Three Great Things: Editrix

1. Tubi

Tubi is where the cinematic refuse of world culture mingles salaciously with titans of the canon. Within the confines of its universe, all films are rendered equal in their reluctant subservience to comically abrupt ads from Lumber Liquidator and prescription drugs that boast an intimidating litany of Death-inducing side effects. For the reasonable price of $0, Tubi beckons you forward to gaze upon the glory of the human spirit, the indomitable will to create that has united our species through millennia of difficulty and discord. Maybe you, Reader, fashion yourself something of an intellect. Maybe you think that your Mubi subscription and New Yorker Tote suggest that you have little to learn from the bounty Tubi provides. I would respectfully ask you to reconsider this position. 

Tubi offers a window into a vast jungle of creative output that showcases what can happen — as many of the best things have — when you combine vision, ingenuity, and limited to non-existent resources. Springing forth from the digital content labyrinth like a stubborn grease slicked rose, Tubi provides curious audiences with sights and sounds beyond their wildest imaginings. Tubi reminds us that life is long, the world is large, and that great rewards await those who allow their eyes to see. Most of all though, I’m grateful to Tubi for allowing me to watch all the freak shit my heart desires while I smoke weed and drink mango White Claw with nary a judgmental word spoken. Such pleasures in this life are not to be taken lightly. 

—Steve Cameron

2. Inventing Games

Sometime last year I invented a game called “Divorced or Alone.” The premise was simple: choose a phenomenon, decide whether its energy possessed the complicated acceptance of Divorced or the near-feral specificity of Alone. The key example I give for it is usually: Outer Space is divorced, because it’s only accessible to the eye or the body through great financial and technological achievement but is otherwise looming universal over everything, and The Ocean is alone, because despite its relative closeness to humankind it remains incredibly unknowable, unfathomably deep. We don’t (usually) see the aliens from space, but ocean aliens are just beneath us — they Were (are) us! Divorced is abstract, Alone is absurd. Marc Ribot is Divorced, Bill Frisell is Alone. Walter Becker’s 11 Tracks of Whack is Alone, Donald Fagen’s Nightfly is Divorced. Hand in glove — the world, bifurcated like a double-barrel, neatly cueing up like kids at a Bar Mitzvah into Coke and Pepsi. Britney Alone, Christina Divorced. Delicious. 

My hunger for gamesmanship continued, whetted by the promise of a new organization of all art. Some of the games are procedural — my dear friend Evan and I have one where we do a novelization of Bob Fosse’s All That Jazz in the style of Jon Fosse; Bob is Fosse West, Jon, Fosse East. “Step ball change he said and I thought….” It’s incredibly specific, but that is the point! Evan will post the fact of our games to the site formerly known as Twitter with Raphael’s oft-memed masterpiece painting, The School of Athens. We alternate between Aristotle (Divorced, Alone Moon) and Plato (Divorced, Alone Rising). 

The most recent game I’ve created is called: People’s Music vs Public Music. Public Music refers to music where the artist is totally sublimated into the product that is their music. People’s Music is music that retains the artists’ personhood over whatever “product” they make. Public Musicians are mirrors. People’s Musicians are windows. 

In Public Music, the artist’s back is always turned. It’s hard to imagine really knowing Kelsea Ballerini, the person. Experimental music, which tends to be People’s Music, despite the greater efforts of our Basinskis and Malones, the back cheats out a bit, the artist remains present and seemingly accessible in their work, even as they become Pop Figures. People’s Music is someone more like Lana Del Rey — even as their self is abstracted, they have a genius for allowing their songs to be just for you. It’s specific (Alone) even if they’re abstract (Divorced). It’s a dialectic; people can move between the two. Willie Nelson, my ultimate, is the summation: he is Both. Mark Hollis, whose career began in Public Music but became People’s Music with the last few Talk Talk records, etc., transitioned. Taylor Swift, that final boss of the music industry, is Public Music by means of People’s Music aesthetics. 

The game is endless, a lens through which to see and then distort the world, a means for setting fences around what I don’t understand and what I want to understand, against and alongside poptimism, something for the fractured nature of the present. I am a composer, I like playing God. This is just another way to organize the world. What could be Greater than that?

— Wendy Eisenberg

3. Stardew Valley

I started playing Stardew Valley while coping with the loss of a much beloved pet. I was looking for something relaxing, engrossing, and gentle, and that’s exactly what I got. I spent in game years planting crops, tending to my digital livestock, making cheese, decorating my house, and fishing. I dropped acid with a wizard who taught me how to speak to the invisible spirits that surround us. There were no real deadlines. No real goals. My 64-bit dead grandpa had left me a farm with nothing but vague instructions and rusty tools. I turned it into the backbone of the local economy. But as the fog of my grief lifted I found myself yearning for more. The world around me suddenly looked sharp. I wasn’t trying to tune out anymore. I wanted to feel my heart thumping, and that’s exactly what I got.

I fought my way to the bottom of the mines, slashing through hoards of slimes, mummies, bugs, and ghosts. Overwhelmed by my bloodlust, I went to the bottomless Skull Cavern. I fought dragons. At level 100, I met the head of the Illuminati. He told me of perfection. I needed it. A period at the end of the sentence, “My cat died.” I battled legendary fish. I fed bears maple syrup. I courted the town. The town courted me. I got married. I payed for a stranger’s house. I drove Amazon out of town. I went to the movies. I went to the big city to see my friend’s noise rock band. I achieved perfection. This game had helped me through my grief and for that I will always be grateful to its lone developer Eric Barone. Eric, or “Concerned Ape,” just wanted to make a game he would enjoy playing. Something authentic and true to his life experience. He keeps the price low. He releases substantial and free updates. Despite his success he continues to work alone on his second game. As an artist, he is an inspiration. Stardew Valley is a game that, like life, can give you what you put into it. If you want it to be simple, it is. If you want more, it is bottomless. The music slaps. The graphics are cute. The townspeople are much weirder than they let on. Like in real life, some things are left unspoken.

I still miss my cat Ruby. She ruled

— Joshua Daniel

(Photo Credit: Laura Brunisholz)