Do you remember True Detective? The one with Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. The one set in the Deep South where Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey were moody and everything was atmospheric and people moved slowly as if the heat was liquid and every scene felt burning and sweaty and uncertain. The one where you felt on edge, not just from the tension of the plot but because everything about the story being told seemed wrong, awry somehow. Do you remember McConaughey as Rust Cohle, blank-eyed and fatalistic, resigned of hope, sat across from police officers we hardly saw yet who were our eyes and ears as they learned about the botched investigation, McConaughey explaining how everything that had happened would happen again, explaining how the characters we were coming to know were doomed to repeat what they’d already lived and resisting with his every fibre the call to retell it because to retell it would be to relive it unnecessarily, painfully, again.
Wow what a great piece! I want to rewatch True Detective and read that book too. Glad I found the substack :)
Gloriously profound. I loved reading this James - it’s a really beautiful, thought provoking piece
This is beautiful and stunningly written James, has really made me think. I love it. Thank you for putting such a great piece out into the world.