rocket to nowhere

I’m un/fortunately ambivalent about the doings over at the DNC. On the one hand, it’s exciting, historic, and in my city. On the other hand, it’s in my city, and seeing as how the Pepsi Center is less than a mile from my house, it (the convention) is also kind of mucking things up near me. Yesterday, for instance, J and I went to the Denver Diner for breakfast. Normally, we would just walk over, but since we were leaving directly from there to go to Fort Collins (where my second cousin’s daughter was playing a street urchin in La Bohéme (which was very good)), we drove. While we were sitting there, seemingly every street around us was blocked off and closed to traffic. As we were then walking out the door, the first major protest of the DNC was coming down the street. J and I weren’t sure how we felt about the protest (necessary? naive? Ethan Persoff has a great post about how he felt about it on his blog.). (I walked up to one guy and congratulated him on his grammatically correct sign which read “Whom would Jesus bomb?” (he told me that so far two English teachers had told him it was wrong).) We were less sure of how we were going to get out of the parking lot. Thank goodness there was a back way out, but that back way became a very circuitous route to the interstate.

This morning, J and I went for a run (away from the Pepsi Center), and saw/heard (predictably) nothing. However, later, as I was coming back from a quick bicycle ride to Meininger Art Supply (to replace a broken pen), I saw James Carville running on the Cherry Creek path. Not having seen many celebrities ever in my life (I once spoke to Ravi Shankar on the phone), I was excited.

In the end, I guess, like most Americans, I am less concerned with the meat of politics—the important things that truly affect my life, and more concerned with the superficial: How am I going to drive my car and how long will I have to wait? and Ooh! Lookie-look, a TeeVee perosonality!!!

Yay for me. Yay for America.

(This still was taken from the clip linked at the bottom of this post.)

Yesterday’s “excellent documentary on depression and anti-depressants in Japan” was Mike Mills’ (not that Mike Mills) 2007 release Does Your Soul Have a Cold? I saw it on the Independent Film Channel, and unfortunately it doesn’t look as though they’re going to replay it (it’s not on DVD yet either, so no Netflix).

[Before I review a movie on this site, I have to give props to my friend Dylan, who has undertaken a brilliantly insane project: He is attempting to watch and write about 365 movies in as many days. You can follow his progress over at Dylan & The Movies. I am really enjoying reading it.]

Does Your Soul Have a Cold? follows five young(er) Japanese people over the course of six months, and talks to them about their depression and how they’re dealing (or not) with it. That’s pretty much it. The film does also point out that until 2000, the concept of depression (and even the word for it) was mostly unknown in Japan. That year, it was introduced via advertising and marketing campaigns by (Western) pharmaceutical companies selling anti-depressants. It is from one of these advertising campaigns that the film gets its title.

The film is a fairly subtle exploration of this problem (a country introduced to the American “quick-fix” before being introduced to therapy), and does not, I feel, engage in many (if any) rhetorically coercive tactics. The one user/reviewer on IMDB feels that the film lacks narrative drive, and that because of that, it isn’t compelling. S/he says, “It lacked some of that ‘oumph’ that I’ve grown so used to… That desire to see & know more.” I think this reviewer is missing the point. Depression robs a person of the desire to see and know more. The fact that the film showed depression while also sort of being depression (without depressing or boring me) may very well be its triumph: Nothing changes. These people are clearly depressed (and whether that has been influenced by the marketing campaigns is left up to the viewer), and the pills seem to do nothing. The one person who does appear to be getting better, by the way, is the only person who has actively sought out therapy (and who could name his condition before 2000), but Mills doesn’t push that at the viewer, he just lets it happen.

The film raised many questions for me: questions about the nature of mental illness and the efficacy of drugs, and questions about the nature of causality in real life and how narrative is used to portray that. I’m still working through them, and probably will continue to work through them for a long time.

Here is a link to Mills’ website and a clip from the film (I’m sorry it’s not embeddable).

If you see the movie, please let me know what you think. Maybe I’m wrong.

I was trying to watch an excellent documentary on depression and anti-depressants in Japan when the cat who loves me even more when J is gone decided it was time to cuddle my neck.

Oh my goodness!

Jess, Dani, and I are starting a “reading” series called “This is Not a Reading.” It has its very own blog (because everything must–this will be a rule in the future: you will check your refrigerator’s blog to see if you should pick up some more butter on the way home (I am not kidding))! That blog, plus information on who what where when why how can be found by following

this handy dandy link!

The very selfsame link has been added to the self-aggrandizing portion of my linkline to your right! —>

You should go there right now.

Oh gosh!