I am a complicated person. Or, at least, I like to think I am. I do know that I have changed a lot in the last decade plus. My wife and I recently celebrated 15 years of our relationship, a milestone that for us signified that we have something incredibly special and lovely worth celebrating with the finest banana split we could find, (shoutout to the Creamery in Lombard). It also made me feel my age. When we started dating, we were so young and new and stupid. The world still felt fresh and honest. We still felt like we could do anything. We are still those bright eyed goofy dreamers, madly in love and making it work. That doesn’t mean that we don’t have scars. And for me, those scars have left me really, really fucking angry.

The world feels cruel now. Climate change is showing itself in real time. Fascism is creeping around every corner, and no one can afford anything. This isn’t the idyllic world of 2011. I find myself incredibly withdrawn and becoming increasingly quiet. I attribute some of this to aging, and the bulk of it to working on my trauma and just growing. A clear chunk of it is definitely feeling like I was lied to growing up, but that’s a different blog post. No, this one ends up positive and hopeful.

On Saturday, I saw Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. It is the classic tale that all of fantasy and sci fi are based on. You probably spaced out reading it in high school. I definitely did. Nevertheless, I was excited to see this movie. I should preface this by saying that I am a student of history, my degree is in U.S. history, and I am keenly aware that history moves in cycles. Cycles that rhyme. The Odyssey’s ending coincides with the beginning of the so called “Greek Dark Ages” the end of the Bronze Age. The movie plays this fear of impending doom as “people from the sea” who are hellbent on destroying Greece. You are shown in great detail that the so called “people” are the Greeks themselves, pillaging towns and ports on their way home from the destruction of Troy. This is Nolan mirroring our own country’s issues with propaganda and media portraying immigrants as “illegal” or “aliens”. It is also made clear that the elites of this time look down on the poor and poverty stricken as other or disgusting, just the same as they do now. 

Now, this movie is technically brilliant and beautiful, and I left the theater in a better mood about the state of the world. There have always been assholes. There have always been billionaire types who are plagues on the earth. And do you know what happens when “society collapses”? We fight. We win. We rebuild. 

Anyway, I really just wanted to write down how much I love my wife and how excited I am to see what the next 15 years look like. I just saw a window to also talk about history and politics and so on. Kinda reminds me of what the album is about…

Speaking of, the album is almost done. 

Ok bye for now 

matt