I have been dreaming all night that I committed to writing some kind of long narrative in episodes, actually probably a novel, and that it’s time for the next episode and I don’t really know what to write. It was exhausting. I am well aware that no dream lasts the entire night, that we dream for only brief moments, but illusions, especially in the matter of memory and meaning, take precedence, so that is how I tell it. I do not remember the conclusion of the dream, or I woke up before it happened. 

Forced into temporary isolation in a non-ideal mood and unable to work at full pace, I watched a few films, for example:

Midsommar - a deeply ironic and virulent pastiche on the total confusion and childishness of today’s culture in its glorification of individualism and simultaneous naive longing for the supposedly redemptive power of ancient beliefs and rituals. Nothing is spared; neither individual empathy, nor scientific objectivity, nor respect for difference, nor, by any means, harmony with nature. Everything is degenerate and frightening. Looking at it from another angle, it could also be a metaphor for mourning as a battle with demons, which has a deep connection with the view I mentioned above, because true mourning suffers perhaps the most as a result of the childishness and naive longings of today’s culture. You could also look at it in a yet another way and see it as a metaphor for mental illness, but I prefer not to look at it that way because there are few things that piss me off more than unhealthy excitement about the topic and exploiting it for the sake of entertainment. So, I’ll stick to the first two interpretations.

Tommaso - A masterfully sketched, strikingly sad image of an ageing artist (not really clear what he does — is he a scriptwriter, a director, a choreographer?), who is fighting a heroic fight with himself for his identity, or for the peace of mind, trying to settle accounts with his own convoluted and infamous past, trying to atone for his sins and face the simple truth, but he is unable to achieve anything because he is a prisoner of his own elaborate construction of convenient falsehoods, appearances and substitute mechanisms. In spite of years of abstinence, group therapy, eastern meditation practices, escaping to the old continent and an enormous effort to maintain a semblance of decency in the best possible faith, he remains an irritating  (both to those around him and to himself), focused exclusively on himself, secretly cultivating an ultra-megalomaniac vision of himself as Christ, douche. There seems to be quite a lot of autobiography of the director (Abel Ferrara) in there, which weakens the message a little, because it raises suspicion of a large dose of contrariness and an attempt to force absolution. Nevertheless, good.

20.000 Days on Earth - A somewhat onanistic, but nice and engaging self-portrait of Nick Cave. Driving a car longingly through the area around Brighton, rummaging through photo archives, snippets of conversations and songs, and staged psychotherapy – in search of, it seems, some common denominators, threads that make it possible to sum up and point out the meaning, I think. The theme that comes to the foreground seems to be the need for transformation, going beyond oneself, towards the truth and meeting the other. Through art. Interesting and somehow endearing.

In addition, I am reading a recently received gift, The Age of Renunciation by Chantal Delsol. I will not make any attempts at summarising it. Someone did on the cover of the Polish edition and it is a bit of a shame that they did. In any case, the images above fit quite deeply with Delsol’s reflections. As far as I understand this reflection, that is, as I am a bit short of this and that.

Wind is blowing. I wish it blew this or that away.