Graffiti 125

Something haunting or melancholy about this face. I've been trying to experiment more with light and shutter speed, it was night when I took this picture.

"You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, 'I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.' You must do the thing you think you cannot do." -Eleanor Roosevelt

"The true mystery of the world is the visible, not the invisible." -Oscar Wilde

Lucky #7

Went to Nearly New tonight to purchase my 7th Chicago bike. There's such an exciting and reassuring freedom about riding a bike. After this sedentary winter its nice to get on a bike and feel mobile again. It always shocks me when people in Chicago don't have a bike. The feeling is incomparable and the convenience cannot be understated. I'm looking forward to avoiding the 36 and the 22.

"I am a bike enthusiast; there's a certain amount of romance to bikes. They're both beautiful and utilitarian." -Dave Eggers

"On a bike, being just slightly above pedestrian and car eye level, one gets a perfect view of the goings-on in one's own town." -David Byrne

"The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets." -Christopher Morley

'The Unknown Known' A Review

The Unknown Known is the latest documentary from Errol Morris about Donald Rumsfeld, a companion piece to The Fog of War. Morris along with his Interrotron set his sights on the former Secretary of Defense focusing primarily on the lead up to Iraq War, its execution, and its fall out, with some cursory outlining of Rumsfeld's previous career.

The majority of the film is a straight on interview with Rumsfeld with him occasionally reading various memos he wrote dubbed "snowflakes". There are periodic cuts to archival footage, text juxtaposed with serene waters, and time-elapsed shots but mostly we just get a whole lot of leering, smug, self-satisfied Rummy.

Fans of the McNamara focused Fog Of War may need to reorient when watching this film because in conceit it is similar but in execution it is quite different. McNamara is intelligent with a mastery and grasp of many different things, he agreed to be interviewed because he had something to say. Rumsfeld is a rhetorician with an almost willful ignorance of the functions of government in which he so long worked. Rumsfeld reveals himself to be incapable of reflection, unable to draw any conclusions, similarities or lessons from not only his own history but history at large. He is unable to recognize irony, showing no reaction or awareness when he contradicts himself. When asked at the end of the film why he agreed to do it he responds "Why, I don't know." And you get the sense he actually doesn't.

There is no "gotcha" moment in The Unknown Known. Rumsfeld doesn't admit fault in anything he has ever done. What comes into focus is Donald Rumsfeld himself. What kind of a man he is and how he views himself and the world. He is not a dumb man but he is certainly not a smart man either. He has an obsessive mastery of rhetoric but seems to hold no other passion. He talks without saying anything and seems to genuinely believe his obfuscations are answers. He lives wholly in the present and gives the past and future absolutely no thought or consideration. This quality extends from years to seconds. Moment to moment Rumsfeld seems to be constantly refreshed, like a computer screen, bland and seemingly accommodating.

A film with no political catharsis but a brilliant and horrifying portrait of a man who is a passenger in his own life.

Rent It.

Ouroboros

In 2006 I graduated from Illinois State University with a degree in Theatre. Following the instructions of my professors I moved up to Chicago to try and perform. During my first month I saw a show at iO and began a winding journey towards improv and sketch comedy.

At the Schwa show tonight during The Dream interview I discovered the volunteer, Nina, is finishing up her senior year at ISU and majoring in theatre. She has her senior showcase audition in a week and plans to move to the city after graduation.

It was a very odd feeling having this 22 year old woman describe, almost identically, my situation 8 years past. In the grand scheme of things 8 years is not that long but my life has changed dramatically since then. From Nina's description the ISU theater department hasn't changed much: Dr. Kim and Jack McG are still ridiculing/shaping those with fresh artistic ambitions, good parts are still hard to come by, and the department as a whole is still trying to funnel grads into Chicago painting, I'm sure, a somewhat inaccurate picture of the opportunity.

The experience felt very cyclical, felt like moving without movement, like I was stuck in a timewarp glitch, got a glimpse of something I wasn't meant to see. Made me feel like a pawn on some wider chess board. Most careers have paths, some clearer than others, and patterns emerge.

It was eerie looking at this young woman full of dreams and desires. Seeing the paths her life could take.

Smartphone

Today I finally made the switch and got a smartphone. I've already started feeling this senseless and cloying urge to check it when there is no reason to do so.

I've been a staunch detractor of computer phones and people being buried in them. People pouring time and attention into a device as opposed to actual humans. There is also something to be said for isolation and silence almost impossible to obtain when you have one of these itchy gadgets. But the digital chickys have come home to roost and my hypocrisy is in plain sight.

I'm feeling the phones quietly seductive grasp around my throat even as I type this. So convenient, so accessible, so functional!

I may have sold out. My life may plummet to a previously undiscovered level of meaninglessness. I may be on a never-ending path to fill the now unbearable void inside with a limitless supply of selfies and food pics and memes.

The upshot is I finally joined Instagram.

Mortality

From a young age I thought I was invulnerable. Not like Superman, not invincible, I simply thought I was immune from death. After reading Tuck Everlasting and watching Last Crusade I came to the conclusion I was one of those select few who never die. Through fate or some series of serendipitously orchestrated events I would never be hurt, never be injured, never be seriously ill. The movie Unbreakable seemed to authenticate this possibility.

When I was 7 I fell down a ravine, probably about 15-20 feet straight down onto a rock, I hit back first. I got up unharmed. I was stunned. As the years passed I got myself into many similar instances emerging with only bumps or scraps. Dog bites, bicycle accidents, sports altercations, fist fights. Other than a couple bruises I was never the worse for wear. No broken bones, no concussions, I never even got the flu.

In high school I went through a phase where I'd have my friends hit me with their cars at varying speeds. The fastest was 45mph.

I totaled four cars and got in over a dozen crashes. Each one I came away unscathed.

At 17 I had walking pneumonia for about two weeks. When I was 25 I had a slipped disk due to a motorcycle accident, I limped for acopule months. Those were the only times I felt any real physical weakness.

I imagine most people feel this way to varying degrees. What they call the confidence of youth. As I got older that certainty started to erode and risky behavior held more consequence. I began to drink tremendous amounts, quickly depleting my physical and mental resilience. It came to a point where, desperate and alone, I was close to the end. A place I never figured I'd be. Depending on your circumstance death can look very ugly indeed.

I recovered, or am recovering, but you never forget a brush with death however glancing. It is no longer an abstract concept, it is a certainty. But I've become accepting of this ever-present inevitability. I'm no longer attracted to danger or peacock my unbroken bones. With a healthy understanding of death you can fully engage in life.

My dad said to me recently "If I went tomorrow, I'd have no regrets." Something I'd like to say someday.

'Only Lovers Left Alive' A Review

Only Lovers Left Alive is a romantic vampire tale from Jim Jarmusch. The film begins with immortal lovers Adam(Tom Hiddleston) and Eve(Tilda Swinton) in their respective cities of Tangier and Detroit. Due to a sentimental suicidal spell by Adam, Eve makes a series of exhaustive night flights to meet him. What follows appears dark and brooding but reveals itself to be patient and wryly pleasant. The film simply observes Hiddleston and Swinton interacting- playing chess, discussing art, listening to music, driving around the seedily picturesque neighborhoods of Detroit. Their vampireness is secondary, what love looks like after centuries is. Expectations rise a bit with the appearance of unstable sister Eva but what could turn into a classic vampiric blood bath hardly registers to its lead who react to this, the only "event" in the "plot", with placid resignation.

In description the film comes across genre-high-concept, in actuality it is a hang-out movie with two vampires deeply engaged with the arts and very much in love. Eerie cityscapes, a haunting score, and references galore create the most relatable and magnetic vampires seen on film in years. The chemistry between the leads and the limited supporting cast enhance this sense of cultivated isolation which we have the privilege of being invited into.

A slow, deliberate, and languidly cool film more about weathering the test of time with good books, dynamic music and a great companion than the minutia of vampire mythos or the flush of blood-driven sexual passion.

See It.