Rail trails and abandoned air fields
I keep watching TikToks of teen goth girls exploring abandoned (haunted) hospitals, theaters, and air fields around New England. And teen commentary on New England field trips like this one.
It was a blog cliche a decade ago and exploitative, frequently—all those white Brooklyn photographers going to Detroit to take pictures of run down places. But I thought this interview conveyed what we actually see of these spaces, something more than time passing or the curiosity of the decay. When you look at these abandoned buildings, you see where "All the wealth was taken out." The abandoned theaters, especially, that were opulent in their time, "represent their own sort of loss, which is an investment in a community."
I’ve spent a little bit of time around Fall River this year, and each time I’ve visited I’ve felt overwhelmed for that reason: the built environment was made for people who are no longer around. You can feel the gap between the purposes the roads and buildings were designed to serve to what people need now, and what modern uses would demand. But even in the wealthier parts of the state, you are regularly standing on history and reminded of a past that was—in a specific way—better than what we have now. Like the rail trails everywhere. Nice to bike on, yes, but I’d much prefer to hop on a train.
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I wrote about the metaverse for the new issue of Filmmaker magazine including 90s movies about virtual reality like Disclosure and The Thirteenth Floor. I also talked a little bit about Neal Stephenson as a colleague of Silicon Valley titans. There’s a lot I admire about his writing, but his original vision of the “metaverse” is, if anything, complementary to what Facebook and other companies are developing.
I was watching How To with John Wilson and got distracted trying to think of what the show reminded me of: Ross McElwee, yes, but there was someone else. Someone British. Had to be Channel 4. A video essay style documentary with a host walking the viewer through various histories….some man shouting to the camera about architecture, politics, automobile design, and “PRO-gress.” Not Chris Morris, not Louis Theroux, not Adam Curtis, not Charles Brooker, not any of them. The name I couldn’t remember but I knew it was a name like James Meek, the London Review of Books contributor. I thought about asking my readers here, but I was slightly worried that the videos might be deBotton-y and not hold up. Anyway, a million google searches later brought me to Jonathan Meades.
I also started watching Beforeigners, which I like so far—it’s the first science fictiony thing I’ve come across in ages with a premise that genuinely feels new. The “beforeigners” are people from various eras: 19th century, Cro-Magnons, etc that inexplicably keep washing up on the shore; and this being set in Norway, the beforeigners are mostly Vikings. There are lots of jokes about drinking mead and being someone’s “shieldmaiden,” but it reminds me, in a good way, of In the Flesh, as for the most part the show avoids the easy on-the-nose situational humor for conflicts that are a little more surprising.
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The Current War is not much more than a Wikipedia article about Westinghouse and Edison come to life, but I really enjoyed it because it’s so beautifully shot. This is all the work of cinematographer Chung Chung-hoon, who shot a bunch of Park Chan-wook’s films like The Handmaiden, as well as It and Last Night in Soho. He’s got such a distinctive style that what could be another dusty period picture feels really alive and immersive.
One thing that doesn’t work in The Current War, is a common problem and that is, I don't think there will ever be an actor truly out-there enough to play Nikola Tesla. Not Nicholas Hoult, who is otherwise a great actor, but look, even David Bowie lacked the charisma to pull off the part in The Prestige. Tesla was lean and handsome like Keanu Reeves or Hozier or somebody like that, but without their inner peace; he had grace with an inscrutable edge. He was a spindly outsider—a gambler and a mark—who experimented with literal bolts of lightening, and was one of the weirdest people to have ever lived. I mean, just look at him:
Who is Tesla smirking at? The photographer? Society at the turn of the century? You? Me? All of humanity, past, present, and future?
This recommendation might be a little to late to be useful, or maybe it is extremely early: I picked up a Slingshot organizer randomly at the bookstore and it’s nice to scribble out notes for the day on paper. I used to order them every year and all the activists I knew from anti-war protests carried them. It was the cheapest day planner you could find: just $5 at the time (the price has now risen to a still very reasonable $8). But then I got an iPhone, and I had apps for calendaring and got out of the habit. I love the hand drawn calendars and activist trivia (today, January 27th, “2011: Yemanis take to the streets protesting President Saleh.”)
On the Slingshot Collective website it says, “Ug – huge apology the August, 2022 month-at-a-glance calendar in the organizer has the wrong numbers on it – you’ll have to fix it by hand." But that’s exactly why I got it: for the mistakes a computer would never make.
Thanks for reading.