Shuffle Synchronicities: Volume 1 - #165
Guest Post by Kerem Sanga + "Nothing Ever Happened" by Deerhunter - 06/16/21
Today we have our third guest post in a row! This one is a bit of a thinker and an instructional one from a friend and filmmaker, Kerem Sanga!
Kerem and I met back at USC’s Film School. We wrote and produced a sitcom pilot together there. It was inspired by my future wife’s relationship with her father, sort of a multi-cam Royal Tennenbaum-returning-to-help-his-daughter-but-go-through-with-marrying-her-boyfriend-vibe. But without quirk. But with a lot of premonition?
I was the manic and emotional one, full of energy.
Kerem was the calm and cerebral one, full of reason.
Guess who went on to direct three movies, LOL?!
Here we are back in late 2009 with our professors:
Kerem is now one of the dozen or so friends I play tennis with.
I usually beat him ;)
Here’s a bio!
Kerem Sanga is a writer-director whose films have won awards at festivals across the world. His feature film FIRST GIRL I LOVED, starring Dylan Gelula, Brianna Hildebrand, Tim Heidecker and Pamela Adlon, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Best of NEXT Audience Award. His previous feature, THE YOUNG KIESLOWSKI, premiered at the Los Angeles Film Festival, winning the audience award there and at festivals across the country. His latest film, THE VIOLENT HEART, stars Jovan Adepo, Grace Van Patten, Lukas Haas and Mary J. Blige; it premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and was released in 2021. As a writer, he has most recently written a superhero spin-off for Columbia Pictures. As a student, he was awarded an Annenberg Fellowship to attend graduate film school at the University of Southern California. He also holds a degree in Mathematics from the University of Texas, Austin.
Without further adieu, take it away Kerem!
“Steady As She Goes” by The Raconteurs
Find yourself a girl and settle down
Live a simple life in a quiet town
Steady as she goes
You know how the older people get, the more likely they are to listen to the same old music? When I was younger (so much younger than today)
I never understood this.
It’s like there comes a time when people stop listening to new music and gravitate to the songs of their youth.
Why is Gen-Z out there surfing the sonic vanguard while Boomers got the same Pink Floyd record on repeat?
Your friends have shown a kink in the single life
You’ve had too much to think, now you need a wife
Steady as she goes
Now that I’m older, I totally get why. Because it feels great.
Last week I put on “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots” for the ten millionth time?
Well here we go again
You’ve found yourself a friend that knows you well
They say there’s no accounting for taste - but is there? It's not like we get “hard-wired” after a certain point. Or do we?
It has never been easier to listen to the songs you love while filtering out everything else.
But no matter what you do
You always feel as though you tripped and fell
I haven't tripped and fallen at all lately. Maybe that's why I've been feeling so musically deprived. It’s like I’ve been on a sonic highway made of velvet. All my favorite songs feel so good against my ear-skin. But if you keep on going forever at the same speed in the same direction, doesn't physics say that's equivalent to standing still?
When you have completed what you thought you had to do
And your blood’s depleted to the point of stable glue
Then you’ll get along
Yikes.
Thankfully, the other day I discovered an off-ramp to this “velvet highway," and it uses the very technology that got me on in the first place.
Let’s say you’re not so into jazz. It’s not that you hate it; in fact, a part of you may even want to like it. Still, every time you hear a Coltrane song your mind just… wanders away…
But you love that first Nas album, and Lana del Rey rules.
HOW TO HEAL YOUR PLASTIC BRAIN
1. Make a three-song playlist, for example:
N.Y. State of Mind - Nas
Chemtrails Over the Country Club - Lana Del Rey
Blue in Green - Miles Davis
2. Make sure you have “Autoplay” enabled (you probably do).
3. Let ‘er rip.
Now here’s the most important part: you have to stop making decisions. Don’t even look at what’s coming next. Minimize the play window and do something else. Respond to emails. Do the dishes. Drive to Trader Joe's.
Steady as she goes
Are you steady now?
For me, this worked like a charm. My pleasure-centers got opened by the songs that were similar to the ones I already liked, and they stayed open for the songs I didn’t know I would. Here’s a bird’s eye view of my brain, before and after:
Folsom Lake on Oct. 26, 2015. Right: Folsom Lake on Jan. 14, 2017. (Images provided by Planet Labs)
Then again, instead of trying to hack the Spotify Recommendation Algorithm into being my own personal mind-expanding DJ, I could just tune into someone who does this for a living:
This all reminds me of a movie I once saw, which was based on a book I once read, which was based on the real life of a guy who once lived. In the movie, the guy is hitchhiking across the country, stopping here and there to make new friends and find meaningful work, but always moving on.
Thanks Dave, for adding another groove to my brain.
Fun post, my friend!
I looked up the song on Genius.com and here’s what the annotators said:
“‘Steady, as She Goes’ depicts a man whose friends have pressured him into a ‘steady’ marriage because they consider that to be a measure of success and happiness in life. The story is told in the second person, presumably to have the song serve as a cautionary tale, warning the listener about the dissatisfaction that comes with settling for stability in place of passion.”
I see Kerem elided by talking about his dating life haha.
Instead, doing a much more subtle think-piece on having the taste of your music grow stale: ‘your blood’s depleted to the point of stable glue.’
So I will steer clear of his dating life and say I’ve always respected his not settling for stability in the place of passion in his career.
I may have this story wrong, but I think he used most of his savings to help fund that first movie, which sparked all the others.
On my end, his Raconteurs song really went well with my vibe today.
As you’ll see below, I’m also caught in that stability versus passion debate.
And, of course, I’ve also gone from married and ‘steady as she goes’ to ‘moving on’ as Kerem says.
"Nothing Ever Happened" by Deerhunter
Our second Deerhunter song!
Pitchfork named this one the 6th best song of 2008. They commented: “[Bradford] Cox's terrors are buried deep inside, and to the degree he's able to access them, they're released with hushed, uncomplicated passion that finds the perfect fit between Poe, post-punk, and pot."
Beatsperminute.com noted that “the band expanded the song during live shows into a 30-minute jam-track, incorporating Patti Smith’s guttural “Horses” repetition into the song’s climactic finale.”
I shuffled to this song right before Kerem confirmed he was going to write the guest post today.
And I’m writing this part of the post before he’s delivered it, so the song to me right now seems to be about my 24-hour response to finding out what my paycheck now is while working part-time (for now) back at my day job in the film and TV industry for the past three and a half weeks.
Sleep through the winter, awake in spring
Adjust your eyes to the state of things
Focus on the depth that was never there
Nothing's easy, nothing's fair
I had to ‘adjust my eyes to the state of things.’
Which was that even though they seemed to promise me that they were going to continue to cover my health insurance as they had during the pandemic, they actually deducted it from my paycheck, which left me with less money in two weeks than I would have made from unemployment.
Yikes!
Not to mention the cost of gas to get to the job which deducted another let’s say $100.
Double yikes!
As Deerhunter sings, ‘Nothing’s easy, nothing’s fair.’
But to be honest ‘the depth was never there.’
This probably hasn’t been a sustainable job for a while.
It was a significant source of tension in my marriage with my (ex?)-wife.
Only way within but there's no way out
You learn to choke, you learn to shout
Focus on the depth that was never there
Eliminate what you can't repair
After learning about the very low paycheck, I had a fall into neurosis, i.e. ‘choke’ and ‘shout.’
Anxiety and anger that I haven’t felt in a long time.
Ironically, in my Enneagram class that I watched last night, Russ Hudson talked about the levels of development which is just this sort of scale of mental/spiritual health.
“By understanding the Levels for each type, one can see how all of the traits are interrelated—and how healthy traits can deteriorate into average traits and possibly into unhealthy ones. As pioneering consciousness philosopher Ken Wilber has noted, without the Levels, the Enneagram is reduced to a ‘horizontal’ set of nine discrete categories. By including the Levels, however, a ‘vertical’ dimension is added that…reflects the complexity of human nature…”
Some of you may remember in post 140 just 25 days ago that when I drew a Tarot card about what going back to the day job would be like, I drew the Death Tarot Card.
In terms of jobs/career it means:
“Death in a career context is a warning not to get too dependent on anything that is not working for you. The only thing in life that is guaranteed is that things change. If you are unhappy in your current job, start looking for a new one or the universe may force you to find a new job. If you are starting your own business but have been reluctant to quit your old job because of the security it offers, Death may be indicating that’s it’s time to consider jumping in with both feet.”
Yesterday, I wrote to ‘my superior’ asking to receive the healthcare deal as I thought we discussed.
But part of me wonders if I just need to ‘eliminate what I can’t repair,’ as Deerhunter sings.
And really ‘start looking for a new one,’ as the Tarot says.
I was able to settle down by talking to my voice ‘within’ but at the moment it still feels a little bit like ‘there's no way out.’
I never saw it coming
Waiting for something from nothing
I never saw it coming
Waiting for something from nothing
Like I squandered a year not looking for a new career/job. That I was ‘waiting for something from nothing.’
But I look at my graphic novel which is now 1/4th done (with savings I’m putting into it like Kerem’s first movie) and going well:
And I look at my still available option to attend a counseling Master’s program in the fall to become a therapist.
And see it’s not all bad at all.
There’s something spiritual in the chorus:
Nothing ever happened to me
Nothing ever happened to me
Nothing ever happened to me
Life just passed and flashed right through me
In the sense that ‘nothing “bad” ever happens to you.’
That ‘life just passes through’ us without needing to fear it.
Or like this Rumi quote perhaps:
“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes around in another form.”
Or this one:
“Every storm the Beloved unfurls, Permits the sea to scatter pearls.”
Or this other one:
“Forget your plans and embrace uncertainty. Only then will you find stability.”
Or as Jack White sings: “Are you steady now?”
Okay, that’s the one hundred and sixty-fifth Shuffle Synchronicities.