105. Not much has changed
I.
“Now that commercial websites are displaying increasingly aggressive notifications and targeting and tracking their users, it is time for an independent web where individuals, their intelligence and privacy are respected.” That might not seem like such an unusual call in 2025, but the message comes from an online manifesto from 1997. Google barely existed back then, let alone Facebook.
The manifesto calls on people to take “their essential role on the internet” seriously. “When they start their own sites, when they leave comments, criticism or thanks to webmasters, when they exchange tips via newsgroups or email, they contribute to an independent and free source of information that third parties threaten to sell and control,” write the authors. “Education, information, culture and debate exist by the grace of users, independent webmasters, academics and interest groups.”
Not much has changed.
II.
I watched the wonderful film Perfect Days for a second time last week. Towards the end, our protagonist Hirayama arrives at a building site. “Do you know what used to be here?” an old man asks him. When he gets no answer, the man sighs deeply and walks away. “That’s what growing old means,” you can still hear him mutter.
Everything changes, and perhaps things really were better in the past. “There is no nostalgia without suffering, for what was will never return,” wrote Alex Mazereeuw this week in a wonderful article about how Twin Peaks helped him come to terms with his father’s death.
When David Lynch and Mark Frost decided to make a sequel 25 years after the first two seasons of Twin Peaks, they did so at a time when old series were all getting sequels. “Series that were once extremely popular, but now mainly had to satisfy the fans’ hunger for nostalgia, who wanted to return to what once was,” writes Mazereeuw. “Lynch couldn’t care less about that sentiment of nostalgia without suffering. If The Return made one thing clear, it was that after a quarter of a century, it’s damn hard to just ‘come home’ and carry on as if nothing had happened.”
I could go on quoting from the article, so do read the whole thing in De Volkskrant. Perhaps one more sentence to round off this blog post: Lynch shows that we can only truly accept a fundamental loss if we do not stubbornly try to repair it.
I think something similar is at play in Perfect Days. Everything is changing around Hirayama. There’s nothing you can do about most of it. There used to be an old building there; soon there’ll be a new one. The mum at the izakaya Hirayama frequents wonders why nothing can ever stay the same. To a certain extent, Hirayama teaches us, this is possible by living in the present. “Next time is next time, and now is now,” goes the mantra. By living in the present, nothing ever changes.
III.
Happy Book Week! From 12 to 23 March (which once again stretches the concept of ‘week’), if you spend at least 15 euros on books, you’ll receive a free copy of De krater by Gerwin van der Werf. My haul is Dius by Stefan Hertmans, Een kniebuiging voor de ezel by Anton Valens and the Book Week essay Hèhè by Paulien Cornelisse.
I’ve already finished reading the last one. Cornelisse examines the words in the Dutch language that we use indiscriminately, without even realising it. I myself am a heavy user of ‘gewoon’, ‘eigenlijk’ and ‘echt’, although that last little word isn’t covered in this essay. Apparently, I feel the need to constantly emphasise things. ‘This book is really great’ essentially means the same as ‘this book is great’.
According to Cornelisse, these kinds of words are precisely the ones “that make Dutch more ‘Dutch’”. Or, to put it even more beautifully, they are “those bits of the Dutch language that manage to hide in broad daylight”. The kind of words that make a sentence sound less harsh or a statement more honest.
The booklet makes you slightly more aware of what we say without realising it. Cornelisse does this like no other: clearly and with humour. Oh, and she generously sprinkles in footnotes to savour. There are 48 of them in 61 pages.
PS.
Frank Heinen with a story about a certain ‘Pieter O.’ who goes to the shop to buy a book. Because: Book Week gift. “At the display featuring the Libris nominations, he is struck by the paralysing realisation that he will have to choose between books he hasn’t read yet.”
Why do animals make the same sounds everywhere, yet every culture interprets them slightly differently? A delightful piece by Pudding.cool on onomatopoeia, which explores how different languages translate animal sounds into meaning.
The Japanese science fiction story All You Need Is Kill has already been made into a film starring Tom Cruise. That film is called Edge of Tomorrow. An anime film is now also in the works at STUDIO4°C, retaining the All You Need Is Kill title. Here’s a rather vague trailer to whet your appetite.
- - -During live shows, Jack White takes plenty of jabs at Elon Musk and Donald Trump. His song Corporation has been given new lyrics. This is what the audience in Boston heard: “I’m thinking about not being properly vetted by the Supreme Court or Congress, just doing whatever the hell I want because some fucking bloated asshole orange fucking gorilla who’s (…) failed at every business he’s ever ran wants me to be his golf cart partner.”
Ten years ago, blogger Steve Randy Waldman still admired Elon Musk. So did I. After all, he has made a significant contribution to electric driving and space travel; there’s no denying that. But, as Waldman writes, recent years have not been kind to that admiration.
Next month sees the release of a new documentary about two lovers: One to One: John & Yoko.
- - -The Radiohead train is slowly starting to move again. The band has set up a new venture, and in the past that has usually led to a new tour. The fact that the venture is called RHEUK25 seems to hint at a Radiohead tour of the EU and UK in 2025. That would be something. Incidentally, this week marks the 30th anniversary of the album The Bends. It’s packed with gems: Fake Plastic Trees, (Nice Dream) and Street Spirit (Fade Out), to name but a few.
Below, Thom Yorke plays a few tracks from The Bends on an old recording:
- - -You’ve just read my 105th weekly blog, written between 10 and 16 March 2025. Subscribe to my free newsletter to receive this blog in your inbox every Sunday.