October 7, 2021

I'm taking Intro to Filmmaking at SMC. I love SMC. So cheap. Such quality instruction. Such good access to resources and equipment. It's likely the youngest class I've been a part of (especially compared to my age). The students seem really sweet and friendly. I think several might be on their first semester at SMC and are looking to meet friends. We had a long protracted break during this week's class. (It had to do with an assessment situation.) And I ended up talking with a group of my classmates for an hour. It was enjoyable, but I felt vaguely dissociated. Like I was there but not in the normal way I am when I hang out with a group. I'm conscious that everyone else is at a different place in their lives, and I feel like I can watch on from a far in addition to being a part of the conversation. I hope it's not making me sad. 

BLog Time! 

**SPOILERS**

Vedantam, Shankar – THE HIDDEN BRAIN

Published: 2010

Read: 09/2021

I thought this book was published more recently. There was a que for it at the library. It being published in 2010 might explain why they didn’t have Vedantam himself read it. Instead, Steve West narrates. He’s a white English guy, and it’s weird when he gets to parts saying things like, “As someone born in India....” Vedantam has a great voice – I’ve heard it on the podcast! Hopefully, he reads his own book next time. 

Hidden Brain is about the work our unconscious brains are doing without our rational/cognitive brains being aware of it. Examples include, racial and gender bias, the tendency to form consensus in large groups in times of emergency, plus some other ones. I probably waited too long between finishing the book and writing this post, to be honest. All of the content was interesting, but I started to think of it as The Book of Bad News. The Undoing Project also covers a lot of this stuff—the stuff we’re missing because our cognitive mind doesn’t catch it. It’s depressing to think that our attitude towards certain people – our biases – are out of reach of our general intentions. The Hidden Brain, the unconscious mind, learns through experience and repetition. That’s somewhat manageable. I think Vedantam’s point across the board isn’t that we should all be depressed, but that we should acknowledge the influence of the hidden brain and work to find solutions that encompass it. 

Rating: ★★★

Rooney, Sally – NORMAL PEOPLE

Published: 2018

Read: 10/2021

Normal People is about Connell and Marianne, high schoolers at the beginning of the novel and just out of college by the end. They’re from a predominantly working-class part of Ireland, although Marianne’s family is rich. Connell’s mom cleans Marianne’s house. Connell’s athletic and popular at school, even though he’s laconic. Marianne is an outcast because she’s weird, overly intelligent, and doesn’t care what people think. The two start sleeping together, but they keep it a secret because Connell, especially, is worried what his friends might think. They both go to Trinity College in Dublin on scholarship. (They’re both highly intelligent and good students.) This time, Marianne is in her element and Connell is out of it. Connell has never really thought about his personality. At home, everyone knows who he is and his personality seems outside of himself, something assigned to him by other people. Now he has the challenge of making friends and fitting in with a much more urbane and well-off group of people. He doesn’t feel he can fit in and feels he doesn’t fit in with his old school friends either. He falls into a depression. Marianne deals with familial trauma by getting into sexually abusive relationships. Marianne and Connell occupy different rolls in one another’s lives, sometimes intimate and sometimes not. 

This book was literature. Insightful descriptions capturing the stuff of life. A close look into two characters. Compelling without needing to add any zombies. I kept thinking of Anna Karenina at the end. It’s a much shorter, less complicated, novel than Tolstoy, but it has the same vibrancy. In tone and topic, it also reminded me of Lena Dunham’s Girls. Although obviously that’s a TV show. In the reviews I’m reading of it, it’s often tagged as a millennial novel. That’s fair, I guess. It’s lovely and a little odd to have something that seems resonant with my own time and experience presented so beautifully. 

Good stuff. 

Rating: ★★★★