Too much movement

In Craig Mod’s most recent edition of his newsletter Roden:

I think a lot (too much) about a breakfast scene in Phantom Thread. The one where Daniel Day-Lewis’ character (the fabulously named Reynolds Woodcock), dress-maker extraordinaire (fully committed, utterly committed, consumed by dresses), is drawing, sketching, working on some design in silence while having breakfast with his new “muse” / lover, Alma. She butters the bread loudly. She pours her tea loudly. “Please, don’t move so much Alma,” he says. She looks at him like he’s nuts (he is a little nuts). “I’m buttering my toast. I’m not moving too much.” And he goes: “It’s hard to ignore, it’s as if you just rode a horse across the room.” He finally gets up and leaves. “Too much movement. Entirely too much movement at breakfast,” he says. Her movement has ruined the morning…

On working days, when I’m trying to live entirely in Bookworld, that’s how I feel when I have to call, say, my bank. Too much movement. Entirely too much movement. Calling the bank. Listening to the touchpad menu options. Going through all the details with the bank person. Too much movement.

It’s a kind of death for the creative part of the mind. The ability to enter into Bookworld is murdered by saying your account number out loud. I don’t know why that’s so, it just is. Maybe it has something to do with the confined particularities of accounts, of banking, of paying bills, for example. How these systems are now more and more complex. Intricate in ways that bring no pleasure or satisfaction of completion. Are never complete. Convenient, yes, in some ways but all necessitating that you: pick up the Mediation Device in order to engage.