#13: I've Got This Rig That Runs On Memory
Months before, I’d told you about my brain over deep-night Twitter DMs and you’d said sorry, nothing, t y p i n g, silence. Now, you only nodded at the comforter’s coquelicot colors, California King, resisting my eyes, but I knew you could hear the blush in my voice. (“Dumb and Wide,” Mary B. Sellers, Hobart.)
I WATCHED DENIS VILLENEUVE’S DUNE THE OTHER DAY, WHICH IS SET TO COME OUT IN THE U.S. IN ABOUT A MONTH’S TIME. My quick review: it’s a movie that — in the opening twenty minutes — is certainly keen to both Explain Itself and Get To It as quickly as possible, which is … fine? Clarity is fine, but it’s okay to let something like The Guild Navigator unsettle you, too. The film is more or less a close third of Timothee Chalamet’s journey as Paul Atreides, but that doesn’t have to preclude you from sinking into a relationship the way in which George Orr and William Haber sink into theirs in The Lathe of Heaven, nor should it get in the way of sprawl sprawling out in front of you, as Pynchon lets happen so well in Mason & Dixon.
The sound design is a lot of fun in this re-up of the film, though. And it’s fun to think about visions of the future as depicted in the original film adaptations of Blade Runner and Dune and How We Talk About The Future Now. A lot of people who have a hand in making our future don’t always want to talk about it, so it’s always intriguing to look to films like these or films like Tenet and get a sense as to what people like Christopher Nolan or Denis Villeneuve see.
I was also surprised that the film so clearly is a ‘Part I’ (the last line of the film is, ‘This is only the beginning.’) I don’t know why I was expected the novel to be done in one movie, but Villeneuve doesn’t even try to take that path, which means that we are proud to give the movie a rating of — wait, what’s that? We’re moving on to the next portion of the newsletter? So soon? But don’t they want to know what I think of the mov —
EXCERPT FROM AN UNFINISHED INTERVIEW:
Evan Fleischer: I feel like "Say It For Sour Patch Kids" has a bit of a chicken and egg scenario going on: were you already thinking about the way empire makes itself present in our lives when you began this story, or did you discover something about the candy itself that led you down this path? (Or was there a line that came to your head that got this piece going?)
Todd Kaneko: I think the way marginalized and vulnerable people are treated is always on my mind because of my family history with the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII. So when I was writing poems on my porch one afternoon and I noticed for the first time that the border on my bag of Sour Patch Kids was actually made up of tiny Sour Patch Kid bodies, it was kind of a shock to me. I had been hearing about families being separated at the U.S. / Mexican border and what seemed to be a willful ignorance about the plight of the people down there on the part of so many people. Like, that situation is so far from where I live in Michigan, so far from where most Americans live—it can be easy to put it out of sight, out of mind, you know? So the candy seemed like an apt and unlikely metaphor and a text that was doomed to fail from the start, so of course I decided to write it. And then I had just read that poem by Li-Young Lee, "Words for Worry," so that "other words" trope became the easiest and quickest way to bring these two unlikely things together. It was a sudden realization of the metaphor and I wrote the thing in one sitting.
there were bees in the ashtray, bees in the heather, bees in
the datura and bee blossoms everywhere, heard
there was nectar sweet and lambskin gloves, and bees in all
the air, and the bees were slung like bullets at the memory
of your body like a prayer (“I REMEMBER YOU WERE MY LOVER,” Erin Lyndal Martin, HAD)
CLIMATE CORNER: “The global average temperature will rise 2.7 degrees Celsius by century’s end even if all countries meet their promised emissions cuts, a rise that is likely to worsen extreme wildfires, droughts and floods, the United Nations said in a report on Friday.” / First look at major hotspots of Amazon Deforestation 2021 / “And it’s where large whales excrete liquid feces (or, more elegantly put, a fecal plume), stimulating the proliferation of phytoplankton, which in turn absorbs CO2 from the atmosphere and releases oxygen.” / Utilities Would Like to Speak to the Manager About Your Tweets / The Liberation of Paris from Cars is Working / “In order to have just a 50 percent chance of meeting the most ambitious climate target, the study found, the production of all fossil fuels will need to start declining immediately, and a significant majority of the world’s oil, gas and coal reserves will have to remain underground over the next few decades.” / Imagine 2200 Climate Fiction /
OF NOTE/UPCOMING:
A hashtag for you to explore: #FIYAHCON21
Roxanne Gay: “Agents, I would love to read a really great novel, essay collection or memoir. Your submissions are warmly welcomed at http://gay.submittable.com.” Unagented writers are also welcome.
“The Emerging Voices application period opens back up on January 1st, 2022.”
Essay Atlas, a new newsletter from Cassie Mannes Murray.
Majuscule is looking for “thoughtful essays on literature, music, art, culture, pop culture, television, and sociology. “
Universal Mind of Bill Evans / Oscar Peterson & Andre Previn /
A Kickstarter for a 1986-themed anthology of horror stories.
October 5th: “Join 2020 Lannan Prize recipients Angela Y. Davis, Mike Davis, and Ruth Wilson Gilmore for a conversation hosted by Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor.”
“FUTURISM is looking for pitches for a package on the FUTURE OF PLEASURE — jon@futurism.com and DMs open.” Rates: “Depends on complexity of story! Probably $400-600 for 1-3 interview types of pieces! But also open to essays/takes/etc.”
teju cole’s attempt to make a playlist of the 100 greatest songs ever.
Images: Martin Wong. (via.) Moon Model Prepared by Johann Friedrich Julius Schmidt, Germany, in 1898. (via.)