These two are five now

Sometime between today and the 28th is the cats’ birthday. It’s not really known, the first vets they saw after being rescued from the streets had to do an estimate when they were just days old and that was late August of 2021. Though I didn’t adopt them until after they’d been fostered for a few months, it’s now been close to five years, and so we’re having a three-day party. (They do not know this, they will just enjoy the benefits.)

Because they are cats, when I initially brought out catnip and treats to celebrate with, they both hid under furniture. They know that unexpected treats can mean being put in a carrier and taken to the vet (or, more recently, moved across town). Eventually they got curious and enjoyed the offerings, but I can appreciate their hesitation.

The weather report

Mid-August in LA is known for this kind of heat, sure, but it’s been going on for months. This year there was no May Gray, no June Gloom. We had a brief spring and then suddenly it decided to spike to 85 and not look back since. It’s the type of heat that makes getting anything done during the day—like the laundry or grocery shopping I have on my list for today—impossible until the sun goes down. Not to mention the electric bill I’m gonna have from the air conditioner being on constantly.

I need to wake up and have it be mid-October.

Entering The Clock at LACMA

I spent 13 hours of my life last week with The Clock, an absolutely monumental piece of video art that caught me completely off guard by, after watching 20 seconds, had me fully committed to watching as much of the 24-hour runtime as possible.

The premise of the work is fairly straightforward: it’s a 24-hour piece that takes place in real time. It splices together scenes from the entire history of media—mostly American but there’s occasional Asian and European content as well—that display or discuss the time and puts them on screen at that time. So, if you check your watch at 7:24 PM, on-screen there will be a scene from a television show or movie where a clock displays the time 7:24 or a character asks what time it is and someone replies, “It’s 7:24.” The splices are quick, so every minute on screen might get five or ten references (popular times in entertainment, such as the stroke of midnight, can get upwards of 20).

On top of simply displaying the time, though, the film is edited with underlying themes and semi-narratives. Doors and telephones play a dominant role in the imagery used. Characters eat during meal hours, go to work in the morning, make themselves a drink around five, go on dates at night. The generic standard for ‘a day in the life’ of a contemporary person is illustrated throughout the entire work.

It’s fascinating and immersive and, above all, left me in a constant state of wonder. How the hell did Marclay pull this off?

The Power of the Process

This isn’t the first time this year I’ve been left in wonder of the process of a film. One of my favorite releases of 2026 has been Nirvana The Band The Show The Movie, which, on top of being laugh-out-loud hilarious, had me constantly asking myself the same question: How did they make this movie?

Though these examples happen to both be films, works like The Clock are great pieces of evidence as to why art made by humans is important and can never be replaced by AI. Replicated, possibly, but never replaced. I am sure that, if not now, then in the near future, someone could prompt a computer to look through the history of media and select scenes that display the time and assemble a film from it. Watching that would end up being such a different experience, because there’s no quality of passion to it. Nobody sat through hours of footage and carefully assembled mini-stories that conveyed human emotion. It would not be a spectacle of achievement that would make you proud to be human. Prompting a computer to do your work for you is not, and never will be, art.

Yesterday I went to a 24-hour screening of The Clock and left at 12:15 AM, after watching six hours of the film. I was spent. I left a completely packed theater to see a line outside of over 100 waiting to get in still. That’s the power of art when someone pours themselves into a process of creation. No computer generated prompt is going to get this kind of response because nobody with a soul will be able to relate to it. There will never be a reason to care about what AI can ‘make.’

Seeing this piece left me with so many thoughts and feelings, but one that left a large impression was understanding that the AI companies and people behind them can steal all they want from the history of art, but not a single thing any of them ever make or do with it will hold a candle to an original drawing made by a pencil and a piece of paper, much less a massive accomplishment like this.

Beverly and Commonwealth

Hoover and San Marino

I moved recently, and the back door of my new place opens up into a fenced-in parking lot. The fence is chain-link on two sides, and metal bars on the side facing the street. There’s an automatic gate for cars to get in and out. The bars are just far enough apart for small animals to be able to squeeze through.

I say this because, for the past two nights, I’ve been woken up by the shrieks of animals in distress. Last night the identifiable cries of a cat echoed through my apartment at three in the morning. I went out to my stoop to see if something was happening, and the cat kept wailing. After a minute, one came in from the street—the stray that hangs out in our neighborhood that my neighbor Donna sometimes cares for and calls Trashy. I heard no other animal sounds, leading me to believe that a person on the street had been attacking her. She saw me and laid on the ground, keeping her distance.

Tonight, or just now rather—I don’t know if five am qualifies as the night or not—a combination of wails and barking woke me up. Two vague shadows that could have been street dogs or coyotes had a raccoon cornered on Donna’s stoop, the raccoon trying to avoid getting caught, barking in a way I’ve never heard a creature sound. Two sounds came from the raccoon: a violent bark in self-defense and an excruciating cry whenever one of the dogs caught hold of it.

I didn’t know what to do and was frozen watching this animal trying to save itself. The raccoon somehow escaped the stoop and scampered across the lot, climbing the chain-link fence. The dogs followed and were able to climb it for a minute or two. The barking and howling continued but the dogs were not able to keep on the fence and eventually abandoned their attack, leaving the raccoon to try and balance on the top, gravely wounded. It tried to walk, it tried to hang on, it swayed as it attempted to head toward the street, its legs were giving out.

After a few minutes, the silhouette of the injured animal fell to the ground of the alley on the other side of the lot and hobbled into the shadows of the building across the way. I have no clue where the dogs went or how they got in and out of my lot. I am sure the raccoon is dead by now.

It’s just one of those things where like, my new place is a pretty amazing spot to live, but when I initially toured it I did not think to ask, How many nights a week am I going to have to listen to a small animal fight for its life? It’s a harrowing experience, to hear and/or see a living creature being attacked. The echoes of wailing fade but that resonant pain and violence lingers in the air. Nothing is comfortable. My cats are scared, huddled up on the bed.

I can handle many things, but stuff like this really gets to me. I know the way the world works—larger animals attack smaller ones, that’s life, et cetera. But confronting it in reality just reminds me of how we humans choose to do this sort of thing to ourselves. Raccoons and cats are kind of just subjugated to nature’s order, but humanity has invented its way out of that. We aren’t subject to violence, we choose it. I don’t have a great memory, but I’ve seen many forms of brutality—accidental deaths, street fights, drive-by shootings, defenseless beatings, murder—and every scene remains crystal clear in my head. I remember exactly where I was, the time of day, the weather. Even just a proximity to violence leaves a mark.

I don’t know, this post has turned into something else. Truth be told, I just am still stirred from hearing and watching that poor raccoon trying not to be torn to pieces on my neighbor’s steps. A little death in the morning tears a hole in the day, and I’ll just be off-balance for the rest of this one.