Spes Sibi Quisque, or Appreciation for Mike Mills

Writing a history of love, as opposed to the history of love, and avoiding getting carried off into the ether of autobiography for its own sake. Check that box.

Avoiding the idea that recounting an idiosyncratic history is enough, as though the story will take care of itself and momentum is a function of quirky pastiche . . . Check.

Being grounded without seeming uncool or disconnected from the vibrant pulse of present creativity - mmmmm.hmmmmm.

Also funny: also voiceover narration but who needs Puritanism: also Beginners femme fatale be still my beating heart.

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An aside:

the thing about grandiosity is you can’t feel ok with just being a normal non-descript self, happy for those who you care for and happy with yourself too. Contentment becomes inachievable; it seems impossible to live outside the terms of comparative assessment. So that so much of the cognitive metabolism is bound over to what someone else has or doesn’t have, what someone suffers from or excels at - and the someone exists as a foregrounding for the self’s obsessive shadow. that comparative lens is THE lens through which all the data points get filtered, and all the most piquant self-involved flavors are contradictions waiting to get sharpened. I prefer not to see in this way and eat at this table.

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A disjointed stand in for the fear I have of liking art that appears tied to a milieu to which I can’t relate and that is in all material respects too cool for me, which is to say

I like my LA with a strong dose of Nova Scotia re the design side of things. Lambent austerity.