At Times

I know the internet (and life as a whole) is not so full of positive stuff right now, and here at Blogtastic, we don't mind adding to it. Oh man, what a strange time. Personally, I've been feeling pretty depressed again for a couple of weeks (unrelated to Covid-19), and my head has been feeling like it's full of scrambled eggs. Then my physical health has taken a bit of a dive (I've got a fever, and aches, so I'm currently self-isolating), and my head feels like it's full of cotton wool. Thankfully, it's not even comparable to a normal flu yet, so I feel confident I'll be back to normal after a not too serious period of layoff. But there's so much worse happening elsewhere, that I'm ding-donging between trying not to focus on it (or at least keep it in perspective compared to other causes of death), and being really sad about it. Yesterday, for example, I heard an update on the death toll in Italy, and that shocked me. I know and love a few ace people in the north, and have been thinking about them a lot, wishing them well, and to hear of such a lot of death got to me. I know their lives are radically different at the moment, and they are putting a brave face on things, so I hope that continues, and that mental and physical health bears up under it all (and that goes for the whole world).

Everywhere here has been ghost-towny for a while. The badminton group I go to had about fifty per cent fewer participants last week. That was weird, because normally we can't quite fit everyone on a court (even when four are set up), but this time, there were a load of singles games on only three courts (I mean, yeah, it was nice to be able to play singles, but you're aware that you can only do it because other people aren't there, and that's probably illness related). At work, it's pretty typically odd. I mean, there's never a normal week where I am, in terms of if it's busy or not, or when it gets busy, if indeed it does. Lately, the weeks have been alternating between getting much better, and feeling like it wasn't worth opening up (and so much of this is filtered through my warped perspective by the way, so isn't reliable, but it is how I feel). And the main thing is that it's not foot traffic that makes work weird, but the conversational focus, you know? Just constant rabbiting... It's not getting on my nerves, as such, but it's wearing me down somehow. And then there's the shopping obviously. This, along with the cancellation of sporting events, has been one of the things that's changed my viewpoint from 'this is similar to avian/swine flu, it is being over-hyped and will not be as bad as people are saying' to 'oh shit, this is definitely worse. Even if the virus itself isn't worse, the effects on society certainly are'. So much shelf space is completely empty in shops around me. I was focussing on fresh fruit and veg on Tuesday, and there's plenty of that, but absolutely no pasta or rice, tinned soup, beans, etc gone... I even looked at normal handwash, as we are down to our last tub at home, and there was nothing. Not even bars of soap, or anything antibacterial. It is striking to look at, perhaps a fifth or a quarter of the whole place cleared out. And I can remind myself that, at the moment, I do not need these products, and if I feel 'squeezed' at all, it's only because I have been spoiled all my life, and, even when I've had no money in my account, I've had enough to see me through to payday etc. Now there's a thought in my head, though; what if people carry on in this over-buying behaviour? Like I say, it's stupid thinking. We'll cross those bridges when we get to them, and I'm sure things will stabilise soon, but I'm just in that frame of depression where paranoia pipes up a little louder than usual... And again, what about the people who aren't as lucky?

Anyway, that's all coronavirus stuff... I also wanted to talk about what I've been doing that's nice. Some of it is vegging at the minute, watching episodes of one of my favourite ever programmes, The Larry Sanders Show. Also watching a good few videos from some of my favourite YouTubers, Funhaus, Internet Comment Etiquette (thanks Alex!), and Red Letter Media mainly. They really do absorb me, and make me feel happier. There's been a lot of YouTube focus on the latest DOOM game, which both makes me yearn for an up-to-date console to play it on, and also made me re-visit the original game, which still puts the willies up me, I can tell you.

Also, connection is as important as ever, so I've been keeping in touch with as many of my friends as possible. This is another area in my life in which I am so fortunate. Many of them got in touch with me, and made me realise what a lucky fella I am, offering to get supplies for me if I can't get out and stuff. I sometimes find it hard to socialise. I don't get why, but my mind just recoils from it, or spins on and on until I distract myself with something else. In this moment, however, I feel like my time is more my own (I'm not working for a bit, nor am I doing much for my dad, as I don't want to pass anything onto him), so I feel much more comfortable dropping people lines. Silver linings, and all that jazz.

My own time... This puts me on to the most important part of all: writing. I have submitted to a new competition (quite an interesting little poem, one that ended up seeming very topical indeed), have heard word about a submission of mine from last year (not a competition at all, but a fantastic opportunity to have my work broadcast on local radio :) ), and, y'know, have been working on other stuff. Obviously I've not got my blogging down to any regularity, but I'm doing this RIGHT NOW, and blah blah blah. Reading, too, has slowed a little since those halcyon days of early January, but I'm still doing a bit! I finished Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (which will feed into a project I want to do later in the year), am carrying on with Ian McEwan's The Child in Time, have read a couple of pamphlets by Francis 'Drumming Up Poetry' Boua, have really enjoyed Sea Goat Who Screams Poetry's Twittering, Sheppard's latest sonnets, Writers' Cafe #18, Ailsa Cox's 'I Never Had a Mother', and quite a few things I can't remember because I read them in bursts from various different websites. So it all adds up, and I don't mean that in a bean-counting way, but, you know, you do feel more whole, and therefore more able to give more of yourself to your own work when you've been reading well. As a whole...

Anyway, there's actually some good news in this post. Here at Blogtastic, we can only apologise profusely for that, and assure you, dear reader, that normal, harrowing service will shortly be resumed.

Peace, love, and light,

Martin x

1917: Landschap Verdriet [SPOILERS ALERT]

It's been a couple of weeks since I saw Sam Mendes' 1917 at the local flicks, but I'd still like to say a few words about it. It is one of the most powerful pieces of cinema, or even any kind of art, that I've seen. I came out of the cinema feeling sick, I found it that intense.

*I'll just take this moment to say 'watch out!' as there are spoilers from hereon out.*

I went in to the viewing with low expectations, thinking I was going to get a 'Saving Private Ryan, but set in World War One, full of teary-eyed Brexit-embrazened nationalistic sentiment', but I was so wrong. Whereas Saving Private Ryan is a story that follows a group of soldiers, each with distinct roles, as they cross through France in search of one man, punctuated with then state-of-the-art blood and pyrotechnic effects (trying to create a sensational viewing experience that conveyed the horror of war), 1917 is focussed, really, on one person's journey to deliver a message which will save many peoples' lives. There aren't the same group dynamics or character explorations. In that sense, 1917 is a bit more pared down, more sharply focussed. And as for the 'sensational'; yes, there is also gore, but the truly shocking and enduring images were of, for example, the way the bodies of soldiers and horses were decomposing into the sloppy mud and clay of the trenches, conveying a deep sense of how the wider war was creating landschap verdriet ('landscape grief'). I know it's a cliché to say that the film's location is a character in itself, but in this case, it is true that the surroundings did play a big part, creating calm or tension by itself.

I feel that SPR was more trying to be accurate and factual, filming along a route that real soldiers may have taken, whereas 1917 shows, yes, the horrors wrought in war, but uses the scenes more artfully than authentically, going from those sickeningly grim trenches sluiced with the dead, to farmhouse, to town, to river, to wood, to different trench systems - each chosen more for their emotional weight than historical accuracy. The journey is, if anything, more potent for that. Its other techniques (lighting in particular, especially during the town scene where pallid flickering flares punctuate the midnight blackness) that foster the sense of unending horror, as opposed to the action (firefights, mainly) in SPR.

One thought I had about the 'human war' facet of Mendes' film was how, at the beginning of the film we see dead bodies being reclaimed by the earth, those promising specimens of manhood reduced to barbed wire-based memento mori baubles. Indeed, our main protagonist Schofield is buried in rubble quite early on, but rescued by his pal, Blake. There seems to be a sense of humans and nature being inseparable. They are the killers and the killed, stuck in an inhuman (depending on how you define 'human', I guess...) process. Shortly after escaping the trenches, Scho has to move through a bombed-out town, lit only by the intermittent release of flares, and inconsistent flames. The town doesn't claim him like the rubble did, but it surrounds him closely, jaggedly looming. After an encounter with German soldiers, he runs away and jumps into a river rapid, which made me think there was an element of allegory there. The obvious point is that he's been baptised, and, especially because he threw his rifle away in his haste to evade the enemy, his focus changes from taking life to saving life. Maybe he's Jesus? Then, at the end, when Schofield's finally within reach of stopping this big battle going ahead, the soldiers' dark khaki uniforms stand out like print on a page against the trenches of loose, chalky stone, whiter than ashes, maybe suggesting they've regained their distinct humanity? I know that's a half-baked idea, but it's all I got...

Obviously a lot had been said in the media of Mendes' 'one-shot' look, and his collaboration with Roger Deakins who helped to achieve this. I think this absolutely contributes to the intensity of the film, and why I felt so viscerally affected by it afterwards. I don't want this to sound like a trite comparison, but it reminded me of playing one of my favourite ever games, DOOM. That is a first-person shooter (i.e. you look through the same eyes as the protagonist), and it is renowned not just for its blood 'n' guts, but also its ingenuity in level design. I am going somewhere with this, honestly... Imagine being completely alone in strange worlds, and every action you take leads inexorably to the next - for example, one of DOOM's fave moves is, upon picking up a key, a wall behind you that you thought was solid opening up to reveal monsters. At first, the sound shocks you, and then you start taking damage. You have to be sharp, turn around, and defend yourself - and it is this way in 1917. Especially in the town scene. That phosphorous hanging in the air provides this moment of sickly beauty, and for a moment we can breathe, but we have to move on, and within seconds, shots are raining down, and where is there to run? The sense, in both examples, is 'there is no turning back'. We can't in 1917 because the message needs to be delivered before it's too late. We can't in DOOM, because we simply want our nightmare to end, to find that elusive safety. 1917 really was a great vision, and superbly realised. I know it could never come too close to the real living grief that war is, but I was almost constantly disgusted - that this is what countries and their governments do to humans, put them through this hell that is completely made up by 'others'. Where is there to run? There is no safety from human nature, which, it seems, will always find conflict and inhuman cruelty. And Brexit.

Right. Ramble nearly over. I think I'd give 1917 four stars. It's so challenging and well-executed that I want to give it five, but I think some of the artistic contrivances (with respect to visuals, the inaccuracy of German soldiers' shooting that would cause even James Bond henchpeople to raise an eyebrow, and, y'know, clip sizes in guns (when will film-makers learn?), for example) took me out of things a bit. As I've said in other reviews, I look at things with such an unfairly keen eye sometimes, but, yeah, I think if the film could have been less of a 'gallery', it would have resonated that little bit more, but that's going to be near impossible to do, But hey, I considered five stars, so it's not like it's far off. Praise due to everyone who worked on it, and a million awards.

Since 1917, I've been to see Bad Boys for Life. Was alright.