It was days like this, when I was walking with my little sister back from having coffee with some close family-friends, or when I’m spending hours talking to my friend Sam for our weekly sessions of productive banter, that I am reminded of how cool it is to have people in your life that care. There is not anything in the world that seems so large and intimidating when it is thrust next to the infinite invincibility of good conversation.
Vulnerability is something I have struggled with for reasons I cannot rightly fixate on. The many times I’ve been able to spill my guts to someone or maybe even to myself, the emotional responses from yours truly is more of a result of the act of being vulnerable as opposed to any sort of emotional exposure. I know what you’re thinking, “what a weird way to start a paragraph.” For our weekly talk on facetime, My friend Sam and I talked a little bit about vulnerability. Truthfully it felt like learning to walk again, we found that it is very easy for her to talk about the things that have happened in her past, yet the second I try to reciprocate and show any sort of hint of my own history, my body simply refuses. I find that I can’t even look people in the eye talking about this stuff.
Adding to the list of things that I need to discuss with a therapist (whenever I get around to finding one again), I did find that I also have an uncomfortable habit of making light of very serious situations. More often than not I am more likely than not to simply make a quick, albeit humorous, remark. It’s not that I am incapable of having a serious conversation, as was evident from a shouting match my sister and I got into the other day. Do not be mistaken, we were not shouting at each other, but in unison at how the country has gotten just a wee bit fucked up. Something I noticed while having these conversations was my ability to string together my own humor with some very serious talking points. As I am typing this out, I am realizing that it is far less funny to dissect why something may be funny in the first place.
Anyway, I am beyond grateful for the people in my life. I had a few successful (at least in my own opinion) interviews for some work this week, so things are looking up for me for the future. Sam mentioned something today about allowing myself to be in a space that would let me be safe for a while. She highlighted how I used the word “fled” when I described my exodus from the Midwest. I agreed with her that I didn’t really allow myself to feel safe, even when I was here in Wenatchee. I simply decided to sit in my room and rot for weeks. There’s so much cool stuff happening, even here on the tail end of the country. I am glad the people in my life could help me see that and I am glad that I am starting more and more to find the good things in life.
Anyway, Bungie announced a new (or returning) I.P. in the form of Marathon. Games like that usually don’t interest me in any way, but what captivated me was the eight-minute long short film they released for it whose style I instantly recognized.
The anthology serious “Love, Death, and Robots,” on Netflix is a mixed bag. There are some episodes that stand out among the rest (crab-boat), and there are some stinkers. My personal favorite and the one I found myself re-watching constantly was Jibarro. The episode follows a deaf knight who’s company is killed by a Siren. Because the Knight is deaf, he doesn’t hear her and instead watches helplessly as the other knights are drawn to her and drown in the lake she inhabits. The whole short is beautifully made, directed, and has excellent music. It has little to no dialogue, just incredibly visual and acoustic stimuli. So you can imagine my excitement when I instantly recognized the filmmaking style present in the short film Bungie commissioned for their new game. Not surprisingly, the what I am calling “highlighter color scheme” works wonders for making this incredible sense of style come to life. In its early life, Marathon was more of a demo for what would later become the Halo games, most of the story revolving around aliens united together against humanity, humans using A.I. that can run rampant and cause more harm than good, etc. I am glad that the endlessly talented art team has found a new and unique voice for this series and I am absolutely frothing at the mouth waiting for the artbook to come out.
In any case, I did some art of my own for the love of the new style.
Anyway, this post was a little disjointed and riddled with non-sequitur, but I appreciate it if you stuck around. Have a good week.
-Jimmi