Experiential Journal

It began in January, 2018.

[filmtvtoday]

Poor Things (2023) dir. Yórgos Lánthimos

[experientialjournal]

This movie was an absolute delight and it left me with a sense of wild creative freedom. This man Yorgos does not give a fuck what people think and creates with wild abandon.

Watch to be inspired creatively.

[experientialjournal]

What a self aware journey he's had. It was like he was using his writing as his way of processing trauma. A surprisingly moving and inspiring documentary.

[experientialjournal]

As Steve Jobs famously said in a 1994 interview: “Most people never pick up the phone and call, most people never ask. And that’s what separates, sometimes, the people that do things from the people that just dream about them. You gotta act.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ixnLUJgmx2E

[experientialjournal]

Gather ye rosebuds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today To-morrow will be dying. The glorious lamp of heaven, the sun, The higher he's a-getting, The sooner will his race be run, And nearer he's to setting. That age is best which is the first, When youth and blood are warmer; But being spent, the worse, and worst Times still succeed the former. Then be not coy, but use your time, And, while ye may, go marry: For having lost but once your prime, You may forever tarry.

To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time - Wikipedia

written by English Cavalier poet Robert Herrick in the 17th century. The poem is in the genre of carpe diem, Latin for seize the day. 

[experientialjournal]

While many problems are resolved by giving them careful thought and deliberation, Weherenberg explains that “rumination is repetitive thinking — going over and over the same thought or problem without any resolution. A problem does not get solved: it intensifies by ruminating on it. It is simply repeating (typically negative) thoughts without mentally moving to a new perspective.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhowes/how-to-stop-ruminating

[midnightmurdershow]

Hereditary (2018) Directed by Ari Aster

[experientialjournal]

This fucking movie. First of all, Toni Collette is an Oscar caliber actress. Secondly, this movie will linger under your skin for days to come. I was checking corners of my ceiling when I went to bed. Paimon, the girl, the party, the son, the seance, the creeping dread, the intense emotion, the figures around them. This was one of the best horror movies I’ve seen in a long, long time. 

[deadpoetsmusings]

House of Leaves is odd (even frustrating, at times). But the story is compelling and pulls you in. Unreliable narrator, humour at unexpected places, mystery, loose ends, with just the right amount of spooky.. It’s an autumn read through and through. 

[experientialjournal]

I read this in October, 2018 over many creepy, late nights. The name Will Navidson will stick with me awhile. At times, the rambling of the narrator was off putting but as the story progressed, everything seemed to gel together and become more readable, even as it literally becomes less legible. It’s unsettling but absorbing, I read every damn footnote, sidenote, poem, letter from an insane asylum, etc.

Sprawling, admirable effort by Mark Danielewski. I’d love to see more novels that experiment in this way. 

[moon-yean]

i’ve seen my death. this ain’t it.

godless (2017)

[experientialjournal]

What a show. I’ve waited too long to post so the emotion and memory has faded, this will serve as a reminder. 

I remember the standoff with Jeff Daniels, in the beautiful field. The shootout at the saloon. The Tarantino-esque scene in the black town where the family is murdered. The romantic west. 

[macrolit]

A Gentleman in Moscow, Amor Towles

[experientialjournal]

For a while I found this book somewhat empty, sort of false, but then it grew on me. It’s about people, life, love, sprawled across a lifetime, finding the silver lining in any situation. It had me thinking about history, how people once lived, brilliant, beautiful minds of the past, honoring those that came before us. It’s about happy endings framed by sadness. I’ll miss spending time with Count Alexander Rostov. 

Note: Explore the Russian revolution further.

[experientialjournal]

The Painful Price of Becoming Jackie Chan

A new memoir by the legendary kung fu star reveals what it took to become one of Hong Kong’s greatest sons.

Something sad and nostalgic about this. I remember my relationship to Jackie Chan began with Rumble in the Bronx, I was in 5th grade. Things from this part of life leave an indelible mark on you. Jackie seemed to represent the Chinese version of “us,” the lower income, overlooked crowd that ran around the streets of our hometowns looking for those sparks of life however we could find it. Whether through the romanticism of a street fight or crashing a bicycle into a telephone booth.

Chan makes me smile. I want to be happy for him but I’m also enamored by the idea that he’s trying to fill a massive abyss with work, and fame. I’m not sure I’ll ever have as much to run from as he seems to.

[experientialjournal]

"There are people whom we do not fully know, and yet they live in a warm place within us, and when they are plundered, when they lose their bodies and the dark energy disperses, that place becomes a wound." from "Between the World and Me" by Ta-Nehisi Coates

[punksstepuptogetbeatdown]

[experientialjournal]

Hell of a read. Biggest takeaway was probably about the crowd mentality, the adrenalin and the feeling of being alive, crowd violence. 

[winterswake]

[queendaenerys]

I’m incorrigible too. Only she doesn’t know it.

[experientialjournal]

This show left me reeling. The haunting way it was filmed, the use of music to open each episode, the repeated use of Led Zeppelin dripping through moments, the driving / skating scenes which almost felt slow motion, the summer time haze of a small town in southern USA. 

The performances by the lead women in the family also blew me away. And then there was...The little sister. 

[experientialjournal]

Sprawled across my couch in the Brooklyn summer heat, on the subway where it's zipped into a bag it doesn't quite fit in, on my parents' back porch in one of those zero gravity chairs that seems to hoist you towards the sun, in a less-than-savory Ramada hotel at 3:30am when I couldn’t sleep, and finally, on a rainy morning Amtrak ride from upstate New York. Over the past 3 weeks this 600-page mammoth has gone everywhere with me, and for a novel that unwraps imperfect people across imperfect places, this felt very appropriate.

Here's the thing about Franzen, he's readable as hell. Go give it a shot.

“...sometimes he writes a sentence or a paragraph that breaks the skin and slices deep“ - a Goodreads review that sums it up for me.

[experientialjournal]

Art brings you in contact with feeling. When you see a Magritte, you feel something; you have an experience that can be very, very strong. He's very poetic. One of the beautiful things about his work is that it's really made for the viewer to participate in. There's a generosity there—it's about you and your response to the work. So when you confront a Magritte, it's not "Oh, Magritte felt this." It's really about what you feel and about creating a shared opportunity for you to experience this sensation. It's not that he wanted to lock himself up in a room to create works for his own experience of these sensations. It's about the viewer's perception. It's about what it means to be human, not what it means to be René Magritte.

Jeff Koons on Rene Magritte - Jeff Koons Quotes About Artist Rene Magritte

[motivational]

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else. -Winston Churchill

I am an optimist. It does not seem too much use being anything else. -Winston Churchill