The February 2025 Report

The machine feeling of January followed me into the first week of February but I've started to remember my organs again. My student accelerated this process of recognition when he kicked me with both feet square in the chest. The mild chest contusion that followed the confrontation pushed me into a 48 hour spiral of loneliness with a childlike need to be cared for and a childlike urge to ask WHY? spinning around me. All I needed was for someone to say to me "Oh, you poor thing" so I called my mom.

Anyways..... having this blog incentivizes me to seek out cool beautiful interesting things so I can impress my cool beautiful interesting friends and has reminded me there is a self that exists outside the monomanic teacher. Lumon Industries should study ME. I don't need a brain implant, I do it au natural. I didn't even reflect or write about turning 28 because I was too absorbed in work. Sighhh... the affliction of the Capricorn. 

                                                                    Movies                                                                             

Mirror, dir. Andrei Tarkovsky 1975  - This was my first Tarkovsky! I was worried I might nod off (and humiliate myself in front of all those damn cinephiles!) because I was a little sleepy going in but I was totally captivated. It’s doesn’t follow a narrative. It’s fragments of a man’s dreams and memories of his mother, wife, and World War II. Tarkovsky’s father narrates it and also includes his poetry. There was a stanza at the beginning of the movie that rocked my world. There was one image (of many) that was so striking it made cry on my walk back to my apt. I saw it at Gene Siskel Film Center in a sold out theater and it felt so good to be should to shoulder with others.

"When night fell, grace was given me, The sanctuary gates were opened, Shining in the darkness Nakedness bowed slowly; Waking up, I said: 'God bless you!', knowing it To be daring: you slept, The lilac leaned towards you from the table To touch your eyelids with its universal blue, Those eyelids brushed with blue Were peaceful, and your hand was warm."

Universal Language dir. Matthew Rankin - Another afternoon spent at Gene Siskel. This movie "weaves together three stories that take place in a fictional zone somewhere between Winnipeg and Tehran." Pure absurdist dreamlike perfection. Every time the Groucho kid popped up I Laughed Out Loud. A needed reminder that we are all connected. Extensions: Great interview from RogerEbert.com and Denis Villeneuve in conversation with Matthew Rankin

Love & Transfiguration - A cinematic performance of Pēteris Vasks’s Vox Amoris, Bach’s “Ich ruf zu dir”, and Arnold Schoenberg’s “Verklärte Nacht by the Australian Chamber Orchestra. Discovered it on Kanopy but can’t find the full thing anywhere else for free. They have Vox Amoris on YouTube. Played it while making breakfast one morning. It deserved more of my attention but part of the total enjoyment was seeing which moments in the compositions caught me and pulled me out of my daily motions. It was my first time hearing Vox Amoris (a composition written for the violinist Richard Tognetti and ACO) and it moved me to wet wet tears while I scrambled my eggs. It had also been awhile since I listened to Verklärte Nacht / Transfigured Night in its entirety. Truthfully, the Spotify-ication of my brain rendered me unable to listen to a full album or composition for a while and I would just skip to IV Sehr breit und langsam because it left a mark on me. Listening to it in full again, I almost felt ashamed that I had been circumventing the story, jumping to the chapter I liked, and limiting myself to being moved rather than transformed. It is, after all, about the redemptive power of love. We can’t be redeemed if we’re unwilling to become something new. 

“You have brought the glow into me, You have made me like a child myself.” 

    

                                                    Shows, Youtube, Misc.                                                                 

My dear Fantine, I could listen to her talk about books for hours... and I do! Her favorite books of 2024 and every book she read. Fantine is the reason I have 340+ books in my Want to Read list on goodreads.

Benjamin Zander’s Interpretations of Music - Fauré: Elegy (*rv) I was reminded of this while watching ACO’s performance. “The last six inches of the bow is where death lies.” 

Per usual lots of journaling and cozy vlogs 1 2 3 4

Andrei Tarkovsky, Cinema, and Prayer watched post-The Mirror 

Harris Dickinson's Criterion Closet Picks ... thats boyfriend

I also got really into this dance fitness Youtube channel and it's the most exercise I've done in months and it actually snapped me out of my winter blues.

                                                   Books / Articles / Etc.                                                          

• The Average Fourth Grader Is a Better Poet Than You (and Me Too)  *rv

Fourth grader writing about a family member's recent death

• The Despair of the Young by Mary Gaitskill
• Lysandra's monthly digest of 1969's Playboy Magazines!

                                                               Music                                                                               

• Phonetics On and On - Horsegirl... these are the coolest girls in Chicago. It feels familiar (Stereolab, Yo La Tengo, Electrelane, Broadcast) and fresh. They have such clear vision and aesthetic on top of great production that it's amazing they're only 20-22. Cate Le Bon produced their newest album! Saw them play at Metro on February 22 and they rocked it.

*rv = a previous read/watch/listen revisted