of actors and characters and actors. There were three layers to this film, fictional characters of Asteroid City, the fictional actors that played those characters, and the real actors who played both. I feel like the real actors, and their personalities, were just as involved in this film as the characters they played. Because this film dissects a real, actual struggle that real, actual people grapple with each day. And, personally, I loved sharing an existential crisis with Jason Schwartzmen.
sweet Sweet SWEET
The rush and the resulting crash
The disappointing peaks and drawn out dips
Dips that leave the bottom of your pants muddy and wet.
Rotting molars, yellowed from caffeine.
Sipping from a baby’s bottle
Sore gums, burned by the vomit you forgot to rinse
Out of your mouth
Maple frosting melting between the thumb and index
Sugar like sandpaper coats your tongue
Constricts your throat
Ice cream on a summer night in Tampa.
Sticky lips dyed red, green, yellow, and blue
Sweet pink splats on your sandy orange flip flops
Seagulls spiral overhead
Amidst sea mist and sunset hues
It’s news that you blink and hot sand becomes a daydream
Life gets muddled like oil paint
Rain cascading down canvas
The trees become the sky
And memories blend until they’re as fake
As wood painted gold
Mold propagates on your impression
View me as a painting
Where the soul I can’t verbalize
Can finally appear to you clearly
Sugar crystals harden
Tang in the back of my throat
SOUR Sour sour
This is a poem or something (MAJOR work in progress) about the obscene amount of coffee and sugar I've been consuming this past week. It's genuinely all I eat. I don't know the last time I've bitten into an apple. It's about nostalgia too. Evil shit nostalgia. It's also about communication and I feel like the best way for someone to know me is by seeing my being translated into a painting. LIKE YOU DONT KNOW ME !!!! until you see me... as a painting...
Stark and stoic tree
Lodged between concrete
and streams of charcoal-black exhaust.
Indifferent among chaos
It exudes an overwhelming feeling of oppressive certainty
Which seeps through the pores of my skin into a current of blood
Meandering to my heart
Where it pools like diluted milk in a cavity under my upper right rib
Stark and stoic tree
Knows what becomes of me
Determinism hidden in a flake of bark
As big as a baby’s tooth
I’d have to climb to the highest branch to find it
Rough pine cutting into my palms
Spiders biting my knuckles
How did I not feel as a Kid
The bite and the blood?
Five way road
The pine asks me to pick a path
Stick to it, don’t look back, and you’ll see the birds diving and rising on the other end
Let the Sun shine on Eurydice
But what about the coyotes in Los Angeles?
And the prickly pears back home?
The thoughts that pinprick my mind
Metal knitting needles knotting my brain into a scratchy wool scarf
I pick a path and I stick to it
And eventually I see the birds in the misty distance
And as the knitting needles clatter to the floor
I take a deep breath and think
How special it is to be here seeing those birds
How special it is to be here watching tree branches undulate in the wind
How special it is to be alive no matter the where or how
Trust creates peace