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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Bressonian, me? ** Misanthrope, Interesting. I think if most people were asked to guess whether you or Sypha were braver, they’d pick you unless they knew it was a trick question. You ate burritos, that’s all that matters in my book. Big up on the neg. test, obvs. Yeah, the UK is as bad as it gets right now. Their higher ups fucked up royally. And their neighbouring countries like ours are, like, *hugs* and Fuck you. ** Dominik, Hi, D. She’s a pleasure to read. Short and sharp. Oh, that’s interesting, the underwater fear. I don’t have that, but, as an outer-spacephobe, I totally get it. I think I find being underwater cozy, like when you’re on land you’re wearing your summer clothes and underwater you’re wearing your winter attire, and I like being bundled up in cold weather. We humans are so mysterious, gosh. If I ever do an escort writing workshop, it’ll feature special guest-stars, and you’ll be the first one, promise. Yeah, I keep hoping to be convinced by the ‘evidence’ that he’s still alive out there, but I have yet to read anything that’s flat out convincing. Exactly! Walt without Mickey. I think he was a big genius, and they say he liked a bit of LSD now and then, and I just wonder what, say, Disneyland or animation in general would be like if he hadn’t cooked up that stupid mouse. I do like ‘101 Dalmations’, though. It’s got kind of a trippy premise. Love with the super power to make outer space and the oceans switch places, G. ** Golnoosh, Hi, Golnoosh. Thanks, but hey, all that bad stuff gave me tons to write about. I haven’t read her Proust translation. In fact, one of my goals in life is to never read Proust, not a word. Because people are always, ‘Oh my God, you haven’t read Proust?!’, like they think one hasn’t even been alive until one has read Proust, and that just brings out my rebelliousness. So, unless someone literally puts a gun to my head and says they’ll blow my head off unless I read Proust, I plan not to. If you look at the top right part of the blog’s front page, there’s a link there that says you can watch PGL via VOD on Vimeo, and if you click on that link, the film becomes available. Happy day! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi, Ben. Oh, yeah, I can see LD being an interesting and useful writer for you to read vis-a-vis your work. Cool. ** Steve Erickson, The words ‘actor’s showcase’ are like the skull and crossbones on a bottle of liquid to me. Hope your stomach is chill by now. Lots of dark songs in a row certainly makes a lot of sense. ** Jack Skelley, Jack, old pal! ‘We’re all caterpillars to an OCD god’: Truer word hath n’er been typed. We’re lucky because the galleries have never really closed, and, in fact, if my plans for today pan out as planned, I will see that Kenny Scharf show this afternoon because I’m heading to this newish gallery district out on the fringes of Paris where that gallery in question resides. Wish me luck. Best Tuesday! ** Brian O’Connell, Howdy, Brian. She’s great. I think you’ll fully enjoy exploring her work if you do. There’s be an Errol Morris Day here coming up in the next couple of weeks, so you can explore his stuff then if you haven’t already. Seeing friends is a luxury these days, which is so weird and sad, so you seeing yours sounds exciting. Shirley Jackson’s great, yeah. What of hers are you reading? There’s a whole course just on Cassavete’s ‘Opening Night’? That’s cool. Ages ago I went to a pre-release screening of it where he and the cast were there and talked and took questions and stuff. My one Cassavetes in-person encounter. And they ended up re-editing the film between then and when it was actually released, and, oh, I wish I remembered the screening well enough to tell the differences. Extremely early happy b’day! I hope to finally go see a bunch of art today after having that plan delayed a few times. Otherwise, hang out with my friend/collaborator Stephen O’Malley tomorrow and try too finish a draft of the fiction/script thing I’m working on to send to my co-author Zac, and ‘praying’ they don’t announce a new quarantine. How was Tuesday in your realm? ** ae, Hey! Cool, I’ll watch my e-mailbox. Oh, I know about Beast of Le Gévaudan. Friends here in France reference him/it a fair amount as, like, a metaphor for extremely unpleasant people and things. I should do more than check the Wikipedia page about it/him, which all I’ve done. Have you ever made art about the Beast, even metaphorically? Sounds like a rich thing. Thanks! How’s your agenda? ** Right. Today’s post is exactly what it claims to be. See you tomorrow.
Now available in North America 
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Hi!!
When I was a kid, I saw a Sailor Moon episode in which the “bad guy” tied his enemies to some poles or trees and could kind of… pull out a mirror from their chest, and if he looked into it (or entered it?), he could see their soul (I guess, their feelings and fears, etc.). (At least that’s how the scene lives in my memories.) I remember finding all this terrifying but also strangely erotic and exciting.
I’ve never thought about being underwater like that – like being bundled up. That’s a really interesting thought. Do you avoid films with space scenes too, then? Do they give you a bad feeling? I don’t freak out from water scenes, but I do get mildly anxious sometimes when a character goes into water, especially deep or murky water. Even if I’m fairly certain that no cheap “oh, something just caught my leg” trick will pop up.
Thank you, haha, that’d be an honor: attending the escort writing workshop as a guest-star!
I feel the same way. I’d like to think that Richey’s alive (although he has to be fairly cruel or completely out of touch with reality to stay away like this), but, sadly, I’m not convinced at all.
I was a huge Disney fan as a kid, and “101 Dalmatians” was my favorite cartoon. I have to admit I did love Mickey too, haha. But yeah, it’d be interesting to see where the whole “Disney world” would’ve ended up without him.
Perfect. That love is very welcome! Love murdering his roommate for listening to Imagine Dragons’ “Smoke + Mirrors” on a loop, Od.
“Mirrors would do well to reflect more” — Jean Cocteau “Orphee”
I am in receipt of a new Blu-Ray of James Whale’s magnificent The Kiss Before the Mirror Made between “The Old Dark House” and “Yhe Invisible Man” and featuring the immortal Gloria Stuart it’s a romantic melodrama about jealous husbands murdering their too-beautiful wives.
Hi nice man, How are you? I’m rewriting my novel right now and I really would like to publish it this year.
Yep, I don´t want a new quarantine too.
Have a lovely day, you matter. *Hugs*.
Charmingly reassuring that you avoid Proust with such ferocity; it gives me permission/ confidence re my own lack of fascination.
I love this mirror post! I used to collect mirrors back when I was living in IR. Fave GIF mirrors are: the Mulan one with the caption ‘When will my reflection show who I am inside?’, ‘you can kill yourself now because you’re dead in my mind’, the glorious ‘SMOKE’ one, and all the anime ones.
Vimeo tells me ‘Unfortunately, this title is unavailable in your region’, which sadly sums up my whole situation with this ‘region’. It’s OK though; I’ll find another way to get my hands/ eyes/ soul on PGL.
My own fave art mirror is this wonky thing by Cerith Wyn Evans: Inverse, Reverse, Perverse that distorts and flips around the viewer’s relection.
Hey Dennis, long time no chat, how are you doing? How’s Paris? Lots of mirrors in the post, thanks for them.
My month has been a tornado, and I’m feeling very up and down, although the down is far more frequent than the up. I can’t go too deep into everything, I wouldn’t really know where to start, but I guess for starters I’m single again. It’s a very long story but basically my boyfriend’s dog died right before Christmas and it sent us into a tailspin. He loved that dog so deeply, and I had also grown extremely attached to the dog. He gave me lots of kisses and he cuddled me and was my reading companion. We brought the dog to the emergency vet at 3 in the morning but he had a seizure just as we stepped out of the cab…..He was yelping and shitting blood all night. I’m sure later in life I’ll be able to draw on it for my writing, after all who among us doesn’t like short stories about bloody feces, but I gotta be honest I haven’t regained my footing since that night. It was a traumatic experience. And looking back I haven’t regained my footing since my father’s death in September. I wasn’t even able to cry for the longest time but at the vet’s I just started sobbing……It’s extremely hard to reconcile my own grief with my grief for my boyfriend, and then to square the grief with my profound feeling of heartbreak and also my disappointment in myself. I feel like I ruin every single relationship and I treat every boyfriend so horribly. I don’t mean to fuck things up but I manage to fuck things up every single time..Ed and Michael have been kind and generous to me through it all. Ed said something to me that made me feel understood, he said that I’m very honest and being honest is difficult. I’ve been repeating that mantra lately and also repeating your mantra that confusion is the truth. Needless to say I’m extremely confused and distraught. Sorry for the word vomit here, but I’ve been holding it all in lately, I feel like I can’t find the time to talk to anyone because I’m also becoming so disorganized lately. Two weekends ago I went and visited my mom in Florida for the first time since my dad died and what do ya know, I couldn’t go back to the office either. CDC guidelines require 14 days in quarantine. So I truly just feel like the biggest idiot on the planet. I wish I could just go to a library or a museum and leave my phone at home and just sit for hours. The library has always been my safe haven and whenever I felt the way I feel, going there made me feel like none of the stuff in my head matters……..
Alright I’m gonna put the brakes on this post. The weather here was horrible today too so that’s part of my mood. There have been other good fortunes this month thankfully. I am working on my new story, it’s coming along slowly but surely. My Castle Faggot capsule thing should be out soon too, within the next week or so. Hooray! Hope you’re keeping afloat. Do you get down in the wintertime? Maybe I should consider moving out to LA, I could use a warmer climate….Catch ya later Dennis.
Dennizen! Another happy notch on the belt of gratitude for these gifs. When Davey Jones opens his bathroom mirror in “Head” that’s Victor Mature’s giant eye, right? (Remember Robert Peter’s “Victor Mature” poems? LOL) But who was that mystery Flintstones character? Relatedly, I’m a major Kenny Scharf head for obvious reasons. I wished you luck and willed you to get in !!!
Oh no! Not the mirrors! 😉
Still, they do play an important role in Lewis Carroll’s 2nd Alice book, so I probably shouldn’t knock them.
Dennis, today I was trying to think of the last time I did a day for you… the art of Jung one I think? Recently I’ve had the idea for another day (I don’t count the upcoming Neo-Decadent Manifesto one as I’m just merely putting that one together). Last year I posted, at a variety of places (like Facebook, my blog, and so forth), a number of “tips for writers.” Said tips were written half-seriously/half tongue-in-cheek, in a somewhat scabrous, bitchy and self-aggrandizing style, and they got some interesting reactions: some people agreed with them, some people found them funny, some people were seriously offended, and so on and so forth. I was thinking, maybe they could be posted here as well? I could add a few new ones as bonuses, and maybe if you so chose you could add some GIFs to add some visual flair… that would be up to you though, ha ha. What do you think?
Hey, Dennis,
I love mirrors. Not in a vanity way (I hope), in a visual way. I’ve gained a new affinity for them after watching them used as fetish objects in so many of the movies I’ve seen recently. So I loved today’s post. A fascinating alignment of imagery. I can see myself revisiting it.
Ah, good to hear re: Errol Morris Day. Looking forward to that. Yes, it is so sad that meeting up with people has become an abnormal and weirdly fraught event. It makes me terribly depressed. We’re reading Shirley Jackson’s “We Have Always Lived in the Castle”. I know that’s considered perhaps her greatest achievement, but I actually haven’t read it before. I know her mostly through her short fiction and “The Haunting of Hill House”. So that’s exciting—it’ll be something that’s new to me.
Yes, a whole course around “Opening Night”, as a tool for close film analysis. (They switch up the movie every year—previously it’s been “The Age of Innocence”, which I would’ve obviously loved, but I’m sure this’ll be great in its own way.) We’ll be watching other movies—I notice “Persona” and an Almódovar in the syllabus, cool—but the focus’ll be “Opening Night”. Wow, that’s so cool about the pre-release screening! Envious, naturally. It’s my first Cassavetes. I only know him from “Rosemary’s Baby”. He’s such an amazingly loathsome slimeball in that movie. Pumped to see his work behind the camera.
Yay, art! Did you get to see it? If so, how was it? And cool about hanging with your friend/collaborator, and also about the script, which you know I’m intrigued by, of course. My own Tuesday had absolutely nothing going for it, except my brother’s schoolwork was asynchronous so we could hang out and watch the new ContraPoints—that’s it, nothing else to differentiate it from the others. High hopes for Wednesday, I guess. Yes, we’re all “praying” nowadays. May this week enrich us both.