We become accustomed to the state of things as they were when we were young. At that time we're not so aware of the world’s constant state of flux. It transforms more easily than we do; upon aging we notice the world we knew as youngsters drifting away, bastions of childhood one by one fading, a bewildering relegation of everyday realities to treasured memory.

I remember sodium vapor lamps. I recall textures of normalcy I no longer know the names for, may never have known the names for: the printers that printed with that scratchy-back-and-forth sound, onto those green and white sheets of paper that had the sprockets on the sides. The plastic preschool chairs with the three holes in the back. Color schemes left over from the seventies, ochre and yellow and orange and brown. Overhead projectors with the roller sheets of plastic for writing on. Floppy disks. Wood panelling. The need to remember where pay phones were, and to carry quarters for which to use them. Film.

Those are the generationally specific ones. There are also the universals: your elementary school, now demolished and rebuilt; the trees under which you played, now withered stumps. An Astroturf soccer field that was once dirt, unkempt and sandy, just the way you liked it. The inconveniences which are no longer necessary but which you take pride in, because they once gave you character.

Logically, you can see it isn't just your generation who faces this issue. But because this is, for each of us, our very first time living life, it feels unique. Why are the bright stars of our landscape dying?

This is where a certain breed of despair takes root. Pile on our contemporary politics and environmental concerns, and you've got a recipe for teetering psychological disaster. It is a terrifying void, that existential pit. The exhaustion of having to continue adapting and acclimating on so many levels, the way we did so naturally as children, doesn't make things easier. We fall short of our earlier selves.

What to do?

Paul Schrader's new film, First Reformed (watch the trailer), is about a pastor (Ethan Hawke) wrestling with this dilemma on an intimate and profound scale. The spiritually vacant megachurch near his tiny parish certainly comes up short on answers. I had to see the film twice before realizing the first action we see the megachurch pastor perform is a corrupt one, so casually is it executed. Schrader's portrait of megachurches in all their sterile, corporate glory is quietly damning, but it's a sidebar. Taking aim at the religion-as-team-sport ethos is almost too easy as the main subject of a film this probing. Schrader, who wrote as well as directed, has larger concerns on his mind, and his protagonist's existential crisis is beyond the purview of what faith systems are able to answer. The pastor's conundrums are those we've all had, a confusion based on the original human question: Why?

There are many elements I love about this rigorous, unsparing and rather perfect exploration of the bleakness of blackest despair and what to do about it. One is its implication that we often already know the answers, but have to come around to them before we know them fully. As Tolstoy wrote, much philosophy is thoughts you and I have already had, just expressed in better language.

Another is the ruminative directness of its language. It's no surprise Schrader loves Dreyer and Bresson (at only 24 he wrote a seminal book on them and Ozu). First Reformed is a companion piece to his 1976 screenplay Taxi Driver in more ways than I dare reveal here; suffice to say both are about lonely men writing in diaries about worlds which they no longer understand. Conversations– notably a ten-plus minute barn-burner of conflicting ideas exchanged between our pastor and a young depressed environmentalist early on in the picture– run longer, deeper, more probing than movie conversations normally do, with not just one point to make but several.

Formally speaking, there are a few aesthetic components Schrader here employs which make the film a different experience from anything else released this year (film critics almost never have filmmaking training: you'll find better writing about First Reformed's themes elsewhere, but you've come to the right place for a discourse on its aesthetics!). 

One is planimetric staging. I know. You've never heard of it, but you've seen it. Wes Anderson is its most famous progenitor: the action is staged parallel to the picture plane (lens), often in front of another parallel element, like a wall. From Anderson's Moonrise Kingdom (left) and The Darjeeling Limited ​(right):

Basically a square, it stands out from the rectangular compositions we've become used to in cinema. Faces and bodies fit into it differently, and different things get emphasized. It's a touch claustrophobic. Its narrowness means usually only one visual item of interest can occupy the screen at any given time. Andrea Arnold, who also uses the ratio, calls the academy ratio more “intimate”: 

From her ​Wuthering Heights (top row, lower left) and Fish Tank ​(lower right):

First Reformed also has a lateral tracking shot that shifts to the right– I won't spoil which one it is– but this time the lonely person in the frame moves with it, and the "hallway" isn't empty, but involves an important character beckoning him, the one who will have the answers. In this way it's more hopeful than Scorsese and Schrader's 1976 vision.
​
These and other stylistic elements combine to articulate a very interior, subjective environment of our protagonist's psyche. There is something profound to me in watching what Schrader calls the "man in a room movie;" the eternal question of a (wo)man alone in a room, with nothing but their own thoughts.Small wonder the guy likes Bresson and Dreyer; we can find antecedents in Bergman (Winter Light comes to mind), and Schrader's own Light Sleeper and others.

Kendrick. Was that him? Even twenty miles an hour can seem too fast, what with all the glass and foliage in between, not to mention our opposing movement pathways and his distance from my bus. I was gliding north on Rainier, nearing the Ethiopian Community Center, when a shadow beneath the trees caught my eye. I know that gait. A figure glancing past on an evening sidewalk, long shadows now, just getting to where I could make out his profile. Yes, it was him. 

I honked softly, a tap two times. He turned– my hand in the air, a salute– and it landed. Our eyes locked at the last possible moment.

The next day he was waiting at Holden Street.

"Mister Kendrick,” I declared, like an MC announcing his guest. “How's life, man?"
"'Sup, how're you. You still modelin', bro?"
It took me a moment to put together that he was referring to the ad campaign* I’m featured in. “Ha! Somethin' like that! Somebody takin' pictures of me out there, I don't know who…"
"Just like that, kickin' it! Gettin' it said! Guess what though. You deserve it."
"Man, I appreciate you sayin' that. I hope that's true."
"I know it's true! I want everybody to prosper, bro. Prosperity is for everyone. That mean sooner or later I got the prosperity."
"Exactly, it's an additive thing, for all folks. Everyone deserves it."
"Everyone deserves it, just like that, man. E'ryone should get a turn. Iss good to see you. You blew at me the other night, bro."
"Yeah! I was like, 'that's my guy!'"
“You know what," he said. The sharing voice. "Some things touch your heart. Tha' touched my spirit, man.”
“Thank you so much. We gotta look out for each other,”
“I know man, tha's what we got, bro! That's all we got, man. We have to coexist–”
“Exactly. We have to figure out a way to make this whole thing work." Hafta. Our words, molding themselves into the regional vernacular, of their own accord. There’s a linguistic fascination in ‘hood cadence being comparatively consistent throughout most metropolitan U.S. areas;** I picked it up from my days in L.A. The sort of thing that sounds truly awful if you try to fake it, but which rolls right off the tongue if you’ve lived a certain somewhere. I feel like I have to hold myself back sometimes. They don't know where I'm from.

“Jus’ like that," he said again. I'm sensing a catchphrase here. "I can’t wait to, I wantchoo to meet mah little girls, man.”
“Oh yeah, bring 'em on!”
“Ah got three daughters, and they as cute as a bug. Paradise, Yum Yum, and Kennedy.”
“What's the middle one's name?”
“Yum Yum.”
“Yum Yum.”
“Tha's her nickname,”
“I love those names! Paradise, Yum Yum, and Kennedy.”
“Jasmine is her birth name, but as soon as tha doctor put her in my arms, we jus' instantly bonded, I said that's my Yum Yum.”
“That's beautiful.”
“She as cute as a bug, maaaaann… you know what? It's good to see a... it's good to see a good… man.”

He chose the final word with care, and said it with emphasis. “You a good man, bruh.” I had an idea of what he meant. It isn’t the first time discussions of masculinity have come up in the ol’ neighborhood. The discussion in more monied circles these days is rightly focused on the need for equal treatment of women, and the urgency, at long last, to take women’s voices seriously. Kendrick and others are highlighting an element that won’t become part of the cultural conversation*** until later– the flip side of the coin. What does it mean to be a good man?

Is there such a thing? How should a man function in a society where men have long been expected to be in control (though most of them never will be), fix everything, to not take part in communities but rise above them, who are raised and encouraged to be out of touch with their emotions, and who generally feel emasculated by the impossible expectations they’re held to?****

Perhaps by admitting we don’t have all the answers; embracing the vulnerability of letting down our guard, sharing in the “uncool” emotions of joy and fear and wonder we only pretend we don’t feel; recognizing that equality is not a zero-sum game but is instead additive, as Kendrick alludes to above. Prosperity shared helps everyone. It’s okay to celebrate something sensitive, and call it out as beautiful; that’s what our friend K-Money, ruffled black denim and voluminous black print tee to match, bald head shaved over a chain necklace– that’s what he was impressed by. 

“Right back atcha,” I said, “especially like, talkin’ 'bout Father's Day and stuff,”
“Jus' like that man, thank you very much." He paused. "So whatchall… what route you was drivin’ before you came back to drivin' th' 7?”
“Yeah I was gone– doin' the 41, 65, lil' bit further north,”
“Okay, goin' through Lake City?”
“Exactly. And those are fine, but man, I had to come back here. It's just, I don't know how to explain it. I feel… this is where I belong, you know? Where it all makes sense. I feel right comin' out here.”
“I appreciate tha’. I'm tellin’ you man, you will always prosper, bro. ‘Cause two things that you are: you are so humble, and you are so thankful.”

Effusively thanking him, I added, "humble and thankful– you know, I remember you and me talking about that one night like those are the two things–”
“If you keep– those two things, I promise you. In time all things wi' be revealed. Ey, what time you leavin’?”
“Um, fifteen. Fourteen minutes.” 
“Koo.”
“Alright man. Always good, Kendrick.”
“Al-ways!”

After the alotted time had elapsed, he materialized yet again, this time bearing gifts from the neighboring Rite Aid.

“Donald Duck orange juice,” I exclaimed, as he handed me the bottle. “How'd you know I love this stuff?”
“‘Cause you a good man, bruh. No matter what, you always– the thing I know about you? Is you treat the neighborhood good, man.”
“Thanks, man. I love this place.”
“You know hatta serve. That's next to Godliness, man.” He gazed out the window now. “Servin’,” he repeated, mostly to himself.

I would see him two days later, once again a figure in my periphery as I drove past. Was it too soon to honk hello once more? No. He was off the sidewalk, stepping through a dishevelled front yard toward the main entrance of a walkup. The bus moving past, his concentration elsewhere, my tap-tap travelling towards him, the sound taking form in his mind, given meaning, a signal a salute, him turning, me turning away, his eyes getting closer, his hand pulling back from the doorknob up into the air, knowing before locking eyes who that probably was–

–and there, right there, a fraction of a fraction of a second. We did it. We stopped time. Made it special, a freeze frame lingering long on a warm summer night.

---

*I still haven't watched this video....

**For more on African American Vernacular English, as it's called in linguistics, refer to this paper, especially section 3 (structures in urban AAVE grammar). It has some interesting bits about how rap has incorrectly co-opted certain grammatical elements of AAVE and why, as well as a new tendency toward minimizing certain AAVE grammar in later age, due its now disproportionate aspect as a marker of youth culture. If you don't want to turn your ten-minute coffee break into a 90-minute lunch, try this shorter but still terrific blog post summarizing AAVE history and characteristics.

***It's an exciting time, but it's not a new time. I haven't been alive long enough to live through multiple such movements, and while I'm incredibly enthusiastic about the direction we’re moving in now, I find the perspective from those older than me sobering, and instructive. “I remember thinking the same thing during the Clarence Thomas hearings, that the cultural moment had come and everything would change,” pioneering psychologist Louise Fitzgerald recently said. “But here we are twenty-some years later when people are suddenly rediscovering yet again that sexual harassment exists.” 

In her landmark tome Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Susan Faludi delineates the principal complaints women aired on inequality during the 1970s. They're almost exactly the same as the ones we hear today.  I'll refrain from repeating the line about history repeating itself, because I do believe incremental progress is being made, but having entire generations who've never read The Hite Report and have no idea who Betty Friedan is probably isn't helping. More for the reading list....  

****I wish I could take credit for these insights, but they come from Susan Faludi. I’ve recommended her writing on my blog before (including thirty seconds ago in the footnote above, ha!), but I can’t help it. Anyone with the slightest interest in learning about gender issues from something besides a 101 class and a bunch of BuzzFeed articles will drink up her two 600-page mammoths, Backlash (about the backlash against Second-Wave Feminism in the 80s) and Stiffed: the Betrayal of the American Man (about male emasculation and the assumption of male dominance, with a focus on the 90s). They’re simultaneously devastating, difficult to get through, and impossible to put down. She channels her necessary frustrations into a level-headed calmness of prose that leads to insights our extremized culture tends not to reach.

​Faludi was most recently a finalist for another Pulitzer for her memoir In the Darkroom, about her father coming out as transgender and undergoing reassignment surgery at the age of 76. 

We are who we are who we are, in other words. They say you never forget the ending of Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath; I came upon it in middle school, and was moved by the stark kindness shown to strangers in the book’s final moments. But what burned a deeper imprint for me has always been Tom Joad’s last words to Ma, where he explains why he needs to be where the action is, where everything’s going wrong. Maybe “a fella ain't got a soul of his own, but on'y a piece of a big one,” he says, echoing filmmaker Terrence Malick’s notion of humanity as a collective, and the fundamentally right sensation of contributing to that collective, those other parts of ourself.

Maybe that's what I'll always be trying to aspire towards.

----
​
Some more specific thoughts on what the 7 is and why I like it (and how I'm thankful for colleagues tolerating my nutty inclinations) here, from a night in 2015, and in the post linked above from a few months ago, as I was leaving the route.

Looking for more 7 stories? Take a peek at the archives, on the sidebar to the right and below! Most everything on this blog from mid-2014 onwards is from the 7/49. Winter 2012 and 2013 are the 358, and the other seasons of those years are primarily the 3/4. 

*More on this in an upcoming post.

I’m going to describe him, and then I’m just going to let him talk, let the scene play out, that it might resonate for you as it did with me. We’re on Aurora, just about about to turn off and go burrowing west into the quiet residential tracts. He boards in true Aurora Avenue garb– gray carpenters and a white t-shirt dirty from work or play, jailhouse tats emblazoned on his arms, once pale but now tan and coarse. Stubble-faced traveller edging out his fourth decade, tough but friendly, companionable even, with the bass-heavy grit of life in his voice. He knows how to meet you on your turf. 

“I think my transfer ran out,” he says. “Gimme a second with these bills.”
“Oh, just some coins is cool.”
“Points?”
“Coins. Just some coins, yeah. You’re all right.”
“Oh. Thanks, man.” He's taken aback. I often feel I’ve seen more beautiful things with more regularity at this job than anywhere else: look at the face in his eyes now, the realization that he’s in a safe space, accepted. Among friends.

“Hey,” he adds. “You know what? You’re all right.”
“Thanks, man!”
“Listen, I bet you hear a lot of stories but lemme tell you. Years ago I made a mistake.”
“Okay,”
“And I’m gonna to see my mom and wife right now for the first time in six years, we’re gonna have dinner.”
“Wow!”
“Then tomorrow I’m going on a thirty-eight month sabbatical. But I’ve got today, and I’m gonna have a great time.” 
“Oh man! Okay that’s fantastic.”
“Yeah I, well I made a mistake.”
“Okay.”

A quick speaker. “I used to run with… you know, I was just downtown makin' a couple rounds. I wanted to say thank you to some of the guys down there. I used to hang out around you know UGM, Rainier Beach– I mean these are not guys you would introduce to your grandmother, lemme tell you. But I wanted to thank them for being part of my life and my journey, right? Now my mom wouldn’t appreciate them at all. But here’s th’ deal, I shook their hand I said ‘you treated me with integrity in my journey but I’m never gonna see you again, ‘cause if I see you again then I’m ‘onna cause trouble, make a bad mistake.’ But I shook their hand you know what they said? They pretty much said the same thing they said, ‘pleasure meeting you. You go take care your business and you go get your family.’ And these guys. These guys… and so I keep makin’ these runs right, on the E Line, I started hitting this wave of grumpy people, and I jus' got through with this one guy, just I mean… I mean I was like I should just take this guy and throw him off the rails but I’m like no, no, no. And he got me all riled up, and then I get here and now all of a sudden for some reason I’m at peace again, and to have you say that, I’m like you know what?” 

“Dude,”
“Just so I’m tellin’ ya–”
“That means a lot–”
“Little things like that–” 
“–the details.”
“Go a loooong way.”
“What an awesome journey, man, first time in six years. And okay, thirty-eight month sabbatical–”
“Yeah well what happens is I made a mistake nine years ago and… Okay I made a poor choice, thought it was quick fast, thought I was a gangster. So what I gotta go do is go back to face a first-degree armed robbery charge?"
“Okay,”
“And what happened was I got out, left DOC for the first time and got a job and got all this– but I left the County after nine months. I took a three-day violation and turned it into thirty-eight months, but you know what? I’m here.”

It was a sabbatical. More jail time– and jail time for paltry regulatory reasons from the sound of it, pertaining to no new crime towards others… no one would fault him for being furious at the world, or hopeless, and yet– he called it a sabbatical. Would that I had a fraction of his temperance and perspective. He had one day with his family after six years, with another three away in front of him, and he wasn’t dismayed in the slightest. He talked about it like it was time to think and grow.

Part of me wondered what had kept him extending the travelling violation. Love, perhaps? It must have been something worth it.  There was no fear in him now, nor energy expended on any other negative emotion, no matter how expected– disappointment, frustration, disillusionment. I’ve met monks that aren’t this good. Did he read the Stoics during his time inside? Or did he and Epictetus simply reflect and conclude similarly, never mind the millennia separating them? 

Take life as it comes, and make the best of it.

He waved back at me, one last time, clearly and genuinely invigorated for the evening that lay ahead, his gladness at our exchange, for what today meant. Here was a man who knew how to enjoy the present.