The Apartments of My Dreams
Oh, god.
First,
I drew these 4 “posters” for Hyperreal Film Club’s use in promoting their short film showcase, and I’m really happy with the way they turned out. I wanted to introduce them all here at once, because I like the way they look in a set. But I’m going to sprinkle the full-sized versions of them throughout the otherwise incoherent mess that is the rest of this post so you’ll have something nice to look at as you scroll.
Wincingly, I imagine.
Okay.
I’ve been thinking a lot about dreams lately. I’ve been reading Alan Moore and Steve Moore’s new Moon and Serpent Bumper Book of Magic. And I’ve been listening to a podcast series about the work of filmmaker David Lynch.
Lynch, at his best, I think, is giving you all the clues you need to solve a puzzle that doesn’t exist. Which is ingenious, don’t get me wrong. David Lynch believes that the time you spend in a transcendentally meditative state is extremely valuable to your creative output and overall mental wellbeing.
The Moores (NR) suggest that the time I spend in the space of my own imagination, in dreaming, could be as valid as the time I spend in the waking world. This is common among comics people.
See: Little Nemo. Sandman.
When I was in college, I lived in downtown Charleston, South Carolina for about 5 years. It was different then. Much scuzzier, but safer, probably, if we’re keeping it real. This is before fraternities became massive Xanax distribution systems. I knew like 2 dudes in fraternities.
On the other hand, I associated with cocaine dealers on a daily, professional basis. We had little secret handshakes and shit. I never did cocaine in my life!
A bartender I worked with went 4-0 one night in fistfights against patrons.
It was different. Rougher, but safer. I mean not for those guys. But: you don’t put your hat on the bed, and you don’t put your hands on the bartender.
The overall vibe, then: More “ha-ha,” less “uh-oh.”
King Street runs through downtown Charleston. I lived in an all-teal apartment on King Street, once, above a hookah bar. It’s difficult to explain, but the experience made me a better bass player.
I have another, much scarier apartment on King Street, in a Charleston where I am all alone, where I have found myself once again, where I can never find anyone I’m looking for.
This apartment is a real urine cake. Peeling wallpaper. A sink that stinks from within. An old gallon jug full of cigarette butts, weird brown liquid sloshing around the bottom. I don’t spend a lot of time there. If I find myself there, I try and leave. It’s no place for a person.
This apartment, on King Street, is like 2 blocks up from where I actually lived once, 3 or 4 from where I worked at the skate shop.
The manifestation of the me that either is terrible or in some way grotesque, or believes that other people either think he’s a cancerous black hole person, or they recognize some inner, irreparable toxicity that he hasn’t yet recognized in himself, who himself feeds on doubt and guilt and shame — this is his rat’s nest.
Thankfully, this place does not exist in the physical realm. But in the dream world, the map of which is drawn from memory and draped over the statues and steeples of Real Life Charleston, it’s up on King Street, near Spring, by where the fabric store was that also sold very nice stereo equipment.
But fuck that place, anyway, and fuck the dude who lives there. I know exactly who he is, and DJ Smokey says I must defeat him, and I will. I’ve been training my whole life.
You want to know how to write good? Rule number one: don’t try to write about a fictional band of musicians. It doesn’t work.
Rule number two: Don’t write about dreams. If you must write about dreams, try and keep it short and fun and obviously related to the “real-world” action within the larger narrative. Writing about just a dream? Don’t.
It’s the same reason writing about fictional bands doesn’t work. You’re using a written language to describe people who are themselves describing their experience in the world using musical instruments — a different toolset altogether.
It can work in a movie, because you can hear the music. But music doesn’t really work if you can’t hear it.
Counterpoint: the team at 5 Points Music Sanctuary in Roanoke, Virginia has lots of ways you can experience music. Then again, reading about it isn’t among them.
You can’t really capture the nuance and elastic weirdness of a dream, of people becoming other people, of places becoming other places, of people becoming other places — with the logic, grammar, and structure of a language designed to communicate real-world ideas.
Dreams are so intensely personal that they make any sense only to the dreamer. When I encounter a dream sequence in a work of fiction, I say to myself, “‘Self,’ I say, ‘this passage will be an exercise in lyricality, in invoking poetics to reveal a great truth. But, unless it’s directly applicable to the action in the “real” world of the story, it will be incomprehensible to me. I was not shaped by the same experiences. I do not share these dreams. I will read this passage, but with the expectation of incomprehensibility.’”
Because dreams really only work in a dream state.
I have another apartment, or house, sometimes, in Dream Charleston. It’s like if you were going the wrong way down Ashley from Spring Street toward MUSC. Or if you took Rutledge down and cut over on one of those little between streets. Ashley/Rutledge/Calhoun/MUSC area. It’s hidden down a gravel drive, tucked back from the road.
It started as a flophouse. And initially it bore some interior resemblance to the apartment Face and them lived in after the Rut, fittingly, right underneath it. That place was like being in a submarine.
From the outside, it looks like this place I dropped a fellow fiction student off after a conference in Atlanta. Later, in retrospect, it occurred to me that this person may have been trying to put the moves on me. Well. Joke’s on them: I can’t really think in abstract terms, so I don’t interpret hints. Look how hard my brain has to work to tell me I have weird unresolved issues with Charleston, South Carolina, ffs.
The more I think about it, the clearer it becomes that I spend a lot of dream time there. I’m realizing I have these weird Inception dream-memories of being there.
Imagine wet watercolors shuffled randomly into a stack of newspapers.
The last time I was in Charleston I drove around the area, right to the spot, just to make sure: it isn’t there.
That said, the last time I was in Charleston a lot of things weren’t there.
I’m always returning to this place after some time. It’s a small apartment building in most incarnations. Like a quadplex, but all 1 story, and labyrinthine. There are rooms I have explored, others I have not. The story I tell new visitors, which I’m now telling you, is that I lived in 2 of the apartments, 2 different times, under 2 different landlords. They never knew each other!
In some of these dreams, I have a memory of a previous time I came to live in this place while I either finished some outstanding work to complete my bachelor’s degree, or to somehow complete an MFA in a single afternoon.
It’s collegiate. Sort of gross. A cruddy, mostly-empty refrigerator. A papasan chair. But it’s Charleston, so old hardwood floors are all over the place, and crystal doorknobs on solid, heavy interior doors, and also a certain spartan quality. Let’s let the light take up this space. Put the couch on the front porch facing the road.
Do you know Charleston? It’s like walking through a ghost story. When I was there, world-famous talk show host Oprah Winfrey interviewed movie star Lindsay Lohan on the Cistern, the jewel of the College of Charleston campus. This is a kind of ghost story in itself. An memory from a now-ancient “monoculture,” since scrubbed from the internet. I didn’t watch it live or anything. I was in class, which, thinking back, is insane.
One dude who —decidedly, understandably — was not my friend then described the Cistern, especially in the fall, as putting our own college on par with an old-timey Ivy campus in New England. And he was right! I wish him the best.
It seems like, in recent years, I have purchased the quadplex on the invisible street. I’m still always returning to it after some time, but now I’m fixing it up. Or it’s looking nicer, anyway.
There is a long hallway in the center of the building. It tees off from the center of the house, and it is not visible from the outside. I don’t know if I’ve ever been all the way down it. Cold, marble floors that look like fancy resume paper. A mirrored console table. Opulanza extravaganza, but sterile. A bit like that room in 2001.
The energy from down there is somehow associated with the preponderance of abusive parents in fancy houses I grew up near. Before it grafted itself onto my dream apartment, it first surfaced in the dream version of an especially scary house in my neighborhood. There’s a Neighborhood Kid character in Redfern who hangs out at the Flopp House instead of his place. He’s based on the kid who lived there.
Maybe it’s about the morally-corrosive nature of material wealth? I do think about that shit all the time. About how if that’s what you look like when you win, then I don’t think we should be playing.
I’m not ready to try and draw this place yet. Not the building itself, and certainly not that fucked-up corridor.
Why am I telling you this even?
TTFN
Bo
King of Chill Town
Comics!
Here’s a story:
So my dad’s a Freemason. 2B1ASK1, man. I don’t know.
And one time he had this special Freemasonic meeting where Rex Chilton — some kind of head honcho of Georgia Freemasonry at the time — was going to be in attendance. So, while it’s probably inaccurate, in my memory Dad got on the full rigout for the occasion: ostrich-feathered galleon hat, sword in scabbard attached somehow to ceremonial apron with event-specific appliqué. Tuxedo. Shiny black patent leather shoes. Cool Water cologne.
We got a call from Dad on his way out of the lodge. Freemasons meet in lodges, and cellphones had not yet metastasized. From what my sister and I overheard, Rex Chilton was coming to our house, right now. They’re on the way. They’ll be here in 12 minutes, and the house is a wreck!
Rex Chilton is coming!
Should we put on nice clothes? Or pretend to be in bed? It’s only like 8!
Also: who is Rex Chilton?
Mom didn’t know, but she was still freaking out, so we stoked her panic with glee.
We over-dramatically arm-swept unopened mail and porcelain figurines and malt vinegar packets into open drawers, Mom yelling at us over the sound of the vacuum cleaner.
We set the centerpiece of the table just so. One tenth of one degree too perfectly. Flowers — flowers? — arranged with clinical, soulless precision. A steganographic smarm. Almost totally imperceptible, but, once detected, unmistakable. A seven-layer wagon wheel dip.
But then a half hour, then an hour passed. Clearly they weren’t coming directly over, but what if they want a nightcap?
We were like “a nightcap?”
They had gone to a steak house after all, and Dad was entertaining Rex the whole time — a really nice guy, by the way — and no cellphones, so he hadn’t had a chance to call.
You wouldn’t have done that, then. It would have been weird to ask to borrow the telephone at a steakhouse not far from home. Maybe if there were a payphone. But probably not. You’d see a payphone in a pizzeria.
That Rex Chilton never got to see the way we’d cleaned the place up — straightened up, really, but with a slippery coat of polish on the kitchen floor, a small candy dish on an armrest — that much more satisfying.
But then: what if Dad made the whole thing up? What if he’d just wanted a night off from his bad kids, and a steak dinner, and a clean house to come home to? Because Rex Chilton is a name for a bong.
Anyway, that’s what the scene this page is from is about, kind of.
A moment of gratitude
But first, how we got here:
I printed up ~50 copies of Redfern #1. It contains previously-unseen bonus material, like the page below.
I mailed some to friends and fam.
I sold the rest at Staple! Independent Media Expo.
IIRC, Mike had COVID that weekend. Or at least that’s what he told me!
I then decided to not print a Redfern #2, opting instead to produce a full-length graphic novel, the ongoing development of which is chronicled here.
As a result, I don’t think Mike Yohe ever got to see his Free Wifi letter in print. Here it is:
Thank you, Mike! Not just for your letter, but for your kindness, and your steadfast support in all my harebrained endeavors. You’re a genius and a madman.
Thank you also for reminding me to take a moment — in a moment like this one — to be grateful for things like this, and for people like you.
And for all of you, too.
I think this blogletter is an intimate enough affair that I can say without any parasocial treacle that we’ll get through this, or we won’t, together.
Submit your comments below, or to PO Box 10146 Austin, TX 78766, or to freewifi[at]coinlaundrycomics[dot]com. Many ways to connect!
An update from K.I.D.S.
Greetings once again from my cute-ass life.
I made a little story about Moon as a special agent of K.I.D.S. in Monterey, and meeting the sea lions. I put it together as a presentation so I could read it to Moon’s first grade class. If you click the image above, it should take you to the whole thing.
See? That’s what you do: you put the call to action at the tail end of the second graph.
It’s one color, because I had to put it together quick, and it’s blue, because Moon’s favorite color is blue.
Early in the story this security guard kid who Moon named Andy won’t let us proceed until we have the appropriate security clearance. So we handed out these badges to the class. They’re kind of crudely finished because I printed, laminated, and cut ‘em all out at FedEx Kinko’s 13 minutes before I was supposed to be at the school.
Cuttin’ it close!
It was the best time I’d had in years. Moon was beaming. The kids all yelled “arp! arp! arp!” when it showed up on the screen. The laugh moments hit — they all loved it when Moon climbs on top of the sportscar to investigate the sound of its alarm. (There’s an accompanying spoken component to the story, where I narrate it, kind of, but I just made that part up when I got there.)
What else?
I got to design a series of posters for Hyperreal Film Club’s short film showcase, submissions for which are now open. I personally know half a dozen readers of this blogletter who shoot short films. Maybe you’re interested!
This is a picture of Kathryn Bigelow, who made Strange Days in between Point Break and The Hurt Locker. Has any one director had a more direct impact on elder millennials’ ideas about of masculinity?
Fincher, maybe, but unintentionally, and in the wrong direction.
There are 3 more in the series, but they haven’t been posted on the Hyperreal account yet.
TTFN
Bo
/
I have found my people
Sea lions must've been saints in their past lives.
They are sea lions.
We’ve been traveling a bit lately, so I’ve spent a fair amount of time on meandering walks around hotels and parks rebranded as “spy missions.” More specifically, recon missions for K.I.D.S., or the Kids’ International Department of Spying. Though technically an adult, I perform a necessary role as Special Agent Moon’s “fixer” in the field.
What could ever be more a more compelling mystery than the little closet they keep the ice machine in? Why are hotels so serious about ice? What’s down this hallway? Does this go underground? Where are they going? K.I.D.S. demands answers!
Behold my cute-ass life.
On one such mission — what is that crazy arp! arp! arp! sound? — we turned a corner to encounter thousands of these glorious creatures.
Hunter S. Thompson said at the top of the mountain we are all snow leopards. I say we only truly know the kind among us when they get to come back as sea lions. Either way: water cats.
True fact worth noting: you are living through a time that Hunter S. Thompson could not. No disrespect. But also: shout out to you, you know?
Comics!
The Operation Ivy portion of this comic comes to a close over these two pages. I switched to a brush as opposed to a pen for these, and I think it serves the images. They’re a little more gestural, a little more focused on rhythm than detail. I don’t fuckin’ know.
Fip Flopp V. Exactly the kind of kid taking a briefcase to school. Subscriber easter egg: the cloud shape on the above page comes from the Operation Ivy logo!
This is going to be a graphic novel about Paul Redfern, but when it’s all said and done a lot of it is going to not be about Paul Redfern. You know how it goes. Ramen Ezra Lungs.
This is the 2-page spread introduction of the Flopp House, where the Flopps live. It’s based on like a decommissioned Chinese radio surveillance tower. There’s a neighborhood kid burning heaters on the balcony. That’s Craig. He’s cool.
The aim here to is to preview some of the characters you’ll meet more formally later, and to introduce the house as the wacky place where these weirdos all live.
Movie review: I love Megalopolis like I love Jupiter Ascending
My favorite thing is an artist at full send. Total commitment to the work. It’s all anyone can ask from them!
I keep hearing that Megalopolis is a critical and commercial failure, but I don’t think it’s either. I don’t know if it can fail, at least not according to the terms laid out in the movie itself.
Do you remember Jupiter Ascending? The Wachowskis’ massive-in-scope sci-fi space opera, in which a shirtless half-wolf Channing Tatum flies around on scooter boots, squiring a secret-princess Mila Kunis around the galaxy? No? It rules.
In the case of Jupiter Ascending, my theory is that the Wachowskis started out making a trilogy, but then the studio saw some roughs and told them ‘we’ll let you make one,’ so they made Jupiter Ascending, and it’s just exactly the insane mess you’d make if you had to squeeze 900 ideas into 2 hours, 7 minutes — with $175 million dollars to spend.
The catch: you have to have the 900 ideas.
I don’t care if you like Jupiter Ascending or not. And I almost don’t care whether or not it’s “good” by any traditional measure. It’s already good. If a movie studio gave me a frankly astronomical sum of money I hope I’d have the courage to make something as audacious and weird and personal as Jupiter Ascending.
Imagine the bullshit the Money Guys™ put you through at the 175 million dollar level. And still making Jupiter Ascending! You fucking win, Wachowskis. Don’t get me started on Matrix 4. They stuck the studio for $190 million on that one, and all the studio got in return was a movie about lighting 190 million dollars on fire. Art is what you can get away with, and The Wachowskis are undefeated.
Megalopolis is a little different. It has a 120 million dollar budget — ¡papitas! — but it’s Francis Ford Coppola’s own money. And: he’s like 84. And he has 120 million dollars to throw at a movie project. You’re Francis Ford Coppola. What else are you supposed to even do with 120 million dollars if you have it? Build a mausoleum?
So this is the insane mess you’d make if you had 120 million dollars to burn, but no more fucks to give.
Still, it seems small.
Not small.
Small in the same way Daniel Johnston’s music is small, but you can hear what he’s trying to do, and what he’s trying to do is very big. Or it would be. You can see what Megalopolis is trying to do, and what it’s trying to do is revolutionary.
Megalopolis is like the movie you watch when you’re waiting to get into the Haunted Mansion, but without the ride. You can sense it, though. You can sense that Coppola, who made Captain Eo, wants each audience member to experience the sensation of “stopping time” for themselves.
The individual scenes may have been better served as waypoints or cut scenes in an otherwise immersive, interactive environment. That would justify some the more egregiously expository speechifying, anyway.
As for the movie’s central “art can save us” stance? I’m sort of with him!
The idea that we make so much food we have to throw most of it away but people still starve to death on planet Earth seems like the prosecution’s exhibit A in the people vs. how dumb as hell the concept of a zero-sum game is. The idea that this is the way things work, because this is the best we can do? Ridiculous.
But listen. An 84 year-old’s vision for the future is going to be necessarily based on some outdated ideas. And any era’s ideas about the future are most telling about the era in which those ideas gained popularity, not in contrast to whatever future eventually came to pass. It’s incumbent on creatives to imagine the future as a stand-in for a more-perfect present, so it’s heartening to see a career iconoclast like Coppola bet the farm on a movie with a very hopeful message.
Minor quibbles:
Megalopolis — a deeply humanist movie shot against green screens — shares a problem with Trolls Band Together — a movie made with zero evidence of any human involvement whatsoever: parts of it appear ungrounded. Like the events unfolding movie aren’t taking place in physical space.
In old movies and sitcoms, you never see the ceiling, because that’s where all the lights and microphones are, and when you become too aware of the lack of ceilings it really takes you out of the experience. This is like that, but with floors, and it’s unsettling. Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis movie suffers from the same problem.
Keanu should have been in the Adam Driver role, because Keanu would never have delivered that dumbass ‘I only have time for people who can think’ line, or it least not so seriously. I was legit like “should I leave?”
Major takeaways:
Aubrey Plaza is an all-timer. We know this. But watching dudes like Jon Voigt and Shia LaBoeuf react to her and try and fail to match her unhinged energy is so much fun to watch. No one knows what to do with her. It’s great.
Francis Ford Coppola makes beautiful movie moments almost by accident. There’s a part where Jason Schwartzman starts playing the drums, and for a spontaneous moment we’re in Uncle Yanco.
Coppola can’t help but capture small moments on a human scale, even as he tries to reframe the scope of cinema itself. Whether or not he succeeds in this is beside the point.
∞/10
TTFN
Bo