Day 5 - There can be only one
Thats not really true, that's just late stage consumer capitalism talking
Welcome to day five of a daily email rewrite experiment.
To quote from day 1 “Every day for the next week I will send out a daily email. Then the following week, every day I will send a rewrite of the email from 7 days ago. I am not sure how long I will do this… I’m going to try for a month.”
Film Theory
I recently watched the made for Netflix movie The Old Guard. It is about immortals battling evil and is based on a comic book - The Old Guard.
The film is entertaining with some good fight scenes. It reminds me a lot of the movie - Highlander, which I really love. That clip blow is a highlander spoiler. There are a number of Highlander films, and they get a little bananas IMHO. The first one is about a bunch of… immortals who must battle each other because in the end … there can be only one.
In this clip, we have the Highlander, so called because he is Scottish. His real name is Conner MacLeod. He fights the Kurgan, above, so called because he is Russian and part of the Kurgan clan. I used to think this was because he came from Kyrgyzstan, which prompted a slight obsession with Kyrgyzstan. Arslanbob, in Kyrgyzstan is home to the largest walnut forest in the world. The photo below is from CNN. I find that incredibly magical.
Ancient magical traditions thought that walnuts were good for the brain because of the so called theory of doctrine of signatures. This means that foods that resemble certain body parts can treat illnesses, or are good for, certain body parts.
This image is from this interesting clickbate article about 12 foods that look like the organs they are good for. I think that black walnuts look like humanoids, but I cannot find any corroborating evidence on the internet.
Indo-European Theory
However, I was mistaken, the Kurgan, although from Russia is not from Kyrgyzstan. Kurgan was an ancient tribe considered to be the origin of Indo-Europeans.
This culture also had steles like Babylonian culture. Perhaps all cultures had steles.
David Anthony contests the indo-european Kurgan connection in his book The Horse, the Wheel, and Language, which for some reason I own (although I don’t have it with me in quarantine). I am not sure why I purchased it, but I have not read it yet, because it looks a bit dry.
Queer Theory
Back to film and The Old Guard. There is a fantastic queer love proclamation, that is probably worth the entire film. But I do think there is some queer baiting with Charlize Theron, the Labrys wielding heroine.
I was clicking through the Guggenheim’s youtube videos and I found a piece by The Institute of Queer Ecology. my new favorite art collective. They are making a series of videos called Metamorphosis about queer mythology with dis magazine. It is amazing, please watch it - I mean it references Mothra. The whole thing is very Donna Haraway and Cinema 4D.
My favorite queer texts are Video Games Have Always Been Queer, Queer Phenomenology, and Testo Junkie. What happens when you are playing a video game for the glitches or to find where the rules break? That is a queering of the video game. What does it mean to orient oneself in space or towards people? Yep, orientation, thats totally queer. And imagine in the future we can take a cocktail of drugs every day to create what ever unique gender and sexuality we want to express. It sort of gives new meaning to that quote from Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man: “forge in the smithy of my soul the uncreated conscience of my race.” Bifo’s book, The Soul at Work, begins with “The soul is the clinamen of the body. It is how it falls, and what makes it fall in with other bodies.” This falling, this relation with other bodies, is an orientation. The soul is the orientation of the body.
I love queer cinema. This conversation is making we want to go on Fassbinder film binge. Rainer Werner Fassbinder died on my birthday - June 10th. Today I momentarily considered changing my name to Rainier, after spying a copy of Duino Elegies on my bookshelf. Fassbinder is also named dropped quite a bit in the (queer) film High Art, which is really fantastic despite the questionable trailer and promotional photos.
Queer theory could fall under the sub category of a sub culture, since it is not part of the hegemonic culture - which would be straight culture in this case. But subcultures abound, as we see in this website, and I apparently am drawn to them since I talk about things like parkour and psychonauts.
Theory of Threes
I have been listening to Oneohtrix Point Never, Age Of, because it came up at least three times. If something crosses my path at least three times, I pay at attention, I investigate, I binge watch, I binge listen. There is a summer playlist from cura, which also discusses The Institute of Queer Ecology so the obviously have good taste.
Looking to Crew
I have an ask this newsletter, or really a desire. Last week I completed the microsolidarity class. I am part of a bunch of what are called congregations, large groups, and I easily, form dyads (two person conversations), but I dont have many crews. Researching The Institute for Queer Ecology really inspired me. It made me want to have an art collective crew of my own. So I am putting out a call for a 6 person art collective crew. This is people first, rather than concept first. If you are interested leave a comment or respond to this email.
XO
Meredith