Dear diary,
Last night I met with my family to celebrate my mom’s birthday, so today I woke up late and don’t have time to write much here. I’ll just say a couple things…
I keep re-watching Charlie Kaufman’s latest film Anomalisa (2015). It rewards every new viewing. At first it seems like a simple story, at least compared to his directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York (2008), which for me is like our age’s Citizen Kane (1941) because it succeeds at being daringly experimental and poetic while yet remaining centered on the human heart…
By coincidence, I noticed yesterday an article on a Kaufman-related website that offers a really interesting introduction to an unnerving project by another of my favorite filmmakers, Guy Maddin. I’ve only had time to view a couple of the new films, which are to some extent generated randomly on-demand (they also purportedly disappear after you watch them); but the whole idea seems truly surrealistic to me, and I mean this as the highest compliment: it reminds me of my favorite works from my favorite artists from my favorite movements Dada and Surrealism—it’s rare that I find anything from our current generation that seems genuinely to have sprung from that same strange seed. It’s titled Seances—here’s the naked link:
But like I said, I spent last evening with my family; so I’ll end this by updating myself on how they’re all doing:
My sister is in the dating stage of her life. Her nights consist in going on date after date. She claims to be enjoying the process. She is not interested in using an online dating service. Some of her dates are recommended to her by her friends, and some of the dates result when an employee of a service company writes a flattering note on the back of a receipt. I asked my sister where she sees herself in ten years, and she said that she will own her own clinic for acupuncture. When I asked if she would hire me, she said no.
My brother and sister-in-law told us that their nightly custom is to walk their dog around their neighborhood. They do this after the sun goes down and the world is dark. Their neighborhood has no streetlamps, so the stars in the sky are easy to see. The only other light that exists is what comes from the windows of the nearby houses. My sweetheart and I went along with them last night, and it was enjoyable. My brother wore something like a miner’s cap that had a built-in light, so that they could see in order to clean up after their dog. Two separate times during the walk we all stopped and waited, for the dog shat twice.
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