Safety Not Guaranteed, Delebs, Stone Yard Devotional, and It's Not You.
On intangible, mythical, silent spaces.
1. Safety Not Guaranteed
My latest essay is on love, movies and the intangible, mythical, silent spaces we occupy.
All over Christmas and New Year, when people asked what I was doing, I replied — somewhat self-consciously — that I was working. I say ‘somewhat self-consciously,’ because at the beach town where I live, choosing work over careless summer abandon, goes against the grain.
Over the last few weeks, my essay maintained my interest and my first draft started out reasonably well, by which I mean I wasn’t choked up in my deep cerebral brain. At one point, I decided, authenticity, requires so much more of the frontal lobe than the limbic system, as it is nothing without courage which, for sensitive introverts, is just another word for disinhibition.
Inevitably, however, I hit the middle slump, the dreaded, directionless, second act sag. My murderously deleted darlings whooshing off to the trash bin were like the camper-trailers retreating to Melbourne — gone for now, but planning their next visit.
But a serendipitous moment occurred. I re-watched Safety Not Guaranteed, an old favourite. With a Tomatometer score of 91% and an audience score of 80% on Rotten Tomatoes, movies don’t get much better than this. It’s been nearly fourteen years since this low budget, indie movie about time travelling was released in 2012, and in my opinion, it has not dated. With Aubrey Plaza and Mark Duplass in the title roles, the movie is a quirky tale about trust, judgement, time, and of course, love. It not only gave me the title of my essay, but the following quote from the end of the movie helped me refocus:
To go it alone or to go with a partner? When you choose a partner you have compromises and sacrifices but it the price you pay. Do I want to follow my every whim and desire as I make my way through time and space? Absolutely. But at the end of the day, do I need someone when I’m doubting myself and I’m insecure and my heart’s failing me? Do I need someone, who when the heat gets hot, has my back?
The work is progressing. Stay tuned for updates.
2. Delebs
Let’s let the artist’s work speak for itself. Humans are so afraid of the void that we can’t let what has fallen into it stay there.
So said Kelly Carlin, daughter of the late comedian George Carlin, in response to a recent AI-generated Youtube show titled: George Carlin: I’m Glad I’m Dead.
In this show, an AI generated George Carlin voice makes AI generated jokes in the style of Carlin’s humour. This AI version of Carlin refers to events and technology that post-date his death in 2008. Spooky.
Critics have described the show as predictable and not at all funny, unlike the real Carlin, whose was famous for his skit identifying the seven words that could never be said on TV:
Marina Hyde and Richard Osman were similarly unimpressed with the AI generated George Carlin special in their podcast The Rest Is Entertainment:
This episode of The Rest Is Entertainment goes on to discuss the concept of ‘delebs,’ the name given to celebrities whose personas keep being used after their deaths for commercial purposes. Hyde gives the example of one of the hardest working delebs, James Dean, who apparently now enjoys a state of virtual continuous employment, appearing in many more films and advertisements than he did during his short life.
With such a growing market, celebrities are starting to state in their wills if they want to work (and how they want to work) in perpetuity after they die. Robin Williams and Paul Newman are said to have left detailed instructions in this regard.
Is this what we want? Can AI and delebs really stand in for real, authentic, experiences?
The long WGA and Sag-Aftra strike showed just how worried Hollywood writers and actors were by the threats posed by AI.
In the end, however, I imagine consumers will determine how successful delebs and AI become. It’s up to us to support the real (or at least, search for it).
3. Stone Yard Devotional
Wood’s novel is a meditative journey of quiet reflection. With a Cuskian style boasting restraint, Wood builds gentle tension through the interior monologue of her protagonist, who visits a nunnery for a short retreat before she later goes to live there permanently, but not as a nun. This makes her an outsider both within the nunnery and the outside world, where she has fled a marriage, friends and a job as a climate activist.
While describing the ordinary rhythms of life within the nunnery, including the nunnery’s internal politics and a mice plague, Wood’s protagonist also details a number of her past memories. Her emotional world is gradually revealed with ‘the church’ coming to figuratively represent containment and a place of soothing, light and silence.
When you’re inside a church, I have come to realise, it’s impossible to see out. There are no clear windows. Light streams in through the stained glass, making coloured lozenges on the floor. More light than you’d imagine is possible comes through those tall narrow slits of crosscrossed glass — but everything outside is invisible, save a rippled blur seen through the watery colourless diamonds interspersed with yellow or red or indigo. The only way to see the world beyond the church is through the door: in or out. I mentioned this yesterday to Simone as we were drying dishes. She looked at me with pity. That’s a rather clumsy metaphor, she said. What I had meant was that it is peaceful there, between four thick stone walls, allowing yourself to rest in the coloured light. But I didn’t say anything like that to Simone, who had turned away and, anyway, why did I care what she thought? The beauty of being here is largely the silence, after all. Not having to explain, or endlessly converse.
Stone Yard Devotional is a must read, especially for anyone for whom life and world events feel heavy and bleak. Wood does not provide didactic lessons to ease suffering — her writing is far too nuanced and subtle for this. However, the novel is reassuring, as it provides space to dwell in the unresolved, without the expectation of resolution. It allows for contemplation on issues such as responsibility, forgiveness and the choices we make. It suggests that to live simply is complex, as our interior world cannot escape the external world, and trauma, grief and loss imprint upon us in enduring ways.
Wood has a Substack newsletter titled Subtraction, and the following edition examines space, mystery and uncertainty, as well as the creative process, with references to Stone Yard Devotional:
4. It’s Not You.
This week’s podcast recommendation is StoryBound: Elizabeth McCracken (who writes at
) reading her short story ‘It’s Not You,’ with an accompanying soundtrack by Moon Hound.The story is a compelling tale of a woman looking back on an occasion in her twenties, when she checked into a hotel to recover from a broken heart.
My plan was to drink Bourbon and take baths and feel sorry for myself… And there was a certain level of weeping that could only be achieved only while watching TV, I’d discovered, self excoriating with a distant laugh track. I wanted to demolish myself, but I intended on surviving the demolition.
All does not go as planned when the woman meets a psychologist with a late night radio program and their competing vulnerabilities play out against the backdrop of the hotel, named after the mythical Narcissus.
The woman somewhat unsentimately, tells of her experience of love:
The worst thing about not being loved, I thought, was how vivid I was to myself. Now I am loved and I’m in black and white.
Like Wood, McCracken writes with compassionate humanity as she portrays the woman in despair, managing a space of turmoil (though the despair and turmoil of McCracken’s characters has more drama than Wood’s characters).
While ‘It’s Not You,’ is a reference to the way the woman’s ex-lover broke up with her, there is irony in this title. Because McCracken suggests throughout the story that her characters and their difficulties could be us by the use of frequent nostalgic references and other inclusive hooks. Take for instance the ending that suggests the woman is just like anyone else:
I became kinder, the way anyone does, because it costs less and is nine times out of ten, more effective.
It’s a great listen.
More next time.
Cheers,
Jen.
I loved Stone Yard Devotional! Definitely my favourite of Wood’s books so far. I’m glad I read this before tomorrow- I was going to bring it for you!