Hivemind Times Issue #92

Welcome To The Hivemind Times!

It’s noon(ish?), it’s Friday you know what that means, Hivemind Times. Welcome to the 92nd edition. This week has been exciting over at HQ. The chamber is full of videos ready for you to devour. We got to collaborate with our buddies over at Nerd Sesh again so go check that out next week (Friday). 

This edition should be full of all sorts of goodies and some great guest columns. Thanks to everyone who has bought some of the new Copes merch and to those who continue to buy and play the card game. 

With love and care we can conquer the world.

- Graydon

WEEKLY PLAYLIST

A playlist of stuff mostly from the 70s and 80s that might make ya feel good.

- Graydon

MOVIE REVIEW

I saw Disclosure Day and I liked it. A lot. So what. (written before I knew Ro was going to write an honest review below)

I’m not a genuine film buff, I’m a baby who likes big time alien slop with EXCELLENT SOUND, mind you and Josh O’Connors ears!. I am sick of being crucified because I’m not overly critical about the CUTE CGI woodland creatures or the massive plot holes or the weak script. Sorry I have maintained a healthy amount of whimsy into my thirties. 

Cynicism has long tried to ruin the film industry, more specifically the summer blockbuster and I am here to fight the good fight of JOY. You know what, I already bought my Odyssey IMAX ticket too dead center fuckers and I’ll probably give that 5 stars too because it go BOOM and Zendaya. 

Eat shit losers, have fun with your art flicks, me and my pals gonna be watching Young Washington with delight when that shit comes out too.

- Graydon

MOVIE REVIEW PT2

Suffering For Celluloid 3

DISCLOSURE DAY - Written at the end of a 12 hour PA Shift, so gimme grace

A friend once told me that TV is like reality, and movies are like dreams. If that is the case - that the elastic time and unrelenting images on screen tickle our subconscious like little else - then Steven Spielberg is both the assurant stamp of auteur theory’s validity and a psychoanalytic treasure trove.

Since his debut Duel in 1971, Spielberg has enough thematic calling cards to print his own tarot deck: the warm glow of childhood, divorcing parents, familial conflict, the desire to escape, a transience of being, and (of course) aliens! Having visited this topic five times in previous films (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, & War of the Worlds), this late career return to the subject matter excited me greatly. Aliens as subject matter are direct channels to otherness, xenophobia, conspiracy, authoritarian exclusion, and speculative technology.

As a child I was profoundly interested in abductions, probings, supposed cover ups, the Phoenix Lights, Roswell; they gave me, in equal measure, access to a profound scale of being and my first bout with an intoxicant terror: what one might refer to as the sublime. Spielberg, when dealing with extra terrestrial material, is at a prime position to strike my subconscious with his big tent blockbusting feelings. I go to bat for this shit, fr, so this oughta be a layup - right?

Sadly, Steven’s paracosmic technothriller, while exciting, ultimately left me deflated. It is a work that runs on emotion like a Ford Transit runs on gas; not for nearly as long as you’d hope it would. The movie isn’t without its appeal - the John Williams score is the same as its ever been (delightful), there are Keaton/Chaplin esque stunts involving henchmen, and a moment involving crop circles that raised the hairs on my arms. Emily Blunt is firing on all cylinders with a paroxysm of languages, accents, and emotions - her most ecstatic performance since the measured rattle of DEA agent Kate Macer in Sicario, but unfortunately the other lead performances seem more phoned in - proleified and pedestrianized tropes that don’t tug the heartstrings as much as they oafishly slug them.

The cinematography, glazed with a bleach bypassed flatness, seems to heighten the unreality of the scenarios rather than bolster them; a problem not helped by Spielberg’s inability to realistically integrate computer generated animals and set pieces. Sometimes the film looks great, other times it’s flashbanging you with anamorphic flares and lurid ridge lighting. Janusz Kaminski is great though, don’t get me wrong.

The core interests of the movie - those of government experimenting, privatized torture, the thrill of the unknown, the capacity for technology to bring us together - cohere like Lincoln (2012) Logs. I found DD to be an enjoyable, if silly, thought experiment rollercoaster: I just wish it struck me like my childhood neighbor’s motion sensing floodlight beam shot through my window in the middle of the night. Some of that is growing up, but not all of it.

With the absolute blowout successes of Obsession and Backrooms, a fact of generational interest has dawned on me: the same old things won’t be scary forever. The language of cinema will continue evolving emotionally, stylistically, and textually to reflect the problems of an atomized, fractured, and economically disenfranchised youth. Films, once the ground on which cast shadows of platonic mimesis enlightened and propagandized our fantasies, increasingly slips from an assurance of reality into a garish, uncanny alienation; perhaps due to the latter’s outsized claim on reality. Speaking of the dreamy, cloudy flow of time - I rewatched Clair Denis’ masterpiece Beau Travail last week and it sent a shock of life through my body. Masterpiece. Go watch that fr.

Album Recs

Wendy Eisenberg - Viewfinder

$ilkMoney - I Don’t Give a Fuck About This Rap Shit, Imma Just Drop Until I Don’t Feel Like It Anymore

Book Rec - Authority by Andrea Long Chu

Artist Rec - Noriko Ambe

- Rosette Ramdin

DOUBLE DISCLOSURE DAY

MUSIC FROM JACOB SIGMAN

I grew up as a summer camp kid. Some of my earliest musical memories were singing around a campfire and there’s really nothing like that feeling. It’s probably one of the few things humans have been doing for the past 300,000 years that we still do today. That’s got to be part of why it feels so good right? Shadows and flames playing off of the faces of the people we know, voices united in a singular thread of musical truth?

Music today is so indelibly woven into the fabric of our everyday lives that there are a million ways to experience it. In commercials, movies, radio, playlists and YouTube videos. But how often do we have that campfire type experience? You would think that as a musician I would say a lot but the answer is actually very very rarely. 

That’s why I’ve chosen to do my latest records this way. I pick a place and a group of people and we go there for 7-10 days and when we come out we have an album. The whole experience is the most incredible ride and once we all loosen up, and let go a little bit, the music we write is just so.. True? True to the moment we’re all in. You can feel it all kind of build, like we all get in sync and the songs just come rolling out. I think records used to probably get made this way.

Single number two from this record comes out a week from today and to celebrate I’m having a show at Cøllect Beer Bar in Detroit. We’ll be putting on a Live Band Silent Disco, a concert fully on headphones. They’re fun immersive musical experiences. Afterwards we’ve got Internetboy and Enderrr (my literal brother) doing a Silent Disco DJ set where you can switch between DJ’s at the click of a button. Super excited, can’t wait to share it all. If you live in Detroit I hope you come through and we can dance together in the firelight like the sapiens of old.

- Jacob Sigman

THE BEST BERRY OF ALL TIME

POEM OF THE WEEK

Louis Simpson (1923-2012)

To the Western World

A siren sang, and Europe turned away
From the high castle and the shepherd’s crook.   
Three caravels went sailing to Cathay
On the strange ocean, and the captains shook   
Their banners out across the Mexique Bay.

And in our early days we did the same.   
Remembering our fathers in their wreck
We crossed the sea from Palos where they came   
And saw, enormous to the little deck,   
A shore in silence waiting for a name.

The treasures of Cathay were never found.   
In this America, this wilderness
Where the axe echoes with a lonely sound,   
The generations labor to possess
And grave by grave we civilize the ground.

NEW MERCH