2023-06-22 Journal Entry

🍃 Season: 🌞 Summer 🔆 Weekday: Thursday 🗓 Date: June 22, 2023 📅 Week: Jun 19 – Jun 25, 2023

I don’t have much specifically to write about today so I’ll write more about Masaaki Yuasa. I finished Ping Pong: The Animation yesterday and holy moly is it good. There’s something about the life-affirming-ness of Yuasa’s work that I absolutely love. I love that Smile and Peco both strive and strive and push to play in the final game, and when they do, it doesn’t even matter who wins. He doesn’t even show the game. That’s the best way to end it. What matters is that they played the game, they showed up. Table tennis is fun, they tell us, and pushing ourselves to the heights of our talents is the best we can do. Even if our natural talents aren’t the highest, that’s okay. Losing is okay! What sucks is losing when you didn’t see how far you could go.

I write about this all the time when I think of Yuasa’s work, but that life-affirming tone feels like what I want to write. I think in many ways that’s the through-line of many of my favorite artists. Pinegrove is this way — melancholy, but leaning into the necessity of expression and experience. Yuasa of course. John Danielle does this quite well too, both in his writing and with the Mountain Goats. It’s a difficult line to balance, being both realistic in the difficulties that come with pushing oneself to our limits and being appreciative of the ecstasies that come from achieving it.

Anyways, I think it’s about time I go out on a run. See you on the other side.