always cargo

(random thots)

As a filmmaker (or “filmmaker” or “artist”), I’ve always been into multiple mediums.

I wish I could make music. I wish I could conceptualize clothes. I wish my mind could absorb every little thing ever. I wish I could sing, write songs, be in a band. I used to do theater, before I got too self-conscious and hateful of myself as only a teen can, and I miss that too.

I liked math a tiny bit growing up. I was decent at it, terrible at geometry, but I ended up even being in AP Calc. I was one of those kids who didn’t really try in school. I was pretty uninterested and angsty. I could do well with minimal effort. I got into some good colleges—both a gift and a curse considering they were all PWIs and my undergrad experience is sincerely special.

Looking back, I regret not taking advantage of my clear thirst for knowledge. It takes time to develop oneself, so it’s not something that could be rushed. I mean I got into Radiohead when I was 26. I remember when I got this mix from my friend of all her top Radiohead songs. I was in Iceland working on a promo short.

First of all, Iceland is gorgeous in a way that a person who loves traveling would enjoy. I’m more of a type who loves traveling but I’d prefer to rest somewhere for an extended period of time. A month or months. If I could afford it I’d do this where I wanted to go. I like immersing myself in the experience and not feeling rushed. I think it’s in part to feeling whole in something unfamiliar. I cannot become acclimated thus comfortable in barely a week.

I digress. I was the only black person (or even non-white person) and was surrounded by an all white crew and cast. By this time, it was nothing new. But I wasn’t at home, London at the time, and having some major self-esteem angst. I remember being tired as fuck from the shoot. I was production designer and I was miserable.

I put all these experiences in perspective now. Oftentimes I feel lonely just because of being the sole other. Certain reminders that I don’t it in. “Why are the people in Iceland so hot? Wow, nordic people.” It’s kinda crazy being the spot in a sea of porcelain.

I remember the show I was watching at the time too. Secret Forest, a kdrama that was pre produced and Netflix picked up. It’s one of my favorite TV shows ever.

Music is something easier to get to. I can listen to the same album over and over and find something new. It doesn’t require my attention like film does. I watch korean dramas because I do not really enjoy much television but there’s a removal I feel from it. There aren’t as many stakes for me in other art forms unlike film or visual media.

I’m always behind on everything, truly. Even being in the thick of it, I’ve approached everything at my own pace. It’s not something that I’m ashamed of anymore. Why should I be? I would have hated Radiohead at 22, but at 26, in Iceland, it was perfect. I saw the merit. I was moved.

That’s my approach to the things I love, and learning, and my art. I may be late, but I will get there. Or this thought wasn’t my own, somehow I stumbled upon asking about Radiohead in this instance, but the ending affected me for the better. If that makes sense. I’m not afraid to say I don’t know and I’m learning to value my strengths for art. That begins with immense appreciation and inspiration.

There’s always a beautiful accompaniment with other artistic measures in film, even TV, or media. Costuming can elevate the feelings somehow conveyed sartorially—the beauty of fashion if we were to look at it as purely beautiful and not flawed. Production design fills your visual cues, too, and it helps make space tangible.

Creation is endless.

I decided to download Radiohead’s discography. I remember the first time I heard Planet Telex I was hit with this sense of other-worldliness. I act out a lot of the things I write to make it seem natural, and oftentimes I think of what a song means if I try to write alongside of it. I realized why this band was so prolific and why I definitely couldn’t afford to buy all their albums so Russia torrenting came through.

The intro to Planet Telex really begins with the point of the post. I felt nostalgic, far away, I felt the era it was made in too. The themes of nostalgia and the idea of visitation, traveling, communicating progress with Radiohead’s body of work. With the opening chords of Planet Telex, there’s this ship or person or people coming to land and surveying life.

Everything is broken. Why can’t you forget it?

I felt like I had just began to look at my life and the past week getting through The Bends. And I could see a film or a video for it. For me, growing up comes to mind. The Bends (song) hits me with adolescence. They were in their 20s/30s when they were recording these. The ennui and anger and confusion. Visually, there’s a clash of adolescence, naivete, being young and getting to that jaded point. From high school freshman, to school senior. Ostensibly part of the song is about their fame, which truly doesn’t matter to me from a writing standpoint. But I want to be part of the human race speaks to that longing to belong. The questions of why why why why the fuck can’t I?

I started this because I got up with Modest Mouse’s The View stuck in my head. Thinking about the logistics of it that morphed into listening to Florida.

I wasn’t always cargo I was once kind of my own, I guess I’ll pack up my mind. It took so much effort not to make an effort oh what a flawless design. The vocal production pronounces frustration of whatever the hell this song is about to the band.

I remember when I first downloaded some of their albums. I was in high school and on accutane. I felt really alone then. I put this on my ipod and I’d listen with my earphones on. I had a really bad weave, cos I was 15 and weird, my lips were peeling, and I was waiting for my friends to include me in anything. I was really really lonely. Oh my god, I’ll probably have to carry this whole load. I would anticipate the crash of wondering if people would accept me, ask me to hang out, the fear I felt when approaching those feelings because I didn’t want them.

Since I like knowing shit and dissecting every part of it in hopes I’ll become more creative and smarter or something I googled the lyrics to Florida. There was this Modest Mouse article on Buzzfeed from 2015, something I clicked on via a wiki article, focusing on their lead singer. Truly it was fucking morbid.

Even when I was younger, I knew I thought that most men were full of shit. There’s a song they have called Bukowski and you can tell with every biblical reference for the band it’s insincere and biting. Which doesn’t really matter. Biblical imagery is beautiful, relentless, dirty, and violent. It’s interesting to hear men, men who identify as atheists, white men and their approach to this and religion. Even as a dumdum 16 year old I was like…”seems patronizing.” (It was.)

Anyway, in 1999 the lead singer was accused of rape. I skimmed the paragraph because I was pretty much done with listening to them for today because of it. At the end it said (paraphrasing) that he didn’t deny having sex but he thought it was consensual.

Stream of consciousness suits me. I write it all down in real time. When I read that I was pissed off. I don’t care to know more, at least right now, but my mind immediately went to Brand New, a band truly influenced by Modest Mouse. They’ve toured together even. In 2016 the lead singer was accused of taking advantage of the teen girls that adored their band. Their last album had come out (Science Fiction, and it is gorgeous. A damn motherfucking shame) and it really tainted moving forward. They took a hiatus.

So, as I’m writing about all these white dudes in this post I think about the love I have for the content and sometimes the major disappointment. The gap between teenage girl adolescence and my womanhood.

When I was a teen I was pretty heavily wading in internalized self-hate so I preferred to listen to men. Around the (small) Modest Mouse phase I had, I heard Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine.

I am a huge Fiona fan and she probably really shaped how I viewed that period of my life as well. I read as much as I could get at that time on her. I know she went crazy on stage. I thought she was weird. I had literally only heard Extraordinary Machine until I was like 20-something. But that album, this teensy weensy white girl, echoed my loneliness. Being out of place. Angry and pleading even in the most pleasant settings.

The difference between all of these is stark. Fiona’s struggles are closer to my own and I believe her mind is the strongest out of these artists. Just as an intelligent music-maker, though clearly they all have merit. I could talk about Fiona’s music all day, the fragility and strength and anger. But it doesn’t matter.

Something like music could make me feel so intensely, make me recall things that happened before, help me visualize what I need to feel in order to write, or say. Like film, there are pieces of the whole that can knock you out even in a greater piece.

Oftentimes I’ll listen to music and figure out the feelings of myself at that time or my characters. Try and visualize the looks people give, what the heaviness of a chord and line means, the progression. It’s a study in humanity in a way. There are some things we can’t say really, but feel and see.

The ding at the end of Extraordinary Machine, that chime, ends a song about strength. The way I could feel or see that is: a young woman is coming to the end of her journey and smiling at what’s accomplished and the fight to come. A smirk in the words, a black woman potentially at the end of her rope but letting someone know that she will never be beat. She won’t allow it. You can never win.

After if there was a better way to go, then it would find me. I can’t help it, the road just rolls out behind me. Be kind to me, or treat me mean, I’ll make the most of it. I’m an extraordinary machine.

The end of that song (it is the first on this tracklisting of the official studio version) leads us into the rest of the album. Songs that challenge her mind and others existence in her life, particularly men who couldn’t get through her labyrinth not that she would let them anyway. (I could probably do a side-by-side of each version, I might.)

There’s some stuff I can’t listen to now. Or can’t see. After I watched When They See Us, I couldn’t bear to even think about it. The last episode, specifically, show me my fears and the darkness solitude can bring. I still have a hard time even talking about this show. I can’t exactly explain it, particularly because it makes me want to cry and scream, but those feelings will never leave me. I am haunted in an amazing way via filmmaking but I can’t handle it.

Or more sonic memories so closely tied to visuals, which is why visual albums and music videos are so important and elevate and amplify the song and its message because we get to hear and feel and see. All that shit.

When I hear some songs from the Moonlight and If Beale Street Could Talk, I feel like the characters. The way I feel about these films and the filmmakers are deep but not the point. There’s a sense of morbidity, melancholy, time slowing and yet never stopping for both of these soundtracks. In particular, for Beale Street there’s the ominous tones that we can never shake. We are never shown Fonny in prison, but we get to know the isolation from the music and him repeating, you don’t know what it’s like in here.

There’s a scene where Fonny reunites with an old friend. Its beginning a beautiful jazz-inspired piece that tells us the depth of love. At the end, we’re broken and alone. There’s this one consistent chord throughout the film that slams on the heartbreak and loss of control. I wanted to puke, choke, sometimes if I want to relax and feel more melancholy moods wash over me I go too deep because the callback to a song like Storge with not only the callback to incredible storytelling and acting and everything but the weight of the words. The weight of the strings amplifying the joy that can slowly disintegrate into pain via blackness.

My reaction is to cry. Some songs, like Elliott Smith’s King’s Crossing bring me to such a violent dark place. When I hear Jonghyun’s Neon, particularly the beginning, it makes me so joyful even if I miss him more than anything. The sadness I feel goes along with the love I feel presented. It reminds me of falling in love, so I’ll write about the color Neon and falling in love. I’ll be filled with that warmth.

These experiences are so immersive and sensory for me. My need to submerge myself in the music mimics what I need for film. I need to know what I mean, you mean, it means. I need to find out why. I need to see what that does going forward. I need to know why this young woman is so fucking mad and what people have done to her to deserve it. Not only herself, her relationships, but her world. What does any of this shit mean? And if I can’t tell you yet, I can feel it