Have I Made Myself Clear? #1 | Severance & Endings.

Hi there,

Sincerely, thank you for subscribing to this newsletter. I know I can be an obtuse and erratic personality, but it’s only because I think too much and my heart’s too big*. This newsletter will consist of links to articles, videos and/or prose that I recommend so highly that I would stake the reputation of this esteemed publication for them. This may include video essays (of which I am an ardent consumer), poetry or novel passages — maybe even some of my own work.

Beneath the aforementioned tepid and unremarkables you will find a few brief articles chronicling my thoughts. I’ve worked hard to- you know what? It might just be easier if you read it.

Today’s post-link article is about Severance’s series finale (no spoilers), so keeping with that theme, here’s a recollection of one of EA’s earliest forte’s into being evil and horrible.

If you, me and honeybees have anything in common, we like fields and bright colours. Check out one of my favourite pieces from Victor Sillue of outrunyouth.

You can see more of his work on his Instagram here. I’m a huge fan and every piece somehow finds a way to speak to me in a different way.

Stunning.

Finally, a video essay by Horses, exploring the facts, fictions and myths of the nuclear holocaust. Cozy!

Horses is a wonderful essayist, and while the videos can land a little bit on the drier side, I cannot recommend them enough. They are well researched, thorough and empathetic.

OKAY, we made it. Who would’ve thought?

Severance season 2 finished today. I know not many among my few readers (if any) have actually watched the show. I must urge you to. It is quite simply monumental television, touched end to end by stellar artistry. Before watching this show, I would’ve said there can’t be more than 9 or 10 ways to shoot an office space, but every single episode is gorgeous, never repeating itself, constantly inventing compositions from thin air. White Wall Syndrome? Pshaw. Student filmmakers, take notes.

For the uninitiated, Severance follows a team of office workers who have had the work lives severed from their home lives. The ‘innie’ wakes up at the office, tippy-taps away their 9-5, then steps into the elevator where they- wake up at the office, ready for another day. The show deals with themes of escapism, loss and grieving, the rights of the manufactured soul (an increasingly topical conversation as chatbots feign sentience more and more convincingly), adolescence, human connection, and…

…for a while now, I’ve been really struck by the frailty of the human psyche.

We have built and burnt civilizations — yet a lack of vitamin D, too much free time and not enough connection will lead a man to bury himself.

Disorders of personality, of mood, trauma of attachment. Loved too much, too little, the wrong way in the wrong place, up, down, left, right, oh, Switch it up like Nintendo. What the f*ck is wrong with us? All life stems from persistent survival, pep and verve, hunger, above all else, an innate desire to LIVE.

Yet, 700,000 people take their own lives every year.

We lit the world up and then flew to the moon just see our own halo. Yet that same human brain has lead me to stand at the edge of oblivion. Against the very spirit of all that has come before me. Shattered glass tracing skin, razor gushes, pills make thin, vessel plunges, go back in… but red doesn’t come out of porcelain.

In Severance, an ‘innie’, with the agreement of their ‘outtie’, can ‘resign’. In layman’s: quit. Pack it up. Go home. But they don’t get to come back. While their body, inhabited by its original consciousness, may go on, they stay back, plunged back from whence they came. In a similar vein to The Good Place’s final arc, the choice to destroy one’s self becomes as simple as walking through a door. Friends are made to walk out and never return; loss. Innies cast themselves away in disillusionment, no longer privy to what made consciousness bearable; suicide. Innies are asked to offer what little they have, themselves, for the good of those they do not even know; sacrifice.

In Severance, an ‘outtie’ can — whilst holding an (at least) experiential understanding of the depths of their despair — choose to Sever. To carve out 8 hours of their day for ignorance blissful. To lose that which makes them whole, wishing new life into themselves so that they, the proverbial they, may be happy.

For those who don’t, I’m very fond of Brutalist architecture.

Humanity was born to forests, deserts, jungles, alps.

Untampered life and land.

And we stored away the vastness of the sky and burrowed up into it, casting ourselves into the Heavens.

And made little white boxes for ourselves.

And ledges to throw ourselves off of.

See you next week!

*The first lie in this newsletter.