Artistic Merit

Booksmart (2019) is in many ways a typical last-night-for-shenanigans movie, set on the day before high school graduation. The protagonist is sort of Tracy Glick, class president who is very accomplished in all the resume building ways and who imagines that this makes her superior to her cohort. A feeling which is partly earnest and partly a defense against the way her singular dedication and stunted social skills make her an outcast. But she has one friend who is in it with her, who in fact can’t say no even she wanted to. She’s not a lackey, but she is codependent, and she needs to escape not just high school but also the constraints of this relationship, so she has the space to find herself.

We meet these two on the last day off senior year, wherein Glick discovers that many of the people she looks down on achieved the same post-high-school goals that she did, and managed to do it while still having friends and fun and a focus that isn’t always a quarter century in the future. It’s upsetting for her for a hot minute but then she decides to change and does so with the same concentrated zeal she applied to other parts of her life. The pair spends the rest of the night trying to have all the experiences the missed, finally see some of their classmates in another light, and eventually are pushed to confront themselves in order to keep pointed at what they really want.

So it’s not new ground on a plot basis. We’ve seen this movie before in a lot of different forms. This one is thankfully not set in the context of obtaining sex from some non-character object, and does a decent job giving many of the secondary characters actual personality and motivation and feelings. It does lots of dialog to feminist buzzwords but isn’t interested in addressing them – this movie doesn’t have time or tone for abstract politics – but it does a good job being feminist in the more personal scope where it lives.

The movie is technically very good. Beanie Feldstein nails it. She’s excited and confident and in charge and wrong and owning it the while time. But the movie is really made in the audio (Dan the Automator) and the camera work (Jason McCormick) and the way they sell the perspective of the protagonist in a movie that never claims to be a point-of-view story. We are sometimes in their heads from the outside and if you’re not paying attention you’ll never notice the change from objective to subjective. The music isn’t all original but it’s quite good and it’s only one part of an excellent audio track. The camera is right there with us too, smooth long shots as we play out external relationships and too-tight, handheld work when we’re playing the main relationship or when we’re stuck in someone’s head. The technical aspects all by themselves make this a good movie. Good job to both of them and their teams, and to Olivia Wilde who put them together.

So do watch. Particularly if a story about reinventing your high school self feels relevant to you. Or if a story about not limiting yourself to a singular goal might help you find new bits of identity. The tone is spot on, the movie is relentlessly positive despite being about a really hard time, and there’s literally a scene dedicated to grieving through food-based dad puns. It’s on Plex.

Did robots Friday. We finally have a a bit more room again, which will be great. And chairs, which my fat feet have missed. Got started on coding right away; T has stepped up much better than I expected. Even saw J for a minute; I suspect visiting is an uncomfortable combination of feels for them but I’m really happy they showed up. It still feels like a lot, going twice a week up to 132nd, but I’ll probably settle into that. I used to do 5+ days a week, ehich seems hard to believe, but that was a different life where I did not have the same constraints.

One of the ways fleeing is complicated for me is that, while it feels like the thing that will provide me safety, I know I can’t share it with anyone. Not with Shanda, not with Dog, not with you. Not with the Kids when I abandoned them. Not with the person I am when I am not fleeing. In order to be safe I feel like need to be ready to leave right now, forever, without ever looking back, and with no support. I’m already 87% through my plan to flee the country and change my name. This is one of the reasons I can’t keep things (or people): I’ll have to give it all up to flee ¹This is also one of the reasons I can’t have hair. It’s too much keeping, to much to hold me back if I need to flee. I need hair that will let me look not homeless even if I were to become homeless. Which I will next time I need to flee. There has got to be a better way about this.. I need to be able to flee to be safe and if I have any attachments fleeing isn’t available. Or at least isn’t easy enough for me to be able to do reliably. That’s the lesson I learned the first time – if I don’t give up everything I might not be able to get away when I really need to.

DerbyK have me a story about keeping things. About art even. And one about comfort. They were all good. I also got feedback on my last care package, which always makes me feel important. It’s hard for me to believe that anyone will respond to me, even when I ask directly about a thing they already like. But I’ve gotten lots of responses this week and they have made a difference.

Shanda is having a hard time with big feels. And with finding time to have them instead of holding them all in. It’s a popular theme with you guys these days – keeping busy to keep the feels away, then feeling too busy because you haven’t got time for your feels. I know it’s hard, finally having the feels you’ve kept away for so long. The rage and the loss and the pain. It seems like too much. It is, at least to start with. You’ve got so much saved up and your brain tells you that letting those feels happen will threaten your survival. It certainly did before. But the only way out is through. The only way past these feels is to let them leak out. You can have whatever combination of space and time and support and help that you need – you never have to do it any more alone than you want – but you have to put in the work and the time so you feel the pain. Ask me how I know.

We did get to talk for a minute about moving and jobs. It’s still fragile and scary and we don’t have all the pieces lined up, but it’s a big improvement over the last couple of decades when jobs and housing were things we did seperately – that you mostly tried to avoid entirely – and I was tasked with never changing in any visible way. Which is a big responsibility and very isolating. But you actually got to have some housing insecurity feels, and that’s a great first step. It’s sometimes hard for me to understand why I can talk about my housing insecurity for years and you never see how it’s related to yours, but I know repression is complicated. Anyway, I’m glad it’s happening, even though it’s hard. And I’m happy to practice for a minute because I suspect this will be an issue in my life again in the spring – there will be new housing decisions to be made by some of you with your own old housing feels.

I’m actually considering buying something, in spite of my aversion to real estate and the related financing (not that renting gives me freedom from real estate, but it does let me feel safer by being at arm’s length). We could do with a lot less space if it could be laid out in a way that works for our work-from-home, sometimes having long-term guests, allergic to light, dog owning, no car lifestyle. There are ritzy condos that have what I want but they are pricey, particular for a two bedroom, and I’ve had too many peopleice with me for too long to not have a spare bedroom. Condos also don’t let me have my own access control; indirect access control makes me terrified of being locked out by an authority, requires me to carry a key, makes me unable to share access with other people, and removes control of mail and deliveries, none of which are tolerable. We’ll see what can be found. Or maybe move a couple of walls around if we can’t find it.

I had good makeup on Saturday, and Shanda’s date went fairly well. It was, as expected, difficult for you to think about me as soon as the first deviation from our pre-planned itinerary happened, even though you wanted me to be around. But it wasn’t hard to recover when you were done, and it’s a step closer to you having the control you want while you’re dating. Good job. With your date, with your stress management, and with your self-insight.

I’m glad you can see how your brain imagines that it’s hard to have art with me, even though you want it in your life. How it feels easier – less scary – with other people even though you like it when we do it together. You dated a high-codependence, low-commitment, young artist ²To be fair, I ran across the country and moved in with an undergrad art student 😉 to try to find ways to get back to all the art you forgot how to do with me.

I think we’re making progress on arting together again. It’s not perfect yet but you being able to see it and agree with me about it will likely accelerate the process we’re already doing. As will me finding ways to refine my life in terms of art. I’m pretty sure my prefered medium is the social heist, wherein I manipulate people’s attention and get them to willingly participate in their own misdirection. My brain wants to imagine that as unjust and unethical, as something corrupted by my proximity and my motives, as something that I can tell is bad merely because I want it. But when I can get you to agree that it’s art – when you will Kim Wexler with me and my heist – it’s a lot eaiser to believe that the outcomes are acceptable. It’s eaiser to believe you feel loved because I created love, and not because I tricked you into that feeling by paying attention and doing things you like.

To wit, I want all of you to help me feel like an artist. Help me see how the things I do are already art. Help me see how to frame the things I want in terms of art so I can do art to make them happen. React and respond to my work so I can make it better. Show me yours so I can respond to it. Be my art buddy about film or parenting or overthrowing the patriarchy or postcards. Agree with me that heists and relationships and listening and teaching are all art that I do and you can see. Have an opinion. And show me your art so I can do the same for you. So I can help you become all the kinds of artist you want to be.

Help me find ways to make art and my life the same thing, not distractions from each other. Help me find the people who can see my art and respond to it. It will make me a better human. And it will help me be better to myself.

ZiB

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Sent from a phone.

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