I am finally able to slightly catch up to reading my favorite newsletters today and really loved both Christmas rides! I had no idea that Marillion wrote a Christmas song so that was nice to hear. I love that you continually promote and highlight short films, as they so often get lost in the morass of feature films and YouTube videos. I know that I rarely watch them and that is too bad, as some of the best work can be found in the short form fiction, animation and documentary.
The one I REALLY look forward to watching is "Bookstores" as it is a topic near and dear to me. I'm actually working on a piece about how reading books has fallen by the wayside in my life. I was blaming it on an attention span damaged by YouTube, social media, reading Substack newsletters (😀), and TV. But as I've been exploring, it goes much deeper than that. I am unsure whether it will become an earworm post (probably it will), though I have the perfect song to go with it. I want to finish writing it before watching this film as I don't want to be influenced or end up negatively comparing my writing to it, which unfortunately is a habit of mine.
And I've bookmarked the Soccer Mommy Tiny Desk concert! I have always loved her, and her collaboration with Bully is one of my favorite songs of the year.
I'm really glad you liked the Christmas rides - I enjoyed producing them, largely because they kind of wrote themselves and there's just so little time to do anything more. The Marillion track was new to me - I combed through lists of Christmas songs/alternative Christmas songs/indie Christmas songs/etc. - and that discovery quickly took root. And what's really cool about it is that, despite the James Bond theme included near the end, it hasn't actually been in a Bond film. At least, as far as I can tell.
Short films are an interest of mine. One of the best aspects of streaming is that stories can develop over many, many hours (e.g., Breaking Bad, Ozark, Bojack Horseman ... hell, even Bridgerton, Designated Survivor and Madame Secretary) that in feature-length form would have ended up so truncated it wouldn't be worth the effort to watch them. But the short form is crystallised art. 'Salmon' is one of my favourites, but 'Bookstore' is excellent, too. Let me know what you think.
I'm interested in your thoughts about how reading books has fallen away - I've found the same. And that's something I never thought I'd experience. And, yes - it's definitely the result of more than an attention span reduced by all things digital. Though those certainly remain a contributing factor. My own thought is that it has something to do with my 70s/80s-educated brain struggling to find its way in a very different (and that's not to say bad) world.
Interesting that you think your lack of book reading is influenced by the world being so different from when you were younger. I will need to sit with that. Do you mean technologically? Politically? For me, more recent factors are physical. I have always been very nearsighted with astigmatism, but I have developed other eye conditions (including severe dry eye) and it's literally hard for me to focus on any small fonts, at any distance. So I was using an e-reader for a while and my iPad so I can make the text large, but I really craved the physicality of a book. If I read by a window that gets a lot of light I can read a regular book for an hour, but a lot of elements have to align for that to work. I've been doing more audiobooks actually. Maybe that's what I have to adjust to going forward. Actual books will become more like photo albums than things to be read.
I am finally able to slightly catch up to reading my favorite newsletters today and really loved both Christmas rides! I had no idea that Marillion wrote a Christmas song so that was nice to hear. I love that you continually promote and highlight short films, as they so often get lost in the morass of feature films and YouTube videos. I know that I rarely watch them and that is too bad, as some of the best work can be found in the short form fiction, animation and documentary.
The one I REALLY look forward to watching is "Bookstores" as it is a topic near and dear to me. I'm actually working on a piece about how reading books has fallen by the wayside in my life. I was blaming it on an attention span damaged by YouTube, social media, reading Substack newsletters (😀), and TV. But as I've been exploring, it goes much deeper than that. I am unsure whether it will become an earworm post (probably it will), though I have the perfect song to go with it. I want to finish writing it before watching this film as I don't want to be influenced or end up negatively comparing my writing to it, which unfortunately is a habit of mine.
And I've bookmarked the Soccer Mommy Tiny Desk concert! I have always loved her, and her collaboration with Bully is one of my favorite songs of the year.
https://youtu.be/u-JFNPg2y30?si=aatK1KH2QiaPXtF4
I'm really glad you liked the Christmas rides - I enjoyed producing them, largely because they kind of wrote themselves and there's just so little time to do anything more. The Marillion track was new to me - I combed through lists of Christmas songs/alternative Christmas songs/indie Christmas songs/etc. - and that discovery quickly took root. And what's really cool about it is that, despite the James Bond theme included near the end, it hasn't actually been in a Bond film. At least, as far as I can tell.
Short films are an interest of mine. One of the best aspects of streaming is that stories can develop over many, many hours (e.g., Breaking Bad, Ozark, Bojack Horseman ... hell, even Bridgerton, Designated Survivor and Madame Secretary) that in feature-length form would have ended up so truncated it wouldn't be worth the effort to watch them. But the short form is crystallised art. 'Salmon' is one of my favourites, but 'Bookstore' is excellent, too. Let me know what you think.
I'm interested in your thoughts about how reading books has fallen away - I've found the same. And that's something I never thought I'd experience. And, yes - it's definitely the result of more than an attention span reduced by all things digital. Though those certainly remain a contributing factor. My own thought is that it has something to do with my 70s/80s-educated brain struggling to find its way in a very different (and that's not to say bad) world.
Interesting that you think your lack of book reading is influenced by the world being so different from when you were younger. I will need to sit with that. Do you mean technologically? Politically? For me, more recent factors are physical. I have always been very nearsighted with astigmatism, but I have developed other eye conditions (including severe dry eye) and it's literally hard for me to focus on any small fonts, at any distance. So I was using an e-reader for a while and my iPad so I can make the text large, but I really craved the physicality of a book. If I read by a window that gets a lot of light I can read a regular book for an hour, but a lot of elements have to align for that to work. I've been doing more audiobooks actually. Maybe that's what I have to adjust to going forward. Actual books will become more like photo albums than things to be read.
Merry Christmas to you and yours. :).
Thank you! And a Merry Christmas to you and yours, too!