As I write more posts for this blog, I think it’s hard to ignore the timing of starting writing again. I wrote a lot about dealing with lockdown, working from home and not seeing a lot of people. I was making pretty big lifestyle changes at the time. I started eating better and exercising more. I tried to get my shit organized.

A big thing that I didn’t really write about was that I deleted the Twitter and Facebook apps from my phone. I was feeling angry all the time. There’s only so much curation you can do of the people you follow. You can’t curate the people that they follow. You can only mute so many friends or people you care about before you have to have a closer look at the problem. I think I’m tired of comment sections, headline reactions and viral videos. I’m just maxed out.

I tweeted or commented because I thought I had funny or interesting things to say. But then there’s the anxiety that comes with interaction online. Will I get likes and retweets and shit? Why do I care?

So here we are, writing a blog about music and movies and things I think about that I won’t share anywhere so nobody can fucking read it.

Why?

I think there’s two parts.

Part 1: I want to put my ideas down and have a record of some things. I’m open to conversation about them but I’d prefer to have a more long form discussion rather than just tweets or instant messages. I’ve tried writing emails to a few people over the years as almost a pen pal setup and it’s something I’ve always enjoyed.

Part 2: I want to have a backlog of content so that, if I decide to share this blog, it’s actually up and running.

I never think about these intro parts before I sit down to write because they’re supposed to just be what’s going on for me. At the moment I have a backlog of films to write about so tonight I started writing without checking what was the next film on my list. It’s funny that sometimes these things have a way of tying in together unintentionally.

Quite a while ago at this point, I watched Inside Llewyn Davis. I don’t think I wanted to at the time, but I can kind of identify with our pal Llewyn Davis (played by one of my favourite dudes, Oscar Isaac) in some ways. He’s a bastard, trapped in a cycle, trying to keep going with the same thing that just doesn’t seem to be working. In his case he’s running out of friends and options and trying his best to burn bridges which isn’t my style but he’s egotistical and he’s angry and it’s kinda his own fault that he’s angry a lot of the time. And I get that. It’s pretty impressive that you can really dislike Llewyn for the most part because Oscar Isaac is somebody I like a lot. I think he’s at his best when he flips it like this.

There’s a bunch of classic Coen Brothers set ups going on – the trip in the car with John Goodman and his driver – but the highlight of the film for me has to be the insane novelty song that Llewyn is brought in to work on with Justin Timberlake and Adam Driver’s characters.  You see Llewyn, unable to help himself from talking shit about the song. And you get some of the absurdity that Llewyn is forced to attract so he can keep himself afloat.

I liked it a lot