Coming in through the clouds @olliefrancis - Tumblr Blog

The Rise of Skywalker and How Action Can Be Boring

A good story is not what happens, but who it happens to. In The Rise of Skywalker, some things happen - some really big things - and they happen to some people. I suppose. I don’t know, I didn’t really see any people I felt like I knew. Yes, there were people I recognised there, but they were there in the same way you might recognise someone on a bus but you don’t remember their name and so you spend the entire journey pretending not to recognise each other because then, oh my god, then you might have to have a conversation with them and it would become quickly obvious that you had no idea who they hell they were.

Such is Star Wars.

#film #star wars #the rise of skywalker #movies #story #character #review

Knives Out - On clinging to the NobleBright

Rian Johnson is my favourite Johnson of the day. Much better than that Boris chap, with all his election winning and lying and blah blah blah. Eugh. Election day. What a kick in the balls.

Oh, spoilers, by the way. Obviously. Go watch the film before you watch this otherwise it will mean nothing to you.

Anyhow the other Johnson, Rian, has earned his place as my all time favourite Friday 13th Johnson. He’s given us a lovely piece of directorship here. Knives out is just damn good fun. No crazy twistings right at the end where the twist in the story turns out to be that twist you thought was the twist is actually not the real twist, but the twist is a twist of the twist. Just a good, old fashioned who-done-it with heart and style. But mostly heart.

Because, and here’s the thing, because feels somehow so very rare to have a good character in a film who is, honest to god, a good person. Writer’s seem so convinced that the only way to create a fully rounded character is to have something rotting beneath the surface - something to make them feel more ‘gritty’ - that it is all we seem to get. Ooooh, how can we twist this so that the good guy is actually the bad guy and everybody leaves the cinema feeling ‘challenged’ by the ‘truth’ of our story. But Knives Out does actually have an honest to god good character. Someone who’s motivation is genuinely good. Their actions come from love. Marta Cabrera (Ana de Armas) is such a nice person that she even throws up every time she tells a lie. Like, there is no way she’s a bad person, even when she believes she is. The little cut-away where she goes to puke on her own has us convinced that what we are seeing is the genuine article and not some cheap trick (I’m looking straight at you, Now You See Me. Which I do, by the way) designed to hide the crappy twist that the good guy is actually the bad guy. Nope, none of that here. The only twist is the relief when you realise that her ‘mistake’ is far more tragic than she herself actually realised. Instead, Marta is nice. You root for her as this NobleBright character (someone who keeps going, who inspires hope, despite the darkness of the world around them) because, especially on miserable days like this one in the early days of winter, as Boris Johnson gloats over his (granted, totally astounding) victory that there will actually be someone out there who is a nice person and they might, just might, actually win.

And that is so damn refreshing.

#Knives Out #Movies #Film #Characterisation #Rian Johnson #Ana de Armas

SLUMBER - a fiction

I dream of sleep. Tucked up, under covers. That warm womb of comfort in which we lose ourselves. Nothing can touch us there. Even time struggles through its natural defences, fat and weak.

We have lost so much.

The newsfeeds tell us of all the progress made. Increased productivity. Leisure and recreation facilities booming. A better, fitter society. I have my doubts. You lose something more than just the inconvenience of it. You also lose the joy.

Maybe one day they will track down the cause - find a biological reason for the overnight change; a way to explain why we all just felt OK with it. No complaints, save from nursing mothers. The early years are such a worry.

The mattress industry immediately went into liquidation. We all converted our bedrooms to gyms, study’s, game rooms. Our dream extension without having to lay a single brick.

But there is something: a hole, a gaping void in our days. We have filled the hours, but a truth remains open mouthed, waiting and hungry from the lies we have fed it.

To sleep, to dream. And our calamitous lives continue on.

#fiction #sleep #dream

Thanks to the smartwatch, tan lines are back.

WAITING - a fiction

The dark is illuminated by the promises of the past. They stretch out between the stones, adding to the strength of the structure, bracing it against failure.

They have waited so long inside. The dust has gathered, unified, blanketed, loving, caressing in still motion. So many hopes against the future, enveloped, sealed and filed away in the strongbox.

It was installed at a time when it was usual to trust the church more than the safety deposit boxes at the local branch. Now we see the financial guarantee of loss of reputation should anything go missing from the locked rooms beneath the bank — such a thing could end the business overnight. But there was a time when the guarantee of eternal life outbid the desire for financial security. The security of heaven was what she trusted.

And so she placed them here, locked behind a bible reference in a Victor Lock Company floor safe among the basement tombs and memorials of St Philip’s and All Saints.

They were placed here while there was still hope of a future more like our own — before the bombs and horrors imposed doubt upon the parishioners. You can see it written between the lines — something about the scrawl tells of an expectation that the benefactors would still be around once she had made her own way to Heaven. Nobody ever expects the young to die before them.

But war has a funny way of playing with our expectations. Righteous causes turn into generational grudges; victories into revelations of hitherto untold horrors.

But these letters are before disillusionment. They contain the conviction of the early days — a certainty that all shall be well, that all it takes is one person to stand against a nation. Not hope for the self — such honour does not concern itself with self-survival — but hope for the others, those who remain, those who will continue. They lie in the knowledge that one day there will be someone to open the tomb, unlock the safe and find the future waiting, written in will and testament, there among the old bones and brickwork.

#fiction #war #hope #safety deposit box #Jane Haining

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There is a roughness to the underside of your hands. Hard calluses and sandpaper skin mar the surface like stars in the sky. When you touch me, you leave marks - white lines of scratches across my arms and neck.

You speak of someone else - she shows an interest and you are flattered. You joke about it when you come home, half-heartedly, hoping that I won’t care. Your eyes appeal to my compassion, my obsession, linger for a moment too long, looking for reassurance. Your head nods in false laughter at the absurdity of it - the ridiculous notion that another might stand a chance against me. As if, you giggle. As if.

These are all scratches of their own. The nick and scrape of guilt are the knives slipping across the heart of us. Every word of overactive confession comes with a score across the surface of our skin, threatening to burst our bubble. It is so much fear of losing me.

You have always been so beautiful. You never appreciated it. You only ever saw your rough hands and your weatherbeaten face. I only saw the hard work and the perseverance through pain. But when you look at me now, I see the tender flesh beneath, the desperation to be here with me now in the heart of intimacy.

You never understand that these are my scratches, my victory wounds. The pain you anticipate inflicting is the proof that I wait for. It is the moment of your return. It is evidence of your hand on me, me and only me.

#fiction #love #returning

BURN - a fiction

The chair was her mother’s; the arms worn smooth by worry and long summer evenings. She leans back, feels the wood embrace her.

This is what she took from the house. Everything else was left, all of it reminders of moments she preferred to forget. But she was always going to save the chair. There was something about its contradiction that consoled her. It was hard and unpadded, yet comfortable; old and woodwormed, yet sturdy beyond anything Ikea would ever offer her.

Taking it from the house was probably the biggest task. Its weight had meant she had dragged it across the parquet flooring of the kitchen, leaving unsightly gouge marks across its surface. Her mother would have hated that, if she had lived. Understandably, she supposed. But that hardly mattered now.

She pulled her feet beneath her, now fully curled onto the seat of the chair. The fire was getting hot.

There had been something about their last argument. It had a sort of finality to it. There was a moment when she just recognised (preternaturally?) that it was over. All those years of bickering and this would be their last. There would be a part of her that would miss it.

But times move on, she told herself. What would be coming next would be something entirely new, she understood that. It scared her a little, but she understood it. It was a little like the matchbox in her hands - she knew what was in there, but the details, the exact number, was hidden to her for now. She would have to open it up again to find out.

She lay her head against the tall back of the chair, feeling the air crackle around her. She had to shut her eyes to the heat of the flames now. Maybe she should have moved the chair to the pavement; she worried that her weight would sink it into the damp ground of the early morning grass. But it had been so heavy to drag, even just to the front lawn.

She nestled herself further into the wood of the chair, letting herself drift into its fibres. She was so tired now, so very, very tired. She would have slept, but the fire was so very beautiful and it would have been a such a shame to have missed it.

#fiction #fire #family #chair #sentimental

SCHADENFREUDE - a fiction

The last time we argued, you hit me across the face full-on, in front of everybody. Maybe I deserved it. Who knows. I don’t really think I’m the best person to judge these kind of things anyway. I’m too ‘involved in the moment’, as my old mum used to say. Even if I was trying to be honest about the whole thing, there would probably be something I would hold back; something I would keep even from myself, maybe, just to add that extra level of authenticity to my protests in the hope that this time - this one time - you would believe me.

But it was the look of your family that really got me. This was supposed to be it - our big weekend away together. A chance to heal all of those wounds from decades ago and play Happy Families late into the night; a last ditch attempt by your parents to stop everything from falling apart at the seams. Well, we put pay to that idea, didn’t we my dear?

Oh god, it was glorious. There was the slap itself and the sting that quickly followed; sure, I didn’t enjoy that bit very much. OK, so we once tried a bit of the old S&M in the bedroom, just to mix things up a little, but pain has never really been my sort of thing. I think we hold the record for the quickest ever use of the safe word. If it’s not for everyone, then I am most definitely everyone. But it was the moment immediately after the attack that got me.

At first, just a second of silence. Just a second. No longer. A single tick of the clock. The birds stopped outside our window. The farmers in the fields stopped their tractors to get a better view. The squirrels in the garden stood up out of respect and waited for the world to draw breath again. If I’d known such a small action could have such a huge response, I think I would have done something to initiate it years ago. Utter, haunting, heavy, solid silence.

You see, in situations such as this, one often expects a reaction from the audience. We imagine it to be like that moment in the puppet theatre when Punch puts out a hit on Judy - the blow lands and the punters wait for the flurry to follow.

Are you not entertained?

But this was a bit different. For in this performance, it was neither Punch nor Judy who continued the action, but rather the watchers themselves in an awful parody of audience participation. Your mother spits at your father; your brother turns on your sister as they did when they were children; our brother-in-law leans in to defend her; your father winds up a hit on your mother before their son steps in to parry the strike; sister scratches at her husband for stopping her from fighting her own battles; mother screams and falls over grandchild; brother-in-law berates his mother-in-law for another example of irresponsibility; father has his shirt ripped open, pigeon chest exposed in a failed attempt at regaining his masculinity; all voices raise, all fingers pointing, and you and I stood in the centre of the kitchen, watching it all.

Schadenfreude. I guess that’s what brought us together in the first place. It seems appropriate that it would have come to our rescue when our relationship was most in need of a little support. When everything is falling down around your ears and all that you love seems to be coming to an end, it’s sometimes good to take a moment and remember that somewhere, maybe closer than you might think, someone you know is going to be having a much worse time than you. I like to think we can take pleasure in that.

#fiction #family #fights #schadenfreude #love

SPLIT - a fiction

There is something between us now. It is the same substance that once surrounded us, the same pressure that once pushed us together. Can you feel it?

There was a time when I would have followed you anywhere. Perhaps it started with something small. An unsung line; a moment of body language gone bad; everything you had ever said brought out into the open and dissected, parsed according to political preference, and presented on a plate by the press.

Maybe it was inevitable.

The thing is, when someone tells you something like that, it just seems complete nonsense (at first). Their understanding simply doesn’t line up with the facts. You look at the numbers, you look at the support, you look at the general mood of the nation and you think yes! this could be it. This could be the moment of change. This could be something real.

But reality doesn’t always follow its own rules. Anywhere else and things could have turned out perfectly, I’m sure. But not here. Not now.

Perception overtakes what we thought was the truth. The repeated lies becomes the received truth.

We have a choice. Stick together and fall together; Fall apart and carry on. It’s going to be messy. We have no scalpel in a surgeon’s hand. We have only brute force and bad timing to make this work.

We have to make this work.

#fiction #politics #Labour Party

PARTS - a fiction

I have a new hand. Much better than the old one. The skin used to crack along the knuckles when the weather was cold. Sometimes there would be blood, but it would always ache when the weather came in. No, this one’s much better quality. I had it shipped directly. Saved a fortune on import taxes. I don’t know why they charge so much anyway; it’s not as if we’re importing live animals or anything dangerous. These are just replacement parts. That’s all.

But everything has a cost, I suppose. Still, I’m glad I got around it this time. Had to meet the guy bringing it in at the coast. He said he wouldn’t dare carry it inland, which I think is preposterous. If you’re going to carry something across a damned ocean, you can take it a few miles on the B43.

It was quite a nice day, actually. Full sunshine, gentle breeze. Ended up a lovely day out. Chips and donuts on the sand and all that.

David was horrified, of course, when he found out the real reason we were there. As far as he had known we were just going on a visit to the beach to spend a little time together, as if that ever really happens anymore. Persuading him to wade on into the water for me and grab a package from a rather rough-looking guy in a rowing boat was a considerable effort. The way he looked at me when I opened it up there among the sunbathers was nothing short of unkind.

Of course, I couldn’t wait to try it on when I got home. Absolutely lovely thing. I don’t think it exactly matches the other one, but it’s nice to have a bit of variety. After all, if they were matching, nobody would know you had anything new. And that’s what we’re after, really - for other people to see something different about you. For them to look and see just who you really are.

#fiction #scifi #consumerism

KEYS - a fiction

I have taken the keys from your windows, placed them in a little wooden box with a picture of a stag on its lid. The hinge grinds when I open it and my neck hairs raise themselves to the sound, but drop them in and close it up.

I wonder if you will find it, hidden as it is behind the books on the shelf. You never read them anyway. Probably the last place you will look, if you ever notice. There’s a part of me that wishes you won’t. I imagine you searching for the key for a few moments before giving up and never trying again - accepting that this particular window will not open, the list of little portals gradually growing beneath your level of attention.

I imagine the temperature of the place gradually increasing as the sun beats in. There will be relief, of course, when you open the front door - you’ll receive a floor of cool air from the outside world and notice how warm you had been - but you rarely go out, stuck inside with your computers and screens; little heaters fanning your hard work into the sealed air of the flat.

They say a frog will jump out of hot water if you just drop it in. Hip, hop, and out it goes to live another day. But if you rest it in cool water and turn up the heat notch by notch you will boil it alive.

I want your processors to make you perspire; your browsers to bake you; your renderings to roast you. Degree by degree, increasing the inefficiency of your cooling systems until that final blue screen cuts you off from it all.

And there, as your books burn, you’ll see that box with its keys spilling out across the shelf and you’ll know it was me. And you’ll know that I know. And your face will be red with the heat of that knowledge.

I’ve read the forecast for today. It’s going to be a warm one.

#fiction #heat #windows

SQUEAK - a fiction

The fifth step from the bottom has a squeak that sounds like leaving. I asked you to fix it so many times. You got as far as B&Q one time - came home with a new coat of paint for the bathroom. Burnt grey. It grew mould in beautiful colours, drawing up unknown pigments from the solution to produce an oily sheen to the mildew. The cleaner scrubbed it clean last week. I came home and ran my fingers over the silicon, tracing the contours. I wondered if she had scratched it off first or gone straight for the bleach. I never knew what to do with these things.

But the squeak in the step is still there. Thud, thud, thud, thud, squeak, thud, thud. I walk back down again to see if it makes any difference to the sound. It is much worse on the way out.

The funny thing is the way the bed feels now. I had grown so used to the warmth from your side that without you it felt like someone had left the fridge door open. The draft crept under the covers like fingers. I will take a hot water bottle and put it there in your place. It will help me sleep.

But in that sleep, I will still be listening. Not for the key in the lock nor for the closing of the door; those things mean nothing to me. I listen for the squeak. Pad, pad, pad, pad, squeak, pad, pad.

I live in fear of the squeak-less night.

#fiction #stairs #leaving

WATER - a fiction

You might say it is my fault - that I am somehow to blame. I can’t see how that is true. My waters flow here night and day, even in winter, and have done for a thousand years. Am I to stop that process? Am I to circumvent the laws of nature and make the river run uphill for a day? All for one life? One little life?

Ridiculous. No, I blame them, of course. They are the active parties here. She is the one with her hand on his throat. He is the one with his trousers undone. I am simply the passive flow fillings his ears and nose and mouth.

It is a wonder how you try to justify their actions. He was taunted, she never planned this, he was in love, she acted in self-defence. Fanciful. You shall never know their reasons why and you only admit your own ignorance by speculating. No, they are here now because of themselves - because of their choices. The river flows this way because it is drawn down, compelled to follow the path of least resistance to the lowest point. They are here because they want to be.

You call me unsympathetic? Of course I am. They sully my waters with their blood; piss in my purity as they pass. They don’t give a shit - unless they are literally dumping their shit into me. Do you have any idea how that tastes?

No.

They are here through their own action. I have not changed course. I have not moved myself to their domain. I have lot leapt from the bed to force them to my depths.

And so I will continue to flow. My waters caress them, hold them, make sure they will stay. You thought I wanted to get rid of them? Oh, by no means. Now they are here, they are mine. I will keep their hair and their hands and their half-lives and their final seconds. I reach up my reeds to steady them, one on either bank. I have washed them clean now. My waters purify. No more hatred. No more pain. None of that filth from before. My payment for a thousand years of abuse. They are beautiful, don’t you think?

#fiction #river #death

SHOULDERS - a fiction

My shoulders are red. I woke up this morning with them hot against the bedsheets. In hindsight, I should have worn something over them - or at least suncreamed them. I can’t believe I didn’t suncream them.

Maybe I’m being a little harsh on myself. To be honest, I didn’t think I’d be out there for that long anyway. You’re normally home much earlier than that. Plus the fact that it was an unexpectedly warm day. All that led to… well, you know.

I had to check, you understand. Of course, it would have been impossible if your place didn’t back out onto the park. It’s actually quite a beautiful space to spend a couple of hours in the late afternoon. I’d always imagined it to be a grubby little spot, considering the area. I suppose I was proven wrong there as well.

But when your car drew up and you got out alone, it was all worth it.

Alone.

God, I had been so wound up by it. When you had told me that was it, I was so certain about your real reasons why. I’m glad I was wrong.

But the burn on my shoulders is still there. I know you went home alone, but there’s still something nagging - still something unsure. It’s like one of those cartoon devils, perching there, whispering ‘someone else, someone else, someone else.’

I think I’ll visit the park again today; spend some time on the swings, walk around the pond I saw on the map. I’ll make sure to pack suncream, of course; wouldn’t want to forget that again. You know, it could be quite a nice way to spend the afternoon. Hanging around; not caring about time; watching; waiting.

#fiction #sunburn #waiting

WALL - a fiction

I have decided to add a false wall to our bedroom, along the back, behind the headboard. It shouldn’t take long - I should be able to get it done over the weekend. B&Q have an offer on for timber framing. I saw it online this morning and if we act now, we can get a third off everything we need. I worked with James on the remodelling last summer and the walls I put up there are still standing, by all accounts, so I wouldn’t worry too much about it collapsing on us in the middle of the night. Sure, it might look a bit ugly at first, but we could get a plasterer in, when we have the money, and a lick of paint isn’t too much.

I’ve also done my research and found a good bit of sound insulation. It’s more expensive than the usual type, but I think you’ll agree, it’s something worth investing in.

Well, I hope you’ll agree, anyway. It’s only the sort of thing we can talk about after it is all up, I suppose. That’s when it will all come out. That’s when everything will come out. No more secrets.

I hope you don’t mind me not telling you about this before I go ahead and do it. It’s just that I don’t want them to know why I’m really doing it. Hell, I think they could hear us whisper if they wanted to. You remember that time we were making love and we heard that gentle cough emanating from the other side of the plasterboard? *That’s* how thin the walls are in these terrace houses. No, there’s no way I could tell you without letting them know I was doing it for them.

Well, maybe that’s not fair. I’m not really doing it for them. I’m doing it for us. Me and you.

I guess I just can’t wait to talk to you properly again. It feels like it’s been so long. Everything in marked tones of acquiescence. So obliging and forgiving of each other. I’ve almost forgotten what you’re really like.

But I want to meet you again - meet you properly; without a neighbourly audience or the prying eyes and ears of public places. Just me and you, together in our room. No more secrets. No more untold injuries. Nothing left unsaid between us. I want to be open with you again. Just like we used to be.

I miss you.

#fiction #walls #neighbours

FEEDS - thoughts by ollie francis

“Properly speaking, a man has as many social selves as there are individuals who recognise him and carry an image of him in their head.” William James - 19th C philosopher

Let’s face it: we’re living in an age of multiple realities. Not in terms of physical existence and string theory, but realities of the self, coexisting simultaneously. We have carefully curated Facebook feeds, witty Twitter personas and inspirational Instagram existences, clever musings on Medium and picturesque Pinterest collections. We craft the best of ourselves and put it online to create an image of the way we wish we were. We get the chance to edit ourselves and photoshop our lives.

I do it.

And I love it. It helps me better understand who I am by trying to create an image of the person I wish to be. I know that there is more to me than by digital projection, but I like the fact that I can look at a version of me that I can admire. It is all too easy to put ourselves down and make ourselves feel inadequate - but the curated self makes up pay attention to the part of ourselves we actually like.

I think that’s brilliant.

FEEDS deals with the darker side of the social media coin. It explores what happens when our social side is all we have left. It has become the immortal part of ourselves - the part we leave behind when we leave this life. We leave behind a huge digital footprint - more information that we have on any significant individual from history - photos, updates, notes and location data. The future will know more about us and our preferences for breakfast cereal than they ever will about Julius Caesar or Oscar Wilde or Martin Luther King.

And yet all that information will only mean anything to a small group of our family and friends - and even then, only for a few years. Eventually, no-one will go back to visit our records. Our browsing history will be forgotten on the back of a hard drive somewhere in North America.

But for a time, at least, someone will look for us among the data. If they ever find us, they will only find the best of us.

#thoughts #social media #self

FEEDS - a fiction

I’ve been searching through your feeds, trying to find you. Collections of articles beautifully arranged with full-colour images, 3D renderings and 360 videos. There is one of a girl on the beach, bikini flat belly, bucket and spade in hand as though she were a child. I assume you are the one behind the camera.

I search for a tag and find nothing. Completely unattributed. No geotagging, no date nor facial recognition.

Is this the one you spoke about or the one you never mentioned? Oh, don’t think I’m stupid; I know about them both. Sure, you were willing to share about the first one, but I knew there was another by the way your eyelid twitched when I asked about love. I wish I knew why you never said anything about her. I guess it’s too late now for me to ask. I thought this would be a way into your password-protected secret history. It took me months to get in - they wanted to make certain that you were truly gone, I suppose. No point in making it easy access. Bereavement is so easy to fake.

But now that I’m in, you’re still as much of a mystery as ever. I don’t recognise most of the early stuff - status likes from people I never met and comments from family I’ve only just started talking to.

I was so sure I would find you here. It was always your best-self; your carefully curated soul. It was the part of you I want to remember. Let everything else fade away. Let the digital remain. Let me fall in love with you again.

#fiction #social #loss

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