Jen Myers

Recently: 14 June

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Links

The revolution will not be optimised: on frictionmaxxing and the creative virtues of inconvenience.
“The difference is not one of activity. A person resting and a person idling may look identical from the outside: both are in the chair, both are doing nothing the world would call work. The difference is in what the doing-nothing serves. Rest serves work. It is the trough between two waves of effort, valuable precisely because of the effort it enables. It can be defended in the language of productivity, which is why the productive world tolerates it: even your stillness, it turns out, can be made to justify itself by improving your subsequent motion. Rest is idleness with an alibi.” On the difference between rest and idleness.
The 20 best corridors in film.
Crash is easily my favorite David Cronenberg film and now that it’s enjoying its thirtieth anniversary, there are some pretty good essays out about it. This one from Travis Woods on Letterboxd is great.
The first straight-to-VHS movie in 20 Years is a deeply human gesture.
“Whenever I do this mental exercise, something physical happens: Besides the change in what I am actively seeing, I inevitably find that parts of my body—my brow, jaw, neck, and shoulders—relax. I find that I am breathing more slowly, or not at all. I realize that in my habitual way of looking, I have been straining, trying to get at something. Looking can be aggressive. It turns out this might be my default way of looking.” Living in an alive world.

Reading/Watching/Listening

A podcast episode about the Bennington Triangle led me to Donna Tartt’s The Secret History, which is a modern classic so it should be no surprise that it’s incredible, but it’s incredible.
I read Hildur Knútsdóttir’s new The Night Guest. I always like a bloody happy ending.
My podcast recently covered the 1999 film adaptation of Stir of Echoes so I was inspired to pick up the Richard Matheson novel on which it was based. The novel is quite a different beast and much more of a critical mirror held up to late 1950’s suburbia. I like them both.
I am mixed on both Obsession and Backrooms but there’s stuff I like in both and I look forward to the nice young men who directed them continuing to make things. I also look forward to young women getting similar opportunities, because apparently that’s something we’re still waiting for.
I watched Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s miniseries Penance. Not as strong as his other work, and the source material influenced a much less nihilistic ending than his tone pursued, which was disorienting. Still worthwhile.
Did I mention that Widow’s Bay rules? Because it does.
David Byrne’s How Music Works is a fascinating overview of how music has evolved as a social creation throughout years and technological changes.
Which seems like an appropriate cue:

Anne Appleby Japanese Maple Ii

Sat, 13 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Anne Appleby, Japanese Maple II (2004)

Katherine May Enchantment 01

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“Mircea Eliade coined the term hierophany to describe the way that the divine reveals itself to us, transforming the objects through which it works. When we make a tree or a stone or a wafer of bread the subject of our worshipful attention, we transform it into a hierophany, an object of the sacred. For the believer, this means that absolute reality has been uncovered, rather than anything fantastical projected upon it. Hierophany is the experience of perceiving all the layers of existence, not just seeing its surface appearance. The person who believes, be it in an ancient animism or a complex modern religion, lives in an enhanced world, having been given a kind of supernatural key to see wonder in the everyday. ‘For those who have a religious experience,’ said Eliade, ‘all nature is capable of revealing itself as a cosmic sacrality. The cosmos in its entirety can become a hierophany.’”

— Katherine May, Enchantment: Awakening Wonder in an Anxious Age

Budapest

Wed, 10 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Budapest, June 2026

David Byrne How Music Works 02

Fri, 29 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“I’m beginning to think of the artist as someone who is adept at making devices that tap into our shared psychological make-up and that trigger the deeply moving parts we have in common.”

— David Byrne, How Music Works

Sarah Bernhardt Self Portrait As A Chimera

Thu, 28 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Sarah Bernhardt, Self-Portrait as a Chimera (1880), taken at the Art Institute of Chicago on 25 May 2026.

Edward Gorey A Dull Afternoon

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Edward Gorey, A Dull Afternoon (1972)

David Byrne How Music Works 01

Tue, 26 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

“Technology has altered the way music sounds, how it’s composed, and how we experience it. It has also flooded the world with music. The world is awash with (mostly) recorded sounds. We used to have to pay for music or make it ourselves; playing, hearing, and experiencing it was exceptional, a rare and special experience. Now hearing it is ubiquitous, and silence is the rarity that we pay for and savor.”

— David Byrne, How Music Works

Recently: 15 May

Fri, 15 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Links

“So every time you share a link on your blog, every time you write a few sentences about why someone else’s work matters to you, every time you add a new entry to a blogroll or a links page – you are a curator. You are doing what no algorithm can do. You’re saying: I am a person. I read this. I think you should read it too.” On curation.
The internet has no benches.
Humans weren’t given souls by God or genes. We made them ourselves with language–turning sentience into something sacred.
What is the chance of a message in a bottle being found? Spoiler alert: not good. I still think I could do it, though.
“People put stuff off, like the angry guy who didn’t climb the mountain when he was 20 because there wasn’t time. No, you didn’t make time. Any project… ‘One day, I’m gonna write that novel.’ Pal? You better start tomorrow morning because the right time never happens. It’s when you boldly determine it.” Sometimes, you just need Henry Rollins to set you straight, you know?

Reading/Watching/Listening

I was anticipating the new film from director Damian McCarthy and Hokum did not disappoint. A weird, grungy, ghostly blast.
I rather blindly started reading Brian Evenson’s Last Days and whoa. I did not properly know what I was getting myself into. Disturbing and astonishingly good.
Widow’s Bay rules. I hope they make a million seasons of it.
A couple of weeks ago, I got to see Joe Hisaishi in concert. What a lovely experience.

Amsterdam

Tue, 12 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Amsterdam, May 2026