84: On Relentlessness

I've been listening to back episodes of The Relentless Picnic, a podcast I picked up six weeks ago on the recommendation of writer Phil Christman. Most episodes consist of a series of weird, loose, philosophical conversations between the three hosts about The Way Things Are, which should annoy me because I have an allergy to listening to podcasts by dudes having long discursive conversations. It's doubly weird because the episodes I've been listening to were recorded in late 2016 and early 2017, and many of those early episodes revolve around the strange political landscape of the time. There's a distinct cognitive dissonance to listening to three men who are alarmed about the turn their world has taken, but will not experience anything like COVID or the January 6th insurrection for several years yet. Some of those back episodes make me feel a little sick, because they're both perceptive and naive about the world to come. Anyway, the podcast works for me because the conversations are thoughtful and perceptive, with each interlocutor digging in whenever they sense their conversation partners are hedging themselves or evading the question. It helps that the podcast is tightly edited, too; the conversations may be rangy, but they each have a point, or at least they're each trying to unearth a point as part of a collective project.

I listened to a back episode yesterday about the point and value of art. It's called Shakespeare-Sized Hole, and most of the conversation was an attempt to sift the differences between art that's made for money and art that's made for the joy of creation. Is one more valuable than another? If it's good, does it matter if no one sees it?

This conversation struck at something I've been trying to express for a little while, and it gets at some of the reasons why I like Kelly Reichardt's Showing Up so much. I still can't fully express the thought, but I'm of the opinion that the act of creation is a valuable thing in and of itself, no matter who else gets to experience it, and that that value cannot be calculated in a way that makes sense under an economic system like capitalism. And, paradoxically, the more people who do get to experience the thing that was made, the more that art's value compounds, because no two people will have the exact same reaction to it. Experience can be an act of creative interpretation.

What I watched:

I'm going to be talking about 2023 TV shows for the Think Christian podcast, which gave me the excuse to catch up with Jury Duty this week. I loved it. More to come soon.

What I'm reading:

I appreciated this article about coding and ChatGPT over at The New Yorker.

What I'm listening to:

Joe Hisaishi's score for The Boy and the Heron. Hisaishi's work has provided the backbone for my writing playlist for nearly a decade now. I like the decisive nature of his piano compositions; they have a spine, much like the Miyazaki movies they provide the music for. This newest score is restrained and startling, and is probably my favorite of the year.