It’s been a hell of a week. I can’t stand looking at the news, and so I’m deliberately pointing my attention elsewhere. Here’s a Friday dump, a way to get things out of my head (and maybe into yours).

reading

Making my way through Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, which I can’t believe I haven’t read before. // Also, Tess Gunty’s The Rabbit Hutch: “all the rhythms and repetitions and seashell whorls of meaning to be extracted from the dull casings of everyday life” (NYT). And because lately truth is more depressing than fiction, Rabbit Hutch is mirrored in the sex abuse scandal at Miss Hall’s. // Rosencrans Baldwin, Cinematic. “In the dark, for ninety minutes, we let go of our inhibitions, and that’s a powerful experience—though within that give and take, if someone cries, if people run from instinct, don’t they deserve respect?” // Alex Nevala-Lee, Chimes at Midnight, about visiting the Clock of the Long Now. “Arriving at the primary chamber, you see the brass and quartz enclosure that protects the calculation system, the escapement, and a pendulum that completes one swing every seven seconds. The clock face itself is eight feet across. At the center is the black globe of a star field, encircled by movable rings that indicate sunrise, sunset, and the phases of the moon.” Mindblowing. // Zach Vasquez on the Startling Empathy of David Lynch. “The films of David Lynch are strange creatures, not unlike the strange creatures that often appear within them, and to focus only on the most ungainly of their appendages is to willfully ignore their equally beautiful qualities. Even in the darkest and most terrifying of Lynch’s films, there are moments of profound beauty and warmth.” // Matt Webb dowsing the collective unconscious.

watching / seeing

Twin Peaks. Binged Season 1 last week, am now slowly making my way through Season 2. It’s as weird and awkward and shocking as you remember. Maybe more so, with time. Also, David Lynch: The Art Life, available for free right now on Criterion. Lynch’s tobacco-stained voice is soothing, and there should be volumes written about his hair. // Amy Sherald: American Sublime at SFMOMA. The “smaller” pieces are hung so their subjects are basically at eye level with you; the intimacy is entrancing. // Also spent a full hour watching Ragnar Kjartansson’s nine-screen video installation The Visitors, which has been extended through September of this year. If you’re in the Bay Area, go. Even if you’ve seen it before. Even if you saw it last week. Go again. // Every bucket in Kobe Bryant’s 81 point performance from 2006. Literally a supercut. // Every Frame a Painting, Where Do You Put the Camera? Greta Gerwig on Little Women: “I almost wanted the camera to start young, and get older – like the girls did.” (Via Kottke) // Nobody does OK Go like OK Go does OK Go.

listening

New Lucy Dacus. // Old Sugar. // Anything from Claire Rousay, it seems. // Ezra Klein and Chris Hayes talking attention. // Four Tet: Three. // Sydney Ross Mitchell: Pure Bliss Forever, esp Fast Cars and Faster Horses. (“Heaven has cigarettes and Coca-Cola, hotel beds and love to borrow, mmm hallelujah.”) // Bill Ryder-Jones: lechyd Da. // Kendrick, Reincarnated, like everyone.