Conversation in long form

Okay. I may have been drinking a little bit and watching Sense8 with a good best friend. Which means words. So. Many. Words.

If you haven't seen Sense8 and don't really want to, there is likely nothing here that is problematic. If you haven't seen Sense8 and would like to, then you may want to wait until you've seen 2 or 3 episodes before reading this. It's not about spoilers, it's about structure.

Miguel Angel Silvestre's twitter 

We take a long time to watch movies. The remote sits on the coffee table and whenever there is a need, the pause button gets pushed and we talk, we listen because what was said was relevant and thick with possibility. Because these are the people hanging out around our coffee tables.

Our conversations, like our relationships, are built on moments that add up over a very long time. We learn, discover and grow together. We share this context over time, sometimes over miles, definitely over space in shapes we could never otherwise imagine. We mourn the loss of love for beloved public figures and movies. We struggle. We demand, especially in the last year, more from ourselves and in consequence we celebrate the more we get from each other.

Doing better.

It takes corporations a very long time to get a fucking clue. Netflix's development department seems to be getting it better than others.

Series television shows, with no commercial breaks, released as entire seasons all at once, are in many ways a hearkening back to ways of storytelling that don't give a shit about commerce and stock prices. Humans have always been confusing to corporations; we are individual and we learn. The consequences of social constructs designed to inhibit our learning and cultural controls manufactured to limit our individuality are made, they are not inherent.

Of late, there is no room for this bullshit in my entertainment choices. I am not shy about my unending love for Magic Mike XXL, a thoroughly fluffy movie that triggers nothing and leaves me breathless and telling stories about what the guys are up to now and how the next film could go. The whole movie happens as a kind of delighted riff on what it is to live well after throwing off the weight of the patriarchy, unafraid of work, unafraid of fucking up, unafraid of cleaning up the messes you make on your own.

It is a movie for grown women. Because being fully alive and aware and not at all freaked out at the possibility of real is some grown woman shit.

from Creative Loafing

Sense8 is a show for grown people. It is utterly unique in my experience of television, although not in my experience of storytelling.

When I say that this show is for grown people, I am not joking. It is less flippant than anything I've seen about humans and their lives and their experiences. Every bit of spectacle serves the narrative. And there is no shortage of spectacle.

Amazing Roommate did some researching while we recovered from the first episode and found that the Wachowskis are gamers. I am not. There is someone in my life who is. She tells me stories. She tells me the stories of the video games that she plays. I have hours of memories set to the soundtrack of her storytelling. That one piece of information clicked and suddenly a show that was bonkers and compelling became a kind of worm hole scented with paper dust and lemon.

Eight people in eight different places communicating without being in each other's immediate presence; their lives under threat from some acknowledged but unknown enemy; skill sets that are partly predefined and partly redefined by the experience of connection; a leveling up of understanding. This is an incredible beginning for any story.

Happily, it also has sense of compassion, humor and something that I hadn't expected at all. Nothing in this show glorifies the patriarchy. Nothing allows people to control other people without cost. It is an investment to be into this show - not of money outside of the subscription - an investment of emotion that is never given the satisfaction of being corrupted. I feel TV love for every one of the sensates at the end of the season. All of them. Equally, though differently as they are all completely different people. Grown people who have to live in a world imperfectly suited to them.

Complications ensue. I cannot pretend to know if this show is perfect. I think that there are more things to think about and dig through and refer to, etc.

At least, I certainly hope so. I got a lot of friends, and we really like to talk about things.