#videohead

Louise’s prompt: “ Create a short piece which takes as its starting point TEXT (either written by you or some found text) and makes use of NARRATIVE."

Paula’s Response: 

Louise’s Response:

I haven’t fired up my laptop in months.

I finally got around to watching ‘Her.’

I saw what the movie was trying to get at from the start, like I almost always do. The appeal to having unorthodox relationships. I had one of those once. Because of the fact that I got a little teary eyed at one point in the movie, it occurs to me that I haven’t quite gotten over her.

But that’s not what prompted me to use up a little bit of my free 5 gigs of data on my phone’s Personal Hotspot.

No, what got to me that I’ve been digging at with myself all this time was a quote in the movie. Samantha, the OS the protagonist has fallen in love with, had some serious insight on writing (as I took it) that reminded me how mad I am at myself that I don’t write like a child on sugar coated meth.

"It’s like I’m reading a book, and it’s a book I deeply love. But I’m reading it slowly now. So the words are really far apart and the spaces between the words are almost infinite. I can still feel you—and the words of our story—but it’s in this endless space between the words that I’m finding myself now. It’s a place that’s not of the physical world. It’s where everything else is that I didn’t even know existed. I love you so much, but this is where I am now. And this is who I am now. And I need you to let me go. As much as I want to, I can’t live your book anymore."

There are so many references here, so many more ways this movie can apply, and from this point on in the movie I could see more and more of the creator vs. created aspect of the movie. It’s not so much man vs. machine, although feelings (both OS and human) were stepped on from time to time—like when Theodore couldn’t flat out tell Samantha that her A.I. emotions weren’t as valid as his human emotions, or when Samantha more pointedly spoke to Theodore’s inferiority of communicating with and loving only one individual at a time instead of 600+….

But again, beyond the idea that a higher power that can love multiple people just not in the same way, I have found that women have the capacity for much more emotion, much more love, and much more lateral communication than men—not that many of them don’t necessarily meet anywhere near that potential, but let’s not get into that….

What I see more than anything in this movie, and the reason it’s making me want to write is that it’s really fucked up that we can’t all just appreciate everyone in our lives for the time that they are there. I’ve known my ex for a long time—I know a side of her that nobody will ever know. So she wanted to whore around and suggested I did the same… That doesn’t make her any less of a hot air balloon of compassion than I am. I wanted to control the moment and live like we were living forever, but ultimately I pulled the plug on it simply because it wasn’t real enough for me.

My hiatus in my love for writing is “this endless space between the words that I’m finding myself now,” and that’s okay. I can’t wait to get back on the horse and start amalgamating my collective thoughts into words again.

But right now, maybe it’s not just the words that are so spaced out. I am at such a disconnect, I’m breaking those words down into their individual letters, what those letters represented and looked like centuries before their current conventional use. And like Theodore kept saying, “They’re just letters” (I know I’m taking that literally, just go with it). But when you realize the Hers and Hims out there are just as much a part of you as yourself, without being a mere reflection or projection that you contort them to be—when you finally see that each one of us has this annoying ass thing called a free will and there’s nothing you can do to make that any less so—that’s when they become more than letters but words, books, volumes of lives and breaths.

The most impactful word in that movie was inspired and never uttered: pretentious. That was what literally came out of my mouth at the very end of the movie when Amy, Theodore’s good friend from college, laid her head on Theodore’s shoulder and sighed. Theodore had mentioned to Samantha that the thought of her breathing like a human was unnecessary since she didn’t require oxygen. And here it is blowing my mind as if they intended that to happen all along.

I’m what’s known as an analytic paralytic.

I’m not that great with words, but I love crafting them together myself.

I am completely full of shit and I love it, and I am in love with that.

Dead Sound & Videohead - The Chosen [Perc Trax 048]

Industrial action is somewhat the sign of the times from Perc Trax of late and thankfully we're not talking about them going on strike. Recent releases from Forward Strategy Group and of course Perc's very own debut album, 'Wicker & Steel' have set the standard for things to come.

Perc Trax 048 sees a first release from new boys Dead Sound & Videohead, although it's not their first outing on the label after their recent remixes for Go Hiyama and Samuli Kemppi's 'Arabia EP' that came out on Perc Trax last month. If you was impressed by that then you'll discover similar feelings when listening to this one too.