Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 30

Greetings from Yokohama

Our World Domination Project premieres at the Kanagawa Arts Theatre on Friday. Between meetings, rehearsals, and watching the performances, I’ve been wandering around Yokohama. Illustrated tiles suddenly appear on the sidewalks. This friendly dog welcomes diners to a ramen restaurant. Chinatown is lit up in preparation for the Chinese New Year. I went walking with […]

We are all Lady Bird.

(While we’re on the subject of parents.) My mother never tore down my dreams because I wasn’t good enough to fulfill them. She tore down my dreams because they weren’t her dreams. She wanted me to aspire to wealth, security, prestige, and I rolled my eyes at her because I wanted books, art, music. But […]

John Mahoney as Diane’s dad in Say Anything

Say Anything is one of my favorite movies not just because I wish I had a Lloyd Dobler (John Cusack’s character), but because I envied Diane Court (Ione Skye) her very supportive, understanding dad (John Mahoney) and was wrenched when Mr Court turned out to be a criminal. Always loved this singing-in-the-car bit. (Context: Mr […]

Call Me By Your Name: We want to live there.

Things we love about Luca Guadagnino’s film Call Me By Your Name, in no particular order. 1. First love should be this beautiful. Even the pain is beautiful. 2. The villa in northern Italy, and all of northern Italy, matches that beauty. 3. Timothee Chalamet’s Elio. He feels everything, and we know exactly what he’s […]

We love The Shape of Water for the same reason many people don’t: because it is truly freaky.

Some see a bizarre fairy tale about a mute woman who falls in love with a fish-man, in which the lovers DON’T get transformed into beautiful humans. But that’s the point. Guillermo Del Toro tells us that they’re ALREADY beautiful. (Something terrible happens to a cat, but we understand it in the context of the […]

Excite your synapses with this Essential Playlist of Early Music

From my classmates I picked up indie rock, and from musician friends I picked up jazz (Hard bop, so I was thrilled to meet Patrick de K, whose mom was the patron of Thelonious Monk and other greats). From my audiophile friend I learned this specialized burn: “Eh, that’s a lifestyle product.” When I got […]

Ursula K. Le Guin, 88. Her words will always be with us.

You will see many obituaries today describing Ursula K. Le Guin as a science-fiction and fantasy author. That is an inadequate description. Ursula K. Le Guin was a literary master. Read this story and understand the bargains we make with ourselves to ensure our comfort and security. Make your friends read it. Spread it all […]

Sign up for our Writing Boot Camp at the BenCab Museum in Baguio, March 17-18

Early bird discount of 15 percent if you register and pay in January. Email saffron.safin@gmail.com for details. Our recent books are now available online. Each book costs Php350. Free shipping nationwide if you buy both books. Offer good till 28 February 2018. Order now through bit.ly/visprintbooks

Alan Hollinghurst’s The Sparsholt Affair is his warmest, funniest novel, and a masterpiece.

If you can’t wait till it appears in local bookstores, it’s available at online bookstores. My friend and I have this game in which we cast the roles in a film adaptation. “Armie Hammer as David Sparsholt.” “Too American. Henry Cavill.” “Armie can learn a British accent.” “Henry is already British.” And so on.

“We still believe in free speech, the world just needs a new theory of it.”

The most effective forms of censorship today involve meddling with trust and attention, not muzzling speech itself. As a result, they don’t look much like the old forms of censorship at all. They look like viral or coordinated harassment campaigns, which harness the dynamics of viral outrage to impose an unbearable and disproportionate cost on […]