I realize it

now, all I had been missing was excess joy. The epiphany came the other day when I had a little excess joy during the day (you know, an overflow) and I was chatting up the guy in The Subway Shop about having to deal with homeless people when I sit by the window and eat my sub. I have now decided that it’s better to hide a bit at the back of The Subway Shop, because King Street in Hamilton can sometimes be a lively place, and I just want to eat my lunch, not get involved. People will see me in The Subway Shop window looking prosperous and ask me for money, or much worse, one guy once asked me if I was a homosexual which was unnerving — as I am one, but that is an antique term. Anyway I was in possession of a little excess joy, so I chatted up the guy behind the counter (could he be gay?) who is always so nice to me, and who once said ‘you look very different today’ which was encouraging — because it seems to me to be a virtue not to always look the same. And I began to think about the fact that I have absolutely had no excess joy to share with anyone for a very long time. I have a naturally frowny dour face, and apparently am intimidating— with my pierced ear and tattoos (I’m not trying to look intimidating, just sexy — but I guess sometimes it amounts to the same thing). So people don’t normally talk to me;  I have to talk to them. And sometimes when I am in possession of excess joy, I do, and it’s fun. So where did all my excess joy go to? Well, COVID-19 took it. And the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to me that eliminating excess joy is what COVID-19 was all about. I mean that’s what the authorities were telling us all the time: ‘You should be able to put up with this, I mean surely you can manage to make do with simple — old-fashioned — joy — what do you need with an excess of it?” To must of us, because we are puritans who are descended from a long line of pleasure-exorcising, self-flagellating crazies (that is our Empire Loyalist Heritage in Ontario) this sounded pretty reasonable. (It’s important to note that I am speaking of nice middle class people when I speak of this excess joy. When it comes to the working classes, or worse yet, the homeless and the very poor, COVID-19 meant much more than just missing a little excess joy, it meant madness, addiction and death. I am still counting the bodies of the friends — they are still slowly piling up, as the isolation of COVID-19 has had slow and chilling after effects). But for us middle class types, it sounded easy -- at first -- to give up a little excess joy. So let me define excess joy right now. Regular joy is -- satisfaction. I think the best way to look at it is in terms of orgasms. Orgasms, are by definition excess joy. The reason God made us this way (or mother nature, or whoever you think is in charge) is because sex is kinda fun -- but orgasms are really fun, and if a man has an orgasm then he will impregnate a woman, which God apparently wants, I guess. There are those of course who think that orgasms are not necessary, who just put up with them in order to make sure that the earth is fully populated (but of course we know that is no longer an issue). Similarly there are those who think that simple old-fashioned joy is quite enough. You know, reading a book and being engaged but not inspired, or watching TV on some device that passes the time, you know, being entertained, having bad sex out of obligation, chatting with a boring person just to be nice and well, you know.... That is what I would call good old fashioned simple joy. But an excess of joy means that you are having an exquisite time, and for me that only happens at parties or with friends, and when I’m writing, or at a great play or movie, or watching HBO, or (yes of course) having orgasms. The fact of the matter is that all ‘art’ could be considered an excess of joy. You see, there is your mundane life, and sure, there are lovely sunsets and petting the dog — these are uncomplicated pleasures that everyone has at their fingertips, and of course if people are Zen enough, they can enjoy them and be satisfied. But what I am making an argument for here (perhaps you can tell I was warming up to this) is that we need the 'excess of pleasure,' well -- a little more than we think we do. In other words it’s not enough just to be satisfied (or worse yet to ‘get what you need’). What life is really about — and what we actually live for — is an excess of pleasure -- what is a special, unworldly, unmatchable, indescribable experience beyond pleasure -- divine, ecstasy -- OMG!— you know what I mean. Because life is basically dreadful (I hope you are still with me here) meaning we are all eventually going to get sick and die — or if we are very lucky, we are simply going to die — and because life routinely refuses to live up to our expectations. And people — well I just don’t know where to start with them — but they constantly disappoint, infuriate and just drive us nuts with their inability to be what we want them to be most, i.e. perfect in the sense that they not only fulfill our needs and make us happy but make us ecstatic in some way (it’s not always about literal orgasms). So we must have something else! This is excess joy…. bubbling over, it is art, it is artifice it is what is beyond -- well, reality -- and we all need it, and it’s really what we live for whether we admit it or not. So what I’m saying is that COVID-19 not only took away something we really need, but something which many of us can’t do with out, and on top of that, COVID-19 made it seem like we shouldn’t really need it at all. So here we are, pretending that we do not need or want excess joy; and I for one am apoplectic. (I had to look that word up, but it  seemed right — and it is — “overcome with anger, extremely indignant”).

To be clear

I have nothing against Jen Sookfong Lee. All this is not her fault. She’s a great writer — that is she writes well, and insightfully, and with great wit. I do have something against ECW Press -- or rather I am very sad when I think of them, for I had a professional relationship with them for nearly 20 years. They published several novels of mine and also several books of poetry. I really counted on them them to support me — not financially but emotionally. I needed to know they were there and were committed to my work -- and then suddenly they disappeared. There was no explanation really, just after 20 years a committee was now making editorial decisions and that committee had decided that my work was not suitable. There was no why or wherefore, but it became clear to me what was going on when I submitted a proposal for their ‘pop classics’ series of tiny essay-books. Or let’s just say it's become clear now  after reading Jen Sookfong Lee’s  lovely essay gentleman of the shade. my own private idaho. Again, this is not about Jen Sookfong Lee, it is about ECW Press. My proposal to ECW in 2018 was to review several movies from a gay perspective (I can’t find the proposal now, I'm not sure exactly what it was —maybe  I wanted to write about a John Waters’ films, unsure). Anyway, I was planning a book much like gentleman of the shade. my own private idaho — that is a chatty analysis of a queer film. They didn’t want me, so they hired Jen Sookfong Lee. What’s missing here? Jen Sookfong Lee is not a gay man. She is, as far as I can tell from her book, a heterosexual woman, although she hints that she is not only into ‘gender fluidity’ but also bisexuality — though she never identifies with either of those labels. You may say ‘why is Sky so attached to labels?’ I'm not, but because I have sex with men, I have experience with several things that Jen Sookfong Lee does not I.e. — homophobia, and having sex with another man. She says of the director of My Own Private Idaho (Gus Van Sant) that "he uses established tropes and expands them with sexuality or gender fluidity or jerky camera shots.” She says Van Sant’s view of queer sexuality in the movie now seems to her "sweetly naive.” She speaks a lot about mass culture and how fake and shallow it is, and she treats Van Sant’s movie as ‘authentic’ in that it alerted her to new realities. Part of that seems to be a certain class consciousness, as -- though she identifies as working class -- it is clear from her 'epilogue' that she is a middle class person: “I left my real job at 29 to write full-time and my agent worried that I would starve. …I decided to keep freelancing instead of looking for a steady job.” No working class person blithely quits their job and makes light of starving, let me tell you. I have nothing against Jen Sookfong Lee for being middle class -- I am middle class -- but being gay has opened up a whole new world of class consciousness for me that Jen Sookfong Lee only gets secondhand from viewing a film about gay street hustlers. The fact that she finds Van Sant’s view of the characters' sexuality ‘sweetly naive’ indicates she doesn’t know much about gay men, or hustlers. I have hired boys to strip for me in bars, and had a boyfriend who was a sex trade worker. Sometimes their work is as sweet and lovely -- as it is portrayed occasionally in My Own Private Idaho -- and at other times it is oddly detached and cold. But so, of course, is most of life. The overall impression one gets from reading Jen Sookfong Lee is that when she first saw My Own Private Idaho at age 15 she was a tourist in the gay world, and she began to get a taste of what it might mean to live an 'alternative' lifestyle. All that’s great, but as a gay man my experience of the film is very different. It made me think very much about what it means to be a straight acting fag (which I am not) and what it means to be paid for sex (Jen Sookfong Lee mentions this, to be fair, but her experience was not mine as a gay man). Finally Jen Sookfong Lee does not know what it means to live in a cultural wasteland, a vast desert of feeling where everything that is important to your sexuality and your emotional life is barred from you, because these feelings are verboten, obscene, fatally outside the mainstream. She does not know what it means to live every day for years fearing AIDs, and never losing the shame of AIDs. Or what it means to be sexually and emotionally castrated by homophobia --  to live the first 30 years of your life jerking off to pictures in porn magazines, and then throwing the magazines in trash bins distant from your home because you are terrified that your mother, or girlfriend, or anyone, will find them. The problem is that no one cares to hear from gay men anymore about anything. We are actually barred from writing about our lives, because it is assumed that other voices are more acceptable or politically correct than ours. What about all the young gay men who are lost and rejected -- considering suicide? They aren’t looking for essays about how looking at gay movies helps straight women feel better about being rebellious -- they're looking for some way out of their suicidal anxiety. Well good luck to them. The powers that be have decreed that our voices are to be silenced -- and that means that lives will be obliterated too. Oh, well.

Monkeypox is a

poem. I will now analyze it for you. Initially we are just struck by the power of the word; it is brutally efficient — so much is said by the sound alone. The word ‘pox’ is a physical shock — the ‘p’ is plosive and the ‘x’ has makes a lovely 'hiss.' The word ‘monkey’ isn't bad either (that harsh ‘k)’. There is lots of harshness in this word. It startles and pleases in just the right manner. More significantly, the word ‘monkeypox' is redolent with associations, one can almost smell it. We have the photos of course — those gorgeous terrifying images of skin that should be lovely and smooth — blanketed with postules! What could be more horrifying? One is immediately rendered not only physically uncomfortable but ugly -- untouchable. And it is that ‘untouchableness’ that is key. The most evident and pronounced resonance surrounding the word ‘monkeypox’ comes in the first part — ‘monkey.’ This is obviously a racist word -- rich — nay abundant — with associations. When Obama became president I received a ton of racist emails from someone I barely knew.  What ever-ending invention there was -- of both a digital, and a lexical variety! I certainly didn't know there were so many different ways to imagine Barak Obama as a monkey! Yes, of course, he has big ears — we can imagine the oversized teeth, the fur, all the rest —  and for these racists such images are deeply hilarious. If black people are monkeys, they are of course stupid and probably sexually voracious (don’t monkeys masturbate all the time? ) and  they have no shame. And because of the 'monkey' part of the word, we know it is a ‘black’ illness — i.e. that it comes from Africa -- and that it is most likely spread by Africans. A welcome echo is the idea that AIDS originated in Africa, where men and women undoubtedly have sex with monkeys.  Thus monkeypox is not only a black disease, but a gay one too. Of course we know this from AIDS - the first victims of AIDs were — bisexuals, Haitians and drug users — the very bottom of the barrel; basically human excrement. So of course we aren’t at all surprised to see that the first cases of monkeypox in Canada occurred in a gay bar on Church Street  — Woody’s — and in a gay bathhouse in Montreal  —G I Joe’s.  (Do they still have bathhouses for gay men?  Oh yes yes yes! Through their diabolical sexual practices gay men continue to inflict their gross illnesses upon the rest of the world!) Racists and homophobes know that  gay men eat excrement and are in their own way, a kind of excrement, so all of this is no surprise. Then there is the final, and probably most important aspect of the word 'monkeypox' --   it is transmitted through contact with animals. Not so co-incidentally, we have recently come to understand that we have cruelly raped our planet; our technological selfishness has hastened the demise of Dear Mother Earth with a frankly suicidal ferocity. And we are paying for it  - in a manner that not even Alfred Hitchcock imagined in The Birds. We will all die with the image of Greta Thurnberg stamped on our psyches! How tragic! It took in innocent child to speak the truth!  We are descending to a kind of hell — we have abused Mother Nature for too long and now she is having her way with us, and there is nothing any of us can do. All of this exists in a beautiful tragic word/poem called ‘monkeypox.’ What is alarming to me — and no one else apparently — is that as we gradually remove literary analysis from school curriculums (along with ‘close reading’) and substitute for it math and science, we render ourselves epistemologically impotent. There was a time when the primary subject of all study was rhetoric -- i.e. the theory that the world can be read as a poem, created by God. You see, the world is ultimately unknowable -- at least in a 'rational' 'fully conscious' way. But we can -- by experiencing beauty, by allowing it to have its way with us (as we might do with that gorgeous, terrifying word/poem ‘monkeypox') -- well, we might come to better understand what actually is. However, it's terribly important to remember that the concept of rhetoric does not mean simply enjoying beauty but -- from the time of Gorgias — rhetoric reveals to us that all language is deception; and that words create our reality. Yes, even scientific theories are poems, and the only way to live in this world with any sort of clarity at all is to be acutely aware, from moment to moment, of the techniques of manipulation utilized by master poets, philosophers and scientists to sway us to their various points of view. But sadly, this particular skill set is now lost to us; we know nothing of rhetoric, and even pretend we don't like poetry (i.e. in books).  But alas, though we pledge allegiance to the 'truth' we are aesthetically flawed and fatally addicted to mists, miasma, and metaphor! Our tragedy is not ‘monkeypox’ -- it is that we have forgotten that we are dreaming -- and there is no one left to wake us up.

I don’t know

where to start with Terence Davies’ Benediction. I would say he is in a class all by himself, but there is a little club of bitter old fags many of whom are still alive (you see they didn’t have much sex, so they didn’t get AIDS) and who hate themselves for being gay, and hate gay culture, and have to write about it over and over again. Larry Kramer was the prime example of this type. It doesn’t matter how much that evil fag did for AIDS, he was still a nasty queen who hated the rest of us for getting laid and having fun. Don’t get me wrong. I hate gay culture as much as the next guy -- but frankly it’s all we’ve got, and it’s much better than straight culture -- which could put you to sleep when you’re already sleeping — it’s so boring and predictable and self-righteous that you just want to kick it in the ass and say "haven’t we listened to Beethoven’s 9th Symphony enough?" (Oh come on:"'Isn’t the Queen a Wonderful Person?" And: "When it comes down to it, there's just nothing at all quite like the loving warmth of ‘the family’"? Pullease.) Terence Davies new movie just makes me want to write something better. Benediction was for me, at first, addictively watchable. At last, a gay movie! But like The Power of the Dog, it must be set in another time and place because we mustn’t ever ever watch post-AIDS fags frequenting sex parties they booked online, or getting high on meth and ‘G’ and poppers, or cheating on their husbands because they are pretending to be nice middle-class straight people when they’re the furthest thing from it. So Davies brings us a biography of Siegfried Sassoon in which he relays the heart-wrenching tale of a poet (circa 1914) of great talent and integrity who somehow mistakenly forgets himself and ends up traipsing around  being a homosexual during his misspent youth. And before he knows it, he’s dancing the tango with beautiful young bucks, sucking off Ivor Novello, and just generally acting like a bitchy, nauseating, promiscuous sissy! Of course these parts of the movie are the only thing that’s watchable —Sassoon’s eventual redemption (he converts to heterosexuality) and conversion to Catholicism — as well as his courageous anti-war stance — is supposed to be what we are engrossed by (and what we can congratulate ourselves for adoring when we leave the theatre). But how can we even pay attention to all that noble stuff when these days we never ever ever get to see cute gay men being bitchy and screwing each other — sometimes even at the same time! (Except, of course, in real life!). I’ve got news for you, gay men are not the only people in the world who are narcissistic, superficial, promiscuous, and mean. Everybody is. So why are we still making movies about how horrible gay men are? I go clubbing every weekend (yes I’m the old guy you see in the corner trying not to look like he’s a day over 50) and tons of gay men (young and old) are doing Very Bad Things, and yes acting just like they did before AIDS, but that’s why I like them! Don’t you see? Most straight people don’t even do enough Very Bad Things in their whole life to have anything to lie about. (I do pity them!) But why are we still lying? Isn’t that what gay liberation was all about? Why do we have to put up with the self-important inflated egos of damaged gay men who try to pull this load of hypocritical horseshit over our eyes — it’s all lies! Do you hear me? Lies?! I can’t f-in stand it anymore. Can we at least try a little bit to stop hating ourselves for one moment for being who we are? I daresay (and now I sound like a character in a Terence Davies movie) I daresay I am one of the few gay writers these days who writes about gay men, and also one of the few of those few, who doesn’t detest his own kind — or at the very least, knows that he hates himself, but really tries not too. I’m not pretending to be the wisest person on earth but I'm old enough to know that gay men are no more horrible than anybody else. The problem is not sexuality, the problem is that the only thing that seems to make people happy is comparing themselves to other people, and deciding they are better, and doing horrible things to those other people because they feel inadequate. You can search for the why and wherefore of such behaviour but I’m afraid it’s just human nature — schadenfreude — relishing the suffering others. We are all to some degree sociopaths. And we love it, especially when people suffer because they do Very Bad Things that we always wish we could do but never did because we were far too cowardly. Or heterosexual. Or something.  Well I’m back! We’ll see how long I can keep this sort of thing up. I used to be able to do it for days, but I'm not quite the man I used to be (however I’m learning how to 'bottom,' don’t you know, and the rewards there are indescribable! We’ll talk more about that later!) Or maybe we should talk about it now. There is nothing quite like submission. There's a whole religion about it, Houellebecq wrote a whole lovely novel about it (I tried to do that too recently, but I guess I can’t, because it didn’t work out). Let’s just say this: what demeans you is what redeems you. And if you don’t understand that, then (sigh) —  he said condescendingly — then for you, there is very little hope. But I’m crossing my fingers. (And they are, presently, up my bum!)

X has been

put in a category with Midsommar (which I loved ) and The Blair Witch Project (which I hated) as a horror film for intellectuals. It is not. It is inexpressibly stupid and offensive. (But that can be said about most commercial films; X is certainly not in a category all its own.) At its squishy centre is something reviewers call real, psychological horror — the fear of aging. But fear of aging is not a universal human dilemma -- rather a problem peculiar to our contemporary youth-obsessed culture. As an aging gay man I am fully aware of what it’s like to be despised for my age -- and not necessarily by other gay men; thank God gay men have invented a category --  ‘bear’--  which is a kind of non-retirement home for sexual older men. I vaguely fit into that category (though I do not have quite enough body hair, but yes, there are hairless bears!) In other words gay culture — though it is often dismissed as ageist, is quite the opposite. (In fact young gays are sometimes dismissed as ‘dumb twinks’ and vilified as much as the old.) Don’t worry, I’m not bitter, and I get very well laid thank you. This is important to mention, as X seems to be under the impression that an aging body is horrific and that all old people run around desperately trying to get young people into bed. (Especially ‘cougars.’ This movie in fact should be retitled ‘Psycho-Cougar!!!!’ It would be even more popular and spawn even more sequels.) The plot— like most horror films, is not really scary, and is endlessly unoriginal. Horror films — like Marvel comic movies — are now a genre that have substituted self-reference for originality. (Apparently there are a lot of filmic in-jokes in X, I frankly couldn’t care less.) So yet again, it’s a bunch of sexy young'uns. But here, the women are very young, the men not so much — because obviously in a heterosexual film it is threatening for straight men to watch young bucks flopping around. But there are very young women, of course, who are invited to dangle their boobs in public. These sexual ne’er do wells rent a farm house (yawn) to make a porn film, and the house is owned by a decrepit old couple — incredibly wrinkled and ugly; they can barely talk or walk. Trouble ensues. Of course the film features lots of pornography (though nothing hardcore, sadly) before we get to the killing. Much of it is instigated by the old woman, who, unlike her husband, is intent on kissing and feeling up these infants — and even dallies with some lesbian action — climbing into bed with one of the girls. It’s so gross! (Just kidding. but that would be the reaction of youth today.) Remember Harold and Maude? None of you are old enough; it was the very opposite of X (and one of my favourite flics). In it, a teenage boy falls in love with an 80 year old woman (the incomparable Ruth Gordon). They have sex and yes, we see some of the action. (My favourite scene is the priest describing his horrifying vision of the two of them in bed: ‘his firm young flesh and her old wrinkled flesh co-mingling' -- making a face as if he’d just eaten bad tuna.) Such a film could not be made today. The mere thought of an older wrinkled lady trying to kiss a firm, hung, young stud sends today's young audiences into gales of laughter mixed with paroxysms of uncontrollable, panicked, screaming joy. (Ugh! puke!) X implies not only that the old are sexual predators because they are sexually frustrated (i.e. sex is over for them) but that they are bitter about it, and angry at the young for being young. This is nonsense. Has anyone ever diagnosed ageism as — not only woke narcissism — but a sociopathic illness? As I understand it a sociopath has no sympathy for others. The fact that we all get old is conveniently forgotten by today’s young; I’m sure it has always been so to some degree. But this romanticisation of physical youth and beauty has now become romanticisation of their ideas. Woke politics is fundamentally ageist. Though supposedly wokies fight the good fight: i.e. diversity for all self-identified minorities, lately they have focused on two relatively new categories -- trans and disabled folx -- while at the same time ignoring two very old categories — the old and the working class  -- as well as gays and lesbians. These are no longer included among the oppressed. (Note -- as my friend Allan Stratton mentions recently in Quillette — the destruction of the Alexander Wood statue on Church Street in Toronto). Whether you identify as old, gay, lesbian, or working class, your lack of privilege simply doesn’t count. Intersectionalism has become ‘age-exceptionism’. What we have learned from intersectionality is not that everyone has many intersecting points of privilege or lack therof, but that oppressed youth are much much more oppressed than anyone. Anyway, rest assured that most of us old folx are quite glad to say goodbye to the urgent erections and messy lubrications of the past. We get all the sex we want and need thank you. We may be wrinkled and repellent to you, but we sure love gettin' it on! And yes, along the way we have gained a little wisdom that (I know it’s sacrilege to suggest it) you might very well learn something from. 

So there.

NITRAM is a

miracle. It’s a new Australian movie that you will probably never see. It stars Judy Davis: I would climb mountains to see her ever since I saw her in Life with Judy Garland: Me and My Shadows. (Woody Allen used her for awhile but now we are now told to hate Woody Allen.) In Nitram Davis plays the mother of a very violent man — I guess he is psychotic, it’s hard to tell exactly what’s wrong with him — though the acting by Caleb Landry Jones as the son is so scary, touching, and real that he’s already won several international awards. (Alas, no Oscars for this work of genius, as the film is not entirely politically correct and features no deaf people). Nitram (the leading character) appears to be ‘retarded’ (I think that term is used in the film) or slow -- but also deeply troubled, terminally lonely, a doomed outsider (there is something of the ‘incel’ about him). Writer Shaun Grant and director Justin Kurzel have  fashioned a deeply moving, hauntingly naturalistic portrait of a depressed murderer. And, fascinatingly, we identify with him — or at least feel his pain. He’s even charming and touching at times, despite his fascination with guns. None of this is acceptable to the powers-that-be these days; the film has been pretty much banned in Tasmania where it was made (no one will show it, it's how stuff disappears now: i.e. Louis C.K.'s I Love You, Daddy). I won't to give away the whole plot  -- but let’s just say Nitram  has very important things to say about bad gun laws. Don't get me wrong. I would never extol a movie that was merely dedicated to reminding us how lax gun laws are-- this movie is not a platform, it is a deeply human document. Nevertheless the Australian and Tasmanian governments have come out against it.The Tasmanian Police Union has complained that the mental health of its members may be ‘impacted' by Nitram.This is 'Woke Victim-speak’ for ‘cancel this film it’s hurting me!’ In fact a member of the Australian parliament has complained that Nitram made him ‘uncomfortable.’ (God forbid!) But art is now so dangerous we must be protected from it. At one pre-Covid play I saw they were offering a room suppled with crayons, where you could do ‘colouring,’ to calm you down. (I would posit that any adult who can actually be calmed down by a colouring book is already irretrievably nuts.) One theatre in Toronto now offers 'a facilitator who will be available to provide one-on-one emotional support.' So if you need to gather your senses after being assaulted by some hateful, hurtful piece of art, there will apparently be people there to comfort you. A somewhat unexpected side effect of COVID-19 -- has been the end of art. (I've been complaining about it for awhile now). No one will notice; art was always a hard sell anyway, and just a few hapless Canadian artists like me  ever bothered to stand up for it; no one ever listened. It seems quite clear that after COVID-19, art will just limp away as it did in the Dark Ages. People will forget that the the best plays and films and books should upset you. Just as in medieval  Europe -- where the unwashed masses were offered church windows and the occasional passion play that reaffirmed the story of Christ -- today we are given films like CODA to remind us of the plight of deaf people, endless appeals to save the environment, and trans hagiography, but, God forbid (!) -- nothing that might make us uncomfortable! This of course will lead to more crime, drug addiction, and suicides -- more unresolved human pain. Art, in case you hadn’t notice, can be a harmless drug. At the moment reruns of The Sopranos are kind of keeping me alive. Tony leads a much more stressful life than I do, which reassures me -- but I also love it  because I can experience madness, pain, and death in heavy doses, something we all need to be familiar with, because our lives will be touched by those things at one time or another -- and art is the only place where we can practice them  without ever actually going mad, or shooting up an elementary school, or dying. I will use this blog to say farewell to art, in hopes that someone, somewhere will remember. Okay, what about Judy Davis’ portray of Nitram's mother? She is sublime, understated, and, thank God, she smokes, (There is something about Judy Davis smoking a cigarette that drives me nuts.) She’s still amazingly beautiful, though alarmingly wrinkled. What makes the movie triply controversial is the handling of Davis's character; Nitram neither entirely blames nor entirely forgives her, we are left hanging in a disturbing zone of paradoxical tranquility (where art should leave us). She watches her son commit atrocity after atrocity and does nothing, because, you see, she loves him. She says ‘I gave birth to him’ with a savage force -- like Brecht’s Mother Courage she is at once admirable and contemptible. The final shot is her, smoking, looking off into the distance, listening to a TV news program that exploits her son’s crimes. Nitram is a work of art because it offers up a real anti-hero -- not some  sexy marvel pseudo-tortured joke like The Batman. But, hey -- incel as hero; there’s a real anti-hero for you.

The Pope’s apology

 is at best fatuous, referring to (if not directly speaking about) ‘bad apples.’ The best I can suggest is that Indigenous people should hang him upside down and shake him for as much as he’s got; he owes it to them, as does the Catholic Church (don’t get me started on that). But what I really wanted to talk about was a revelation that came from the mouth of Kaluhyanu:wes Michelle Schenandoah, of the Oneida Nation. She said: “Because we didn't have souls, that gave the right for these explorers to do whatever they wanted with Indigenous Peoples — murder, rape, enslave.” This is a very profound and tragic -- but also beautiful -- idea. It’s also true. And it’s also nice to hear someone speak of ‘the soul.' Do we, in fact, have souls? One isn’t so sure as ever more frequently the transhumanists go on at length about how computers can write poetry. and we can download our personalities onto them. But computers will never replace people, thank God — though they may try to. (It happened to me recently -- twice -- at the bank. My debit and credit cards were both denied. When I complained they said — “We don’t know quite why the computer did it.” When I questioned one woman further, she said: “It was probably due to an algorithm.” It occurred to me, naturally, that the algorithm had something against me, but that’s what’s supposed to make algorithms so wonderful — that they couldn't, possibly. An algorithm has no soul, and if it makes a booboo it’s merely a booboo, there is no malice behind it. But, I must insist that a booboo is still a booboo; it still smacks you in the eye and makes you bleed, malice or not.) No. Humans have something called ‘the soul’ and no amount of bad computer poetry is going to convince me otherwise. There is something magical about truly bad poetry, truly bad art, and truly bad thought, because it comes from that glorious imperfection we call humanity. It’s as if God didn’t finish us. She/they didn’t get something completely right. The neoplatonists did not believe that; they believed that God intentionally bequeathed us with all his dreaminess, craziness and poetry, that there are various levels of reality. At the top is God. Then comes angels, then pure soul, then the human spirit, and then the material world. (I may have missed some levels — I’m imperfect, due to my soul, sorry.) The point is that most of us are pretty much always floundering around somewhere between the material world (the body) and the soul (spirit). What I love about neoplatonism is they’re actually not too bad on sex; they realize the body is necessary, and that people do need to get off -- a little more than occasionally (whew!). But they also believe that the kind of union we really need with other people is spiritual, which can only be achieved through love, And love is also the same as beauty. (Which is the really good part.) Lord in heaven (to coin a phrase) why am I telling you all this? Because I’m old, and will be dead in no time at all I’m sure. As I write this I can feel my spirit very leaving my body, ever so slowly. It’s a good thing. I don’t mean I am ascending to heaven (or hell, for that matter…) but my the body is becoming less and less useful, I experience less desire, less physical joy — and loads more physical pain — as my body gradually disintegrates with age.  I will not be sad to see my body go (my body and I always had issues). And I will still be there, but in some unrecognizable form — which I know is not reassuring. I may come back as a beetle, or a cock (not a penis, but a chicken, unfortunately, and not that kind of chicken unfortunately, maybe even -- a hen). I won’t bore you with any more of this, but I wanted you to know why I find the soul so interesting right now, because mine is definitely going somewhere else, soon. So my ears perked up when I heard the word ‘soul’ from the mouth of  Kaluhyanu:wes Michelle Schenandoah — it struck me that what she talks about here is the essence of human evil. It’s a principle also articulated by Hannah Arendt in her various studies of The Holocaust. Arendt theorized that the Nazis rationalized exterminating the Jews by dehumanizing them, compared them to animals -- to rats and pigs. As they were not human, they necessarily had no souls, and one could dispose of them. This kind of dehumanizing is central to genocide; unless you are a psychopath (or Donald Trump) you will identify with other human beings, but not with soul-less animals (we’ll leave animal rights activism aside in this analogy, as it is left out by Arendt). Therefore, you cannot and will not kill them because they are human and have souls. But here comes a difficult concept; try and get your mind around it. Everyone has a soul. Every human being. (How do you know you are human? Well if you are reading this and you are not a computer, then you are human). Yes, that means Hitler and yes, even The Pope, and Stalin and Putin and that guy who won’t wear a mask in the elevator (and is an anti-vaxer), and racists, and sexists, and homophobes -- they are all human.  Ergo, therefore, as angry as we get about other people we should not kill them. And it might be advisable not to even wish them dead. Living, you see, is not something some souls deserve and others don’t. Living just is, well, a thing. And for all our theorizing, we are not entirely sure, yet, what.