I know you come here for bus stories. But don’t leave yet! As many of you know, I used to be a film critic, and I’m still a filmmaker. I love driving the bus for the same reason I love art: because I love people. Because I’m intrigued, mystified, and intoxicated by this stage we call life. Art is the only profession that explores the act of what it means to be alive. It is the only discipline where you don’t have to provide answers. Questions are the thing. The artist does not answer; she asks, engages, presents for our reflection. Art is what keeps me going.

Somewhere in the not-so-distant past, the art form of cinema fell prey to the same forces that gradually convinced the masses that painting, dance, opera, theatre, jazz and classical music were not for them but only for the cultural elite.

This is false.

Don't believe anyone who tells you otherwise: Art is not only for rich people. It’s for everyone. Art galleries don’t have a dress code and are always free, but you’d be surprised how many friends of mine don’t know this. Can we blame them? There’s an aura of exclusivity in some of these places, where prestige and status and education are wielded as barriers to keep inquisitive working-class minds out.

This is a mistake that hurts everyone.

Each of the mediums above used to be consumed by the “common folk,” and they were all better for it. High culture was not always the preserve of the elite. We all know artists themselves are poor. We know from Tennessee Williams’ famous essay that art is best created when life involves struggle. We know from Linda Nochlin that artists almost never come from aristocratic backgrounds. We know from Jonathan Rose that the working class is hungry for intellectual stimulation, and for 400 years was better-read than the average aristocrat. Shakespeare was written for the common listener. Tolstoy kept his prose as simple as possible because he wanted everyone to be able to read it. Dickens’ weekly serialized novel chapters were discussed by anyone and everyone who got their hands on a newspaper. People attended operas and threw fruit on the stage if they didn’t like the performance. Everyone should be included– the wealthy, the poor, and everyone in between. Life is a question from our first moments to our very last, and we all deserve to explore it by taking in art.

Cinema– I don’t mean Avatar or Marvel, I mean dramas without special effects that are about humans and their problems lived out in real life– has succumbed to the same fate, and like the aforementioned mediums is now thought of as a niche interest. It shouldn’t be. Cinema is the most potent form of art expression we have. It is all the art forms combined into one. It is the ideal medium for manipulating time, the construct through which we interpret existence. It more closely approximates the experience of dreaming than any other medium. It is impossibly, irresistibly hypnotic. It is for anyone who’s interested.

Here are brief notes on the films of the past year which, to me, most lived up to the medium’s possibilities. Which most pushed at the edges of what the medium can do, is best at, is defined as. Some of them are disturbing and profane; others are gentle and light. But they are all for everyone. In order from least to first, with a few runners-up at the very end:

17. The Stranger

"Would you like to come up for a bit?"

Dir. Thomas M. Wright
117m.
Synopsis: Two men meet on a bus and strike up a conversation that turns into friendship. For Henry Teague, worn down by a lifetime of physical labour and crime, this is a dream come true.
Trailer.

An immersion that feels thoroughly dangerous, rife with the threat of violent harm, without ever showing violence onscreen. You know you’re in the hands of a master when everything is conveyed obliquely, but you feel it as powerfully as if you were standing there seeing it. A chord change and a shadow, artfully thrown your way, and you're hooked. Questions last longer than answers. The unsaid has a power that dwarfs the said. Thusly, the less said about this film, the better; go in cold. It’s a thriller about two men who really existed, the things they did, and the shifting and  uneasy relationship which formed between the two of them. It’s about friendship, suspicion, patience, and madness. The trailer accurately suggests a sense of the film’s hypnotic mood.

16. What Do We See When We Look At The Sky? (Ras vkhedavt, rodesac cas vukurebt?)

"Lisa and Giorgi finally met, but didn't recognize each other."

Dir. Aleksandre Koberidze
150m.
Synopsis: A chance encounter on a street and a lo-fi spell have lasting consequences.
Trailer.

A peaceful, mellow, quiet hang-out session with the dogs, children, friends and others of the small town of Kutaisi, Georgia. A spell is cast; questions are asked; joy is had. You walk away with feelings, not words. A richly fulfilling experience that resists simplification into language.

15. Blonde

“That’s not me. Daddy, that’s not me.”

Dir. Andrew Dominik
167m.
Synopsis: An exploration of the relationship between Norma Jeane Baker and her performing self, Marilyn Monroe.
Trailer.

Those who can’t tell the difference between depiction and endorsement are in for frustration here. “It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it,” said Aristotle, referring to a skill most media no longer asks us to hone. Reknowned author Joyce Carol Oates, upon whose book of the same title Blonde is based, is more blunt: “surprising that in a post #MeToo era the stark exposure of sexual predation in Hollywood has been interpreted as ‘exploitation.’” Questioned further on the subject of exploitation, she replied, “It scarcely matters in 2022 how we approach Marilyn Monroe — she’s long beyond being hurt by us or acclaimed. She’s become something abiding, American— iconic— detached now from even her own history, like a figure out of mythology.” The focus is what Ms. Monroe’s unfortunate life tells us about the society we live in. It isn’t a pretty picture.

Blonde is deeply sympathetic funerary cry for a woman who was enormously put upon by the world, and never got the grace she deserved. In this film we understand her, by way of Mr. Dominik’s formidable mise-en-scene, but no one else onscreen does. They are all oblivious to her journey, her hope, her wish. She is the child who never got to grow up, forever searching for parents that might love her. Can we blame her for seeing herself as ever the receiver of action, so rarely its doer? Wasn’t that so often the reality for a person in her position? Can we blame her for not knowing how to start again, not knowing where to turn? Where could she turn?

A child needs at least one other soul to tell them they are loved, before they can love themselves. Hopefully it’s a parent. It can be a friend, or a relative. In Joyce Carol Oates’ conception, this character never got that. It’s an unpleasant watch, to see such a good soul mistreated so much. She’s on a different plane, wishing someone would love her, listen to her. No one does. They merely obsess over her. They see their version of her, and don’t realize the difference. You finish the picture perhaps ready to do what Ms. Norma Jean probably wishes we would all do: let her be.

Dominik’s visual collage of a film, involving note-perfect recreations of many of the famous photographs, is some of the most arresting of the year. He uses idiosyncratic period lenses and opts for the inky blacks of '50s B&W still photography (not motion picture) stock. There’s never been a film that looks like this one, which in terms of structure approximates Oates’ writing style in the form of an interior psychological focus, and long scenes with much detail. Fans of works like her 1969 Them will be pleased. Says Ms. Oates: “Andrew Dominik is a very brilliant director. I think he succeeded in showing the experience of Norma Jeane Baker from her perspective, rather than see it from the outside, the male gaze looking at a woman. He immersed himself in her perspective.”

14. Women Talking

"Hope for the unknown is good. It is better than hatred of the familiar."

Dir. Sarah Polley
104m.
Synopsis: In 2010, the women of an isolated Mennonite community wrestle with the conflict between faith and reality.
Trailer.

In Martin Scorsese’s widely read 2021 Harpers article, he describes walking up 8th Street in New York in 1960, with theatres showing amazing films from around the world. In the space of a week you could watch The Cranes are Flying, L’Avventura, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Through a Glass Darkly, Pickocket… What about this time was special?

It isn’t merely that the films were excellent. “In essence,” Scorsese writes, “these artists were constantly grappling with the question ‘What is cinema?’ and then throwing it back for the next film to answer. No one was operating in a vacuum, and everybody seemed to be responding to and feeding off everybody else. Godard and Bertolucci and Antonioni and Bergman and Imamura and Ray and Cassavetes and Kubrick and Varda and Warhol were reinventing cinema with each new camera movement and each new cut, and more established filmmakers such as Welles and Bresson and Huston and Visconti were reenergized by the surge in creativity around them.”

None of the titles listed above, as any viewer can attest, was made primarily to make money. They were made by artists who were excited about pushing the medium forward. In 1960 such films were massively popular, especially among younger generations, who would form hours-long lines wrapping around blocks to see the latest arthouse hit. They wanted to see art. It didn’t need to be entertainment.

Art was enough.

Great films are still made today, but they’re usually not popular. They don’t cause long lines to form. The Godfather was the highest-grossing film of 1972. Today, it would exist on the margins. As well, many great films made now don’t attempt to ask and answer the question of “what is cinema?”

Right now all the discourse on Women Talking is over its provocative script and admirable performances, but Polley should be praised not just as a women’s director effectively tackling women’s issues, but as a director period, ably pushing the medium in new directions exactly as Scorsese describes above. In the last sixty years only three films have been shot in the 2.76:1 aspect ratio, and only this one uses desaturated colors. There is no other film that looks like this film, and thusly the experience of watching this film feels like no other film. Maybe you don't like it. Fine. (I would've preferred a longer cut, with more fleshed-out characters.) But you can't deny Ms. Polley, like Mr. Dominik above with Blonde, is experimenting. This is good for the medium.

As for content: films are now doing what social media, newsmedia, and films from three years ago have all failed to do: explore women’s issues with nuance. Don’t quote me out of context. Read me in full: Feminist movements will continue to come and go, with each progressing slightly further than the previous in achieving gender equality. But the current system of patriarchy, even with all its obvious problems, will not topple until a viable replacement is proposed. (The same goes for money; we all know it’s evil and unfair, but it sticks around only because no compelling alternative has been suggested.)

Men used to be providers, and prided themselves in having essential value as such. Feminism can scare them because they perceive, incorrectly, that they no longer have value. They’re no longer needed as providers, since women can provide for themselves; but with that being the case, they need a new role. Or else they’ll turn hell and high water to make sure they can still provide. They want to feel like they have purpose. Unless you give them a new role, they’ll achieve that purpose by restricting the rights of women so the men can be providers again (hello, Roe repeal).

The question is not being explored: what, moving forward, does a good man look like? What are his goals? How does he square his ideals, desires, sense of accomplishment and self? I tried to explore this in my film Men I Trust. Women Talking feels like one of the first features to incorporate this into its explorations. It is not a #MeToo film, despite being about female rape survivors; it engages with the issues without being driven by them. It is larger. It tells a universal story about human suffering, and you feel inspired and galvanized by its ending no matter your gender. It has the courage to look beyond anger.

13. Paris, 13th District (Les Olympiades)

"Why are you so unsure of yourself?"

Dir. Jacques Audiard
105m.
Synopsis: Interrelated lives of love, lust and friendship within a housing complex.
Trailer.

Elder cinema statesman Audiard (whose masterful Un Prophete should’ve won the 2009 Palme) here displays an optimism for the new generations that inspires me. How does he understand them so well? Cowriting with Céline Sciamma and Léa Mysius (both highly able directors in their own right), Audiard shows us the state of things as lived by millennials. They want the same things previous generations had. But all the markers of success and accomplishment which were so acquirable in the 20th century– home ownership, starting a family, a stable and single-profession career, starting a business– have all become intimidating hurdles. Things have changed.

They've changed on a more intimate front as well: we want the same love, connection, meaningful interaction and lasting partnerships and friendships which were so cherished by those older than us... but we don't have the equipage to acquire them. We are suffering the consequences of growing up with technology instead of people, of spending more time with screens than faces, bereft of jobs that pay a living wage, of living in a world that's horizontal instead of vertical (even in Europe and Asia, where family ties are stronger than here in the States).

But we get by.

Audiard cloaks the film in beautiful black-and-white, about as good as the notoriously unseemly medium of digital black and white can get, and has the grace to give his characters a hopeful ending. Noemie Merlant astounds, as she always does.

12. Memoria

"I remember everything, so I limit what I see. "

Dir. Apichatpong Weerasethakul
136m.
Official synopsis: A woman from Scotland, while traveling in Colombia, begins to notice strange sounds. Soon she begins to think about their appearance.
Trailer.

If you missed this in theatres, you missed it permanently. Director Apichatpong Weerasethakul stipulated that the film be shown only theatrically, with no disc or streaming release to follow, ever. Watching the film, I could see why; its sensitive sound design and quietude demand the focus of a theatrical environment. Before the film started, every screening was preceded by ten minutes of silence. Do you know how long ten minutes of silence is? In today’s world? Sit still for ten minutes without looking at your phone. You’ll be a different person afterward.

There is more than one Tilda Swinton performance to appreciate this year, but this was my favorite. We the audience walked out of the theatre knowing we had seen something special, and something rare in our times: a thing unrepeated. In a world of endless options, endless access and archivability, endless replay… true value reveals itself in scarcity. All the best moments in life happen only once. I’ll always remember the daylight scene of the man by the river, and the conversation they have together, from which the above quote stems.

11. Athena

"He's fragile."

Dir. Roman Gavras
99m.
Synopsis: Three brothers on opposing sides of the law and with differing concepts of self and community have contrasting responses when a fourth, younger brother is killed.
Teaser.

Watch the opening shot. Just do it. You won’t believe your eyes, especially with the knowledge that the film has no CGI. This is the most impressive first shot of a film since 2006’s Children of Men, and the new gold standard following the one laid down with such authority by Orson Welles with Touch of Evil (1958). Everything you’re seeing is real, unfolding in real time. Imagine the intricate rehearsal. What an anachronistic choice: to employ a process requiring intense rehearsal, discipline, and professionalism… to depict such unbridled chaos. The effect is hypnotic. It’s almost like dance, like theatre, the infinitesimally precise choreography of it all. Every detail. The team spent two weeks rehearsing the shot before finally going for it. The rest of the film is similarly spectacular in execution, with the director completing one shot per day. How do they do it? Tension in cinema is often created with editing; here, it’s all planned out beforehand.

But it’s more than mere showboating of skill. Craft can touch us emotionally. Technique can immerse us. We are immersed into the realities of these characters. We feel for them and learn about them not by hearing their histories or through other traditional character development, but by watching them act and react to present tragedy. The Greek director (son of Costa-Gavras), a fan of Greek tragedy, has organized the film around three potential responses to tragic loss, each embodied by one of the three surviving brothers: you can seek to calm things down and keep things as they were; you can desire to torch everything, to start the world over with a clean slate; or you can endeavor to protect yourself alone, regardless of what happens to others. Each of these responses has its flaws. An astounding, breathless experience.

10. The Fabelmans

"You can't just love something. You also have to take care of it."

Dir. Steven Spielberg
151m.
Synopsis: A Jewish boy in working-class Phoenix resorts to filmmaking as a method for navigating family trauma and personal strife.
Trailer.

Spielberg’s memoir is more than a story about how the legendary filmmaker came to be. He tells what for me is the more interesting story: a quiet Jewish boy growing up in middle-class Phoenix accidentally discovering the unwieldy power of the moving image, and the role it plays in destroying his dream of a perfect family. Reality sets in, and so does struggle; but he discovers, as so many of us artists do, that creativity is a release because it allows us to engage with life without having to find answers for it. As I say above: Art is the only profession to explore the act of what it means to be alive. Our protagonist (played remarkably by newcomer Gabriel LaBelle) discovers that art is best when you have something to say– not the same as knowing what you have to say, and not the same as hardship qua hardship. But it is the release that frees us from needing answers.

We expect greatness from Spielberg. It isn't surprising that this film is good. If anyone else’s name was on it, we’d be howling over its mastery. But we've become spoiled with such a strong career. Having said that, I'd still assert that Steve has been spinning his wheels for the past decade, failing to take risks in the way he used to, and in the way his colleague Martin Scorsese still does; but here, finally, Steve pushes himself, going for broke with sensitive, personal material and mostly avoiding his longstanding crutch: John Williams' telegraphic scoring. This is a hugely welcome return to form.

Pay particular attention to Spielberg's blocking; every shot is staged for maximum economy of storytelling, and always tells us something about whoever’s the subject of the scene. (Note the above shot– we know to see the scene through the boy's eyes; we sense his trepidation about the film reel's contents without dialogue; their close relationship such that he probably knows what his mother's facial expression is right this moment; and blocking that allows us to see both their faces, with the knowledge that neither character can see the other).

Film as memoir has become a semi-popular approach of late, to varying degrees of success (the best seem to be those which deemphasize the person doing the remembering, a la PTA's Licorice Pizza and Cuarón's Roma; Gray’s and Sorrentino’s latests are a study in the contrast between retelling an event with self-awareness (Armageddon Time) and without (The Hand of God)). Spielberg nails it, going for universal human relevance by way of precise, lived-in detail after  detail. No one else straddles dexterous form with broad sentiment– art and commerce– so effectively, and there haven't been enough films made about middle-class lives. Cinema is too often a showcase for the totally destitute, or the stupendously wealthy. Seeing Jersey suburbs and cars with roll-up windows call to mind the century of my youth, when you could be forgiven for confusing middle-class and working-class, because they were so often the same thing.

9. Petite Maman

"I have a secret. It's not just mine."

Dir. Céline Sciamma
73m.
Synopsis: A girl, grieving her grandmother's death, meets another girl while building a treehouse.
Trailer.

The less said about this gem, the better. It achieves in 73 minutes what most feature-length titles cannot touch. There comes a point in the film where you realize what it’s doing (a brilliant conceit given away, sadly, in the film’s US trailer; the above trailer is spoiler-free)… and you respond with quiet awe. Of course. It makes no sense, and yet all the sense in the world. If only.

8. Bones and All

"I thought I was the only one."

Dir. Luca Guadagnino
131m.
Synopsis: A girl travels across 1980s America in search of her mother, and encounters a boy along the way.
Teaser.  [contains spoilers]

Guadagnino is doing something different grammatically from most other filmmakers, and I can’t put my finger on it. The choices in shot composition and especially cutting are striking. I’m reminded of the daring formalism of the New Hollywood days. Consider the “I am nice” exchange, or the use of editing to suggest smell. Note the luscious 35mm lensing, those fields of swimming grain making the image alive. How film compels night scenes to be lit differently. You remember the 20th century; this film feels like a repository of its textures, fears, and secrets.

Like his previous Call Me By Your Name (which is one minute longer and stars the same male lead), Bones possesses a notably warm gaze towards its characters, who once again are marginalized souls who find rare understanding in an unexpected romantic bond. But Bones uses a fantastical metaphor whose meaning the viewer can suit to her/his own needs, allowing the story to become things Call Me can't access.

[Not for the faint of heart.]

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Click here for the rest of the list!

What an honor to be interviewed by longtime friend and fellow artist Holli Margell and her awesome partner-in-arms Casey! Click here for the full conversation about career, childhood, perspective, parenting, art, community during COVID, all about how and why I decided to get into Metroland, and much more. It's the final episode of a great season wherein Holli and Casey explore a wide variety of careers, Studs Terkel-style. I'm honored to be the capper on such an exciting list of luminaries!

Hope you enjoy listening!

A rare chance to watch my (short) film, albeit online, via its official selection at Madrid International Short Film Festival!

Follow this link to the festival's current roster of titles. Scroll down to Men I Trust, my film. You will be asked for a password. Here it is: MSFFJan23

This will take you to my film's Vimeo page, which requires another password. (My film has music licenses, so passwords are important.) This password is the film's title: menitrust

Men I Trust is 32 minutes, and has won numerous awards around the globe. Learn more about it at the film's web page, here. Or, watch the trailer below:

“Yes, I have perhaps suffered more than you. Yet I do not succumb to despair.”
-Chekhov

I prefer to ride in the last train car but couldn’t tonight, as it reeked of fentanyl. Little did I know this would be something I would later be thankful for. I scurried onto one of the center cars and stood in the middle section, the area with the seats that face each other. Why did I stand there? I never go in that area. The doors closed and we were on our way, already bombing into the next station. At this late hour only a small crowd was forming.

He walked slowly by me without recognizing me, taking a seat to my immediate right. What was his name again? I can never remember. A congenial face who’s ridden my bus not a few times, and better known by other people in my life who speak better French. My French is abysmal, so I remained silent, too embarrassed to speak up.

He’s a mid-aged man, handsome in a Clooney sort of way, trim and sharp as so many Frenchmen are, tonight wearing fitted jeans and coat with a scarf, and shoes you looked at a second time because you were trying to resolve whether they were duotone leather dress shoes or sneakers, because they really seemed to be both.

He said to the college-age woman seated across from him, “I like your scarf.” A gentle, quiet accent.
“Thank you,” she replied with enthusiasm. “I like your scarf! We both have yellow!”
“Yours is golden.”
She had the youthful exuberance that welcomed such comments, perhaps especially when they came from an amiable and French version of George Clooney. You could perceive she hadn’t yet been soured by poor experiences, did not yet have the instinct to turn from the world, to be wary and cautious, distrustful. She was excited by the prospect of living.

Do you remember what that’s like?

I seek to preserve that belief, that sight for goodness, despite the times I’ve been burned. I assume good in others. I believe they are telling the truth, that maybe they are giving and trusting and kind, because I am. I am gullible, and you will ask, has this gotten me in trouble? Have I been burned by these traits?

Worse than you can possibly imagine. But I endeavor not to let those experiences define me. Are they not fewer in number, for all of us? The tendencies within me listed above are also those which allow me to experience all the highs of my life, all the countless joys with strangers recounted in the pages of this blog and my book. “Do you really want to live your whole life distrusting other people?” historian Rutger Bregman asks. “That price is way too high to pay. I think it's more rational to say, OK, this is just going to happen a couple of times in my life that I'll be the victim of some confidence game. And if you've never been conned, then maybe you should ask yourself the question: Is my basic attitude to life trusting enough?”

It’s a good sign, not a bad one, if you’ve been taken advantage of here and there. It means you’re getting the good stuff too. Like this woman, who was beaming from the stranger interaction in a way none of the other youngsters buried in their headphones and smartphones could know. I look to such souls for inspiration, in the ongoing question of how to remain open, fragile, raw, while also taking care of myself.

A silence passed. Then Monsieur Clooney commented to three young friends seated off to the side, nearby, all unrelated to the scarf-clad woman: “I like your earrings, all of you.”
As they thanked him with smiles he added, “everybody, so well-dressed tonight!”

At this point I simply had to turn and say hi. “Bonsoir, monsieur!”
He recognized me instantly. “Aaahh! Bonsoir, mon ami! Comment ça va?”
“Ça va bien, et vous?”
“Tres bien. Où vas-tu ce soir? Résidence, travail?”
“Au cinéma!”
“Au cinéma, bon! Quel film?”
“Un film français: Petite maman.”
“Quel?”
“Petite maman. Un film… de Celine Sciamma.”
“Ah oui, Sciamma.”
At this point he lost me with his reply, and I said with a smile the one French line I can repeat with ease: “Je sais seulement un peu de français!” And despite his protestations I insisted on my clumsiness, adding, “un petit peu!”

We put together with a smattering of both languages that I was off to see the new Celine Sciamma film on my own, and had earlier that evening seen Jacques Audiard’s Les Olympiades (English title: Paris, 13th District). He knew both directors and we jointly marvelled particularly at Audiard’s prodigious talent across a range of genres. The hushed and respectful awe that crept into his voice on the mention of Audiard immediately revealed how thoroughly he knew the man’s work... I was flushed with delight. I don’t get to talk cinema with people nearly enough. Out of gladness I asked how he was doing generally, and decided to give a truthful answer to his reply of the same.

“I’m… okay. These days are, you know.”
He smiled in rueful agreement, asking, “what is a struggle for you? Which one?”
“Well, personal stuff is hardest for me. If my personal life is going well, then I have the strength to not be bothered by everything else. But if it’s going poorly, then I see everything as… you know how if three things go badly, people think everything is going badly? But it’s really just three things? I am trying not to do that.”
“Yes, I agree. I keep my personal life very simple.” After I assented to the wisdom of that approach he added, “there is a parallel in math. Simplicity as an emergent quality.”
“Really?” I asked, thinking it over. “The reduction of things… as a growth?”
“Well, yes. The cancellation of complexity. It allows for…”

As we continued on, I could feel the woman across from us leaning in, listening with fascination. I flashed her a smile and wanted to bring her in on the conversation. Spaces like this should feel like campfires.

I said, “okay, I just have to say I think your shoes are super cool. I noticed them as soon as you sat down.” She smiled wider. “They’re very striking. And I like the… the pleasant contrast with your slacks, it’s a cool contrast.” They were striking; matte black platform shoes with thick rubber soles, which raised her at least four inches, likely more with the elevated heel. Not my style, but definitely hers!
“Oh thank you! It’s my first time wearing them out, so that’s good to hear.”
Monsieur Clooney: “How do they feel?”
“Really good! I can see over people, which has never been my experience!”
Clooney, who is tall, quipped, “you can see at my level!”
She laughed. “Exactly! I think they’ll be good for going to concerts and raves, they fit well for dancing, and I’ll be able to see the stage. For once!”
I said, “it’s good to be able to see the see the stage!”
He nodded, saying, “yes, I like the clash with your pants. It’s good.”
She thanked him and asked what we were up to tonight, and I mentioned I was going to see a film. “It’s called Petite maman, by the director of, did you ever see Portrait of a Lady on Fire?”
“I don’t think I know that one.” She spoke the line not dismissively but eagerly, her wide eyes and clear voice wanting more. Not all young people are so intrigued by new worlds. But how do you describe the sublimity that is Portrait de la jeune fille en feu in a few words on a subway?
“It’s about two women… a painter and a subject, and they form a bond. It’s kind of magical. Really beautiful.” Clooney was nodding. “You should check it out.”
“I’ll look for it! Is it in French?”
“Yeah, but there’s subtitles,” I said. “I’d be lost without them!”
“Hey, you know more than me. I know Spanish and English, but not French–“
At this point Clooney said, fluently, “eso es muy bueno, poder hablar español–" to which I exclaimed in delight, “you’re amazing, oh my goodness! Both of you! My Korean and English are both better than my Spanish and French, I barely know anything, but you, both of you–"
She said, “well that’s great too!”
Westlake Station came all too soon. “Thank you. I’ll leave you two here. Have a great night!”
“Enjoy the movie!”
“Bonne nuit!”
“You too! Bonne nuit!”

And with that I dashed out the train doors, just in time. There was no exchange of numbers nor other information. That’s not why we were here. You don’t talk to strangers to make friends. You already have friends. We speak to the person next to us for the reminder that we belong to something larger. Not just a friend group, not merely a family, but the vast interconnected cosmos of humanity at large, the great urban experiment as success rather than failure. Do you know how good that feels? How deep down that sense of community bolsters us, the knowledge that we all share life and light, and we make more of it when we reach out to each other?

I document the details of this quotidian exchange because these are the moments life are made of. Despite my short time here I can already state what you probably also know: it will not be the momentous, climactic high points which stick in your memory. It will be run-ins like these, the small moments of pause in our hectic lives when we made each other glow. The three of us became beautiful, easy smiles bouncing off the energy we threw around for one another. We felt larger, filling the outline of our best selves, accepted by others different in age and temperament, able to find a common language of existence.

He was a thinker, someone alive to his surroundings who considered his words before speaking them; she was buoyant, open to the world instead of shut off from it, receptive to joys besides the ones she knew; intrigued by our conversation and eager to offer light. I like to imagine the two of them talking long after I left them. They will likely never see each other again, and I am equally unlikely to run into either (though I have had a knack for randomly encountering the Frenchman). What sticks with me are their qualities. That is what I did walk away with, and what galvanizes me. Their conversation inspires, raises me up with the reminder that things like this still happen– even today, in our antisocial, withdrawn, interior, suspicious, isolationist times.

This happens too.

Happy New Year.

The world was ending, or so we thought. The malaise people have forgotten has previously existed was once again upon us, a new and bodied thing, stifling our ability to believe. There was the late summer smoke and all the disillusionment it brought, the toxic glory of sunsets with double meanings, a volume in the air, weights both literal and figurative: our hopes seemed a poor fit for the world we now lived in, a crumbling wasteland of institutional ignorance, abandonment, and general uncaring from all sides.

Have you felt this way lately?

Have you felt it around you, the presence of an attitude trying to get in? We the city looked around, regarding ourselves, our brethren in their drug-fuelled outbursts and stupors, a confused and growing suspicion gnawing at us– that our institutions are somehow making money off of homelessness, for there could be no other reason they allow it to perpetuate. What could be more depressing? We felt now what our forbears felt in 1968, 1934, and so many other moments throughout history.

It was the day of the final Mariners game of the 2022 season. It will remain historical only in the sense that everyone who was there will wish to purge it from memory as quickly as possible. The crowds I saw for the event, a pivotal one for fans in being the first (and last) Mariners playoff game in two decades, were assembling at 11h00, for the 13h07 start time. I spoke to people who’d traveled from across the country to be here. They were excited. They wanted something to believe in. I drove my route through the city, expecting the crowds to emerge a few hours later. They didn’t.

They wouldn’t surface until 20h00, as silent and demoralized as I’ve ever seen a congregation numbering in the tens of thousands, hoarse and spent after an 18-inning game featuring only one run after 6.5 hours– a run which decisively ended the Mariners’ decades-building hopes for playoff glory. The masses boarded my bus without speaking, eyes averted as they sheepishly told me the game’s outcome. There was no positive spin for this event within the world of sports, and the general chagrin seemed a synecdoche confirming the awfulness of everything else. Their dismay felt of a piece with the smoke, the climate, the crime, the city, the country, the politics, the drugs, the everything. A man murmured a refrain I’ve heard for the last quarter-century: “everything the Bible says in Revelations… is coming true. Right now.” He muttered darkly to himself and anyone who would listen, utterly convinced of his words as they applied to mid-October 2022.

A few hours later the fans were all home and the roads reverted back to just the street denizens and myself. I was still carrying the sorrow of the day, their sorrow and that of the times. We do this without thinking. Happiness, as age progresses, seems less a default than a choice. You have to work at it.

--

Here he came now, a shadow hobbling up the sidewalk side of the bus, hustling as much as his aging, fading body would allow. I almost didn’t wait for him. But I did. The conversation began as so many conversations on Third Avenue do.

"D'you go to Virginia?"
"I sure do. Yeah, come on in!” I looked at him, adding, “glad you made it." I meant the words now, but wouldn't have five seconds prior; I'd been somewhat anxious to get to my layover, and dozens of buses on Third go to Virginia Street. Did I really need to wait for him, when there were already more coaches appearing on my mirrors? But I was warming up to the man. Some people, particularly older folks, have personalities which overwhelm the decrepitude of time. They have a spark which reminds you to slow down, calls your goodness to waking life and reminds you the present is right here, not at the layover.

“Me too," he said. I didn't recognize him, but he did me. He looked at me after tapping his card, saying, "I ain't seen you in a while."
"Thanks for remembering me!"
"Of course I remember you!"
"I usually do that 7, but I'm taking a lil' break. Lil' bit of variety. Variety's the spice of life, right?"
"Sho is!"
A pause. I spoke. Why not speak? If the hairs on the back of your head are not standing up, I say go for it. "So how's the year been for you?"
"So far, so great, man,” he replied. “I'm pretty much blessed.”
“Man, that's so good to hear,” I marveled, quietly blown away by the utter contrast to earlier. His words and their gentle tone couldn’t have been farther from the day’s previous chaos. I continued drifting up Third, hoping he’d elaborate. He did.

“I got an apartment, my own place, two bedrooms, up in Shoreline…”
I’d assumed he was homeless. “Oh, you got it made! Two bedrooms?”
“I waited my time, lemme tell ya.”
“I hear those waiting lists are no joke!”
“Ha! You got that right! And I been (unintelligible) fifteen years now,” he said as a passenger stepped on dragging a soiled blanket, one of Seattle’s many young newcomers with the telltale lighter, straw and foil crumpled in his swollen and ash-stained hands. Remarkably, he tapped an ORCA card. I thanked the youngster while asking our older seated friend what he’d just said.
“Hold up, you said fifteen years what now?”
“Oh.” Slightly sheepish: “Since I been offa crack.”
“Oh, man. Congratulations! You got will power, bro, cause there's temptation out here.”
“There is, there so is!”
At this point the young user asked to leave, though we hadn’t moved. Not a conversation he wanted to hear. I closed the doors and we carried on.

“That's an even bigger deal than housing. Fifteen years?!”
“I had this car accident fifteen years ago. It was a wakeup call. Went off this embankment in Georgetown. I actually fell asleep at the wheel.”
“Oh man, that's one of those life events where everything is either before or after that moment. A wakeup call.”
“A wakeup call for sure.”
“Fifteen years,” I repeated. That’s how long I’ve been bus driving. “Man, I'm so impressed. ‘Cause I talk to a lotta guys out here you know, they're trying to get where you're at, but they relapse, man, six months, a year, six weeks…”

Spoken clearly, the years of grit and struggle effortlessly echoing behind the syllables: “You have to want it.”
“Well, you seem like you musta figured out a system that works pretty okay!”
“I don't know if you seen the way I walk. But I got some rods in my spine.”
“Yeah, I noticed you got a lil' something goin on–”
“–And they're always there as a reminder, that I gotta make sure I find something else to do with my time, or else that's where I'm headed. I'll take your next one. My name's Marshay.”
“Marshay, it's an honor to shake your hand. My name's Nathan.”
“It's an honor to shake yours, Nathan. I'll see you again!”

It wasn’t the end of the world. All societies in all time periods have all believed they were living during the end times. We don’t get to choose the age we live in; but we can choose how we think, feel, believe. Live. Marshay was thankful for the roof over his head. He had reframed his debilitating car accident as something to be grateful for, something that gave him purpose and direction. He had even the wisdom– the courage– to be thankful for the rods in his spine and the limp in his walk. This is where we find our solace. Never mind the ball game. The other distractions, as real and cutting as they are. All the rest can be true, too. You can reinvigorate your perspective. Reframe the ordinary.

This is how we remind ourselves of the daily miracles.

Look at the two of them swaggering onboard, one man tall and the other short, their arhythmic head-bobbing, shoulder-swagging, pimp-rolling gait living out as large a square of real estate as a few steps can contain. They roved into the bus’s entryway as if in slow motion, giant mythological beasts too majestic to move quickly. The 21st-century psyche of the male 99-percenter knows he cannot access true power; he is thusly instead concerned only with the appearance of power.* And these two men were excellent actors.

“Ey, Jewish,” the tall one said to me, with an upward nod. “Wassup. Ah remember you from yesterday.” We assume other people are similar to us; perhaps he thought I was Jewish because of his own background, though I wasn’t about to presume, nor certainly to deny a connotation which clearly boosted his admiration of me.
“Yeah, welcome back! What's going on?”
He sprawled out in the front three side-facing seats, a geometrically impressive feat his shorter partner in crime attempted on the chairs opposite. The speaker, bald and tattooed, was a fellow of textures tonight: shiny bald, rough stubble, gravelly voice, ochre and tan and denim and black. D. H. Lawrence’s famous line about the American soul being hard would’ve made sense here… but only superficially. There is always more.
“Iss good,” he said, responding to my query. “I’m so glad they got you on this route, man. Some of them other drivers is jerks out here.”
“That's true.”
“Ah just got back from Hawaii.”
“Oh, how was it?”
“It was amazin’. Ah put my daughter there, ah put my son there, ah put muh wife there, 2013…”

He sallied forth with the details, interrupting himself to tell a female passenger: “Yo, that's a nice backpack. Ah like the pattern. I ain't trying to get your number or nothin’, just givin’ a compliment!”

He turned back to me, reverting to the earlier topic of bus drivers. “Yeah sometimes they be jerks. Like it was this one time when some guy– this wasn’t in Seattle, but back home– didn’t have the right amount of fare and wanted a transfer. And the driver was houndin’ him, bro. Houndin’. And so finally the dude who wanted the transfer had enough and he punched the driver two times.”
“Oh no!”
“But they wasn't done, ‘cause then the driver stepped out and followed him and started beating his ass, and then the dude took out his gun and shot the driver five times.”
“Oh nooooo!” I exclaimed. “That's a tragedy. Letting it escalate over such a tiny little thing!”
“Over a freakin’ transfer!”
“Coulda just been another normal day.”
“Yeah!”
“Driver didn’t deserve to get injured, but it's almost like he was practically askin’ for it, raggin’ on the guy like that.”

I was overstating myself of course, but I felt a need to concur with the enthusiasm of this man’s disinclination toward disrespectful behavior. A transfer, I marvelled. Street fights are always about the tiniest of things– or at least that’s how it seems in retrospect. James Gilligan, Harvard Medical School psychiatrist and director of Harvard’s Center for the Study of Violence, states that all acts of violence are “attempts to ward off or eliminate the feeling of shame and humiliation… and replace it with its opposite, the feeling of pride.”** It all boils down to that, which is why the currency of the street isn’t money, or love, or status, but Respect.

“Yeah, ‘cause he was usin’ humiliation–"  he stretched out the word, teasing it into a larger shape, pulling up on the penultimate syllable, emphasizing its dangerous music and terrible power, almost as though he knew I’d been reading about the subject– “humiliation, and he wasn't stoppin’. So yeah, he got shot and they made him a hero and everything, but whatever. People shouldn't be doin’ like that.”
I agreed. “People got to have empathy for each other.” I expected him to assent and leave it at that, but he had an even better story for me.
“Like the other day this dude came up to me and said he was gonna kill me and my dog.”
“Whoa!”
“But I didn't do nothing, I just let him walk away. And then later that same day Ah saw the same guy again, and you know what he said to me?”
“What'd he say?”
“He said, ‘I’m sorry.’”
“Thaaaat's beautiful!”
“Yeah it is!” Grinning in the dark. “It didn't need to be anything more than that. He was just hot over somethin’ else, and we had a nice conversation.”
“That's beautiful. That's so beautiful. Empathy!”
“Empathy. I needed some help from my bro though. When dude said he was gonna kill my dog, I said damn! I'm gonna run up on this fool! But my bro right here, he helped me check myself. Reminded me it ain't worth it.”
“Sometimes it helps to take a minute!”
“Yup. Makes all the difference. Empathy, bro. And I could see you got that good attitude too, you care about the people. So thank you for rollin’ this route.”
“Thank you, for puttin’ out that good energy too!”
“Yeah man. I'll be seeing you, I'm always on this bitch.”
“I’ll be around!”

They swaggered off as they had swaggered on, but with a slight difference: their expressions were now vested with something fuller, less ironic, at once lighter and more substantive. There was less acting going on. Coolness is all about projecting an exterior, putting up a guard. You do it in adverserial environments. But here, now, Mr. Balding Textures was in a safe space. He could relax into himself. We could praise the unglamorous things, the sensitive and the kind, and let live what we truly cared about.

They had found something greater than dominance:

Connection.

--

*’Power’ is a broad word; I use one of its more petty definitions here, in reference to sociocultural status and financial freedom. Says author and journalist Susan Faludi: "I don’t see how you can be a feminist and not think about men. One of the gross misconceptions about feminism is that it’s only about women. But in order for women to live freely, men have to live freely, too. Feminism has shown us that what we think of as feminine is actually defined by cultural messages and political agendas. The same holds true for men and for what constitutes masculinity. Being a feminist opens your eyes to the ways men, like women, are imprisoned in cultural stereotypes." Interview with Ms. Faludi about her book on this topic here.

**Yes, all violent acts are attempts to restore pride, to ward off shame and humiliation. But: shame and humiliation occur in all demographic groups, in all countries. Why then, you may be asking, do younger and poorer men living in countries with a high inequality index tend to be the only ones who translate those feelings into violent acts? The answer may be different than what you suspect. Refer to Chapter 10 of Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett’s book The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger.