Dark Matter 2.1: Who's Who in the Infinite Bucket?

Dark Matter -- the TV series on Apple TV -- based on Blake Crouch's novel -- which Blake Crouch created -- is back for its second season.  I thought the first season was thought-provoking and excellent, all that an alternate history science fiction TV series should be.  I thought episode 2.1 was even more so.

[And there will be a few spoilers ahead ... ]

The episode starts with a great punchline, as Jason tells the police detective (Keller from the first season) before she's replaced (along with Mason, also from the first season) by some other kind of cop (who says he's not a cop), "What, is it illegal to look like a bunch of dead people?" in response to being questioned about the bevy of dead Jasons who have turned up on the tables.  No, it's probably not, but we'll soon see another dead Jason, killed by Daniela because she's sure he's not her Jason, let's call him, Jason 1. The slain Jason does seem a little more ragged than our hero, and that ring on his finger, some of what he said, but ...

All of which raises an interesting question, at least to me.  Can we be 100% sure that the Daniela who pulled the trigger is Daniela 1, and the Jason she killed is indeed not Jason 1?  I mean, I get that we're supposed to think that the Jason who shows up after Daniela pulls the trigger is her (and our primary) Jason, but how can we know for sure in a series in which doppelgangers show up everywhere, including in the song "The Quiet Life," heard early in the episode (and indeed the name of this episode), which sure sounds like it was written and performed by Leonard Cohen, when in fact it's by Teho Teardo and Blixa Bargeld?

But that's all part of the mental stretching aka deep fun that characterizes alternate realities -- that's why I read them, watch them, and write them -- and season 2 of Dark Matter looks like it will have plenty of doppelgangers in the story, additions to the seemingly infinite number of Jasons, of which the Jasons on the tables at the beginning of 2.1 are just a drop in the infinite bucket.

And I'll be back here every week with a review of every season 2 episode, which looks to be well on its way to becoming classic.

See also Dark Matter 1.1-1.2: Break-Neck Action and Philosophic Contemplation ... 1.3 Missing Fingers ... 1.4 The Multiverse Unveiled ... 1.5: The Lesson ... 1.6 "A Bunch of Chicagos" ... 1.7: Obama Tower ... 1.8: A Bevy Of Jasons ... 1.9: Science Fiction and Horror

Ten-Minute Podcast Take on Current Beatles Books and Documentaries

 from Rock Talk Studio ...

Sense8 2.1-2: The Mental, the Digital, and the Palpable

I caught the first two episodes - Christmas special - of Sense8, Season 2, on Netflix last night. Thoroughly enjoyable and thought-provoking - just like the first season.

Among the best scenes, as in the first season, are the all-eight events, including in the two new episodes, a birthday celebration (all eight in the cluster have the same birthdate), a Christmas celebration, and an eight-person orgy.   All were moving - especially the Christmas celebration, topped off with a beautiful rendition of the recently late Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah".  Christmas scenes are difficult to do in an original way, but Sense8 did this quite memorably (that is, in an un-trite and emotionally powerful way).

The fight scenes were also good, as also in the first season.  These scenes, in which members of the cluster with martial arts skills take over the fight of someone else in the cluster who doesn't quite have them, are a fresh perspective to martial arts gambits and are always welcome to see.

The science in the story was furthered, too, with Jonas helpfully explaining that, for sense8s, memories are transmitted along with genetic material to offspring.   This gives sense8s a valuable cognitive connection to the past, in addition to members of their cluster.

The main threat remains Mr. Whispers, who now has an in with Bill.  Fortunately, Whispers, though despicably powerful, is not without some flaws, which Bill, aided by Riley and the others, may be able to exploit.  Riley and Will are now the most interesting couple in the group, because, as they both say as they physically hug each other, they're now able to hold in their arms what they previously had held only in the minds.

That, in effect, captures the essence of the series - the intersections of the mental (throw in digital, too) and the palpable physical, and I'm looking forward to more in May.

See also Sense8: Vibrant, Profound, Dangerous ... Sense8 Season 2: Sense8tional


                               another kind of human species

Dominic Balestra, RIP

It's been a week of deep loss - of people I didn't know personally whose work made a difference in my life, of people I did know personally whose work made a difference, of perhaps - though I hope not - of something in America itself which many of us hold very dear.

Back in the day - actually, just a decade ago, but time flies when you're having a good time - Dom Balestra and I did some good things together at Fordham University, when he was Dean of Faculty and I was Chair of the Communication and Media Studies Department.   A few years earlier, in the summer of 1998, Dom was the first person who interviewed me when I first came to Fordham seeking a job as a professor.

We already knew each other.  The first time we met was when Dom came up to me after the conference about Karl Popper and his philosophy that I had organized at the Prince George Hotel in Manhattan.  (It's also been week for remembering seedy hotels - just yesterday I was recalling how I had met someone who claimed to be Leonard Cohen's Suzanne, in the Milburn Hotel on West 76th Street.)

Dom had love of philosophy of technology, as did I, which is why our paths first crossed at that conference.  It provided a great basis of conversation years later at Fordham, where I briefed Dom on McLuhan, he briefed me on Spinoza, and we discussed everyone and everything in between.

Most academics have a love of knowledge in one way or another.  Dominic Balestra embodied it, and epitomized what it literally meant to be a philosopher.   After the funeral, a colleague said to me, as I mentioned what I said above about this being an especially tough week, that Dom died at the right time, so he didn't have to see what had happened in America.

True enough.  But, even though we hadn't spoken in years, it would be wonderful indeed if I could talk to Dom right now and get his sage, thoughtful views of our world and its dangers.

The Night I Met a Woman Who Said She Was Leonard Cohen's Suzanne

Leonard Cohen passed on a few days ago.  His songs, especially Suzanne, will live on forever.  Or as Shelley said about Keats (great poets, like Cohen, from a previous century), "tis death that's dead not he".

I once met a woman who said she was the Suzanne who had inspired Cohen's song.  Ed Fox and I met her in the lobby of that slightly seedy hotel - the Milburn - off Broadway and 76th Street, as we were on our way into Herb Abramson's A-1 Sound Studio, to record some tracks on our Twice Upon a Rhyme album.

That would have been in 1969, a few months after Cohen's "Suzanne" had been playing on the radio and in our heads.  Ed and I were standing in the hotel lobby, waiting for a moment for one of the musicians on our album to arrive.  A woman in her 20s struck up a conversation with us.  We told her we were making an album.  She asked what kind of songs.  We said, you know, the Beatles circa Rubber Soul, Dylan Blonde on Blonde, Bob Lind, Leonard Cohen ... those kinds of songs.

She smiled ... elusively.  And told us that she was Suzanne.   We of course knew what she meant and of course we didn't believe her - not at all, not at first.

But we ran into her in that lobby a few times in the succeeding weeks.   And she told us things - about her and Leonard, nothing we could confirm. certainly not in that age so long ago, long before Google.

But Ed and I believed her.  And I believe her to this very day.   Hey, Suzanne could still be alive ... somewhere ... maybe she's even reading this blog post, or will someday.

You did well, Suzanne.  You inspired one of the great, beautifully plaintiff, soul touching songs, as delicate as a leaf at the edge of a hurricane.

(Here's a BBC interview with another Leonard Cohen "Suzanne" -- Suzanne Verdal from 1998.)

Rest in peace, Leonard Cohen.

Ed Fox and Paul Levinson, not long after meeting Suzanne

Leonard Cohen's Tower of Song

What more can you ask for on a lazy June afternoon than Leonard Cohen singing his 1988 "Tower of Song" just a few weeks ago, at a concert in Newfoundland (May 27, 2008, to be exact)...

Cohen, of course, is best known for Suzanne, back in the 1960s. I once met a woman who claimed to be Suzanne - she was staying in the New Milford Hotel in Manhattan, where I was recording Twice Upon a Rhyme with Ed Fox and Peter Rosenthal in 1970. She was probably lying, but you never know.

Meanwhile, it's heartening to see that Cohen still has his stuff. Great lyrics, gravelly voice, and even a fine throwaway line, "some places, yes" - listen for it.