Paul Thomas Anderson - Punch-Drunk Love

"I believe I was spared so I could finish the job."

To prick the human conscience itself, to make it bleed the shape of hopeless loss, and want to die but know that conscience denies, even as the gravity of nothing leaves it laughing and alone.

Savages. Kill the savages. Repress criticism. Be sad about duty. Neglect family, lost. Be your father. Do it. Do it again.

"You're everyone!" she screamed, facing the faceless ghost, saviour scapegoat, the fabricated truth which, teaching you how to impersonate yourself, teaches you how to believe. "Who... who the hell are you?" "You'd be surprised how often i get asked that."

Void floating black boat, an abyss upon the sea or a face that seems, warbling shifting, never mixing, cooking fat screams, you have it all wrong: you are in here with me.

Listen folks, we were feeling chatty at the beginning of this episode. It happens. If you don't want to listen to three guys shoot the shit about current events, our conversation about everyone's favourite Kafka-esque dark romance, The Lobster, begins at about the 10 minute mark. Don't say we didn't warn you! "We dance alone. That's why we only play electronic music."

Why do you believe something? Ask yourself. Ask yourself about light. Ask yourself about light asking about light. Why do you believe? What is it, that underlying certainty? Is that love?

Love, the mother of all bombs, is a mirror, looking back at the horror you might have been.

Thinking about how the red pill/blue pill metaphor was co-opted by racists and shitheads, the blame has to be laid at the feet of David Icke, doesn't it? If he wasn't the first to steal the idea, his online and in-person popularity must have opened the door for all sorts of peddlers of conspiracy ideation. From the Matrix to reptilian infiltrators to FBI crime statistics and great replacement theories. A shameful trajectory that dishonours this great film.

It's symmeTRY, goddammit! SymmeTRY!