4 kinds of contemporary pleasure - not all of them, just 4
D'Angelo - The Line
"That we live in, & current political crises - they are X the Boring, / to deal with"
1: Compromised by it, like how Tess tells me she went to Value Village and was able to spend a full 20 minutes inside: 18 minutes enjoying herself, and 2 overcome by a panicky wave of I need to get the fuck out of here. Or like how I walk past a guy on the sidewalk patio and get a little too close with my grocery bags and he does that thing where someone looks up at you without wanting to seem like they are looking up at you. He is busy talking to his friend, determined not to acknowledge me, either out of politeness or some other more complex emotion or maybe just a reflex, the whole thing is about half a second long and I am still thinking about it now. Or like how I am scrolling through my Instagram feed and come across a photo of two men in what seems like an otherwise empty Cineplex. They are old family friends. One of them, the one who posted the photo, is holding a bag of popcorn. They are happy to be back at the movies for the first time in months; you can see it through their masks. I have been vaguely aware of them through all of lockdown; I have watched them diligently follow city protocols, spending seemingly almost every moment of quarantine together through my feed. They have been exploring different parts of the city, biking around, walking, staying active. I know, too, that one of them has been visiting his elderly mother once or twice a week. In the comments there is a gradient: a few people are happy for them. Someone says soooo you eat the corn through your ears? Another says you couldn’t pay me to go to a movie theatre right now. The popcorn-holder replies: super empty, super safe. You’re closer to people on the subway. The commenter says you couldn’t pay me to get on the subway either and that comment just hangs there unanswered.
2: Carlo and I keep having basically the same conversation about the NBA. It is the kind of conversation that is not an argument exactly, full of overlap and pull-apart, both about exactly what it’s about and something else entirely. I keep changing my mind, can’t pick a side, am always coming in hot from the opposite angle. He is steadfast in his feeling but his certitude is expansive, flexible, nuanced.
Lydia Davis has this thing: I can identify roughly, at least, two different ways I read, depending on the text: I read Anna Karenina in somewhat the same way I read Stephen King’s Firestarter in the sense that I lose sight of the text as artifact, the text becomes invisible, and I also lose sight of myself - my thinking mind, my discriminating mind. I lose my self as I lose myself in certain kinds of movies: the illusion is complete, the fiction has more reality than I do. [...] The other way I read is the way I read when I read a work in which the text itself remains visible and present to me, an object of interest by its language and/or form; and in these cases I remain present to myself as well (i.e. conscious of my own thoughts).
My feelings about professional basketball are so strong, maybe, and so impossible to pin down, because that Firestarter feeling of full-body immersion seems nearly impossible right now, and also maybe morally reprehensible? I feel this deeply, and also I would eat my own hand or at least a few less significant digits for a really good hit of complete illusion. Still, I wanted to watch that first Lakers-Clippers game just in case, and still, watching it, I felt nothing, and then I got scared that maybe I had lost my connection to basketball and therefore to this parallel dimension, infinite metaphor, processing tool and source of total envelopment that I have come to rely on so heavily in my normal life. After all, even though everything in the world is different now than it was, most of the fundamental elements are still the same. It’s not like the problematic things that make me feel weird about watching the NBA now weren’t present in the structure of the spectacle before. They’re just literally impossible to ignore the way I am used to allowing myself to ignore them. Why should I feel the same way I ever felt, given that I already felt uneasy, and am out of excuses for ignoring that unease?
But then I watched the Raptors and it did happen, or at least almost. The screens and the masks and the plexiglass and the words on the back of the jerseys signified what they signified and I was aware but the awareness didn't neutralize the pleasure. My discomfort made for a strange counterpoint to my enjoyment, but they sat side by side. Not total immersion, but close enough for jazz. Is that good or bad, or just what it is? Every time I write about basketball, including this one, I return to the central question: is this supposed to be a distraction from your feelings or a container for them? Which, yes, I know, the only answer is both, neither, duh, whatever. But I wonder, still, watching myself as I watch it. Uneasy, maybe changing or unchanged.
3. Some things happen both against the grain and with it completely, e.g. the smell of tomato plants and geraniums rising up from the garden as I water, or the sound of Carlo playing the rhodes in the basement rising up through the floor while I’m in the kitchen filling the kettle, or the sight of Rudrapriya skipping stones across the water at Ontario place, or the smell of the air as the storm rolls in, watching the lightning strike around you, listening to the train roll by a couple blocks away, dragging the thunder with it. Eating popsicles in the garden, playing Mario Kart on the projector with James and David. Wearing a big linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, biking downhill into the breeze. Context doesn’t dramatically highlight itself, but it’s present, gives these things gravity. Heightens their colour. Makes them a collection.
4. A few nights ago, sitting on the couch, three halved edibles into the day, Louise and Carlo each out for the evening, I was just kind of flopping around bored when I finally decided for some reason to look at those photos of Gigi Hadid's new house, which I didn’t really know anything about except that they existed. Hot summer night, empty house, flopped out along the couch with the cats lying around me, all of us working in the same genre of ridiculous sprawling posture, flipping through my phone, zooming in on each image and squinting. When I got to the part with the giant pen leaning up in the corner I laughed out loud with shock and pure delight.
This one is the rarest kind, maybe, so slight you can’t think about it for too long or it loses its power. But it is rare and crucial. Like eating a big glowing star in a video game, the kind that appears after you beat a boss. A moment of weightless, regenerative indulgence. A token of the world you came from, to which you are trying to return. A little extra life in you before the next level starts.
Here are two short videos I took on the same day, on the same walk:
In the second one the thing you cannot see is the band of socially distanced Jazz Dads practicing outside, in one of their driveways, just playing to the sidewalk. I did not get closer because it felt like if I made eye contact I would be forced to groove, but now I sort of regret my cowardice. There is also a bonus photo of me eating ice cream and trying to take a photo of a guy on a hoverboard except I didn't realize until it was too late that I had the front facing camera on instead. I do not know why I feel compelled to share this photo with you, but I am not going to deny the impulse. This world is full of mystery!
Something longer to listen to:
Michaela Coel's James McTaggart lecture, holy shit
&&&:
Carlo's basketball corner:
WNBA players walk off court before the national anthem and dedicate season to Breonna Taylor