New year’s resolution: Know more than ever one’s worth, no more chasing those [motherfatherfuckersclearsthroat] who don’t. While obviously staying humble. Remember kids of parents reading this, self-actualization don’t equal being an arrogass bastard-bitch. Also bro be a tad less bitter save some of that for when you’re 30.
Allowing oneself to publish now, having reached the end of video editing, so anything else done don’t feel like bs side-tracking:
Dear future-Malu—this written from what will hopefully be the past-post-apocalypse by the time you can read this. Proof-checked this and really am not a fan of my writing here cause at this point it feels like existential filler between what feels like ~5934876 hours of editing by now. But as a way to exercise the end of year review inspired by Dan Barrett and also exercise my deliberate disregard of classical grammar, this will have to do.
No one objectively knows where the world will be into next year. It’ll still be a mess, but which way on the pendulum of forward-progress or regression is a bi-product of living in a post-industrialization taken to the logical extreme of entitled division [e.g. human pieces of shit who like corona-flavored freedom, racial-cultural purity, guns, rape oh right pro-life, pro-life rape, division, misinformation, repressive revisionism, [ …— ]]. What I Do know is come the first quarter of next year, this thing that for the last 6+ years the people in my life have willed to life will be existentially done. I’ll figure out how I’m gonna continue surviving—e.g. roof over head, baseline rent life consistency—but I’ll never be okay without living to the best I can what I wanna do and give.
It’s been a long 2 years and counting as you’re gonna learn of from the adults in your life. As encapsulating of valleys and peaks as I could imagine. But thigHOLy shit I almost spilled my drink which this time might’ve murdered the laptop. Good segue, Lots to be grateful for. But things have started changing for the better. And for the first time in my life I can attest and believe it as someone who before that never felt like there was a real place that will be forged and cemented in the wider world for those I share culture and identity with. I’m in my tail-20s and I realized my entire life’s relationship with media was reacting against it, or at best knowing it was a matter of time before it’d fail people like me again. But now I genuinely love the art I Do engage with, and I have hope in where things are going and can go. Lot of having missed out beforehand is on me still; poetic irony of making outsider art and not looking more to what’s being built outside.
Though what goes on in the mainstream and forefront matters cause it directly shifts worldview which can either make the world worse or better. And cause I humbly don’t picture myself operating at the mainstream level, I had always grappled with the helplessness of seeing those I relate to not have their deserved seats at the table. But those tables this year alone have more than ever turned in their favor. Even better, they’re flipping the tables so hardcore that those tables are resultingly their own tables and now the jackasses who’ve denied them the seats are coming asking for a seat.
I no longer have to just feel fury towards a larger system that wasn’t changing, and I know now that what I do doesn’t have to solely exist to rebel against and attack the present. What I do can also be for a bettering present and future from the path I take. This off the hope from Awkwafina, Shang-Chi, Simu Liu, 88rising, and the rest of my generational sheroes / heroes in the big leagues changing the collective culture and trailblazing a more lit present and future. As for who I’m blessed to have in my own life in alphabetical order to name a few, Annie, Dan, Peter, thank you from the deepest depths of my duck taped heart for being there.
And you Malu when you read this and potentially feel embarrassed/appalled. I’m convinced you’ll get to grow up in that better future. Evil people who resist and hold back the future can never truly stop that future. Even if / when things might feel like a marathon with no finish line, hate ultimately just seizures in circles while love will always go forward.
With warmth,
Tail-2021 Terry
For all of 2021’s you-thought-2020-sucked-fuck-this-ness, my hope in pop culture film was restored. Listed by release.
Zack Snyder’s Justice League – Both in real-life and art, a light amidst the dark.
Evangelion 3.0+1.0 – On the blessing any of us have to feel, live, and give.
Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings – Things are changing for the better; the power of authentic representation through ass-kickery.
Malignant – Malignant!!!!!
The Matrix Resurrections – The ultimate big budget middle finger to reboot/IP culture protest film – this as an IP sequel that exists for itself and not its parent company Warner Brothers. Wonderfully sure to break all neckbeards’ little fanboy hearts and ruin their childhoods.
re: Malignant – Now check out Insidious 2.
OPEN DOOM CRESCENDO 