hello!!!!!!!!!
happy 10th week birthday!! what have you learned as a 10 week old?
this will be my last post this year and I will come back sometime next year… maybe after I arrive at my quarter life crisis.
dirty little virus
I did not know what I wanted to title this week’s post, seeing as it is a big birthday celebration. But then, I opened up Pitchfork and saw that Iggy Pop just released a song called “dirty little virus” and that felt too on point.
fun I’d like to share with you:
I just started reading Eve Babitz’s Slow Days, Fast Company, after being in my collection for a while. I wish I had sooner!
Has Tom Cruise ever seen a movie? An investigation.
I love this! Choose any city in the world and drive around listening to the local radio. <3
Check out Ellington’s weekly curated playlists that drop every Monday. Here’s this week:
articles I’d like to share with you:
The drama of this piece. and this one. (I never really have looked to Elle for hard-hitting journalism, but both of these articles really took me on a ride.)
Subversive girls & Jennifer’s Body.
Happiness won’t save you.
A long read sent to me by Gabi.
More on Steve McQueen. I still really recommend Small Axe!
A long read sent to me by Tarra. So good!
On the first person being vaccinated in the US. “I trust science.”
humor i’d like to share with you:
Dave Grohl & Company covering Peaches for Hanukkah! Fuck the pain away!
maya white original
below is an original maya white original! She is also going to be in the upcoming radio play i’m directing in 2021! Here is her blog. <3
I’ve been reading a lot about flat things, and beautiful things.
Theory, y’know.
In my mind’s eye, when I try to recall the contours of something I find beautiful (like Beverly Glen) I always flatten it to accommodate the road signs.
Hard to remember the contours of a yield sign. Much easier to remember the white and red paint.
I know it’s a triangle. Is it an inverted tarot card or does yielding just naturally look like a triangle on it’s head.
I used to take pictures of these kinds of sign while I was driving. I like how they punctuate the terrain.
When I think of the actual wildlife beside the road I drive (Beverly Glen, again) I think of beige and a deep green. I think of wrought iron grey and hidden driveway heather grey.
I think of palatial abodes and me running into lecture 15 minutes late.
All these images, flattened into a semi-sensical reel of memory I parse through at my leisure.
It’s hard to keep everything 3-d when you’re just doing the remembering. The flat files of the mind are flat in fact. It’s like that so they can store memories with dignity and so they don’t get crinkled at the edges.
But inevitably, when the clerk finds the memory in question, it’s gonna come out of the flat file flat.
There are tubes in the stockpile of the mind, but those are more action-y memories. They contain a whole mis-en scene as well. Which is why they get to be rolled up into a tube. Those memories don’t get flat, they come out with a perpetual curve on the ends. Like really big memories want you to keep skating and sliding back into the center of it all.
A memory that is flattened? My outfit that I wore to a piano recital gets “flat filed”. But the memory of my car accident on the freeway gets “tubed.”
I hope that illuminates the difference enough.
But what of beautiful things? Same logic.
I think some of the most shockingly beautiful things get reduced to sensations, which are also tubed.
Like when I think back on getting high with friends, my brain begins to create a panorama. And panoramas get tubed, but they also get little patches of dirt and grass stuck inside ‘em too. They get some of the visceral parts of the memory stored in there with the panorama picture of ‘good times’. The dust and the dirt is to remind me of the solace of an earthen blanket when amongst the right company.
We’ve done silly things outside, my friends and I, but I never felt exterior in those times. I felt swaddled in sunlight and shoulder to shoulder with bliss. A panorama can only accomplish so much when it comes to conjuring the full beauty of these moments.
Hence the dirt.
And the little tiny rock that got stuck in your shoe
And the cap to the Gatorade we all shared
And the blanket I keep in my car for certain moments.
How do you store something like that?
Very carefully.
Preciously.
I wish you health and safety from this dirty little virus and peace from this dirty little year.
always,
Kyra
<3