In 2022, I began a project to write about each film I saw and each book I read, with some digressions into TV, music, and performance. I wrote about 60 books, 80 films, 7 TV series, and 5 music experiences. Below are those reports, but we begin with a short assessment of the project, written on the first day of January 2023.
Exploring our thoughts and feelings—who we are and how we came to be who we are—through the creative work of others is an incredible gift. And here, now, in 2023 we have so much available to us that it can become daunting. Mind-numbing. Each creative work gives us the opportunity to examine ourselves, to ask questions again, to re-define and attune. This is an enormous privilege, not only to have so many books, films, songs, and articles available to us, but to have the time and the inner space to consider them; and this privilege shouldn’t be underestimated.
For the last year I’ve written about every film and book I completed. There have been times when my response of criticism has been harsh, times I’ve gone off on a rant, even times I’ve been offended. There are times I have been unfair. But, even the work I loathe gives me the chance to re-assess my perspective, and what I actually want both from art and from things that aren’t art (whatever that means.)
I’m not going to go off on what Art (Capital A) might be. What I want to say, at the end of this year, is that creating anything, seeing a project through to completion over months or years, is very nearly impossible. It’s impossible to write a book, to make a film; and anyone who manages to do it deserves praise because in some sense they have stood at the abyss and brought something into the world. Whether or not I like it, whether or not I respond to it, it’s a thing they have made and haviing the chance to interact with it is a gift.
The last year found me sometimes confronting my own notions and sometimes shying away from that confrontation; I’m aware of both in the almost daily practice of this project. Looking back on the 20,000 words this catalogue has become, I can see a few things clearly about what I want from the media I interact with.
I want to be surprised. Surprised, sure, but not by a cat leaping from the darkness or a loud screech on the soundtrack. I want to be surprised because I’ve never seen something in that way before, never thought of it like that.
I want to be uncomfortable. Uncomfortable in the sense that I am outside myself, inside a new idea or an old one I’ve never come to terms with. At a tattered edge. I want to feel I’m being nudged or pushed. I want to be presented with something—in relative safety—I might normally turn away from.
I want to feel at risk. I want to feel the writer isn’t playing safe, that they are reaching for something just outside their grasp, presenting me with something just outside my own. I want to cheer for their bravery or their sheer balls.
I want something beautiful. And this gets tricky, right? What the hell is beautiful? It doesn’t confine itself to the senses though that’s a large part of it. Beauty has something to do with how the disparate elements are integrated, how a thing comes together for the artist and the audience, and I venture to guess this beauty has a lot to do with the risk taken by the artist.
I want to be free, inside the world of the piece. I don’t want to be told what I should feel or think. I want the opportunity to explore and discover meaning for myself. I want to be trusted by the author.
Now and then, I want an amusement park ride. Something that buckles me in and hurtles me along breathlessly until it slides to a stop.
These things I want, from books, movies, music, etc. can be found in any subject matter, in any genre, on any level, from beginner to established artist. I relish the field of play created between the author and the audience in which both are equal participants. And I relish artists who honor that field of play.
What I have little respect for, and no interest in, are films and books assembled by committee, by marketers, by demographic data, or—preparing for the future—by AI). Or airless films, so sure of their meaning that there’s no way to enter them. Or technical exercises masquerading as a finished work. Give me a truly bad film over one of these any day.
Truly bad films house their own, usually deeply personal, integrity. They are often projects so honestly felt yet badly accomplished that they contain their own eccentric and fragile beauty.
As a writing exercise, this project has compelled me to write about each film and book, usually the day after finishing them and that has been a useful exercise, but I’m not sure I like the way it affects the actual reading and watching. To know I must write about something changes the way I enter it, the way I continue to approach it, in ways I chafe against.
Knowing I must write is knowing I have to have an opinion, or even simply a thought, about the book or film. It insinuates a subtle meaning from the start, which precludes the work from simply drifting in my conscious and unconscious mind until it catches hold or fades. There were times I put off writing about a particular film or book (sometimes for months) because I wanted to relish this drift. I still believe it’s the best way to take in art, i.e., without the necessity of articulating the experience immediately—or maybe ever.
There such a joy in not knowing what I think or feel about something, there’s so much limitless space there, as the experience drifts. It’s a luxury.
There were a good number of books and films I didn’t finish, thus felt no compulsion to write about. Work so faceless and thus offensive it might as well have been assembled by a computer. Work so derivative and contrived there didn’t seem to be a human breath taken in its world. Work that reveled in hate and violence as its reason to exist. I didn’t finish those, sometimes I only made it five minutes, or five pages, in. Life’s too short.
Completing the year makes me grateful I’ve had the time and the space to read these authors, to see these films. They deserve a round of Huzzahs. They made something, when the insistent world around us does all it can to prevent that from ever happening.
Hope lies in art; but it’s present in so much more. In conversation and argument. In learning and stillness. In each person’s face at rest, if you look closely enough. We are not compelled to respond to hope with a smile and embrace. We’re allowed to feel threatened, to feel fear or anxiety, to be confused, startled, stunned, and unsure. Hope without these qualities it isn’t hope, it’s the status quo.