orbific – Page 29 – orbific weblog

Iteration 1: Groundhog Day

Phil: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.

Today is March 371st 2020, and day 355 of my personal lockdown. I’m watching movies today, and the first was Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day has been described as the perfect lockdown movie, since every day is the same. That comparison only holds so far. While Phil Connors lives the same day again and again, there are distinct events in the day and his life is slowly changing within the repetition. And, you know, the film is based around a large social event with no distancing.

Over the last twenty-odd years since I first saw it, I’ve thought about Groundhog Day a lot, but rarely re-watched it (the film turned up most recently in an episode of Imaginary Advice). There are a lot of details I’d forgotten, including that the film has two car chases.

Spoilers follow for a 28-year old movie.

Statistics:

Length of first iteration: 11 minutes
Length of second iteration: 7 minutes
Reset point: sleep or death
Fidelity of loop: Day repeats with little degradation
Exit from the loop: spending the night with the main female character / becoming a better person

The film is from 1993, and parts have dated in 28 years. Phil’s hostility and workplace sexual harassment doesn’t come off as a quirky character traits now. I also wondered what happened to make him so invested in his own misery. Fortunately, given the way Netflix and Amazon are reusing old intellectual property, the Groundhog Day prequel TV show can’t be far off.

There’s also something a little unbalanced in Phil’s relationship with Rita, played by Andie MacDowell. The film focusses on their relationship and not the other things that Murray does with his repeated day (one DVD commentary says that Phil spends ten thousand years in Punxsutawney, usual estimates are about 20-40 years, although we only see 37 days in the film). Does Phil know this is the aim of the loop, or has he just tried everything else he can think of? Also, it’s a good thing Phil was not stuck in the loop until the movie passed the Bechdel test or it would still be going on.

Rita is treated as a prize to be won in the film, with Phil as the ultimate stalker. While the movie ultimately has Phil becoming a good person, the movie uses the trope of men deceiving women into falling in love, with the female character having little agency. In one iteration, Rita is horrified to realise “This whole day has been one long set up”, but the film is lamp-shading that issue rather than dealing with it. There’s definitely something a little uneasy about the film from her point of view (which someone has compiled on Vimeo)

When he emerges from the cycle, Phil remembers what he has been through. But how does Rita deal with him after that point, when he does not have years to set-up a perfect day? Will he ever tell her what happened? Will he stay a better person?

And surely Phil’s experiences within the loop have left him scarred in some way. There are some touching scenes where Phil’s mental health collapses, as he tries to deal with his situation. It’s painful to see the scenes where Phil breaks down and begs Rita for help. There is a shocking sequence where Phil repeatedly kills himself, which is (thankfully) played lightly.

A detail that puzzled me was the piano teacher. There’s a section fo the film where Phil decides to learn piano. He goes to a piano teacher and pays her $1,000 dollars to kick out her current student and teach him instead. It’s a scene played for laughs, but you wonder how many people’s lives are touched by Phil’s strange behaviour in this one day where the world revolves around him. Some of them will be left with very odd anecdotes.

Phil continues learning piano until he is an expert –

(This raises the question of how Phil manages to learn within the loop when his brain is being reset at the start of each cycle. I guess this is probably the sort of nit-picking metaphysics best cut in favour of jokes).

(At one point, Rita says she has deja-vu in one of the loops – does this mean there was a chance of her learning what has been happening?)

Anyway, Phil continues learning piano until he is an expert, returning to the piano teacher each day, presumably paying her $1,000 dollars for each step of tuition until he is a jazz virtuoso. On the final day, when Phil uses his piano skills to help him ‘win’ Rita, the tutor turns to Rita and proudly says “That’s my student.” How does she know? On that final day, he was an expert who came for a quick top-up lesson – or else, she is the only person in the film to remember previous cycles.

Another weird diversion is when Phil, on camera, describes the Groundhog Day ceremony as the town “worshipping a rat”. I hope we one day all get to watch a folk-horror version of Groundhog Day.

Groundhog Day is a well-made film whose flaws have become more obvious over time. But it was fun to watch again, and I did like the film’s message. Phil only ‘won’ Rita when he built a community in the town, and she saw how much they loved him.

February Monthnotes

February was a bleak month but, as it drew to a close, I was feeling hopeful. The government’s plans for returning to normality gave me something to look forward to. At the same time, my house sale is ticking over in the background, with the promise of big changes once that completes. Most of February was challenging, though. I felt isolated under lockdown, and my company was handling remote working poorly. The repetition of the days was difficult, with my energy very low.

I reduced my daily step goal to 10,000 in the middle of the month as I was struggling to do much more than that. My total for February was 323,882 (compared to 415,784 in January), an average of about 11,500. I’ve been so bored of walking that I resorted to buying a new pair of running shoes. I’ve not been doing any more than occasional lengths of jogging, but it is the first positive thing I’ve done towards running in some time. I’m taking it very easy and doing lots of physio to avoid setting my hip off.

Not for the Faint-Hearted has continued its weekly writing session, and I’m enjoying being part of that community. There was also a new issue of Bodge, and sending out the physical copies of that is fun.

Work on the South Downs Way project continues slowly. I’m in an informal workshop with Rosy and Sam, where I’ve polished up a couple of new pieces. I’m finally putting a new actual collection of stories together. I’m moving slowly (so slowly!) but I don’t feel as if I am wasting time. Rather I’ve been improving as a writer and this will hopefully show in the new work.

I’ve been reading less news, which has resulting in me spending a lot more time with books. I read Salena Godden’s Mrs Death Misses Death, and long to hear that as an audiobook. David Mitchell’s Slade House was light but fun; Empireland by Sathnam Sanghera was an effective book on a lot of current debates; Derek Jarman’s At Your Own Risk was a powerful depiction of gay life in the 90’s. Patricia Lockwood’s No-one is Talking About This was an impressive novel about being Extremely Online and very inspiring.

I watched a pile of movies last month: Wheel of Time, Kill List, The Wailing, Quatermass and the Pit and Apostle. Glitch In the Matrix was interesting, but the interview with killer Joshua Cooke unbalanced it somewhat. I also watched Bill & Ted Face the Music which was exactly the positive film I needed at the time. TV included more Wandavision, Rupaul’s Drag Race US, and the Mandalorian. It was great to see Joe Black brought back to Drag Race UK, even if he failed to make it through to the next episode.

Onward into March!

The Beginning of the End (Day 344)

I was surprised at how relieved and excited I was by last night’s government announcements. This morning I feel lighter and calmer than I have in weeks. All social restrictions might be gone by June 21st (day 462 of my personal lockdown). The end is in sight.

I’ve been fraying during this third lockdown, and I’ve seen some friends responding similarly. We’ve already been doing this lockdown for 50 days and it’s been hard, particularly for those living alone. A few days ago, the Zoe App said they were amending the symptom list, “adding fatigue, sore throat, headache and diarrhoea to the ‘classic triad’ of cough, fever and loss of smell“. Headaches and fatigue are pretty much constants for me and a lot of people I know – the ‘lockdown hangover’. We are sleeping badly and waking up to repeat the same day we’ve had for weeks.

At least now we have something to look forward to. I imagine everyone has now seen the four-stage plan (although it wouldn’t be this government without some daft complexity, and stage 1 is actiually split into two parts). 8th March, two people can meet socially outdoors. 29th March sees the ‘rule of six’ and outdoor social gatherings. 12th April, shops and holiday accommodation open. 17th May, the rule of six allows indoor gatherings again. And, if all goes to plan, the nightclubs reopen on June 21st, and all social restrictions are lifted.

It’s still a long time, but the weather is improving and the vaccine seems to be working. Even the gamble about delaying second doses appears to have paid off. There still needs to be a reckoning with the appalling errors and waste by the government but, for now, I just want to look forward to June.

First thoughts on Adam Curtis’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head

Last weekend, I watched all six episodes of the new Adam Curtis show, Can’t Get You Out of My Head, which comes in at about eight hours. I’m still thinking about the show, but my initial thoughts are somewhat critical.

First off, I loved that the first mention of Discordianism was approximately 23 minutes in. Beautiful attention to detail.
In many ways, this felt like a direct continuation of Curtis’s other documentaries, with the same mix of B-roll footage, out of context archive shots and tasteful music.
In a show that talks about power and narrative, Curtis’s use of his voice as a patrician BBC voiceover is suspect. This should be parodic, but he seems to be playing it straight.
Many of the ideas Curtis uses are quite simple, and thrown out of linear order just to create patterns and juxtapositions.
Some of these juxtapositions begin to seem trite. ‘Saudi Arabia is a fairyland, just like Tupac Shakur’s version of LA!’ ‘The KKK are like Isis, who are just like English folk dances before world war two!’
There is a loss of context to the images, which is sometimes problematic. We’re lulled into not questioning the origin of footage and ideas. At one point, shocking footage is shown of what looks like preparations for a mass execution, the victim’s faces blurred. Were they blurred by the BBC or by the people who shot and edited the original footage?
Curtis often talks about how the world had gone “badly wrong” for the middle classes, sometimes supporting this by proximity to appalling outrages on less-privileged groups. I think that someone like Curtis could always show the middle classes being unhappy and unsettled with whatever the mainstream ideology was.
Towards the end, Curtis talks about use of neural networks on the web, and how patterns in the data are analysed without context or meaning. The implicit self-critique is palpable.
But, at the same time, there is a fascinating twist, which comes too late to be followed up. Having spoken about manipulation through social media, Curtis questions the idea of this through the replication crisis.
After talking for hours about the growth in bureaucratic power, Curtis briefly moves to discussing Brexit. He questions the idea that Brexit was a manipulation of Leavers by outside forces, implying that Brexit might even be a positive way of reclaiming the collective power has been undermined over years. It’s a disturbing and fascinating moment.
It feels like the next Curtis documentary could be very interesting.

What fascinates me about this show, and makes it worth discussing, is that Curtis seems to be making a provocative, inspiring narrative, but one that is almost drowned by his tropes. That positive story is about the limits of individuality, and the need for collective stories to change the world. Rather than focus on the anxiety and confusion, he could have focussed on people gathering together. It’s that show that has excited me, rather than the one discussed above.

Curtis deals in hidden narratives, but the film begins and ends with David Graeber’s inspiring quote: “The ultimate hidden truth of the world is that it is something we make. And could just as easily make different”.

Reading Poems on Twitch (7/2/21 at 6pm)

On Sunday evening I’ll be live-streaming on twitch, reading some of my favourite poems. I’ll start at 6pm GMT, and will go for about an hour.

I don’t expect me reading poetry over the internet to be a huge draw, but one of the things I love about twitch is the intimacy of tiny audiences, the feeling of presence. And it’s been fun digging through my shelves, handling the books, and realising how many memories are attached to them.

My sudden twitch obsession comes via DJ Kate St Shields. Kate has been looking at different places to host her DJ sets and has recently settled on Twitch. The service has been about for around 9 years, but I’d only heard of it as a video-game streaming service. There is so much more. I can watch a dog called Leyla on her walks. I watched sea-otters, swimming in the rain, near to Canada – Great! Watching cars move through an anonymous intersection in Russia might have been one of the most moving things I have seen.

It’s like something from a sci-fi novel. There are all these little interactive TV stations, whose graphics are almost as good as some of the little stations on cable in the late-90s Essex. I can watch a ship docking, or someone sewing. I can watch a self-proclaimed redneck and ex-con doing a delivery round, the chat questions repeated to him by a gadget as he drives. It’s like the few times I caught a pirate radio station when living in Essex – the chat between the tracks was the most interesting thing.

Poetry, for me, has always been about the capture of little moments (which is a poor, reductive definition for poetry, but it’s what I like about it). I love how the particular way this art captures moments, and the ephemerality of twitch seems the perfect place for such moments.

Monthnotes: January 2021

They say time gets faster as you get older, but January has managed to be the slowest month I’ve ever experienced. There has been no travel anywhere, few events, and I’ve been waiting out the time. I don’t know how other people are coping with this, particularly those in cramped accommodation, or unstable shared houses, or with no opportunity for income. We’re hearing promises from the government about a great summer, but it’s hard to put much stock in those. Life is just work, screens and staying safe.

Inspired by my friend Justin, I’ve been keeping a diary to help tell the days apart. It’s just a few lines for each day, noting what was remarkable about it. It’s helped to distinguish the days from each other, and has made life a little more vivid.

Work feels particularly strange at the moment – I’ve not seen my colleagues for almost a year, and I was only about five months into the job before this begun. The advantages of being in a permanent role are pretty much obliterated and I long to go contracting.

I’ve continued my maintenance dose of walking, with a target 11,000 steps a day. My total for January was a healthy 415,784, which is an average of over 13,000. I feel like I’ve been wasting my daily steps by not doing more interesting things with them. But some days it’s hard to summon the energy just to pace without trying to feel inspired too. I’ve considered starting running again, despite the bad hip, just to see if I can make my exercise more interesting.

After a long pause, I restarted Not for the Faint-Hearted, my now-online writing group. I feel like I’ve relaxed into this year’s sessions and have been enjoying them a great deal. At the end of the session, we each discuss a piece of culture we’ve enjoyed the past week, and the question has unearthed some fascinating passions.

I finished reading a good brace of books. Wintering by Katherine May has a strong book-of-the-year vibe to it. I also read Gideon the Ninth, and I’m still trying to work out if I liked it enough to invest time in the series. I loved Gideon’s smirking and inappropriate humour, and would be up for more of that. I’m going to wait for a while and see if I’m drawn back.

I’m still listening to audiobooks through an Audible subscription, although it seems to be mostly there as a fallback for when I run out of podcasts. The first audiobook I listened to was the stunning Beastie Boys book, and the others are having a hard time living up to that.

On the PS4, I’ve been playing Horizon: Zero Dawn a little, but that feels compulsive rather than fun. TV has included Wandavision, Rupaul’s Drag Race and the Mandalorian. I also managed a couple of movies: Pixar’s Soul had its message undermined by its provenance, and Chris Morris’s The Day Shall Come felt weirdly slight.

Via Kate, I’ve been getting into twitch. Listening to someone chatting over a video game is a good ambient experience. And, you know, the fact it’s streamed makes it a little better than me just being an old person who has the TV on for company.

While January has been grim, I’ve felt less lonely than I did in the previous lockdown. I’m making more effort to socialise on zoom and it is definitely helping. Being in a bubble, along with the simple act of sharing food, is also doing a great deal to keep me sane.

According to the almanac, we gain about 100 minutes of daylight through the course of February. We also have the start of Lent on February 17th. I’ve been trying to make use of festivals as calendar markers wherever I can. On that basis, Lent is a good thing. But do I need to follow a festival around giving things up, when we have already giving up so much?

Imbolc (Day 322)

Today is Imbolc, the first festival of the Celtic Calendar, which brings a promise of spring. Wikipedia tells me that Celts associated the time with ewes beginning lactation, preparing the way for their lambs. Or, as Katharine May describes it in her book Wintering, “It marks the end of winter, a time when the snow would traditionally melt, and its debris could be cleared away”. This is a time for spring cleaning, for dusting away cobwebs.

Imbolc also comes close to Candlemas, and to Groundhog Day. According to wikipedia again, this year marks the 135th Groundhog Day in Punxsutawney and this year Phil the Groundhog will wear a mask, with the ceremony held behind closed doors.

I’d wanted to mark the Celtic Festivals as we dragged ourselves through the pandemic, but January is such a low ebb that it is hard to muster up any feeling of celebration. Gathering with other people is illegal anyway. At least now the incredibly long January is over and it is time for renewal. And I legit completed my todo list yesterday, which feels even better than a spring clean.

Judy Mazonowicz’s article on Celebrating the Goddess at Imbolc in Bodge Issue 1 notes the connection of the day with St Brigid/Bridies, and the making of a traditional Bridie’s Cross. The article suggests visiting a Spring and the photo above is from my dawn visit to St. Anne’s Well gardens.

A year ago today, I visited the Long Man of Wilmington with The Door, in a very different world. It’s hard to believe all the time that has happened since. The days have passed slowly, but the weeks have flown by, with so many different periods to this – the three lockdowns, the long summer, the mess of Christmas. I keep thinking back to the early days, where I thought the economic effects of preventing the virus would outweigh the effect of the virus itself.

The next Celtic festival is the Spring Equinox, on March 20th. By this point, the schools should have reopened (and, I think, shut for the holidays?), so things will be a little less restricted. It’s a Saturday too, so I should think about how to mark the day.

Today also promises an announcement from David Lynch, which I assume is about the new Netflix series. I’m hoping for something that strengthens the connections between Twin Peaks and Mulholland Drive. But I have faith that Lynch will produce something I need rather than something I want.

Life on Plague Island (Day 321)

As Britain lurched past 100,000 deaths last week, I saw people post an interview with Jacinda Ardern on Twitter, where she talks about making her plan for coronavirus. What’s interesting about that is not her particular approach; shutting down the UK completely would have been hard to justify in early 2020. But Ardern is clear about her aims. Cutting off a country looked drastic, but now I watch with envy as New Zealand has music festivals. Their economy has still taken a hit, but normal life is recovering.

Meanwhile, Britain’s government tries to balance lockdown and the economy, and fails at both. There has been talk about quarantine hotels recently. The policy was trailed in the papers for days before a half-hearted implementation was finally announced. I’m not even sure that these hotels have yet opened. They don’t cover people whose destination is hidden by transfers.

The thing that surprises me is how little anger there is against the government. The polls suggest a solid base of 40% support, which seems ludicrous given the number of mis-steps that have been made. Without acknowledging how weak the response has been so far, there is no way to try a new approach. I find myself waiting for fury; instead, support rallies on the government’s vaccination success. Buoyed by this support, the government has announced a date for reopening schools rather than an actual plan, with the promise that pubs will follow within two months. The newspapers include reference to “Boris” wanting to reunite families at Easter.

It’s no wonder that some people are confused about the difference between guidance, laws, leaks and ministerial statements. Last week, a friend got angry with me recently for not wearing a mask outdoors as a matter of course. I was defensive, and I part of that that is fear. If it’s not safe to be outdoors unmasked, then a lot of things the government implies are safe are actually incredibly dangerous.

The vaccine programme is all we have, and it’s not certain that it will solve Britain’s coronavirus crisis. Countries such as Japan, Thailand, New Zealand and even China seem to have been far more successful than we have been, yet there is no real sense of learning lessons from them.

Obviously, nobody cares all that much about my views on politics. This blog post simply records my feelings of quiet, frustration at the situation we are in. A few months ago, I was hoping we would be out of lockdown by Easter. Now, I’m not even sure we will be out of lockdown by June.

Back in March 2020, the Prime Minister claimed we would turn the tide on coronavirus in 12 weeks.

Bodge Issue 1

Last weekend (on Saturday 23rd, of course), the Liverpool Arts Lab released the first issue of their new zine, Bodge. You can download a free PDF or order a physical copy. The Arts lab are planning 12 issues, on the 23rd of each month through 2021, and it also includes contributions from some of the Cerne-to-CERN pilgrims.

I’m using my recurring page to talk about ley-lines, which is an excuse to bury myself in books about old stones and earth mysteries. I’m still not 100% sure what I think about the topic, but it’s fun to figure it out. And, as the year moves on and we can actually leave the house, I hope to do a few experiments.

I’ve also been working to send out the physical copies, which arrived earlier on Monday. While the zine is available for free, there is something special about receiving culture as a physical object. I think this is particularly great while we are all physically isolated from each other.

Bodge collects together a loose community of people, some I know well, and many I wish I knew better. There is art, poetry, short essays and even a problem page,. It documents a nexus of interests, as well as looking good, and I can’t wait to see what emerges over the year.

The Cult of the Seagull

Back in February 2020, walking to Hove station for my commuter train, a bird dropped a bone on my head. The image feels almost too rich with symbolism, given what was coming. And, of course, this bird of ill-omen was a seagull.

Brighton belongs to the seagulls. Whenever rubbish goes uncollected, they scatter litter on the streets. They trash the town like the worst stag night tourists. They scream and shout, waking people in the mornings. Netting doesn’t keep them out. They’ll attack people for chips, making it dangerous to eat in the open.

(There is a shop at the end of my road, which has fruit and veg in stands outside. I’ve always wondered how it copes with the local seagulls. So, I asked the shopkeeper one Sunday. Apparently, the seagulls are no trouble in the winter, but in the summer they can be. Strawberries, blueberries and raspberries are among their favourites, but more than anything else they love peaches.)

Brighton’s seagulls are vicious. I’ve had them stalk me down the street to have a go at stealing a baguette. Another landed at a table to grab the sandwich from a plate waiting opposite. They’re vicious thieving bastards.

They seem to know they cannot legally be killed. Some of them must suppose they are a holy thing, a beloved and adored bird. They will assume that we build houses as places where they can perch and nest, that we serve them our rubbish. We like to pretend that Brighton is a human town, but really it belongs to the seagulls.

They are the Bullingdon Birds, like little Tories, causing noise and mess, not caring for the smaller birds. They’d steal the food from hungry school children in a minute. I’ve seen them cruelly tear apart pigeons. Brighton is their city.