It's been a busy month, with not much time to write and hardly any energy to focus on art. But i wanted to be sure and take the time to write about what's caught my fascination as we close out what has been an incredibly transformative year for me.
A Day To Remember have been one of my favorite bands (You're Welcome nonwithstanding) for years. i first listened to Homesick all the way through in what would've had to have been January 2018 and can honestly say i've kept that record, plus What Separates Me From you and Common Courtesy, on almost constant rotation ever since. And that's cause those songs are great. City of Ocala into Right Back At It Again is some of the most fun and energetic pop-punk-meets-metalcore has ever been, WSMFY has some of the angriest songs in ADTR's discography, and Homesick is just an all time great record that travels the swath of genres represented by a mall goth's playlist, it positively oozes angst and energy without a cause but with a definite direction. Back. Going home again ripped me violently back into feeling a lot like i did in high school, not helped by literally living in my old room but definitely soothed at least slightly by thoroughly enjoying albums i couldn't get into back then. A Day To Remember's
The Disappearance of Haruhi is my favorite Christmas movie. i've watched it every year for the last five and it always moves me to tears. Even just looking at it– The world is simple, but beautiful. The setting is a tiring, beautiful city. Those gorgeous, unmoving mountains in the background fade out to steep hills; cynicism and exhaustion are bred on their slopes. And this is the kind of thing the story is about.
By no effort of his own, Kyon is plucked from hellishly stressful fun days to a heavenly ennui–a world so boring it's cliché. Deliberately. It's heartbreaking, with Kyon, watching our beloved quirky friends filed down into stereotypes who do not recognize him. Kyon never takes his coat off. This is a world running out of heat and with no one to share theirs, everyone hoards it. But it's not hopeless, either. Despite the gray and the cold there is warmth and bright color everywhere in the world where our characters do something for it–make exceptional efforts, waiting by the side of the bed of someone you love for three days. Cutting fruit for them. Throwing a Christmas party, even getting all the details wrong. These moments all take place in warm rooms. Haruhi and "John Smith" writing in chalk on Tanabata would prove to be the ultimate effort in terms of its effects on the timeline and Haruhi's life; fitting that the festival of wishes that commemorates the fixed celestial seperation of two mythic lovers would take place at the warmest time of year, force Kyon to remove his coat immediately, and then confront him with the ultimate thesis of the Suzumiya Haruhi series writ large: "You're Gonna Miss It All," as Modern Baseball said. In other word, these days might be tiring, boring or annoying, but they're fun like nothing else. Everyone misses their youth sometimes, once they grow up.
This other timeline only budges past the borders of cliché's domain once Kyon takes the initiative and accepts Nagato's invitation. She shyly asks him to come home with her, and having no better leads, he accepts. Cliche or not, its so purely beautiful and rare, so precious that like a diamond it scratches the glass of this world. The ensuing conversation leads to Kyon's first and best leads, revelations that only come from trying to understand Nagato better. Her acting along with the pace set by everyone else in this alternate universe only works so well because they were so distant from each other to begin with. He can't even tell at first. Hell, Kyon can only call out to Haruhi because he snuck away three summers ago to aimlessly proclaim "I was here" with her–and she only listens because its more interesting if it's true. She only listens with her cynical rationality fully to the side. The word of this god is that anything else would be idiotic.
Even getting stabbed by Asakura is an exciting step in the right direction for the universe returning to abnormal. It can only happen after Kyon fights the full force of his body weight taunting him with how tiring and stressful it was for Haruhi to have powers. The only way out is to lift his head from his desk and admit that all that exhausting stuff was fun, because it was, and that's the most important part. Of course it takes place in their classroom at sunset. The greyed-out world previous is gone. It's vivacious, warm storytelling in the dead of winter leading us to the climax. But the stabbing itself takes place in the white and gray again, under blue streetlights bright like magnesium. As he bleeds out we learn his death here only "had" to happen to keep Nagato's image of the world safe from rejuvenated, exhausting life. Asakura is a protector of Nagato's brittle peace with the fanatic devotion of a computer program. Everything is cold as the imagination of an android. Visually, thermodynamically, the most warmth in the scene comes from Kyon's spilled blood; Asakura whips her knife through the air, and it writes a scarlet arc for second. It makes sense that the blood of life would "shatter" this illusion when it hits Nagato's face; temperature difference makes things brittle, after all. She makes the move to save him from the deathblow, and Kyon wakes up in the warmest hospital room imaginable, with his two closest confidants at his bedside. I fully read the "fell down the stairs" theory as being created by both Asahinas and future!Kyon, and count Nagato's calling the ambulance as an expression of the same clearheadedness that crucially allowed him to live long enough for the time travelers to fix things. But the mechanics in a story like this are a lot less important than the feelings and the emotions are clearer in their power than anything.
Clumsy energy, excitement down to the molecular level, the force of a highly advanced killer robot–it's still warmth in a world where that scale measuring such approaches something like absolute zero. Precious, precious warmth, in the kind of cold that makes it impossible to tell: "am i happy?" That sort of heat really seems to come from the kind of effort i can only seem to muster straining to reach back in time, against a force that won't budge yet tears forward. With chronic fatigue its really hard to put energy into anything consistent but running mental simulations. Haruhi makes it feel worth it to put the work in for a life full of fun memories and nowhere is that particular life-affirming spirit stronger than in the movie. it really is a wonderful life.