You Spoony Bardo!
It’s that spookiest of Fridays, October 13. I’m your host, Samsara K. Marzipan. Here’s the Potpourri.
Bardo Fond
“Bardo” is from Buddhism; it refers to a liminal stage between death and rebirth. I first encountered this term in college in the mid-00s via the drony noise rock band Bardo Pond. It seemed to further penetrate the American zeitgeist via George Saunders’ novel Lincoln in the Bardo (2017), followed by Alejandro González Iñárritu’s film Bardo, False Chronicle of a Handful of Truths (2022).
Writing out my beliefs as positive or negative statements is antithetical to my agnosticism, but I am comforted by the idea of reincarnation. Not in a straight 1:1 sense, that’s too literal for me; it suggests a kind of cosmic bureaucracy that my imagination has no patience for.
What my imagination will accept is the law of conservation of energy. Death is a great flummoxer to all of us, but at least we are energy changing forms and not just momentary amphibians smashing against the rock of reality.
Then again, I suppose that’s what existentialism is for: to teach us how to be graceful amphibians on our way to the rock.
Après Moi, Le Brouillard
The strange fog of COVID-19 is finally lifting, and that’s probably why I feel like a frog being slingshot at hostile geology. I went into overdrive trying to ignore my body for those two weeks, and now I’m returning to it like a bashful gardener to an unkempt plot.
Disco Elysium, my favorite video game of the past decade or so, kept me company during the ordeal. As I do with films, I found myself writing down lines that stood out to me; there were many, because this game is written to the nines. A few that pinged particularly deeply this time:
— “A volatile simian nervous system, ominously new to the planet.”
— “Few of us can begin to imagine the horror of you—with all of creation reflected in your forebrain. It must be like the highest of hells, a kaleidoscope of fire and writhing glass. Eternal damnation.”
— “In the silence, a low hum starts creeping up your spine. It’s a song inside you—not in the speakers, not in the room. A great bass sigh in the basement of your mind.”
If anyone knows where I can get more writing like this—in any medium—please let me know. My volatile simian nervous system is pining for more.
Art-Maker, Art-Eater
I’m a big art-eater; I assume every artist is. But I seem to have hung up my spurs as far as making art goes. I can find words for my daily life, which I share here, and for the films I watch, which I share elsewhere. But I’m not sure what else to do with my ability to summon words. Brain-ingesting great art agitates a hot kernel at the center of my brain that hollers “make things, make things!” But it feels easy to dismiss this as raw egotism. Maybe raw egotism is what I’m afraid my work will amount to. Nothing beautiful, just a lot of unnecessary me-ness that I’m embarrassed for others to see. And yet I crave being in the world somehow, in a way that scans to me as beautiful. I’ll continue to puzzle this one out.
Art-Addendum
It’s possible that writing about how I don’t write out of a fear of raw egotism is the rawest and most perverse of all egotisms. And anyway, the real fear here is the fear of yelling in your weirdest colors and receiving in echo the annihilating murmur of the lukewarm response. All too quickly, the alchemy of shame and excoriation convert “my work is not interesting” into “my soul is not interesting.”
I guess this is the real reason art is hard: you have to make yourself vulnerable on an unsafe bet. When I grow up, I want to be brave.
Photo for the SEO
Elevator at the Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University’s free art museum. As the title suggests, this exhibit rediscovers the work of Morris Hirschfield, who worked and exhibited alongside popular surrealists like Leonora Carrington but hasn’t endured in the public consciousness. Sister and I visited the Cantor last month during my California visit, and the Hirschfield exhibit was a treat. It also features surrealist work from some of his contemporaries. If you’re in the Silicon Valley and want to check it out, it’s running until January.
—Dara K. Marzipan