Polaris
Things I steer by. A quote, a picture, a film, a page: whatever reminds me of something, makes me feel something, or inspires me.
Not easy. Easier. The catch is the every day.
BoJack Horseman, end of season two. BoJack has collapsed on a hill trying to take up running. An old baboon who jogs past him every day finally stops to say this, then keeps going.
Nobody buys a slide projector. They buy the way back.
Mad Men, season one finale. Kodak brings in a round slide projector they call the Wheel. Don Draper renames it the Carousel and pitches it as a time machine, clicking through photographs of his own family. The product never changes; the story around it does.
The phone is long gone. What it sold still works.
A commercial for the Nokia N70, a phone from 2005. The handset is a footnote now. What the spot was really selling never went out of date.
Love doesn’t lose to time in a fight. It gets trimmed, patiently, a feather at a time.
Pierre Mignard, 1694. Time, winged and bearded, holds Cupid on his knee and trims his wings with shears; the bow, the quiver and an hourglass lie at his feet. Even love gets grounded eventually.
Eight thousand diamonds, and it grins like every other skull.
Damien Hirst, 2007. A platinum cast of a human skull set with 8,601 diamonds, the original teeth left in. A memento mori: remember you will die, however you dress it.
To gain anything, something of equal value must be given.
Equal value
An Instagram reel that plays the law of equivalent exchange, the opening line of Fullmetal Alchemist, as a night out: the euphoria in the grass with the bottles, then the kitchen floor and the electrolytes the morning after. Humankind cannot gain anything without first giving something in return. The joy was real. So was the bill.
He fell. He also flew. The myth keeps both.
Icarus
A reel that strings the myths together: Icarus too close to the sun, Phaeton losing the sun's chariot, Orpheus turning back at the river, Pandora opening the jar and finding hope at the bottom. Set to Camus: the struggle itself towards the heights is enough to fill a heart.