When it comes to the internet, I feel like I have often found my way to things a little later than most. I was the last of my immediate friend group to join Facebook, the first Twitter account I created went into permanent hibernation after about half a dozen embarrassingly vulgar tweets were shouted into the zero-follower void from my parents’ computer room, and Instagram never held any particular appeal because I was convinced it was all just pictures of food. As a politically stern teenager making his way into his twenties while holding very strong, and often very naïve views about anything from colonialist exploitation of the developing world (bad), to the DIY ethics of Fugazi (good), the realm of the digital, and of social media especially, was something I regarded with a mixture of confusion, condescension, and mild disgust.
But as most human beings are blessed/cursed to find out eventually, time is nothing if not a sculptor, chipping away at us until we share little in common with the fervent, black-and-white, and deeply insecure person we once were. Ergo, the myriad ways my outlook has changed are, and I say this with humility and an awareness that a lot of change still lies ahead of me, too vast to recount here. But perhaps an example can shed some light: having found my bearings in the world of cinema through a variety of gifted filmmakers — the holy trinity of budding Serious Film Aficionados, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, and Akira Kurosawa; American sleazoids like Abel Ferrara, Larry Clark, and Harmony Korine; queer cinema provocateurs John Waters and Gregg Araki; Italian genre weirdos Dario Argento and Lucio Fulci — I had little to no patience for “Hollywood garbage” like, say, Michael Bay or Paul W. S. Anderson. I even considered Spielberg’s blockbuster cinema to be beneath me, dismissing it as a “capitalist product,” one of many statements seemingly uttered for the sole purpose of embarrassing my older self.
Time passed, however, and at the end of 2022 — the year that introduced me to my thirties — I decided to put Michael Bay’s formally precise actioner AmbuLAnce on the first ever year-end list I compiled for In Review Online; when I got a new TV the previous year, the first film I wanted to watch was Raiders of the Lost Ark, its thrilling action set pieces having lingered in my mind since childhood, despite my best efforts; and whereas Anderson’s work was narrowly more than a footnote in my mind before — and then, usually flattened into a punchline to conclude some long-winded rant about the ever-increasing ridiculousness of a sequel-addicted American film industry — these days I often try my damndest to steer any film conversation in such a way that it offers me a chance to hail Resident Evil: Retribution as a postmodern masterpiece. (I recently came across a tweet which compared Anderson to Fritz Lang but I don’t think I’m quite there yet.)
I picked up writing, or film criticism more specifically, early last year, mainly because I wanted — nay, needed — something to counteract the drudgery of a decidedly unglamorous day-to-day existence. Before that, I had found some form of spiritual nourishment — though, back then, I would have never placed my thoroughly secular passions in the proximity of a word as ugly to my ears as “spirituality” — in a decade-plus, high-dB activity as the guitarist/singer/bassist/drummer/songwriter in a string of noise/sludge/punk/metal/industrial bands. (Make sure to never ask a musician what genre of music they play unless you have at least half an hour to spare.)
But the pandemic, compounded with a diminished willingness to lug around heavy equipment night after night, took me off the path which I was sure I was going to devote the rest of my life to. (I should add that it’s also very likely that the well simply dried up after all those years culminated in an extremely satisfying, extremely cathartic final LP which left me with nothing to say or prove.) Admittedly, getting my writing published so far hasn’t been able to scratch the same itch that releasing a few albums’ worth of music has — not to mention the strange sensation of actually holding a vinyl record on which your songs are imprinted — though I might just have to learn how to savor many smaller achievements over a few big ones.
Now, after having joined — and subsequently abandoned — Facebook; taken to maintaining a steady Twitter presence (even making a few friends along the way, some of whom are hopefully reading this); posting my mug on that dreaded gallery of superficiality, Instagram; and managing to regularly have my words — not just on film but music as well — included in the virtual pages of Slant Magazine, The Big Ship, Cineccentric, and the aforementioned In Review Online, I’ve decided to take a new step towards exploring the possibilities of an increasingly-homogenized digital world. The fact that I’m once again late to the party feels more than appropriate.
So, partly motivated by a desire to write about what I want, the way I want, whenever I want — it might sound dramatic, but having to check my calendar to make sure any work I plan on doing will neatly line up with a filmmaker’s birthday or that an album’s year of release will qualify it for whatever arbitrary anniversary our culture has decided is worth celebrating, can be torturous at times — and partly by my faint hope of convincing at least a few people to financially support my latest undertaking, I’m launching this newsletter. Free subscribers will be kept up to date about the long-form public posts — essentially an outlet to probe into whatever objects I’m currently fascinated by — which I aim to keep coming with some regularity, while paid subscribers will get to hear my Very Important Takes™ via my monthly In Review pieces, which cover anything currently taking up space in theaters, record stores, or their streaming/VOD equivalents, wrapped up in a more straightforward review format.
As of right now, I don’t have an audience to speak of — this is not to undersell the appreciation I have for my very patient and usually constructive family and friends — so hiding a sizable chunk of my work behind a paywall feels a little ridiculous, if not like outright self-sabotage. (In general, asking for money is something I’ve never been all that comfortable with.) But considering the amount of time and effort that goes into any given piece I write, coupled with the lack of pay that often accompanies work of this kind, I do hope that my latest endeavor will at least net me the odd hot meal, a few non-alcoholic beers, or maybe even allow for a little biannual bookstore splurge. I’ve always led a spartan existence — a perpetual lack of money has left me with no choice — so I don’t expect, nor do I wish to suddenly be propelled into a cushy middle-class existence. But having a few extra bucks left over at the end of the month would be a great place to start.
Regardless, the meat of Electric Dreams — named after the largely forgotten sci-fi television anthology series Philip K. Dick’s Electric Dreams, itself an approximation of the title of Dick’s famous 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? — will be the public posts, as I consider the In Review pieces more of a show of gratitude for my paid subscribers than part of whatever fuzzy mission statement I have cooking in this bowl of chowder I call a brain. Those who are on the fence are of course free to forgo a paid subscription in favor of a free one — having spent the majority of my adult life munching on cheese and crackers in lieu of an actual dinner whenever I decided to drop a few bucks on cheap beer and a basement show the night before, I know the value of an ostensibly fractional sum like $2.50 — and should anyone think that even the bandwidth used to send out this newsletter is too precious a resource to waste, there is always the option of simply not subscribing at all.
I won’t say I don’t care because I do but I’ve come to accept that these things are more or less out of my control. Having been instilled with good old-fashioned Christian ethics that even my love of Nietzsche couldn’t completely exorcise — although the idea of publishing a piece titled Why I Write Such Excellent Substack Posts à la Ecce Homo remains on the table — I’m more inclined to take any lack of resonance as an encouragement to try and improve my writing, rather than the failing of any potential subscribers to acknowledge the quality of what I put out. But God willing, I’ll find that elusive audience — and that even more elusive creature known as “decent financial compensation” — someday. In the meantime, thank you for reading. Here’s to becoming what one is, whatever that may be.
Well written piece. Thoroughly enjoyed!
Great piece
I enjoy reading from a writer’s heart and soul❤️