Ok So I Generally Don't Find Guys Attractive But You Cute 👌🏼👀

The Cradle

We assumed we were in the box.

It was only natural, after all. It’s what anyone would have thought. We had been away for almost six years. A little silver glint in space; not even enough to catch the eye. The CAS system kept us asleep most of it, of course. If we’re talking waking hours, we had been away from Earth maybe eight months.

Space is full of radiation. There’s a reason so many old astronauts have cancer - it comes from everywhere. Our ship had a ridiculously simple monitor, a light really, that was meant to alert us when radiation levels were about to get too high. The trouble was, when we were under, something went wrong. No way of knowing what, but this little green light was on the fritz. We looked at it and no one could figure the thing out - our chief engineer, after some tinkering, told us that the thing was garbage. That there was a 50/50 chance it was accurately indicating high levels of radiation. When you’re in a little metal tube, surrounded on all sides by death, those odds really don’t sound so bad.

Still, it was enough to get to you. It turns out an even chance was the worst thing we could have heard. I would gladly have taken 90/10, or even 99/1 odds. The certainty of death would have been infinitely more comforting.

After a few days, someone brought up we were exactly like the cat in the box. I’m sure everyone is aware, but if you’re not, I can give my two cents. Schrödinger’s cat is a kind of tawdry metaphor that was never really meant to be taken seriously, but the basic premise is as follows; a cat is placed in a box with a Geiger counter containing a trace amount of some radioactive substance. In the space of an hour, it’s equally possible that the substance  remains unchanged as it is the substance decays. If the substance decays, a flask of poisonous shatters and kills the cat. In the hour before the box is opened, the contents of the box are a superposition, wherein the cat is both alive and dead. Upon observing the contents of the box, the superposition “chooses” an outcome. It was a metaphor that, to my foggy recollection, was meant to mock the idea of a contradictory harmonious state. However, it caught the public imagination and became accepted into the vast sea of pop-science.

What is interesting, however, is the notion that an action in the present, ie opening the box, can in fact change an event in the past, in this case whether the cat has been alive or dead the last hour.

We were currently the cat in the box; there was a 50/50 chance that we had been poisoned. The monitors on Earth would know for certain whether we were or not, but we were not due to communicate with them for another six months. It was funny, in a way. We joked about being zombies. That we were just waiting for the boys back open to crack open the lid.

After a month, it stopped being funny. I became unsure whether I was feeling the effects of radiation poisoning. Maybe it was a placebo, maybe it was all in my head, but I swear I could feel it. I could feel this looming dread, this decay deep in my bones. Examining the path the ship had taken, one of my peers figured out exactly where the radiation source must have been, if it indeed existed at all. After two months of uncertainty, we decided to open the box ourselves. 

It was not our decision to make.

We put ourselves to sleep and turned the ship around. We had a six month timer; that would put us in range of Earth.

In that sleep, you are meant to dream. I had nothing. When I think back to my time under, I recall nothing. Only the darkness and a strange anxiety.

We awoke, looked out the window, and realised we were wrong. We were wrong all along. 

We were never in the box.

A neutron star is the result of a collapsed star. While relatively tiny in size, their density is incredible. A neutron star with a radius of only 7 miles can have a mass of over twice our sun. They also give out enormous amounts of radiation. A tiny, blinding usher. A calamitous angel. The scroll, rolling up the night sky.

Swallowing whole the world entire.

Uncertainty was the curse. There was an even chance that there was no radiation source. There was an even chance the monitor was faulty. There was an even chance we were all fine.

But we had to know, and in our knowing, we became fate. We were the observers. We forced the choice. We changed the past and smashed the vial.

It wasn’t us in the box, it was the world. But we needed to look. We needed to.

Happy Halloween y'all. This is my low budget Gravelord Nito costume. Or, I’m “skeletons”.

You will be okay.

I see a lot of people talking about the Mad Men finale in a cynical sense. They see it as the punch-line culminating from seven years of build-up; one of the longest, cruelest shaggy dog jokes ever told. Without sounding too stand-offish, I think this is absolutely the wrong way to view the finale and that is does a great disservice not so much to the writers or the show itself, but to Don.

The ending is one that is immediately a little polarising, but once given time to digest most people agree that it really does just click. The reading I’m so opposed to is the idea that “after all that Don just made an ad! Haha! People never change” in regards to the series ending with the iconic Hilltop Coke ad, after Don has a huge emotional breakthrough.

The thing is, to take this view (like many people have, from random tumblr users to Wired), you have to completely ignore the kind of man Don is. The question of Don’s character has been at the centre of the show since it’s very first season, and has been examined in so many ways that it makes the conversation hard to ever really finish, and harder still to begin. However, there is one thing about Don that I will always believe, that has been supported by the show since the very beginning;

Don is a man who believes in a pure ideology. He wants to connect with people and he wants the best for them.

Now, does this mean Don is morally sound? No, he’s actually anything but. He cheats on his spouses, he’s not really a great Dad and he is prone to being unreliable. Despite all that, Don beliefs have always been idealistic, lofty and sincere. That is what makes the character so wonderful to talk about, and at the same time makes him so incredibly tragic: he is a man whose weaknesses constantly betray his own morality.

Don may be cynical, but he really, really doesn’t want to be. Rachel calls him on this way, way back in season one, when he gives his “born alone, die alone” speech. She see’s through it immediately, and it catches him off guard. One of the things I’ve always adored about the show is its incredible level of humanity, and even seemingly casual interactions can be incredibly powerful character moments when this is properly utilised.

This lack of cynicism goes doubly for advertising. Think about it; how many times has he brow-beaten Peggy (and everyone else who works under him) for being phony in her work? For not being sincere?

Don doesn’t want to sell you a product; he wants to sell you a feeling that he associates with a product. Why is Don so passionate about this? Why is this what Don wants to sell? Simply put, it’s because it’s a way to connect. Connection has always been what Don has ached for.

Why did Don leave his new place of employment? Well, because he didn’t belong there. That was a place where Ivy League ad gurus sat around a table and talked about the demographic they were after while taking notes like they were studying for an exam. It was a place where the product they were selling was their ability to sell a product.

This not the place for Don. Don, who used his own life and pain to demonstrate the value of the carousel. This is the man whose first experience with love was being given a Hershey bar, which he would eat alone in his room and pretend to be normal. Maybe this is sad to you, but to Don it’s real.

With this in mind; think about what the Coke ad Don apparently creates is about; a collection of people, of all genders, races and ages, united together by a common product. This is the image Don envisions for a product that, hand to God, used to have vending machines that said “White Customers Only” (that’s right, Coke had honour-based racist vending machines). A product that isn’t even mentioned until 20 seconds into the commercial. What Don wants to sell you is the feeling that when you sit down and drink a Coke, you’re drinking it with a million other people all over the world. There’s a reason it’s the most successful commercial of all time. It may look schmaltzy, cheap or silly today, but at the time it was something people genuinely wanted to hear. Don doesn’t want you to know how great this sugar water tastes, he doesn’t want you to know that it’s better than a competing brand, or even cheaper; he wants you to feel what he feels.

And what did he feel? Well, his epiphany in that episode came when Leonard, seemingly the opposite of Don, gave a speech that rocked Don to his core. He told a story of loneliness, or worthlessness and of the desire to be loved. And Don understood. So much so that he hugged this man, who he had never met, and wept. He knew the answer to the question he repeatedly asked Peggy only a few episodes ago. Don wants to sit down with the world and buy it a Coke. It’s really what he’s always wanted.

Mad Men was always a show about introspection. To think that the show’s final moments wouldn’t reflect this is an incredible oversight, and to think that Don changes for the worse in the very last moments of the show is doing him a huge disservice.

The Hilltop ad is about empathy. It is Don, realising that not only is he not special, but neither are his worries. The way Jon Hamm played the scene supports this; he realises who he is. He is an ad man, he is a human being, who wants to connect to other human beings, and that want is ubiquitous. Don does not just “come up with a great ad”, because ads were never that cheap to him. He finds a way to communicate the feeling of profound empathy he felt the previous day, when he and Leonard were both people, together, in the only way he knows how; an ad.

Advertising is based on one thing: happiness. And do you know what happiness is? Happiness is the smell of a new car. It's freedom from fear. It's a billboard on the side of a road that screams with reassurance that whatever you're doing is Okay. You are Okay.

Goodbye to one of the greatest shows of all time, and thank you for the beautiful send-off. You are not alone. You will be okay.

Howdy everyone. Please take a moment and watch this quick video I made about the best film of last year; Sorry to Bother You. If you enjoy it, feel free to give me a sub/like/share/the good stuff! If you don’t like it, pretend you didn’t see it!

I have to disagree here. The only thing punching a nazi does is make a martyr out of them. Cultural wars are only won by hindering and lessening sign-up rates for the opposition. Sure, it’s possible to get people to leave the side they’re on or have a change of heart, but you’re never going to “win” that way. You’re only going to win if you can stop people from joining.

And punching these people doesn’t work. Young, dumb and disenfranchised people who have the potential of siding with this ideology are absolutely not going to see an asshole getting their just desserts. They are going to see someone they view as similarly disenfranchised getting hurt for their beliefs. That’s what they’re going to see. They’re going to see evidence that the opposition are “PC thugs” as they’ve been told. They’re going to see the masses cheering as someone whose ideology they agree with (or have the potential to agree with) gets hurt - and that doesn’t dissuade evangelism.

No matter how much you dislike it, and how wrong you feel it is on a moral level, engagement with the young and vulnerable to adopting this ideology is the only way to make progress, because if we all write someone off who is on the verge of adopting these beliefs they will only have one place to go. Treat people on the verge with sympathy, speak to them reasonably and with respect, and try to change their mind. The old vanguard, and those who will never change - the public figures of hate, though, need to be fought with mockery. These are people who should be not be shouted down as they speak, but be viciously made the fool afterwards. Tear down the idols and heroes of hatespeech, but engage the young and vulnerable. 

I know I am coming from a fairly privileged position here, and admit it may be easier to accept this form of rhetoric having never been the victim of right-wing extremism. I hold no ill will to those too tired or flummoxed to expend any energy on these people.

The point I wanted to make, simply, is that if you want to feel good, punch a nazi. If you want to win, engage the young. 

Rolling

I always enjoyed the sound of the projector clicking and sputtering to life.

I work in an arthouse cinema. We show oldies and obscure flicks. A lot of what some people would call “classics” mixed with trash to appease the ironic, younger crowd. Personally I think if a movie is bad you shouldn't watch it, and if it's old... Well, older movies always me uneasy. I never liked seeing moving, colourless faces. The more faded and grainy the film the sicker it made me. Like I said, I'm not really a movie buff.

We do have them though. I've found that people can summon the most passionate responses to anything, especially things you don't understand. The cinema is small, but always full of people and rhetoric, a bustling hipster exchange where it's hard to even finish a thought.

Every night but Thursday. Thursday, at eight o'clock, the places is vacated. Completely empty except for me, and our patron. I never speak to the guy – I don't ever even see him, but he's worked something out with the manager. Every week on Thursday, eight o'clock, he has the place to himself, and he watches “his movie”. If it weren't on film, he wouldn't even need me there.

There's an uncanny aspect to these old movies that extends beyond the sound and visuals. We're the first people on Earth to be able to see these long-dead, moving faces. Have you ever considered that? For all of human history, when someone was dead, they were still. An image or a painting. That's not true for us anymore.

Though the people on the screen remain youthful, the stock expires and becomes grainy. I always felt like it's as if the film itself is trying to break the illusion of immortality we've granted these characters. The projector reassures us – it provides us with a distraction from our dissatisfaction whilst also allowing us to pretend for a while. We laugh at those zombies up there, and by doing so breathe life back into them, and into the audiences decades ago. The same feelings – things are alive.

The film itself, though? That's another matter. That's an impermanent, physical, fleshy thing that ages and dies just like us. It breaks the spell. Call me nihilistic, but I think the movement to abandon the medium in favour of  digital is laced with the sad tinge of denial. We need to preserve our idols, and in doing so, ourselves. When I watch those young-but-weathered faces up there, all I can think about is denial. How much of what I do, day to day, comes down to denying mortality? I don't know about you, but I feel it's... Something you can only ever not think about. It's not something to conquer. Maybe watching the screen so long has opened my eyes to it, but I think film is too honest to survive.

He needs me, you see, because it's on film. Maybe you've never seen anything on film before, but if you have you may have noticed a black oval appearing in the upper-right hand corner of the frame from time to time. That's a cue mark – it's meant to signal to me, the person running the projector, that it's time to change reels. I'm no good with just remembering or timing it, so I have to pay attention. I've seen this movie... Maybe a hundred times. It makes me afraid.

It's avant-garde. Or maybe dada? I'm not a humanities major, so I couldn't tell you, but it's... unsettling. There's no title card, and there are no end credits. Maybe the film itself isn't what gets to me, so much as that man's devotion to it. How can anyone care so much about something – about one, specific thing? How can anyone ever dedicate themselves like that? I wonder what's stranger... If he sits down there, eyes glazed over, in a routine, or if... He's down there, feeling it all. Feeling the things he felt before, again and again. That scares me.

Time to change over. Sounds and shapes I can hear in my room. Images that project on the back of my eyelids and echo through the halls of my apartment. They mean so much to that man, but to me they're abstract uneasiness, and they follow me home.

Sometimes I feel like my life is one long lead-up to a jump scare. The sinking and uncertain feeling that it could be coming any minute now. Now could be the moment when it – whatever it is – happens. I let my mind wander. I try not to pay attention when I don't have to.

Am I on the screen, am I in the audience, or am I up here, waiting to transition?

Cue mark. I reach out to change reels but there's nothing there. I look down, and my hands look old.

The Cloverfield Paradox is the first ever Clickbait Movie.

If you missed it, last Sunday Paramount released the most recent Cloverfield on Netflix with a surprise Superbowl trailer. The movie was... Not great, to say the least. In this video, I talk about what a weird marketing decision that was, and whether it paves the way for more “clickbait movies” in the future.

If you enjoyed this video, a like/comment/sub would mean a whole, whole lot. Thanks everybody!

For Halloween I made a video recommending five spooky horror movies in just five spooky minutes. Lemme know what y’all think or if you have any suggestions for what to watch this All Hallow’s Eve

friends, i have been quiet because i have been funnelling all my creative energy into music right now and idk how to move from poems to that on here. I do still make more visually inclined things but right now this is what’s taking over my life. I’m not really calling anything as formal as a hiatus - just that’s why I’m here a bit less right now, though I’ve no doubt I’ll be around again for poems and art.

if you would like to maybe keep up with this music stuff, you can, and I would love it if you did.

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I am also working on solo music stuff a fair amount. none of it is being released yet because recording is either difficult or expensive, but old things are on ishanijasmin.bandcamp.com and new things will be too.

He could never shake the calamity of time from his face, nor the persisting ache of life from his demeanor. Without knowing a thing about the man, you would look at him and think "My God... he survived all that?"

Stage notes from "Lilytooth”, a work in progress