It pleased me that Paul Thomas Anderson’s film, One Battle After Another, won Best Picture at this year’s Academy Awards. Leading up to the ceremony, I watched each of the films nominated for the award and went into it knowing the landscape; an exciting achievement and a first time for me. I would have been happy if either Sinners or Sentimental Value had won Best Picture, as I think both of those were phenomenal films, but there was something in OBAA that resonated in my chest with a nameless meaning.
There is a scene1 in One Battle After Another where we are given a time break with musical accompaniment. The break splits the film cleanly between two eras and washes past all the things that affected the characters and made them who it is that they would become. The song that plays is “Dirty Work” by Steely Dan off of their 1972 debut album Can’t Buy a Thrill.
I loved this movie for many reasons. I felt the directing and cinematography were brilliant and developed a pace that lived up to the title. The performances, across the board, were sublime and nuanced and elegant and evocative and dripping with character. The first time I watched it, the movie stayed with me for days and I kept coming back to this projected feeling, the pronunciation of an emotional weight with that time jump and the Steely Dan song, with Benicio Del Toro’s Sensei Sergio and his line “You’re not breathing.”
I have many addictive traits2, one of which is becoming concerningly fascinated with songs. The Steely Dan song here is interesting. It does not parallel the narrative movement with its lyrics at all, but somehow nails it with the vibe: the tired vibe, the resigned vibe, the remaining vibe. To remain and to have remained3. To have lasted, somehow. I wore this song out. I listened to it on repeat, nonstop. Some resonance rings my movement through this existence true for this moment to the sounds of that Hammond B3 organ. I am listening to it now.
These musical compulsions of mine have not always been so endearing.
In the winter of 2019, rolling into 2020, I was in a place where I only listened to three songs. "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" and "Head Over Heels" by Tears for Fears and "This must be the place" by the Talking Heads. The Talking Heads leaned on an already strained part of me that just kind of broke. I remember walking to Troost to take the Max bus up to the library listening to the notes of that song over and over, set on repeat. I listened to it on the bus and walking and sometimes just sitting in my basement in the near dark with my headphones on. I was not mentally well4.
Recently, I've been putting on "Dirty Work" at the end of the day. It feels like a weak attempt to calm myself, but I suppose attempting anything is better than doing nothing. The Hammond B3 reminds me of "Drug Buddy" by the Lemonheads. It makes such a beautiful sound, a trilling croon, a sad call in the dusk to connect with someone or anyone. In One Battle After Another, its a soft cloud that holds together both a feeling and a time5.
The tone and mood of Dirty Work does such a great job of exemplifying this feeling of remaining. We don’t want to be a part of this, but what else is there to do? I boycott, I call my congress folks. I vote while we still can. I write my little stories and poems and newsletters and I tell myself that this is something. This is something. I am doing something.
I was in such a bad space the last time my musical compulsion took me over, and this time the world is not better, but I feel stronger in the face of it. That doesn't mean that anything I am doing is nearly potent enough, but I have hope and I feel that hope and that goodwill and that kindness is the kind of shit that this place was founded on. And I still think that was a good idea. Addictive Tolkien-ing has been working a little bit too?
So all of these things, in one song. Now, spot-welded to this other expressive artistic sentiment in my heart. This song is working really hard. And just when I think that it is done with me I find that I need it once more. I walk from my desk to my little standing set up with it on my headphones. I tell myself I can have a little drink, a few small beers, as long as I get some words on the page. So here we are. So here we are.
1 Staggering, really. Amazing. The previous thirty minutes of the movie have all been driving action and hope and fighting for something that is worth dying for and then all the wheels start to come off. This scene starts with such a simple and pedestrian line that it just breaks your god damn heart. “Sixteen years later, the world had changed very little.” For a cut that covers so much time and so much distance between who we were and who we are we get this mash-up of Willa vs Bob to try and illustrate the place where these two realities overlap. Willa, bathed in light, bettering herself and preparing, learning, being instructed and taking the instruction. Learning is always an act of hope, an act in which we believe in a future where what we are doing now will influence it. To see Willa in the bright overhead light, so concerned to get it right that she has forgotten to breath - nothing but intensity, dedication, and hope. And then we shift to Bob. Bob, who is very much breathing (bowl-smoker) in the dark of his car - timid, un-proud, ashamed of himself and his actions and trying to disconnect from the moment at hand. Even the way they move and the way that the camera interacts with them - with Willa, moving to meet her in the middle distance, her future stepping towards her while she rushes headlong at it, Sensei Sergio stooping down with grace and understanding to reassure, not reprimand, and to meet her in the place she is with encouragement - while Bob’s camera is still. It is solid and mounted and it is not going anywhere. He stoops too, not to encourage but to escape, to inhale a cloud of marijuana which he is almost immediately ashamed of.
2 nicotine, alcohol, video games, books, planning, distraction, eating, etc
3 I know that this is far out on a tangential, but it would be unfair to note - in reference to this concept of remaining - the magical and transcendent performance that Carrie Coon gave in season three of White Lotus. I have wanted to write something focusing on this scene but I just keep watching it and feeling a certain sort of way that is non-conductive to figuring anything else out about my life.
4 My anxiety and depression came to a head on my 40th birthday where I spent most of the day fearing that someone I worked with at the library would find out it was my birthday. I made it most of the day until a package of sweets and pastries showed up from Mildred’s next door on Baltimore. You see, my mother, who uses Find My Friends on her iPhone to keep an eye on her baby boy so that she can know I am safe, noticed that I spent each morning at Mildreds before going into work at the library. She called and wanted to get something delivered, but they did not deliver. They did, however, know who I was and volunteered to run it over to the Central Library. The secret was out. I was furious at my mother (who, unclouded by the misperceptions of chemical imbalance did a thoughtful act exploding with love). Instead of taking the bus home like I usually did, I walked the hour and fifteen minutes with the Talking Heads song on repeat. When I walked in the door, Carrie was already cooking dinner but I just pasted a dead smile on my face, walked past her and into the office bedroom where I went to sleep at 6:30pm on my birthday. It was even a really good number. 02-20-2020. Anyway, once the world shut down less than a month later I found a place to focus my fear and got well enough to get therapy and medication and, I am told, I am much more pleasant to be around. (See also - assembly-lining cans of PBR in my basement with Big Thief’s “Not” on repeat walking circles in the concrete trying not to wake Carrie up upstairs).
5 The revolution has failed and yet we are still here fighting the failure and trying like hell to understand this feeling. It hurts to watch at this point in American history. The deluge of Content New is unstoppable. Is it overreaction that is spawned by Social Media or is this truly the revolution? I feel like I am watching Andor all over again, watching Dedra Meero explain that all you need to do to have to send in the army is for the resistance to do something stupid. I am amazed that no ICE agents have been killed yet, I feel when the first one is killed that will be when the boot truly comes down. I feel like that is what he wants. He wants someone to kill an agent. It did not happen at the protests so maybe now it will happen at the airport. And that will be when it stops being able to be classified as hyperbole. Update: My notes for this are sold old (couple of weeks) that we have now moved onto a new failing of government and violent whims and are killing young girls at school in Iran - oh - that is already old news as well - birthright citizenship? Fuck this broken and burned timeline.
6 Yes, I know that this passage was added by Peter Jackson, that it is not TRULY the words of JRR Tolkien but I am ok with that. I think this was Jackson’s listing in the movies and I don’t hate it, because the movies and the books are two separate things - whole different, so don’t get me started. Did I mention that I am in TWO Tolkien book clubs currently?