A few weeks ago I read Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. I read his earlier novel The Emigrants a few years ago. Both novels were difficult to read, not because the prose was complicated, but because I had to stop from time to time and sit with the overwhelming sadness of history. By obliquely showing historical events (in this case, the Holocaust) through the lives of individual people, Sebald reveals not only the deep sadness but also the deep cruelty of the events.

I was thinking about this the next morning when I started listening to The Devil You Know, a podcast by Sarah Marshall about the Satanic Panic of the 1980s and 90s.

About three minutes into the first episode, she says something about the satanic panic that also applies to all history at all times:

“… to see it only from the distance of the present is to not see it at all. The grand sweep of the narrative turns it into something that happened to a country or a culture. But that also means it happened to individuals”

… which was exactly what I already had on my mind that day. Coincidence? I don’t know. Her comments in episode 8 on the lessons of Jonestown are unfortunately especially relevant for Americans these days.

" … we learned the wrong lessons from Jonestown. We learned to fear cults, but we learned to believe that cults come from anything different from the mainstream. We learned that we should look out for Hari Krishna’s tambourines, hippies, and outsiders. We learned to find some “other” to blame, when in reality the cultists we should have feared were the Jim Joneses of our society. The middle class white Christian men leading groups of believers to slaughter."

I haven’t listened to the bonus episodes yet, but the main series is worth your time. And so are Austerlitz and The Emigrants.

I recently watched My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant, 1991) for the first time in 35 years. I remembered only the last few minutes of the movie. I remember seeing the film with two friends in a theater in Indianapolis, but I must be misremembering other parts of that day, because the scenario in my memory could only have played out in 1990 but the movie wasn’t released until 1991. These things happen to memories sometimes.

Recently watched: Zydeco (Spitzer, 1994), Drugstore Cowboy (Van Sant, 1989), Carlos (Assayas, 2010). Also watched Dazed and Confused (Linklater, 1993), which I had somehow never seen before.

Currently reading: Austerlitz (Sebald, 2001), which is hitting me much like his novel The Emigrants did. It is hard to believe what people are capable of doing to each other. Hard to believe that it happened at such a large scale in Europe only 80 years ago. Hard to believe that it is still happening in places around the world. Even harder to believe that roughly half of the people in recent US elections voted to bring it to America.

It seems that Notepad++ got hacked last year. Lovely.

This has been a tough winter to run outside. Cold + wind + slippery snow. Hard to stay motivated.

Recently watched: The Limey (Soderbergh, 1999), F for Fake (Welles, 1973), Safe (Haynes, 1995), Hiroshima Mon Amour (Resnais, 1959).

Recently read: The Oxford University Press edition of The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories (Arthur Machen, edited by Aaron Worth, 2018). Currently reading Ubik (PK Dick, 1969).

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly.”

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in Letter from Birmingham Jail, 1963

America needs his message more than ever.

Recently watched: A trio of films from Werner Herzog and one from Akira Kurosawa. Stroszek (1977), My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009), Fata Morgana (1971), Sanjuro (1962).

Recently read: The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch (PK Dick, 1964). The Man in the High Castle (PK Dick, 1962). Working my way through the Oxford University Press edition of The Great God Pan and Other Horror Stories (Arthur Machen, edited by Aaron Worth, 2018).