All the Weirdness in the World

Bob Dylan, Newport Folk Festival, 1965.

Watching the Dylan biopic A Complete Unknown it was striking to see not simply the florid period of Dylan’s output but how it was a part of the unfolding events shaking the world. At the heart of it was the postwar power and cold war shadow that was the USA. Sound familiar? Fear of nuclear armageddon, political upheaval, unwanted war, the environment, and fights for freedom and equality were the fabric of the quilt that was tearing at the seams of 1960s America.

I didn't appreciate the music of the 60s as I do now. Films like The Big Chill were a show of strength of the Boomer generation and when they were running things, all pop culture and music would directly refer to the time of their youth. We were constantly told by aging journalists, DJs, and music directors that Dylan was a mysterious deity, a genius, and oft suggested he might not be mortal. That was the bee in my bonnet and that bonnet was my cross to bear. As a Gen Xer, I recognize that the music of my youth is now popular and much revisited in many Marvel films and film franchises that returned from the dead for no particular reason (Top Gun, Beetlejuice, Ghost Busters etc.). Don't worry. This is just a brief blip as we Gen Xers are not a big bunch and we're getting older and would like to retire before the Earth is entirely engulfed in flames.

They say "Victors write history", but they forget to mention that the generation that comes after the victors get to rewrite history. I have reached the age when history starts repeating itself and it is very ugly. Let's go back some 40 years ago. Oh, I was a bright-faced boy who could not keep up with being cool, so I didn't bother. I couldn't afford it (the looks, the music, the whatever). I discovered my musical tastes later than a lot of people. In fact, I think I discovered that any of my tastes (music, film, art, books) would never be fully "discovered" but would be a continuous thing I am always chasing, finding, understanding or being wrong about. It's often said that the tastes, likes, and dislikes that you form as a teen are the ones that influence and inform your choices for the rest of your life. I can't really argue against that though I'm sure many would. One thing I think The Olds get wrong about teenagers in general, is that they don't know and understand the flotsam and jetsam of the world. Of course, teens don't have the weight of bills, work, and taxes on them, but they can have a keen eye for simplifying big issues into black and white. The moral greyness of adulthood hasn't clouded their eyes with corneas of experience.

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The New Egg

Leave your morals at home.

There’s been a lot of talk about a scientific paper from Italy purporting to make the perfect boiled egg using the periodic method. The methodology described uses two pots and takes 32 minutes to complete. The reason for such complications are because the white of the egg cooks at around 85°C, while the yolk cooks at around 65°C. It's this difference that generally has flummoxed many a home cook. Over a decade ago the sous vide technique lead to the 50-minute egg and became the new standard of eggy perfection. Neither of these methods compare with my Sunday ritual that requires four pots set at three different temperatures and takes six to eight hours, depending on your elevation above or below sea level.

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You are here (but don’t want to be).

This is where you don't want to be.

As more people are being asked to return to offices it’s as though we have to remind people that working from an office was something we all did, all the time. We did it so much that we forgot that it wasn’t normal to be sitting at a desk all day. How the pendulum has swung. Nowadays if people are asked to go to the office, you can measure the collective groan from space. The collective sigh would affect the weather. I get it. I’m one of the moaners and my sighs are heavy, accompanied by eye rolls of disbelief.

How did it get this way? For years I worked in an office because well, that’s where the work was. Even when I was designing signage for trails and spent days on my bike to better understand the landscape (or just scoff off while riding trails in Gatineau Park) I still returned to the office to mark where I’d been and what I’d seen. When I started working freelance from home, I found myself going cabin crazy and would routinely run around the house meowing at the top of my lungs while jumping off the walls. Though that may have been the cat? The sentiment was the same. We were cell mates in a prison of our own making.

When I did start working for someone else again, I enjoyed the office and the camaraderie. We had just moved to Toronto and I didn’t know many people so it gave me a world of meeting people of my ilk. At some point though, doing digital work, it became possible to do it in the office or at home as long as you had a good internet connection and a desk you were fine. Yet that more often than not led to bringing work home when you really shouldn’t. The seeping of work into home life had begun.

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Word Play

I think this is how movie ideas are generated now.

Epic Penile Picnic Panic
There’s a hot dog joke in there somewhere.

Each morning I do a series of New York Times puzzles including Wordle, the Mini crossword, Connections, and Strands but I start with the Spelling Bee. That's how this gem of a sequence of words appeared as I puzzled away on the possible anagrams (where you try to create as many words as possible with the seven assigned letters).

It even included the word “Alien”. I only wished I hadn’t thought of it out of sequence. Can you imagine being confronted with “Epic Alien Penile Picnic Panic” first thing in the morning? Even separately there's fun to be had: "Epic Penile-anything" could be fun or terrifying. Who hasn't had a "Picnic Panic"? Or, if I may say so, who amongst us hasn't suffered a "Penile Panic"? The less said of "Penile Picnic" the better.

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Seen in February

Sex, drugs and dance clubs in Anora.

Now that the Celebrity Super Bowl, AKA, The Oscars is done, I'll address what we saw this month. Out of 11 films, 4 were actually seen in a theatre. Though when Sean Baker, 4-time winner for writer, director and editor of Anora took the stage and implored people to see movies in theatres, I may have blushed a little. Of the four Best Film nominees that we saw, we only experienced one in the theatre and rented the other three. Despite being Canadian, I think the trek outside in the deepest darkest days of winter proved our downfall. In warmer times, we're a bike hop away from all the screens, but in winter, that trudge outside is one dog team too many.

The Brutalist, in name and runtime.
The Brutalist
Great film, but not great enough to justify the runtime of over 3-1/2 hours (or maybe its commendations). It never had a chance of winning the Academy Award for editing. I will say the film looked fantastic and along with memorable performances, it had a very memorable score. László Toth (Adrien Brody) is a Hungarian Jew who escaped post-war Europe to go to America, where he would find menial labour jobs while waiting for his wife (Felicity Jones) and her niece to join him. Toth is also an accomplished architect but without connections, he depends on a cousin who has not only anglicized his name but married a Catholic and left his Jewish past behind him. Through a small contract to improve a personal library, Toth comes to the attention of a wealthy industrialist (Guy Pearce) who discovers his credentials and engages him in building his own major project. Thus begins the tortured relationship in which commerce literally screws the artist. The film, in many ways, feels like it is trying too hard to be an art film. There are so many avenues it follows that are unnecessary to the main theme, and, to be honest, it spends too many moments paying homage to other films that it becomes the bloated runtime it is now known for. There's also a lot of chatter from architects that talk about how much the film gets wrong from an architectural history point of view, which misses the point of the film. It's not about "Architecture/Architects", it's about filmmaking or more broadly when artists and commerce clash, which misses the point about architecture. So yes, I'm saying this is a film about an architect by a filmmaker, who misunderstands architecture being reviewed by architects who misunderstand filmmaking. It's like the ego of the two professions prevents them from realizing how wrong they both are. When we saw this in the theatre, there was a 15-minute intermission. It didn't need an intermission. It needed an intervention.

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A Cat's Forehead

A small space will do. Image by Midjourney.

A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction.
— Virginia Woolf

Woolf wrote these words particularly about women, arguing for a woman to be able to create any art, visual or literary, she needed both the space and financial independence to do so. That space wasn't just a physical one, but also a mental and societal one. Obviously, at the time of Woolf's writing, this was much more difficult for women than men. Yet, without trying to appropriate an argument made for female independence, the same is true for any artist. To create something, you need a place to work, time to think and freedom from obligations. I don't just mean financial obligations, but things like familial ones, taking care of kids, cleaning, laundry, buying groceries, cooking, worrying about rent and all the stuff that takes up so much of our time. While Woolf articulated this argument so well, she wasn't the first, nor the last to talk about creativity in that way. To do creative stuff, you really do need the freedom to pursue it. Freedom from errands and tedium of everyday life and from other people filling your time with their opinions. You need the freedom to explore. The freedom to get bored and let your mind wander the way it might in the shower or on a run.

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