“I don’t feel enjoyment watching films that evoke passivity. If you need that kind of comfort, I don’t understand why you wouldn’t go to a spa.” — Park Chan-wook
It was 15 years ago that I started this blog. I’ve come and gone from it a few times over the years. The COVID pandemic that began in 2020 sparked the richest period of film viewing and writing I’ve ever had in my life. From then to the present accounts for just under 1,500 film viewings, if my Letterboxd stats are accurate. I’ve read hundreds of books in that period and watched over 1,000 hours of serialized programming. I started dabbling in solo tabletop roleplaying. I recorded over 100 episodes of a podcast with my wife. And then the realization came that we weren’t going to be able to keep going in the Netherlands.
It wasn’t an easy decision, but the housing market there and the loss of hours as independent contractors made it the obvious choice. We sold or gave away almost everything we had in the Netherlands, just like we’d done when we moved from the States. We were starting over again. My wife had a really hard time with that; I did not. I don’t see myself as a person of above-average intelligence, but I do think I’m more curious than most people. The nonfiction books I read are often focused on the plight of the working class and the poor, so I don’t see myself as being alone in my suffering. When I look around the States right now, I especially feel that we’re all in hard times that just keep getting harder.
I had an epiphanous moment before the move. I’m not going to lie and say I don’t think my experiences with psychedelics in the Netherlands played a part. These drugs do something that clicked with me, and it doesn’t with everybody. They remove your pretentiousness and force you to reckon with the actual person you are; they melt away the self. If you are someone who is uncomfortable being alone with your own thoughts, then psychedelics will probably be a bad experience for you. For me, it began an internal psychological process that culminated in contacting my father for the first time in 17 years.
We had a falling out then. He threw me out of his house, and I struggled for a very long time. And I hated him. I was justified in my anger. He hurt me very badly, and it took a lot of time for me to get to where I am now. I got his phone number from siblings whose reactions varied from tears of happiness to anxious apprehension that there would be an explosive argument. I knew there wouldn’t be, because through these psychedelic experiences & through moving to a place that was alien to me, I partially dislodged from ego. I’m not going to pretend that I don’t have ego-driven reactions anymore; I certainly do when my autism is triggered and I lose sight of my priorities. What’s improved is that I have a greater awareness of this. I’m engaged in a healthy level of metacognition and talk to myself in my head when I feel those flare-ups.
My family has come to learn that my stubbornness is immovable, so they never imagined I would contact my dad. He was surprised, but very eager to help us out when he heard we were coming back to the States. All of my family was so kind in that regard, and I am lucky for it. I also contacted my mom, whom I stopped talking to as she sank into the Trump hole. While I forgave my father, I apologized to my mother. The last time I had contacted her, I had been very cruel with my words. I know there was emotional truth in those words, but their shape was jagged and sharp, intended to wound. That was wrong of me. I apologized, and she has been incredibly happy to have us both back and around.
Part of my realization was that if I claim to believe in my leftist ideals, particularly solidarity and community, I would be hypocritical by allowing these grievances to persist. It doesn’t mean I excuse harm or mistreatment, but that I contextualize it. The United States is a country of profound mental illness and emotional dysregulation. These are both the source and the fuel of a cycle of violence, like a perpetual motion machine that just keeps ramping things up and immiserating us. The only way out of that cycle is a radical action, and for me, empathy was that action. I had to forgive and apologize if I wanted to grow as a human being, if I wanted to provide a family unit for my wife.
There’s still so much healing to do. I struggle every day in my head, with my aging body, seeing the horrors of the nation and the world spiral downward. Part of my mindset is an understanding that I’m just a small piece of a grand series of systems. I’m part of a cycle of life and consumption and death. Sometimes you can get confused about what your scope of action is when watching the news. I understand that the people who perpetuate horrors and antagonize are always going to be very far away from me. I can only affect my arm’s reach. My actions are limited, so I try to love the people I can and share as much helpful information as possible.
I spend a lot of time ruminating, and as is common with some autistic people, those thoughts are focused on existential things. Death and meaning occupy a lot of my thoughts, but not in some darkly morbid way. I think about how evolution is so saturated into everything. The universe is constantly breaking down and reprocessing matter and energy. I wonder if the whole drive of evolution is simply to create every possible iteration of DNA. Humanity will not be the end of life; there will be animals smarter than us and beyond us in every way imaginable someday. Maybe they already exist and we just don’t have the sense to perceive them. We think our perception of time is so universal when it’s just one perspective in a seemingly infinite sea of them.
I derive a lot of pleasure from thinking these thoughts, noticing little connections in things. I’m still very much an agnostic person because there’s no way I—or anyone else—can know. Uncertainty is something to be embraced because change is the only constant in the universe, as Octavia Butler said. Humans are very pattern-based creatures, so there’s a lot less uncertainty with them, but the cosmos creates patterns of its own, uninterested in our affairs. These are dark times, particularly in the United States, and I do feel stress from it here and there. I am able to re-center myself and remember that I’m a speck in the universe. It’s okay if I can’t solve all the problems.
PopCult is going to be something I continue to add to, but that time from 2020–2025 is over. I couldn’t continue at that pace, but I am so thankful for that period. I learned so much from the art I consumed and how to articulate myself better than I ever have. I’ve come to view art as profoundly curated thoughts meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Good art should tell us something about the world we live in; truths that may be uncomfortable to hear. If we don’t like what the art has to say about our world, then it’s our job to reshape the world, make it better. Shitting all over a movie because it made you uncomfortable with its truth is a very unproductive venture, in my opinion, and I won’t waste time on it.
I don’t know what my next post will be or when it will show up. If I see or read something that compels me, I will write about it. Most things get logged on Letterboxd or Goodreads, but aren’t worth more than that to me. I’ve been providing my youngest sister and her kids (11 and 9) with movies since we’ve gotten back and have been so happy to see them finding things they enjoy. My niece loved Greta Gerwig’s Little Women, and they all recently watched Chaplin’s The Great Dictator and enjoyed it. While the world is getting very bad, I still try to share art with those who are receptive to it. I find so much value in stories and my imagination.
I don’t really know what else to say. I appreciate the “regulars” I see liking my posts. It is nice to feel like someone is reading. I’d like to think I’d still be writing all of these even without any sort of audience. I just like to get my thoughts down on the page.
PopCult Reviews 