change the pear vol. 13 18 May 2023

hello and welcome to another month in crazy town (my mind). it’s been hard going, but i’m trying, and i’m still here. i hope the longer spring days are bringing more joy to you—and if not joy, then at least some kind of peace. thinking of you all.

on repeat

AMYGDALA by agust d. i’m not sure that i have the words to write about this song but i owe yoongi an apology for ever doubting him. this is one of the rawest songs i’ve ever listened to: a meditation on the impossibility of continuing to carry all of the pain you’ve felt, but the equal impossibility of being able to erase it. (anne carson: You remember too much / my mother said to me recently. / Why hold onto all that? And I said, / Where can I put it down?) the difficulty of trying to set yourself free and realising that it’s not a single act of letting go, but something more constant and continual. as hayley said, the whole agust d movie trilogy is ultimately not about being able to kill your trauma once and for all, it’s about continuing to kill it as a process.

last seen (tv)

here is my elevator pitch for trigun stampede, a tv show that ate my brain, rearranged my insides, and is (clearly) still causing me severe mental anguish:

tragic brothers. space western. gay as hell. religious imagery. insane animation. philosophical musings on what it means to be good and whether we can be forgiven our sins. questions include: is being a pacifist in a violent world morally right, or even possible at all? how can we find absolution when we will always carry our past with us in some way? can, and should, you try to save everyone? why? why not?

obviously this is a cocktail of ingredients designed to make me, specifically, insane, but i do think there is something for everyone to enjoy in trigun. anyway, i’ve attempted to outline exactly what makes me feel so crazed about this show and the characters. spoilers ahead.

the story takes place on the planet no man’s land, a totally inhospitable landscape that is only able to support life through the use of generators called plants, which produce water/power/other essentials. the plants are only located in a few towns/cities, meaning they are very precious, even more so because more and more of them are breaking down.

my engines started revving as soon as we meet our hero, vash the stampede, happy-go-lucky guy who really hates fighting please please please don’t make him fight listen he’ll just run away and everything will be fine, except when it comes down to it and he needs to protect people, can whip out a gun and destroy several hundred bombs with a single shot. however, what really got me was the moment where vash is asked, “what are you afraid of?” as he’s caught trying to sneak out of town after this heroic feat, and vash looks away and says, “i have a brother.” HELLO!!! that is the good shit right there!!!

to be clear, i love my own brother very much. but i also absolutely love when complex sibling relationships are portrayed well, with all the joy and tragedy that comes from such an intense bond with another person. showing how growing up with someone, learning about the world alongside them, marks you, for better or for worse.

the reason vash is so afraid of his brother is that 150 years ago, a host of spaceships travel away from earth to colonise other planets. vash and his twin brother nai are living on one ship, along with the woman who raised them rem. a terrible crash happens, caused by nai, and facilitated by vash giving nai the access codes to the navigational systems. this ends up being the reason why humanity is stranded on no man’s land, using the remains of the shipwrecks to build towns and settlements, and relying on the plants to survive.

why did nai do it? well, it turns out that plants are not just generators but interdimensional beings. vash and nai are “independent” plants, meaning that they are able to live outside of the reactors that other plants are kept in. nai harbours intense anger about the way humans have trapped plants, whilst vash thinks that there’s no way plants can survive without humans taking care of them. after the crash, they go their separate ways, but are brought back into conflict with one another as the plants begin failing across the planet. nai, now going by the ridiculous moniker “millions knives” sends genetically modified gunmen after vash to entrap him, including one called nicholas d. wolfwood, who is also a priest and carries his gun as a huge wrapped cross on his back, and obviously vash is super gay for him despite knowing that wolfwood is going to betray him. possibly the most unhinged sentence i’ve ever written.

anyway. vash believes that plants and humans can live symbiotically together; nai believes humans must be wiped out so that plants can take over the planet. to do this, he needs vash. in a physical sense, but also emotionally—nai cannot stand that vash doesn’t see the world as he does. which is why the vash/nai split is one that can never be reconciled. nai will always want vash to love him above everything else, to want retribution, to stand with nai against humans. but the second vash does that, he’ll stop being vash, and so it’s an impossibility. vash is always going to love humanity. he believes in people so intimately: he looks at wolfwood and says, he’s a good person, i see it in his eyes. he smiles when wolfwood tells him he’ll kill vash if anything happens to the orphanage wolfwood grew up in, because it’s an affirmation of that belief—that people are fundamentally motivated by goodness. vash is never going to want to cause anyone pain. even though violence might be justified, he won’t do it. partly because of his nature, and partly because of how he believes that he has already done too much violence.

vash carries the guilt of being responsible for the crash with him. he carries the guilt of abandoning nai with him. he carries the guilt of every single person he’s failed to save with him. he can’t put any of it down. in one scene, he’s shown running while the hands of the dead claw him back. it’s exquisitely painful to watch someone try and try and try to do the impossible: to find absolution for an act they themselves believe to be unforgiveable. because you will never succeed. you will always come up wanting.

and yet vash has been trying to atone for 150 years. at this point it’s a reflex to put himself in harm’s way, to undergo pain in service of others. there’s the tragedy of it: he wants to run, to escape, and yet he will never be able to, because he will always stop to help. he’ll always turn and go back when he’s needed. he learned that early on, when he realised he could heal the dying plants. that’s what he believes he’s good for, where he gets his self-worth from: saving others. or trying to.

but you can’t save everyone, which is something wolfwood knows well, something he tries to convince vash of. he says to vash, “did you think trying to sacrifice yourself would make everybody happy?” maybe this is the first time someone has ever wanted more from vash than what he can do for them. maybe this is the first time someone has ever implied that vash’s own happiness and well-being might make someone happy. maybe the first time someone has wanted vash to stay alive for his own sake, for who he is.

whew. i feel like i exorcised something there. please watch trigun stampede.

last seen (movie)

my favourite thing that sarah and i saw at queer east this year was a short documentary called leo & nymphia. it follows a drag queen called leo (nymphia on stage), and at first the documentary is focused on how he got into drag and what he does in his shows. and he’s very charming and beautiful and we get to see how he becomes bolder and more playful in drag, how inventive he is. but the moment the documentary elevated itself for me was a shot in the mirror where we suddenly see the cameraman, who is also the director. and then we learn about him, how he’s the same age as leo and he’s always been a very socially conscious upstanding student who makes films about, like, garbage cleanup. but when he saw some of nymphia’s videos, he wanted to film her. it gives the documentary this truly intimate feel—we’re now aware that we’re seeing nymphia and leo through the eyes of someone desperate to understand another person’s transformation. the final scenes are of leo doing the director’s makeup and helping him wear drag for the first time—and the director goes to his mother’s house to show her. this blew me away, honestly. a beautiful portrayal of curiosity about the way someone else lives freely, the desire of wanting that for yourself, and then the courage to actually try it.

currently watching

as compensation for me forcing sarah to participate in my rewatch of trigun stampede (yes i watched it twice within 2 weeks. no further questions), i resumed watching demon slayer: the entertainment district arc. what an incredible 11-episode arc. i was gripped from start to finish. the animation is stunning, but i love the journey we’re taken on here. a mystery demon in the entertainment district! our three plucky boys volunteering to join the hashira uzui tengen (who is insane) to smoke her out and kill her! at first it’s all hee-hee ha ha with silly dress-up scenes and tanjiro annoying the fuck out of the house mistress by being too good at being a servant and tengen screaming at them i’m the god of flashiness!!! worship and praise me!!! i’m a glamorous ladies man with three wives!!, but the fun and games ends when we realise this is an upper rank demon (upper six) we’re dealing with. then it’s fight scene after fight scene interspersed with traumatic backstory, because—as we all know—it always goes right back to childhood.

in some ways the greatest animes are all about loss and grief and how we carry them. the violent death of tanjiro’s family is a touchstone for him, and that’s hammered home here, when he is powered into action by seeing upper six cut off the arm of an innocent civilian. he will not suffer any more loss or death. he simply can’t. it is not an option. and so he must fight. and nezuko (his younger sister) is the same. for the first time we see her actually use the full extent of her powers, and it’s because she’s angry and terrified that tanjiro has been hurt beyond repair by the demon. she too, cannot face losing him. she’s already lost so much. and tengen… man. his backstory actually ripped me apart. raised in a strict and brutal shinobi family, he watched as his father worked his other siblings to death in service of becoming perfect killing machines. instead of following the same path as his father, he escapes with his wives and vows to try to outweigh the lives he’s previously taken. breaking the cycle of intergenerational trauma? in my opinion, that’s the flashiest move someone could ever make.

the battle with the upper six demon is long and one of the most gripping anime sequences i’ve ever seen—the animation is stunning, the rise and fall of the fight had me gasping, and through it all i had no idea how things were going to go. the moment where inosuke is stabbed through the heart, zenitsu has been crushed by a building, tengen is lying poisoned on the ground with his arm lopped off, and tanjiro has just fallen off a roof??? literally how the hell do they come back from that??? but come back they do, and it’s so unbelievably satisfying.

but the point where the demons are defeated is actually one of the quietest moments in the whole show. there’s no triumph to it. we have seen the toll that the battle has taken on our heroes. we know how close they have come to defeat, and we have seen what it has taken from them. i love fantasy/sci-fi that is aware of how fighting evil changes you; how even in victory there is a darkness that cannot be eluded. the burden of giving everything to a fight is not one that can be lifted lightly. some hurts do not heal. so it’s not satisfying because they win. it’s satisfying because although it has cost them almost everything, they did it anyway. there was simply nothing else that could be done.

i also really liked how agency was emphasised in this arc. tengen’s choice to escape his family background turns him into a hero. he takes a path that nobody expects him to, and he walks it with grace. similarly, tanjiro has chosen to be a demon slayer, which causes the scar on his forehead (a sign that the bearer is a sun breather) to grow. what a perfect detail! he is becoming a hero, wielding the oldest and most powerful breathing technique, out of his own will. nothing is pre-destined. fate is something we can, and do, change. starting now, things are gonna get real flashy!!

reading

i’m back to slowly making my way through the grundrisse. i read a couple of other political economy books in the last month (monopoly capital by baran & sweezy, and value chains by intan suwandi) and honestly, not to be a marxpilled loser but they have nothing on marx. don’t get me wrong! they’re valuable texts, and i’m glad to have read them, particularly monopoly capital. but the way marx breaks things down to basics and comprehensively analyses every aspect of a situation is unparalleled. yes, it is sometimes difficult to follow and hard to understand—but grappling with capitalism, a political economy that shrouds itself in opacity, is never going to be a walk in the park. that’s why i appreciate the comprehensiveness of marx’s approach, how he dedicates himself to analysing and taking down his contemporaries. only through grasping the whole can you start to deal with the particulars.

anyway, here’s a part from it that i really like. marx begins with a quote from adam smith, a bourgeois political economist, and goes on to critique his position on labour.

‘Equal quantities of labour must at all times and in all places have the same value for the worker. In his normal state of health, strength and activity, and with the common degree of skill and facility which he may possess, he must always give up the identical portion of his tranquillity, his freedom, and his happiness. Whatever may be the quantity or composition of the commodities he obtains in reward of his work, the price he pays is always the same. Of course, this price may buy sometimes a lesser, sometimes a greater quantity of these commodities, but only because their value changes, not the value of the labour which buys them. Labour alone, therefore, never changes its own value. It is therefore the real price of commodities, money is only their nominal value.’ In the sweat of thy brow shalt thou labour! was Jehovah’s curse on Adam. And this is labour for Smith, a curse.

‘Tranquillity’ appears as the adequate state, as identical with ‘freedom’ and ‘happiness’. It seems quite far from Smith’s mind that the individual, ‘in his normal state of health, strength, activity, skill, facility’, also needs a normal portion of work, and of the suspension of tranquillity. Certainly, labour obtains its measure from the outside, through the aim to be attained and the obstacles to be overcome in attaining it. But Smith has no inkling whatever that this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity – and that, further, the external aims become stripped of the semblance of merely external natural urgencies, and become posited as aims which the individual himself posits – hence as self-realization, objectification of the subject, hence real freedom, whose action is, precisely, labour. He is right, of course, that, in its historic forms as slave-labour, serf-labour, and wage-labour, labour always appears as repulsive, always as external forced labour; and not-labour, by contrast, as ‘freedom, and happiness’. […] Really free working, e.g. composing, is at the same time precisely the most damned seriousness, the most intense exertion. The work of material production can achieve this character only (1) when its social character is posited, (2) when it is of a scientific and at the same time general character, not merely human exertion as a specifically harnessed natural force, but exertion as subject, which appears in the production process not in a merely natural, spontaneous form, but as an activity regulating all the forces of nature.

Someone may castigate and flagellate himself all day long like the monks etc., and this quantity of sacrifice he contributes will remain totally worthless. The natural price of things is not the sacrifice made for them. This recalls, rather, the pre-industrial view which wants to achieve wealth by sacrificing to the gods. There has to be something besides sacrifice. The sacrifice of tranquillity can also be called the sacrifice of laziness, unfreedom, unhappiness, i.e. negation of a negative state.

yes! there has to be something besides sacrifice! this overcoming of obstacles is in itself a liberating activity! say that! marx is clear that this is not the case for serf/slave/wage labour, but i love that he also emphasises that there is work and meaningful activity to be done that can bring satisfaction. it will take effort, it will mean exertion, it will mean the most damned seriousness. but to have a purpose, to sacrifice laziness, unfreedom, unhappiness—that’s what work will be when we are truly free.

miscellaneous

making dumplings with the loves of my life. doing my first v5-v7 route at the climbing centre. visiting the grenada exhibition at the bca with abeera and having two margaritas afterwards. poached chicken with sesame sauce. wood-ear mushrooms. burnt aubergine and walnut dip. pork wontons with spicy sauce. agnes reading poetry to me at the pub and holding my hand. ateez revolutionary comeback: the cowboy era. sarah cooking me lamb noodles. abeera cooking me biryani. writing with claire and stella. all the time in the world… and filled with tomorrows. the g. c. waldrep poetry collection alfie got me. this kyra wilder poem. this joanna klink poem. this dan albergoti poem. this carrie fountain poem. trigun stampede thesis 1 (unserious), thesis 2 (DEEPLY unserious), thesis 3 (actually got me to watch the show). watching suzume in the cinema with sarah and both of us laughing out loud when souta turns into a three-legged stool. having our fourth “chaos pint” with claire at new river. this comic. walking amongst magdalena abakanowicz’s weavings with arenike. writing with claire and stella. finding a bag of “pigs’ hands” in the chinese supermarket with siyang. finding an airbnb with a swing to stay in with elete. the motivational kirby and wattlebird that em drew for me. the pear that marisa lino-printed for me in honour of this newsletter.

thanks for being here, through it all. see you soon.