#201

Since yesterday, I have not listened to the Two Gallants or Gogol Bordello albums that were released while I wasn't participating in anything that was happening, but I did listen to the Caspian album that was released during that strange, deeply isolated time.

Wildly off the chain. So everfucking mothercrashing good, so far beyond superlative. These dudes continually exceed their promise, giving me everything I could want from their next record every time and an order of magnitude more. Every time! Dust and Disquiet. So beautiful I cried a tiny bit as I walked home, during the first swell of "Sad Heart of Mine". Hyperawareness of the total permeation of the complete love of God in everything before my eyes and infinitely in every direction overfilled my torso and leaked out of my eyes. That is how that was.

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Probably tomorrow I will get to those other two or at least one. In addition oughta finish hearing  Aesop Rock's The Impossible Kid and also Malibu Ken. Whenever, though. That seems less important at this juncture.

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Also of special note on In League With Dragons are the songs "Going Invisible 2", "Clemency for the Wizard King", and "An Antidote for Strychnine". Those four are my special favorites from the album, the fourth being "Possum By Night", as I mentioned yesterday.

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The sunset did so many crazy things as I finished typing this post. 'Twas a magnificent time. It was a great, blazing hot day and I had tremendously great walks. My special shoes are back from the shop and the joy of walking is back to full power. It's been a lucky week and a lot of good stuff happened.

Yo. Y'all. Midsommar, written and directed by Ari Aster, is no joke flat-out one of the best movies ever made. Period. My girlfriend and I went and saw it yesterday evening, testing out the renovation on our once-crummy and hella run-down local small pre-1950 theater. Both the newly splendid theater and the film were everything anyone could possibly want from the stated purposes of the phenomena in question.

Seriously one of the best movies ever. I haven't seen anything that good in years and years, maybe more than five or even seven years. Everybody in the world (who has some confidence in the strength of their stomach and the resilience of their nerve) should watch this thing.

I should probably qualify a little more. The movie is fucked up, maybe more fucked up than any movie I've ever seen. It's funny as hell and gorgeous to look at and groundbreaking in a dozen discrete ways but yeah, this is stuff that has made people leave theaters in panics and rages and rants and have to go be sick and stuff.

Nothing gets me off more than shit like that, provided it is done artfully, to a perceptible point and purpose, but the point is if you freak out easy, this is a movie you should not watch. Even if you don't, this bad baby might push your limits. Antichrist is one of my favorite movies ever, and I think this goes considerably further in a couple key ways. If I can even compare a movie to Antichrist it's an incredible day at the office; I cannot even compare it to the rest of its director's oeuvre. Here there are ample comparisons to be made, and things that keep each work fully in itself and beyond comparison. Midsommar brings it to that level and maybe a notch or two further out.


It's a fuckin trip, check it out if you can handle a bad trip as well as a good one.


--JL