This week I finished:

I Am Not Your Negro: directed by Raoul Peck, based on James Baldwin’s manuscript Remember This House: You can probably tell that Baldwin’s views resonate with me. How he describes the perspective from the bottom of a dominance hierarchy. He attributes it to color, which I see as a proxy for access to a resource with no alternative, but the view is the same. Partly it speaks to my time growing up as a minority in school and my neighborhood.

He also survived a lot. This movie, and I suppose his manuscript on which it is based, deals with the assassinations of his friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King. It also features Bobby Kennedy, whom Baldwin also knew, and who was assassinated. It treated his experiences in Paris, imprisoned, and other inhumanities he faced.

Through it all, he persevered and shared his experience. I don’t know if I can think of someone else who has taken up his legacy.

Mulholland Drive, directed by David Lynch: My recent series of movies that altered my views of movies and gave me insight on life: Yi Yi, A Brighter Summer Day, and Tokyo Story began with seeing Yi Yi on lists of greatest movies since 2000. Mulholland Drive appeared on those lists too. I didn’t know anything about it.

In college, at the soup kitchen I volunteered at was a cool guy I got along with. Sadly I don’t remember his name, but he had curly red hair and wore hearing aids in both ears. He was also in college, but I never saw him on campus.

He loved Twin Peaks and talked about it. I don’t remember details, but since he seemed so cool, I figured the show must be too. It sounded visionary. I remember friends in high school liking Blue Velvet. Something about Eraserhead seemed to resonate with the scene on South Street in Philadelphia in the 1980s. Still, Mulholland Drive is the first Lynch work I’ve seen

Needless to say, I watched it more than once. The first time through, I couldn’t tell what it was about and got thrown after the blue box got opened, but I kept thinking “I don’t know what this movie is about, but the directing and acting are great!” It was very compelling. The scene of the two guys behind the Winkie’s stood out.

Still, at the dinner party announcing the engagement, when many characters came together but some, like the Winkie’s guys or the aunt, don’t, it felt self-indulgent. I couldn’t get the connections between the different but similar characters played by the same actresses.

I was ready to chalk it up to great directing and acting but surreal and odd when I watched a few videos dissecting it. Then I rewatched it, jumping around to closer to chronological order. Things fell into place. It made sense. It stopped being surreal and became more nonlinear in time but linear in sense.

I appreciated the storytelling, style, and how well details and subtleties fit together. I like how he was saying something meaningful. I’ll probably watch it again months or years from now and get more from it.

I’ll have to keep thinking about the following, which may change because of some details I’m still processing: I can’t put it on par with the other movies, though, because its message is less universal, more just about Hollywood. The other movies are about families and people in regular life, which, in the hands of the artists who made them, make them relevant to all people at all times. So far I don’t see that universality in Mulholland Drive.

I qualified that statement because just at the end of the last time watching it, I saw some imagery of the two main characters lit like the young Betty overlaid with the jitterbug dancers. Something about that image made me think of them as people independent of Hollywood. Did the movie transcend just a critique of Hollywood to reveal something about all relationships? Who hasn’t experienced unrequited love? Who hasn’t wished revenge? Who hasn’t regretted something huge, even if less than murder?

I’ve fallen so deep in love I couldn’t think of life without the women I loved at the time. As for the movie, I’ll see how it evolves for me.

Wisdom Takes Work: Learn. Apply. Repeat., by Ryan Holiday: Speaking of series, as I did with Baldwin, this book wrapped up the Stoic virtues series, of which I liked the first three. This fourth one continued the quality and meaning.

I had met Ryan in person maybe five years ago at a book event of his. We spoke for a moment, but nothing meaningful. A month or two ago, a mutual friend introduced us by email, but we haven’t communicated much. Still, knowing an author makes a book more appealing.

As with the others in the series, this book portrays vignettes of renowned people, some alive others historical, showing various aspects of wisdom. It’s engaging.

I have my share of vanity, but I don’t think I’m vain to say that I believe I’m exhibiting these virtues in my living more sustainably. When people say I work on the environment or sustainability, I correct them that I work on leadership applied to sustainability. Leadership is about people, emotions, and behavior, not technology, market incentives, or legislation. I’ve been acting to change culture, which requires leadership, which requires virtue.

I look forward to a full conversation with Ryan. I wonder how he’ll view my life and work.

• ← Another winter solstice successfully handled. Tomorrow will have more sun.
• Year 15, day 1 of my burpee sidcha →