Having begun the day with a doctor's appointment for Hestia, we will be ending it with a doctor's appointment for me, but in between there seems to be a lot of clear bright sun and we are developing an amicable relationship with the contractors based around the minimal availability of street parking. Our porch is now partially floored. The plumb lines have gone from the rafters and the second story is no longer propped in a fashion suggesting coal mines or those molecular structures one makes with toothpicks and marshmallows. The buzz saws, hammers, and power drills remain a regular feature of the soundscape.
Much of this week just seems to have disappeared, but when![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
spatch and I had to run an errand late last night, I appreciate WHRB greeting us with Dry Cleaning's "Her Hippo" (2021) and Surfbort's "Lot Lizard 93" (2021). We agreed that Ada Rook's "Sardonica" (2018) would make excellent exit music for a horror film. I really enjoy discovering new music on the radio.
I just saw that Ron Peck has died. Nighthawks (1978) was among my earliest discoveries on Kanopy; I had no idea of its historical importance and I liked it so much I hit a wall on writing about it, because while the film is not a documentary despite its prevalence of non-professional actors and location shooting which could almost serve as a cruising travelogue of mid-'70's London, its lo-fi slice of 16 mm life felt so casual and quotidian that it seemed almost as fair to review a scrapbook. This I gather was part of the point. Even now, it may be radical that so conventionally-dramatically little happens in a film which is nonetheless so soundly queer. The protagonist, Jim, played equally and importantly low-key by Ken Robertson, teaches geography at a comprehensive school; he is sort of out and kind of alienated and mostly just trying to get through the school year and have some kind of romantic life, which establishes the routine of his days and nights until something has to change. There is no tragedy unless you count bad dates. The crucial scene in which a daring taunt from one of his brasher students sets off a real discussion about what it means to be queer is chaotic, compassionate, electrifying—it shouldn't still be so relevant and here we are, here we are, here we are again. "Well, if they're going to go on and on about me being queer, I mean, what's the point of me trying to teach them about wheat growing in the Canadian prairies?" As soon as one of Jim's friends brought him to a party at a studio in the docklands, I wondered if Derek Jarman had had anything to do with the production and sure enough there he was as an extra in one of the club scenes, dark-haired with those saint's cheekbones, pre-AIDS. I was delighted to recognize the Salisbury from Victim (1961), this time in color. Nighthawks is one of the stories that went beyond the ending of that film; it has its own successors now. The smallest things change and that can be everything.
Much of this week just seems to have disappeared, but when
spatch and I had to run an errand late last night, I appreciate WHRB greeting us with Dry Cleaning's "Her Hippo" (2021) and Surfbort's "Lot Lizard 93" (2021). We agreed that Ada Rook's "Sardonica" (2018) would make excellent exit music for a horror film. I really enjoy discovering new music on the radio.I just saw that Ron Peck has died. Nighthawks (1978) was among my earliest discoveries on Kanopy; I had no idea of its historical importance and I liked it so much I hit a wall on writing about it, because while the film is not a documentary despite its prevalence of non-professional actors and location shooting which could almost serve as a cruising travelogue of mid-'70's London, its lo-fi slice of 16 mm life felt so casual and quotidian that it seemed almost as fair to review a scrapbook. This I gather was part of the point. Even now, it may be radical that so conventionally-dramatically little happens in a film which is nonetheless so soundly queer. The protagonist, Jim, played equally and importantly low-key by Ken Robertson, teaches geography at a comprehensive school; he is sort of out and kind of alienated and mostly just trying to get through the school year and have some kind of romantic life, which establishes the routine of his days and nights until something has to change. There is no tragedy unless you count bad dates. The crucial scene in which a daring taunt from one of his brasher students sets off a real discussion about what it means to be queer is chaotic, compassionate, electrifying—it shouldn't still be so relevant and here we are, here we are, here we are again. "Well, if they're going to go on and on about me being queer, I mean, what's the point of me trying to teach them about wheat growing in the Canadian prairies?" As soon as one of Jim's friends brought him to a party at a studio in the docklands, I wondered if Derek Jarman had had anything to do with the production and sure enough there he was as an extra in one of the club scenes, dark-haired with those saint's cheekbones, pre-AIDS. I was delighted to recognize the Salisbury from Victim (1961), this time in color. Nighthawks is one of the stories that went beyond the ending of that film; it has its own successors now. The smallest things change and that can be everything.
