morning.computer

Okay, my mind has been fully broken by discovering monochrome publicity stills from the very much technicolour 1979 Star Wars-knockoff flick THE HUMANOID. Because in monochrome this frame looks like nothing more than a Soviet-era black and white science fiction film. I really don’t want to do nostalgic or atemporal stuff any more, it feels wrong for the moment, but that image is like a leak from a lost cinematic universe where Tarkovsky cut his teeth on a space movie. There’s like twelve stories encoded in that one image.

Director Bela Tarr (in tandem, one suspects, with Agnes Hranitzky, who was only later accredited as co-director but was with him since 1978 and collaborating from 1981, well before SATANTANGO was commenced) is more interested in composition than those very, very long takes might suggest. I have this notion that his career progresses somewhat like Beckett’s, shedding complexities and adornments as he goes, in search of a final purified minimal form. He does not make another film after THE TURIN HORSE, because there are no Bela Tarr films left to make after THE TURIN HORSE. This year I am trying to watch and re-watch a lot more films, and am scribbling furiously in a small LOT 2046 notebook.

Maybe dipping in and out of social media, rebuilding my online audience a bit, trying some digital experiments, perhaps even having and joining some conversations. When 2018 went Full Speed Life, I pushed and railed against it and got pissed off. I’m pulling out my fresh notebooks, assembling my pens, declining all public appearances, buying DVDs and spending thirty quid a day at Bandcamp. Let’s pick 1000mph and see what happens.

A dystopia is a speculative situation where the absolute minority of people habitually experience hope and joy. Embedded in every piece of dystopian fiction is utopian thinking – the speculative condition where the absolute majority of people habitually experience hope and joy. Dystopian fiction is almost always about the utopian reach that’s suppressed by the situation. Dystopia is one of those parts of speculative fiction that function as early-warning systems for bad sociocultural weather, a function I’ve talked about at length elsewhere.