Mix Tape
When I was with the billionaires, I thought Ryan’s conceptual amusement park should also be a resort. (Because exotic destinations are always trending in reality design.) A place where language is location based , and experience a map.
A place to go to meet a roaming belligerent property line. FITCH-TRECARTIN (2019)
Lizzie was sitting shotgun and I was in the backseat. Jeremiah drove. The directions were on my phone. A dot on the way to the desert. The Inland Empire zone.
We needed a swim spa of audacious scope and scale. It had to be special but the same as any one (so known) –a paradox pursuit. I wish I could remember what we talked about and if we ideated details of the mission. But I don’t. I remember the road and the horizon. The singular and the common.
I read this thing about (the social life of) things that i remember loving. Like in that animated movie where the toaster leads his friends with so much heart and gallantry. THE BRAVE LITTLE TOASTER (1987) –it was called --about all the objects that got left behind. (a few odd contraptions and remarkable device). Lampy and Blanket hitch a chair to Vacuum’s back and get Radio to navigate a signal towards the city. Emotional adventures inevitably ensue – a total hero’s journey: transformative, complete. I was utterly seduced.
consumer culture theoretics.
My favorite was, ‘the cultural biography of things”, where Igor Kopytoff advocates a biographical approach. Like a life cycle thing --to understand how objects get their meanings (as commodities). To classify. And how we homogenize what starts as infinite potential permutation to maximize exchange-ability. The mass produced and common. What we wanted for that spa –the fluency (convention) but with star power and distinction. A Hot Tub Casting Call.
I found a place that claimed to offer just the thing. A factory outlet warehouse in Chino California called LifeSpas™ where we could pick and choose –peruse –models and components to compose.
Thank you for calling on the spa for sale. We’re looking forward to meeting you at your appointment time please yourself about an hour or so. CINDY@LIFESPAS.COM (2013)
Grammatical oddities that reeked of copy paste to hack-job out a phony form (gave trickery for sure). We took the exit off the ten and drove past (saw) a Clyde’s Hot Chicken and some retail CBD. Of course they weren’t a warehouse or a manufacturer direct. It was I.E. plaza mart with junk businesses and chains.
We were seated in a humid room. (carpeted). Two sections of three rows of chairs with a center aisle for the host to post dramatic entrance pitch. A few full spas (operational) and humming jets in chlorine clouds went bubbling away. The guy’s name was Danny or Maurice I think it doesn’t matter. He dimmed the lights and started up his show. Slides of faux desirable environments, a sad catalog of feigned and framed affluence. Champagne cocktail glass and suburban deck with patio. Russian ballet symphonies in Hallmark™ poster states.
I got confused but also kind of into it. Jeremiah lost his patience and was done with song and dance. Danny-Maurice didn’t wholly understand. He didn’t know how to skip the script (he only knew so many scripts to fit).
Its for a movie. (lizzie giggled when she said). She told us later, when he left the room, that this happens all the time. They all always think we’re shooting porn. I see, I said, I thought, I can see how that would happen.
So I wondered if the swim spa felt embarrassed. Stripper mall timeshare trash they all assumed would work in porn. I reassured her that it was a talking part --and that all of the Objects have agency in this Art.
It's a read-write paradigm on set. You will be taken seriously, as an actress, like a LAURA DERN (2006) Plus, this is the audition and you already got the part.
Add on package LEDs.
Roll Sound. Camera Speeds.
An ode to ambition and experiment. A memento of inception.
I think it’s obvious what Christopher Nolan wanted to make a movie about. (but it was disappointing). The human loop pursuit. Of course he was interested in
The human loop pursuit.
(but it was disappointing).
to correlate the artist and the scientist in thier moment of discovery.
Picasso painting door to DaDa--Bohrs (OPPENHEIMER 2023) --the War. Berkeley incubator diasporic physics thread (that begat the Big Sur psychedelic). Sexy, Daring, Scary, Spooky Actions at a distance place to make.
(but it was disappointing).
Does this movie even get to be what its about? Nolan as Picasso (as Oppenheimer) and a noose around the neck. Was it even (allowed to be) bold enough to achieve a self-reflexive singularity? No. So, what did we disprove? The delusion of control.
But its like what Dave Chappelle said about being a powerful DREAMER (2023) -- even the GOATS are sometimes cast in somebody else's time (to say their lines). reading between (and below) the line.
Ruth takes the stage with her team at the DOLBY ADJACENT BALLROOM.
She thanks the members of the guild for this award. (The art directors cheer).
She shakes and breaks --- a hyphenated gasp. How to hold each other up -- when someone trusts you with their puzzle -and your narrative resolves. They all feel (and cheer) for her again. She thanked her whole department is the thing. She thanked her right hand and her left. She looked behind herself at Jonas Kirk when she said he had 8 weeks to build Los Alamos, in the dead of winter in New Mexico and he did. I heard that one (of many miracles delivered). She declared her Set Decorator, Claire Kaufman, as unflabbable. I know how that would feel —dressing the setting the tables of that place. (SITE Y) Six nobel prize scientists sat there —colliding all their thoughts. There are no words for the energy unleashed. Their gravity swallows light. —their haunting in the score.
It was a replica then. It is a replica again.
SOMETIMES MAYBE ITS NOT JUST THE MOVIE THATS THE POINT.
The methods of the theater employed.
The ritual and re-making of a fake atomic town.
I thought: they should've sold tickets for that! Tickets for a two-night stay (minimum) amusement park--conceptual--like ryan's. Dinner service and an AI concierge (a roaming belligerent property line). Double rooms for rent and the suites on bathtub row.
That would totally be better than that LunaLuna show. (content park experiment). Where, even for a hundred million dollars --we couldn’t even go on any of the rides.
END | EPILOGUE
You are good in boats not alone from knowledge,
but because water is a part of you,
you are easy on it, fear it and like it in such equal parts that you work well in a boat without thinking about it and may be even safer because you don’t need to think too much.
That is what we mean by instinct
and there is no way to explain an instinct for the theater,
although those who have it recognize each other
and a bond is formed between them.
LILLIAN HELLMAN
(PENTIMENTO, 1973)