Internal echoes

I went through something of a transformation about a decade ago. I got divorced, moved out of the house I'd never wanted, and spent a large part of a year mostly isolated. I still went to my dojo fairly often, but unless someone contacted me or showed up at the door, there were times when I could go for days without seeing or hearing another human. It was me and the cats. As you might expect, that led to a fair amount of introspection in the depths of a very, very low period. What came out the other end was largely positive (I think.) It allowed me to grow up in some respects. (You'd like to think a 40-year-old wouldn't have that much growing up to do, but we all know that's rarely the case.) Watching The Sound of Metal this evening brought some vivid memories of that period back to me and now I wonder, a decade later, if I might have forgotten some of the lessons that slowly dawned on me in the darkness.

The film is about a nomadic heavy metal drummer in a two-person band with his girlfriend. They live in an RV and simply move from gig to gig. The music is, almost literally, their life as Ruben (Riz Ahmed) uses it to give his life purpose away from drugs and Lou (Olivia Cooke) seemingly does the same to escape her inner demons. But then Ruben begins to lose his hearing. What is it like when you have the whole focus of your life removed, whether by your own hand or something you can't control? I've been there. What is it like when you feel like you're failing simply by existing without that focus? I've been there. What is it like when you desperately want to fight back against something which can't be fought, because it's an essential part of you? I've been there, too. This is Ruben's entire existence being disrupted, not by a mistake that he's made, but a bodily function that can only possibly be repaired. In the making of himself into the whole person that keeps him from addiction, he suddenly finds himself feeling like less of a person in a way that's more mundane, but every bit as crucial.

Director and co-writer, Darius Marder, does a sterling job of keeping us immersed in Ruben's experience and allowing all of the emotions to progress naturally. It's almost documentary-like, but delivered with a deep grasp of the story being told, without deviation. Ahmed handles the textured and difficult role without becoming maudlin, which is a feat in itself. It would've been easy to overemote into the tragedy of the situation, but he keeps himself tied to what Ruben's reality should be even through the scenes where the character pulses with rancor. The actor has had a fairly regular career on large and small screen (plus an intriguing moment as The Corinthian in an audiobook presentation of Sandman), but mostly on the other side of the pond. But his performance here was so good that I'm kind of eager to seek out his larger roles and see what he could do with screenplays perhaps not quite as grounded. Paul Raci, as Joe, the director of the deaf addicts shelter that Ruben is convinced to stay with, is another standout. It's during their most emotional conversation in the film that Joe points out that the stillness of their condition is where he finds the most peace; not simply that he's been able to accept what has happened to him, but has embraced it as something that makes him a whole person and which he was using alcohol to avoid.

When I was staring into the darkness alone, my outlet at the dojo was something that allowed me to find that same kind of stillness. The motion, the interaction with others without speaking, the absorption of form and ritual, the actual stillness of zazen; all of these things contributed to that introspection that led to a similar kind of change that Ruben experiences. He had created a life that was driven forward to keep him from slipping backward into a lesser state. He had to constantly be doing something. When deafness initially robbed him of that, he felt lost. I'm still often in that frame of mind. If I'm not doing something, learning something, conveying something, I still feel as if I'm wasting time; as if I'm failing. In that respect, this film was a small reminder that learning to be comfortable with one's own existence, no matter the physical requirements or hurdles, can occasionally be all the accomplishment that any one person needs. I'm still not certain of that and, thankfully, the film avoids a pat ending, as well. We're simply left with an understanding that this, too, is part of the journey to whatever end.

Highly, highly recommended.

The privilege of ignoring

As some of you know, I've done some writing for a website called ThereWillBe.Games. I'm a relatively long-time member of the community that it's based upon; the original Fortress: Ameritrash. That group was made up of a number of members of Boardgamegeek, who were (and still are) vocal fans of a style of game once known as "Ameritrash." Whereas Euro games, like Settlers of Catan emphasized mechanics over theme, Ameritrash games emphasized theme over mechanics; such that they were often much more random and had aspects that were often embraced/derided as simple "bad luck." Think Talisman or Dungeonquest, if you know games (albeit both from a British producer...)

As games, in general, have shifted away from the old "roll a die and move" approach, so the site has shifted away from its former neo-frat house nature. About a year-and-a-half ago, I was deeply involved in an attempt to broaden the audience of the site, in the same way that many game producers and retailers have been striving to do with the industry as a whole. No one wants the gaming world to be made up solely of pasty, White guys like me, as there are a lot of other people who also enjoy playing, designing, and producing. We wanted the site and the forum to be welcoming to anyone interested in playing games, regardless of their identity. That, of course, produced some pushback. Publishing articles and running a forum on any site is tricky in its execution, but especially so on sites that are nominally confined to a certain topic. In this case, you want the conversation to largely orbit around the topic of games, but you also don't want to prohibit expression. Games are a social endeavor. "Social" means interacting with others. That means other issues can and will arise.

The pushback immediately manifested in the pseudo-libertarian perspectives of some complaining about "free speech" concerns. (I've commented many times before about how that interpretation of the First Amendment is self-serving horseshit, so I'll spare you a rerun.) But it also occurred in the context of gaming as an "escape" from everyday life. It occurred again recently when the site's director decided to add TWBG's voice to those speaking out about the problems of police brutality and systemic racism in our society. As most of us have been tied down with COVID-19 issues and some have tailed off in output, she recently emailed all of the site's regular contributors about their well-being and received a response of that kind, which I'll reproduce here:

My dissent is this: people need spaces where politics don't intrude. Gaming, for me, is one of those. I can't speak for anyone else, but my days include occasionally being on conference calls/webinars with the current administration of the US Department of Education, often with the [...] State Department of Education, and dealing with the rough-and-tumble of a local school board and town council--all extra highly politicized at the moment. I need a break once in a while, and I don't need my hobby throwing politics back in my face. I was sorry to see it come to TWBG.

This is one of the purest expressions of privilege you're likely to see in casual conversation. It's not spoken with any malice or overt racism, but it is spoken with the perspective of someone who has never had to think about conditions that he takes for granted, but which might be serious blockades to the enjoyment, comfort, or even function (like, say, breathing) of others in our society.

This was a project announced by GMT until a backlash canceled it.

Whenever "politics" as an intrusion or "politicization" are cited, it almost always comes from someone who doesn't want to think about other peoples' problems. After all, as a White male, I don't have any concerns about driving to the game store, purchasing a new game, and maybe sitting down to play it right there. I'm in control. Those decisions aren't impacted by any societal circumstances or the narrower ones surrounding those actions. How comfortable might a Black gamer be driving to the store (because of the police)? How comfortable might a transgender gamer be dealing with the staff? How comfortable might a female gamer be simply walking up to the table and asking if she can play? Those are "political" issues because those are social issues. They affect the society that we all happen to live in. That's why the site decided to join the chorus of protest against injustice.

Most people who aren't White males don't have the luxury of deciding when and where they want to forget about what's happening to other people. Instead, they have to consider the social (and, sometimes, legal) barriers constructed against them and decide whether it's worth the risk of encountering anything from feeling uneasy (which, y'know, kinda makes playing a game less enjoyable) to direct fear of being arrested, assaulted, or killed; most notably by those whose purported role in society is to protect its citizens. In short, if your response to someone highlighting these problems is: "I don't want to make one tiny sacrifice of my attention in the name of changing what other people have literally sacrificed their lives for", then I think a moment of introspection might be called for.

A lot of games present fantasy worlds to immerse yourself in. It's safe to say that the author of that response wants to live in two of them: the swords-and-sorcery/meeples kind and the "one where racism doesn't really happen" kind. Again, he has that privilege because of the status that his skin color and gender bestow upon him. What other people want is the ability to also slip into both of those fantasy worlds and make the second one more of a reality. Furthermore, no one is saying that you have to live the larger world every moment. I don't think anyone is thinking about larger societal issues while they're watching a baseball game or an episode of The Blacklist or while they're reading a novel or, yes, while they're playing a game. No one has to be "on" all the time. What we're talking about is the actual ability for some people to turn "off" some of the time and have access to that ability in the same way that the dominant social presence does. That, of course, means progress, which means change, which always makes people uncomfortable. But that's the way the dice roll sometimes, yo.