I Felt The Ad Looked Beautiful

I love doing nothing, what I don't love is the inevitable overthinking that comes with doing nothing

How to Decay Gracefully (ink redux)

I don’t know how to say this in a way that doesn’t sound insane but….

Anytime I see Logan touch Kendall it makes me wanna reach through the screen and throttle Him. Anytime it’s a shot where he puts his hands on his shoulders and his grip tightens, the scene where he caressed Ken’s cheek, god god GOD. There’s something abt it, that makes my blood cold and makes me physically ill. I mean I know what it is, it’s the physical manifestations of the grooming, the physical manifestation of the way Kendall is the son Logan is, to quote Brian Cox, in love w the most fiercely and yet hates so much. And the way he touches him captures this so well, OOO ITS SICK SICK SICK SICK

Wowza

Kim Keever

“Miniature topographies inside 200-gallon fish tanks, based on traditional landscape paintings. Keever fills the tanks with water once he’s sculpted and placed the miniatures, and colored lights and pigments create dense, atmospheric environments. He views his works as an evolution of the landscape tradition and deliberately acknowledges the conceptual artifice.” 

The Kaleidoscope of Political Depression

Staring vacantly at the clinical white walls of Dr. Cottril’s office, an emptiness blankets itself over everything. Like a damp sheet fresh from the dryer, not dry enough to keep you warm but not wet enough to warrant another tumble. She repeats the question back to me, aware of my obvious dissociation in trying to come up with an adequate response.

“But how does it make you feel” she repeats.

“You seem to complain frequently about the stifling nature of growing up in Canada, but I want to understand what about this country feels so suffocating?”

I take a moment to collect myself. It is almost a cliché of mine at this point to blame all my problems on the neo-liberal, late-stage capitalist, imperial, settler-colonial hegemony of 21st century Canada (a string of buzzwords I frequently strew together to invoke some sort of reaction from anyone who will listen). My parents see these complaints as just my brash undergraduate education rearing its ugly head. My sister sees it as a manner of escaping my own insecurities, blaming my personal mistakes on the larger system. “A nation-wide scapegoat,” she says.

“It feels like we are just set up since the day we are born, to be made so small that we eventually just allow this smallness to swallow us whole” I finally utter. “I mean it makes sense though, Canada is a nation whose entire human history has been near erased by the expansive colonial agenda. The only dominant history that remains is the one constructed by a capitalist narrative. Unlike countries with immortalised history, nations which have a record of their different forms of organisation, Canada erased everything.” Just uttering these words makes my palms begin to sweat.

I am quickly reminded of the fragility of my own discontent. How unlikely it is for things to change. I am reminded that Canada has been this way since its foundation and that the current state of climate breakdown is only the result of this system of inequality.

“Thank you for your honesty,” Dr. Cottril responds calmly. “I want to remind you that these feelings are not unique to you or your positionality. You are certainly not alone in feeling this way. I would say you are describing what is perhaps the consequences of a severe case of political depression”

Political depression? I ask myself. What on earth is political depression? I have never heard these two terms strung together before nor can I image the implications this combination of terms would mean to my psyche.

“As defined by Dr. Ann Cvetkovich, Political Depression is the feeling that systems of political action and critical analysis are no longer functioning to improve society or make us any happier. By examining where your depression and sense of ennui may stem from, it’s possible to create a more precise treatment plan that extends beyond typical medical intervention. Cvetkovich sees the current epidemic of depression not as a strictly chemical reaction in one’s brain, but as a symptom of the larger social and cultural inequalities ravaging the planet like racism, colonialism, homophobia, and capitalism. See, I don’t think your depression is entirely genetic or can be treated solely with talk therapy or medication, what your mind is reacting to is the need for social change.”

I sit with her comment, letting her words wash over me and soak into my past. Political depression: a feeling of helplessness and exhaustion in the face of social subjugation. Immediately, I think of Kant’s theory of the sublime. I think of how small it makes me feel to live in a world so grandiose and flagrant in its corruption and hostility. Yet where the beauty of the sublime should reside, I am instead confronted with fear and a sense of worry about where all this destruction will leave humanity. I find myself completely detached, unable to comprehend how to find art, poetry, or beauty in the outcome of our colonial past and capitalist future.

“How can I treat it? Political Depression?” I utter, eyes locked on the floor.

Dr. Cottril asks when I began to feel this way. Says the origin of these feelings will tell us where the best treatment lies. I respond that it was when I could no longer write. I had grown up with an active imagination, spending endless summer afternoons daydreaming along rocky shorelines, creating stories about magical forest nymphs and other creatures only my mind could conjure up. I remember seeing the world as a vast kaleidoscope, endless in its possibilities and combinations, ready for a new generation to discover all the wonderous symmetries and patterns that could be spun.

It was on these very same shorelines my fantasies came crumbling down. The Kaleidoscope stopped spinning. I remember the west side of White Rock beach, just past the train tracks where the landscape begins to curve, obscuring Salt Spring Island behind its towering trees. For the first time I feel my daydreams be punctured by the low rumble of churning engines and the stench of raw coal.

I spin the colours at random and discover anxiety. These trains which have rumbled my communities’ shorelines, sending ripples across our gentle bay, was killing us. Slowly but surreptitiously. I returned home distraught, crawled into my childhood bed, let the blankets crush me into the nothingness I felt on the inside. I wanted to scream but had no sounds to make. I wanted to cry but masculinity grabbed at my throat. The kaleidoscope became jammed in this pattern, unable to spin again. I tucked it away at the bottom of my junk drawer. Every once and a while, sunlight glimmers through and it shines once more. Coal trains are heavier than they look, harder to remove than a Prime Minister, especially when they come from America.

Why this impacted my writing, I’ll never know. Suddenly the words stopped coming to me. I left my journal under a duvet of dust for 5 years, only opened once again to document why I could no longer write for my future self to bring up in therapy. Like I am doing today.

I tell her this is what capitalism feels like. It’s the jammed kaleidoscope that keeps on shinning. The day you can no longer write. When self-expression becomes commodified, every move we make a form of productivity, all that survives is the dust covered journals of those who suffered before us. We study them. Name them the western cannon. If Ocean Vuong is right, and writing is a political act, I write to survive political depression. To cope with our politics in the hope that someone somewhere will read my words and find comfort in company.

“Then start writing again.” Dr. Cottril responds. “Write for yourself and no one else. Don’t just write about your emotions and feelings, but write stories, fables, tall-tales and fantasies! Revolution begins with a pen and paper. Resistance permeated by bleeding ink.”

Alicia Elliot wrote that her language, her voice, was stolen by both depression and colonialism, but that she doesn’t accept this. She writes as a radical act of self-preservation. Maybe writing in the age of anxiety, climate breakdown, and late-stage capitalism demands revolution of the personal kind. Sanctuary has never been more urgent. Writing becomes liberation in the face of adversity. I leave Dr. Cottril’s office and go to my junk drawer. I smash the kaleidoscope into a million pieces, rebuild something new, something unwritten. I build it to endure, I write us both back into existence.

Sam

there are calcified layers of shame in my soul that you could carbon date like rock strata

ok but stewy being canonically bi really makes everything about his relationship with kendall so much funnier like imagine being a beautiful bisexual stallion and your fate is to become best friends with and develop a 30 year crush on logan ‘homophobia’ roy’s prodigal son like. imagine having to do deal with kendall’s ‘no homo but my tongue is down your throat’ repressed bullshit for 30 years whilst also dodging the beam of mixed flavor racism homophobia his father directs at you every time he sees you within 5 feet of said prodigal son but also you feel a strange solidarity with this old man because he at least has also accurately clocked and acknowledges that his prodigal son is queer

The effects of Tom & Shiv's relationship on the main plot

On a rewatch, I found it really crazy how much this dysfunctional relationship––which initially seemed to be nothing more than a b-plot about infidelity and a reversal of traditional marriage dynamics––has sneakily grown into the primary driver of events in the plot. And it started way before the S3 betrayal.

Many cite the beach scene from the S2 finale as one of the most emotionally cathartic scenes in the show. And I totally agree––its fire. BUT, I also think its larger story repercussions are often overlooked; especially how it basically caused the entire S3 civil war plot. Lets just run down the cause and effect:

1. When Tom finally stands up for himself, Shiv is sent into a bit of a guilt-spiral, confronted with just how awful she's been to him. She is reminded how much she NEEDS him, and that she has been taking his support for granted

2. The two main candidates for the sacrifice are Tom and Kendall. Logan says as much when he consults Shiv, and basically asks her to choose between them. If Tom hadn't shared his feelings with her MOMENTS before, she likely would have continued the objective/heartless mindset she showed towards him earlier in the episode. But, because her mistreatment of him is in the forefront of her mind, she decides to protect Tom. This could be read as a change of heart, but i think it's more accurate to say that she does it to make herself feel better; to mend her cognitive dissonance and affirm to herself that she IS a good person after all.

3. Her decision to protect Tom also serves as the final nail in the coffin for her succession aspirations. Logan says that this is the type of decision that she would need to be making if she were to replace him, and the way she frames it as "I cant choose" but also "please not Tom, for me" signifies a shift in the once-equal dynamic between her and Logan. He follows her wishes because he loves her/she's his favorite, and not because he respects her strategic opinions. I think this moment feeds into his complete lack of respect for her in S3.

4. Of course, Shiv's protection of Tom is what puts Kendall under the axe. I think it's clear that Kendall had no intention of going civil-war-mode before Logan deemed him as the sacrifice, and made the NRPI comment about the boy. Neither of these things would have happened without Tom dumping his emotions on Shiv

5. The beach confrontation is also what gives Tom more independence going into S3, tipping the relationship in his favor for a while until it's completely turned on its head in Italy.

I just think it's so cool that the seeds of an entire season's worth of story are sewn in one little scene of emotional confrontation. The Tom/Shiv dynamic has been just as impactful as the one between Logan and Kendall imo, and it's really exciting that the story has such unexpected engines of conflict––and that they all weave around each other in such beautiful ways.

Best show ever guys :,)