This Week
Friends, I’m temporarily out of sentiments this week. I’m just trying to focus on things directly within my control.
Here is a photo of my cat.
In personal news, I’m very excited that my flash fiction “Matinee” is in the new issue of Coffin Bell! It’s a little slice of atmospheric horror about one of my favorite activities: going to the movie theater early in the day when no one else is there. This is my favorite piece of fiction I’ve written since I started writing fiction again a little over a year ago and Coffin Bell was my top choice of venue for it. I’m so thrilled to see it there.
I wrote this story last January. I’d been laid off the previous November and was on garden leave before severance kicked in. I spent most of my free time watching movies. I went to the Arclight early on weekdays and I was often the only one in the theater. It was eerie and vulnerable. I never imagined that a year later I wouldn’t have gone to a movie theater for months. This fiction is about the dark side of seeking escape and being in liminal places where you can lose yourself, but absence makes me think more about the joys of that state.
Anyway. I’ve also adapted this story into a short screenplay, of which I’m currently working on a new draft. More on that as it develops, hopefully.
Links
Trump's mob attacked more than the Capitol—they attacked democracy.
The two last white rhinos on Earth.
Steven Soderbergh’s “Seen, Read” list for 2020. I will Venmo $20 to the first interviewer who gets his ear and asks him for all his thoughts on Glitter.
How Edward Hopper’s stony blonde became a noir icon.
I am trying to unlearn decades of being told that creative work isn’t “real” work and isn’t worth doing, so I appreciated this essay: “I already have a real job.” It includes this quote from Japanese printmaker Takahara Takeshi:
In your life, because you are artists, people will try to tell you that you are not dealing with the real world. You will meet lawyers and businessmen who will look down on you, and tell you that you are avoiding reality—that you should get a real job, participate in society like everyone else. They will say that you are renouncing the real world and indulging your ego. You must listen to me and believe what I tell you now, that we are not the ones avoiding reality; it is they who are avoiding reality. It is the businessmen, and the lawyers and the accountants who are caught up in a self-indulgent fantasy, but they cannot see this. They will not understand or believe it. They will never choose to see. And to go on, you will have to learn to forgive them for that.
“This is one of the most liberating adult lessons, isn’t it: that point when you see that everything that was insisted upon, passed down to you as an inflexible rule, was made up.” Reality is plasticine.
Reading/Watching/Listening
I liked The Nest, an unsettling domestic drama featuring the increasingly formidable Carrie Coon.
I also liked, although not quite as much, Let Them All Talk. This one didn’t really come together for me until its close, so I recommend paying attention and sticking with it.
Because I never had before, I read The Secret Diary of Laura Palmer, which was much better than I thought it would be. I suspected it might be a shallower grab at Twin Peaks merchandising, but it was in spots a pretty raw window into a character that unfortunately exists more as symbol than woman. I’m really glad I finally picked it up.
Keep going, that’s all I got.
Love,
Jen
Connections
Substack archive: https://jenmyers.substack.com/archive
TinyLetter archive: http://tinyletter.com/jenmyers/archive
Essay archive: http://modernadventuress.com/
Website: http://jenmyers.net
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Email: hello@jenmyers.net
Post: P.O. Box 13114 Chicago, IL 60613
This week’s quote is from Albert Camus.