Dead Ends
I started a website to hold all of my writing about cannabis labs, I’m pretty proud of it, and it would be super helpful if you could check it out (pageviews are good). It’s called ‘Eye on Cannabis’ (dot org!). The blacklist in particular is freaking awesome.
This is important, because I’m retooling ‘somewhatcyclops.com’ to be about independent movies and media commentary. It’s part of a larger initiative with Sujewa Ekanayake, who is also gearing up with the second part of Secret Society of Slow Romance, Cosmic Disco Detective Rene. I want to spend more time writing supporting that sort of thing. So, in addition to pulling pieces I’ve written about TV, movies, etc. from my journal, notes, and other postings around the web, I’ve been working on this essay about one of Amir Motlagh’s films and it’s driving me crazy that it’s not finished yet. I seriously first watched the movie right after I had COVID. It’s not finished partially due to client weirdness, my life sort of ..shambling apart… and part due to overwhelm after A LOT of client writing. Often it feels like if I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing (and maybe guilting myself out for not writing). I will be watching the film again tomorrow (It’s called 3 Worlds, it’s really amazing, too!) so I can close up the essay, and use it to premier the new site. This is really important to me because what I really want to write about are stories, makers, songs, musicians - creators.
I also have a few stories of my own I’d like to write.
Speaking of…
I did finally write that piece on The Fool!
I also wrote a piece on the Endocannabinoid System, and I plan to write articles on the endocannabinoids, receptors, and enzymes more specifically, and focusing on research on recovery and caring for the ECS. It’s mysterious and important! (To get my brilliant headline joke, watch Severance!!)
Darren has been creating some music videos that take his music and movies in the public domain. He’s Jelly Miser on the YouTubes. It’s hard for me to pick a favorite of his, it’s either Dada Cafe or Psychedelicatessen. I told him his style is Lucid Dream Electro, but I don’t know much about music.
Speaking of music, since the first time I heard ‘Welcome Home, Son’ I’ve been a fan of Radical Face, and his album ‘Therapy’ really hit me in the heart. This song, in particular. Now, especially.
“I don't wanna know why I just want to know how to move on now / The past is buried in time / And the future's an anxious invention / Oh, and you never arrive/ Unless you accept your dead ends/ Yeah, you will never arrive /Unless you make peace with your dead ends”
I recently read a book that hit me right in the heart, just like Radical Face. It was recommended to me by a client, titled Why be Happy When You Can Be Normal by Jeanette Winterson, and I thought I’d share some quotes that I found to be especially meaningful.
“When we tell a story we exercise control, but in such a way as to leave a gap, an opening. It is a version, but never the final one. And perhaps we hope that the silences will be heard by someone else, and the story can continue, can be retold. When we write we offer the silence as much as the story. Words are the part of silence that can be spoken.”
“All of us, when in deep trauma, find we hesitate, we stammer; there are long pauses in our speech. The thing is stuck. We get our language back through the language of others. We can turn to the poem. We can open the book. Somebody has been there for us and deep-dived the words. I needed words because unhappy families are conspiracies of silence. The one who breaks the silence is never forgiven. He or she has to learn to forgive him or herself.”
“I used to have an anger so big it would fill up any house. I used to feel so hopeless that I was like Tom Thumb who has to hide under a chair so as not to be trodden on.”
“In fact, there are more than two chances – many more. I know now, after fifty years, that the finding/losing, forgetting/remembering, leaving/returning, never stops. The whole of life is about another chance, and while we are alive, till the very end, there is always another chance.”
“Home is much more than shelter; home is our centre of gravity. A nomadic people learn to take their homes with them – and the familiar objects are spread out or re-erected from place to place. When we move house, we take with us the invisible concept of home – but it is a very powerful concept. Mental health and emotional continuity do not require us to stay in the same house or the same place, but they do require a sturdy structure on the inside – and that structure is built in part by what has happened on the outside. The inside and the outside of our lives are each the shell where we learn to live. Home was problematic for me. It did not represent order and it did not stand for safety.”
“All my life I have worked from the wound. To heal it would mean an end to one identity – the defining identity. But the healed wound is not the disappeared wound; there will always be a scar. I will always be recognisable by my scar.”
Winterson, Jeanette. Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal? Grove Atlantic. Kindle Edition.
One of my projects is going to require social media presence, etc. again. I’ve been trying to log back into the ‘somewhatcyclops’ accounts I made when I thought I’d start a yarn company (Oh, 2018 Jamie, I wish I could talk to you and give you a hug, especially right around 5 years ago).
But - if you are super into my content I’m slowly trying instagram but I still really really hate meta - and have a discord server, where I have actually managed to figure out how to stream movies and TV there (I’d love to do a stitch and bitch or watch Phantom of The Paradise!). If you have discord and hate servers, my id is somewhatcyclops#9016 . I have no idea if Linkedin will ask me for my license again, but since it’s literally for a job I might redact it and try to get my account.
The things I do for clients, I swear.
I still haven’t managed to recover Twitter from the Elondebacle (and with most of their security team gone, I’m afraid to get it back at this point), but again - clients care about this stuff, and it’s hard to be a content creator / writer without an actual presence. As much as I’d like it to be that way . it isn’t.