ONLY LOVERS LEFT ALIVE, JIM JARMUSCH

this is honestly the only thing i’ve been thinking about lately…one of the most introspective, beautiful films i have seen in a while….a film about vampires. but it’s only a little bit about that.

two vampires named adam & eve stalk the earth, bound by their deep understanding of one another, a mutual disdain for how humans live their lives, and the centuries of history they have witnessed together. this is the story of a profound and enduring love, one that reverberates through space and time. it’s an honest, sometimes tender, exploration of how a relationship can be an anchor in an ever-changing, often superficial and misguided world.

the film plays like one long conversation, with all of the rhythmic silences, distractions, and revelations that make for an especially good one. these two people have literally shared the world together and have talked about everything under the sun. how could there possibly be more to say? but there always is. and their language is one of acceptance — for life as it is, for each other, for their own personal ebbs and flows. instead of happiness alone, they are interested in the full spectrum of feelings that life has to offer, and they remain curious about it and about each other. in some strange way, it would seem as though these vampire people have found the most human way to exist in the world.

-liv

MOUNTAINS AND RIVERS WITHOUT END, GARY SNYDER

when i was in L.A. a few weeks ago, my friends and i found ourselves at a bookstore called the iliad, a vibrant, no-frills, old-school labyrinth of books new and old, with a curation i could not quite understand but appreciated nonetheless. i found an old copy of this poetry book by gary snyder (whom i originally met in the form of japhy ryder when i first read on the road). as many do in the aisles of an old bookstore where some are perusing and some are reading but none are talking, i too leaned against the shelves and slinked into the act of leafing through this little pamphlet, what seemed to me a small and secret treasure. i always love reading poetry from the beats because, well, i think that they really saw california and wrote about it well. i was pleased to find that the third poem is named for highway 99, the highway that goes through my hometown.

i found in this poetry a tale of the west coast and its cosmic and contradicting pathways, its unyielding forces of nature, its “calligraphy of cars” and the euphoria and devastation of life at the edge of the continent. my favorite from this is actually not the one about highway 99, but about owls and the moon and neon life: “night song of the los angeles basin.”

-sum

CULT RADIO

in a world where music is at the tips of our fingers wherever we are, whenever we want it, there are still some surprising voids when it comes to the practice of music discovery. there was once car radio, record store browsing, cassette mixes made by friends-turned-lovers. our avenues for exploring seem to be less intimate than they once were — at the very least, less interesting. it may be that everything is accessible, but does that matter if the point of access has no soul?

cult radio is a place of pure discovery, an online radio station responding (intentionally or not) to the mission of introducing listeners to the vast and intrepid world of music. this is music with the potential to cure your ills and haunt your dreams — because it comes from everywhere and could be anything at all. it’s multi-cultural, genre-defying, sometimes even mind-bending (!!), and it’s completely blind to the lines of history & time that divide music into distinct ‘eras.’ with the channel being so eclectic, it leaves no room for passive listening. the experience isn’t meant to flow, it’s meant to probe. what do you like? is this song for you? do you want more? are you actually listening?

there is something being returned to us on cult radio that we have mostly taken out of the music experience: the act of being surprised.

-liv

MAN ON WIRE (2008)

i found my roommates with this on the projector one night, and the title i got a kick out of because i had suggested earlier that week that we watch walk the line together (my favorite movie), and we not only watched walk the line that week, but also, man on wire. i don’t really know what i expected of this documentary, i think i didn’t plan on paying too much attention. but i was simply taken by the story. have you heard that someone walked a line between the tops of the twin towers in 1974? they planned it for years and set his wire all up in the middle of the night with his friends and he went across back and forth and danced on the line for an hour? and that this was real in time?

i just keep thinking about philippe petit, this dreaming person, on top of the world laughing, going where they say you cannot because you actually can. he says people always ask him “why? why do you tempt fate?” he says why do we dream? because it is beautiful.

-sum

THE SOUL OF NATURE @ THE MET

there is no place for musing quite like a museum. i was at the met recently with a friend for an exhibit called the soul of nature, a collection of evocative landscape paintings from german artist caspar david friedrich. as both artist and explorer, he engages in a search for something greater and more enduring than the self. and where does this search lead? to moments of awe in the natural world: sunrises, new moons, mountains, rolling seas, quiet plains. he captures the scenes that surprise, that make us look twice, the ones that draw us to feel there must be something more. in facing nature, something divine is welcomed into our lives. friedrich’s art is really an expression of the small, inexplicable pangs we feel when we look out at an open field or a sky streaked with color. nature seen through the eye of a wandering soul!

go see this if you’re in nyc :)

-liv

THE BEAR (2022)

nothing like a show about the midwest restaurant scene to dish out a slice of life like this. i continue musing on this show and its landscape of grit, of unglamorous aspiration. people who are both hard and easy to love, all in conflict with themselves or each other, all in search of purpose and redemption from family and self. each episode begs questions about the web of life and what we choose, of nature and nurture, and how who and where we come from follows us.

this show forces us to think about how we spend our time and the sacrifices involved in this choice. the episode that i really cannot stop thinking of is “forks” from season 2, episode 7, the story of cousin richie. when i say i cannot stop quoting this show…well, i’ll redeem myself by noting that it is really just one quote from this episode, and i repeat it mostly to myself. it’s so simple, even cliché, the unmistakeable truth: “every second counts.”

-sum