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p.s. Hey. ** jay, Hi. I’m totally good with Takeshi Miike. His films are very clear about what they are and what they’re doing whereas to me Von Trier’s stuff is very manipulative and sneaky and has this kind of ‘I’m smarter that you are’ vibe that’s too much to take. But oh well. Where is your uni? Sorry if you said and I’ve forgotten? Really, thank you so much for all the great words about ‘TMS’. That’s really, really heartening. And of course I’m flattered if it brought ‘Mulholland Drive’ to mind. It and ‘Inland Empire’ are my favourite Lynchs. Have a fine, fine morning and, well, day in total in your fresh locale. ** kier, Hey! I have seen ‘Maidstone’, and it is totally bonkers. Fingers very crossed the grant, hopefully unnecessarily. God, I hate having to write about my work. We have to do that all the time with our films, and it’s agony. Btw, Zac sends tons and tons of love to you! Yes, I hate going to the doctor. I have to be in serious pain or totally laid up before I do it. That said, I am going to bite the bullet and get my ear unclogged via that method. Six weeks of living with one working ear is getting very old. The concert was Kali Malone performing in this huge, old Catholic church. It wasn’t loud. I love her records, but live it wasn’t mindblowing or transcendent like I had hoped. But it was interesting, for sure. Yes, you have to do Halloween in LA with Zac and me. We’re there every Halloween, so one of these days. Sucks that it’s such a gigantic trip from over here to there. At the moment — it’s still early on — we want to make a short film (short like an hour or less, not 10 minutes or whatever) because we want to take a break from the hell of fundraising that it takes to make a feature. It’s about two young guys who are kind of obsessed with puppetry. One wears a cheap sock puppet on his hand 24/7, and the other steals a ventriloquist dummy from some rich people and then gets kind of overly involved with it. Or that’s the plan for now. I remember Ottar, yes. Say hi for me. The Paris aquarium isn’t bad. Did you go there when you were here? Uh, my day: Zac and I had a big meeting with one of our film producers. We had hoped it would start to resolve a big debt problem the film has due to our other monstrous producer, but the opposite happened. We did assert ourselves and demand to take control of the film, finish it, get it out, and that part went well. Then I ate Mexican food and went to the concert. And uninteresting this and that. Did today leave you anything cool in its wake? ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. As always, I’m not yet at PTv2.0, but I will be imminently. When Grove Press accepted ‘Closer’ and went on to publish my books for years, that was definitely way, way up in my all-time life accomplishments, for sure. Nice about the signed Anger book. I’m no Crowleyite either. He’s just never really interested very much at all. ** M4ts, Hey, M4ts! Yes, yes, I remember. Sure, you can send it to me. My email is: [email protected]. Warning that I can very slow, but I’d like read it, yes! Music-wise, I think I’m mostly still listening to the stuff in the recent gig post I did. I’ll go find the new Toxe album, thanks! ** HaRpEr in Blogland, There’s something about Almond’s ‘Jackie’ cover that makes it seem like kind of the ultimate Marc Almond thing. Yeah, I like talking about my work, but I hate explaining it. It’s hard making people understand that the writing is the explanation. If I could explain it, I would have explained it and not actually written it. So, yeah, I’m on board. I love ‘L’Argent’. I think it’s one of Bresson’s best. I think you know that most I love the later color films. Most Bresson-ites don’t seem to feel that way, but I do. Although I do think the b&w ‘Mouchette’ is as great as any of them. ‘The Counterfeiters’ was really formative to me. I still remember reading it on a train traveling through France in my very early 20s and feeling a big revelation in my thinking as a writer. ** nat, Howdy. I was thrilled that they put a piece of ‘Closer’ in that Evergreen Reader book. Thank you, so cool. Rosset was the fucking dude in the 60s and early 70s. It scares me to think of what I might never have been able to read without him. Sorry about your sickness. I hope it’s seriously waning or kaput. My rough equivalent to your story is the neighbors below me, who have a patio, left their cat out there in the pouring rain all night, and it never stopped violently meowing. I even dropped a little bit of food down there at one point, but it just ate it and started cat-screaming again. ** Lucas, Oh well, good morning, or, good yesterday morning. I always do the p.s. in the morning, obviously. The meeting was a mixed bag. Our monstrous producer has put the film in deep debt, and it’s obvious that he’s never going to pay, which means Zac and I are going to have to figure how to pay it back even though we aren’t responsible at all for the debt, and we hoped our nicer producer, who we met with, would be understanding and lower the debt thereby making it more possible for us to pay it off, but he won’t. That was awful. On the good side, he’s been holding the film hostage because of the debt, and we told him that we’re going to finish the film now and start getting it out in the world, and we’re not waiting any longer, and he didn’t tell us we couldn’t. So that was good. I’m in between books too. Too much film stress and stuff going on to be able to concentrate enough right now. Either of those two books are good reads, so you should be okay either way. No, I haven’t checked the link, I’m sorry, there’s just been a lot of shit going on, but hopefully today. I hope your day is an upwardly mobile one. ** Joe, Hi. Oh, yeah, I was completely over the fucking moon when Grove started publishing me. It was hard to believe. I’ve read some of ‘Alehoof’, which is incredible, but I still have a ways to go. Life’s been very interfering lately. I’m dying to read further and finish it, and I will ASAP. Thank you for being so patient. xo, me. ** Right. I’ve restored this old stack post because I always really liked it. That’s that. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
Oh, this is really fun. I’m always a bit weird in terms of how I sit while I read, I kind of either lay down and hold a book above me, or basically sit in the foetal position, but it is mostly down to my dodgy eyesight. How do you normally read?
Mmm, I’m at uni near the coast of the UK, in Cornwall. It’s lovely, but it’s totally a tourist town (there are more second homes than actual homes). It does mean the rent is mega-cheap, but it’s also a sort of ghost town, two thirds of the shops are shut most days.
No, no problem about TMS! It did remind me personally a little of Inland Empire, inasmuch as it was a series of basically unreadable experiences brong thrown into focus by emotional understanding. I’m glad you like Inland Empire too, that movie is sort of one of the things that made me actually, I don’t know, engage with art, made me see it could still be innovative and bizarre.
Mmm, yeah, I agree about von Trier, he does mask the actual cores of his films in quite a lot of repellent shit. There is also a level of extreme emotional violence in his work I just find hard to stomach. I’m very glad you like Miike, Audition and Imprint are movies that are wedged pretty deep in my brain. Anyway! See ya!
hi den, good morning when you’re reading this, i assume! nicely stacked. i only read in bed and when i’m in transit, like waiting for something, on the bus etc. but i still get a lot reading done usually. i’m much broker now than i have been in a while since i’m living alone which is more expensive, and have to pay studio rent, so i can barely afford to buy books ever which is sad. i’m getting flunker as soon as i get money at the end of september, picture me making raccoon-like grabby hands in the air thinking about it. slightly salivating. i’m really dependent on the library now, and they have some good stuff, but i’m also frequently schocked at what they don’t have. right now i’m reading ‘the wretched of the earth’ by fanon which is good but i’m rereading every other sentence almost, it’s heavy. probably a bad book to read in transit.
aw i’m really glad to hear you’re gonna go to the doctor, i think that’s the move, unfortunately. hope it’s really painless. i’ve been listening to the latest kali malone album and it’s incredible, too bad it wasn’t all it could be live. if i ever get the hang of this application thing and the powers that be start handing me money on the regular i’m definitely making up a project in la in october. the short film sounds very promising. how far in the process are you? writing script? i just meant like a regular aquarium that you’d have in your house, i think they’re such alluring objects when they’re not filled with water, although that has its charms too. but i haven’t been to the aquarium in paris! there’s a big aquarium in birmingham, which is very close to coventry where my family’s from, and i went there as a kid, and was soo excited about this tunnel you walk through that’s all glass and sharks are swimming around you and overhead. little sharks but still.
i’m sorry your meeting went badly, it sounds like a total nightmare the whole situation. it’s great that you can start getting the movie out at least. is it completely done? i really hope i get to see it in oslo! maybe you and zac can ride its tailcoats here again like with pgl, that was great.
trying to remember what i did yesterday. oh yeah, i was gonna go to the gym, but i’m still not unsick enough so i stayed home, and i sent in my application and just did stuff around the house. baked cookies. today i’ve been to work which was nice. i bought a little halloween decoration, a scarecrow with a pumpkin head, just a flat thing to hang on the wall but with real straw for arms and legs. now i’m at the studio, not sure what to do today, but i should keep tidying and organizing ’cause it’s a semi-mess. i might make a miniature playpen.
see ya big D, xxx
I have a really cool chair in my front room to do my reading in. All the angles of the back rest and the supports for my legs are 100% adjustable so I can just chill in that for at least an hour at a time. Best of all it was completely free, so I really shouldn’t complain about our government too much. I’m still on the House of Mirth but am enjoying it and finding the content to be surprisingly contemporary.
Long time no see Dennis!
Sorry for being away for so long! Lots of stuff has been going on lately and I’ve forgot to be active on here. My friends actually liked Jeanne Dielman, I did too, even though one of them fell asleep for a little while during it… I probably won’t ever rewatch it, but I can acknowledge it’s a very well made film and surprisingly enough it wasn’t all too boring. Have you seen it, and If so, what do you think of it?
The party was great too! I stayed sober because I am kind of paranoid all the time and I got flashbacks to the last time I drank while being out in the woods (almost shat my pants hahahaha) and didn’t drink anything because of that bad association. I kind of regret I didn’t, I was probably the only sober one, but I had a lot of fun. I talked to this girl and we made a deal. She’s gonna help set me up with this girl in school that I have a crush on (I literally know nothing about here except she has the same ‘Thriller’ shirt as I do hahaha) and I’ll help set her up with this girl that she likes! We’ll see how that goes.
I’m sorry for your aching knees, but I’m afraid you’ll have to stay on them for a little longer… The place wasn’t open the day me and my friend had planned, so we had to go to another place 🙁 I PROMISE I’LL GO THERE AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, YOURE JUST GONNA HAVE TO KNEEL FOR LIKE A COUPLE OF DAYS MORE!!!
About the Saltkråkan ride: apparently they closed it down! 🙁 It used to be one of the highlights of the trip for me, there were these talking and moving wax dolls in there that displayed some of the most iconic scenes from the show. Really uncanny dolls when I look back on them though hahahha ! And yeah, the plays are pretty great there, as I remember!
Pippi Långstrump is great, but she made a lot of better stuff! Saltkråkan is one of my personal highlights, and I also love ‘Ingen Rövare i Skogen’. That ones great! I’ll look into how famous her work is in France, I can see them being way into her too.
How’s your last couple of days been treating you? Anything fun/unfun going on that you want to share?
xo, Måns
Hey. Yep, ‘the writing is the explanation’ is my philosophy as well. I remember David Lynch saying that about his movies and it being very validating. I obviously like talking about writing but in terms of why I do something, why would I pigeonhole something I wrote?
‘The Counterfeiters’ really blew my mind when I read it, and it blew my mind that it was written when it was written, it’s like proto-postmodernism. Its structure is just so genius, and I remember there being a lot of brutal, quotable sentences that come out of nowhere.
I’m going to look at a possible room tomorrow. I’m really hoping for the best. The rent is better than my last room. It’s kind of hitting me that everything will go back to ‘normal’ soon. It’s kind of making me nervous because I’ve had such a long break, but at this precise moment everything is going so fast that I keep having to tell myself to calm down.
I love this post! I’m one of those people who is always discreetly trying to find out what people in public are reading.
Greetings from Berlin. In-flight reading was Jeff Noon’s entertaining Creeping Jenny. One of my favorite blogs back in the day was called soulike hot guys reading books, haha.
Ok, let’s see if they fixed the captcha.
Bill
Hey! Back at school now, thankfully. Weather is just as HOT as MS which is not what I needed. I’m also down with whatever cold is the latest fashion, as is William. Readers. Like how they’re in B&W. I feel like the older woman reading the magazine while a young menace tugs at a bow knocked with a ruler (?) aimed right at ‘er. Pulled Blanchot’s Thomas the obscure from the library and am poring over it. I’ll probably have read the book several times before I finish. I’m fixed (‘jonesed’) on his syntax at the moment. Reading it is like the language equivalent of flipping through different iterations of that optical illusion where you hallucinate ostensibly reasonable things over discordant imagery outside your immediate focus. So, you think an image is all blue or yellow and then you look at it again, and there’s, like, a black dot, right there. Wish I read this in high school, but I was too obsessed with the Anglophones. Any personal standouts of his?
I will rapid fire some anecdotes: I was really fortunate to recently get a little research position to work on a sprawling piece of software for composing and synthesizing music. I know nothing at all about music theory. So, that’s going to be very exciting. To my surprise, the professor who leads it seemed kinda thrilled I’d even heard of musique concrète or Iannis Xenakis, let alone that I like those things or anything. Glad to know the Paris g’mnt didn’t do the pass extravaganza. The film sitch. BLECK. You seem too busy for video games, but maybe keep your eyes peeled for a game called ‘Judero’. Serendipitously, one of my ex-coworkers is heavily involved in the “Friends of the Mississippi River Basin Model,” and she delivered to me and a few other curious minds a very neat history of the site. I’m rapt. The Friends clean it up and stuff. The land itself is held by an incredibly disinterested city government, so, ugh. Still cool (40+ acres of concrete!), will need to arrange a tour/volunteer outing with her.
Hey Dennis, thanks so much! Good to hear you and Zac are going to do a short film and thus negate need for fundraising. (The need for) money sucks so bad. Nice stack. I’m reading a random selection of public access books about geology at the moment, after which I plan to read In Cold Blood, for the first time. J x