The Point
Vibes, aesthetics without substance, and the definition of art
The worst thing Gen Z has ever done to me is give me the concept of vibes.
Everything is vibes. Writing is vibes. Adulting is vibes. Living is vibes. Existing is vibes.
I am drowning in vibes.
They’re everywhere: in the movies and TV shows I watch, the music I listen to, the books I read. Exquisite vibes that create incredible moods — beautiful, dark, horny, ethereal, with just a touch of ennui that grasps at sophistication. It is aesthetics without substance, a fairyland of sumptuous fruits, and I’m left starving, ravenous to be fulfilled instead of just full.
The pandemic has done something strange to my brain: it’s made me afraid to take risks. I suppose that’s not all that strange; in uncertain times, we revert to what is secure, what is safe, what is known. But my hesitation extends far beyond what I am willing to expose my body to, it has affected my willingness to expose my mind to the unknown.
The only books I’ve managed to finish in the past three years have been by my friends and authors I trusted to deliver something I could enjoy based on their previous works. It’s not that I think nothing new will satisfy me anymore so much as I’m just...risk-averse. I used to jump out of perfectly good airplanes for fun, but now I’m too afraid to try a book by a new author lest I don’t enjoy myself.
It has nothing to do with the author or the work itself and everything to do with me. (Is it me? Am I the drama?) For the past five years, I have been struggling with why I write, but at the root of it all, it comes down to a question of what I want from a story. What am I consuming in a narrative? What is that which I want to put into the stories I write? What is the point of what I’m writing? What is the point of writing at all?
Generally, I’m not the sort to think that hard about anything. I’m kind of a himbo to be honest;1 still waters don’t run that deep with me. But this surfeit of vibes was getting to the point where I was starting to feel my creativity wither away because I couldn’t get past The Point. It was there every time I opened my laptop, my Scrivener file, my Notes app, my journal, my sketchbook. Like the monolith at the beginning of 2001: A Space Odyssey, daring me to contend with it, to grapple with its existence, The Point was inescapable. Inevitable. Incomprehensible.
And it didn’t give a fuck about my vibes.
These days I think a lot about art, as well as Art.™ Art being something people do or make, and Art™ being a product that gets consumed. I have no problems with the former, but the latter bothers me. It’s The Point again, you see. I keep tripping over it in the media I consume — sometimes because The Point is there, and sometimes because it’s not but I want it to be.
I just finished watching The Book of Boba Fett with Bear last week. It was enjoyable, but I didn’t love it the way I had The Mandalorian. The Book of Boba Fett had a lot that I loved — particularly having an indigenous man and an East Asian woman as the leads—but what it didn’t have was a Point. The vibes were there: a former bounty hunter turned reformed crime (?) boss, a partnership based on friendship, episodes firmly entrenched in the western genre while (awkwardly) trying to grapple with native issues, etc. etc. etc.
But at the end of it, I wasn’t satiated, even if I was satisfied.
The Mandalorian, as a show, has a Point. It’s about diaspora, family, and fatherhood. It has something it wants to explore when it comes to those subjects, and it explores them through the medium of a space western TV show. What does it mean to be functionally exiled from one’s home planet? What traditions do you hold onto? What traditions do you pass down? Who do you claim as your own? Who do you shun? The concept of a Mandalorian is explored through Din’s adherence to a very conservative creed, through his adoption (for all intents and purposes) of Grogu, and through his actions about what orthodoxy he is willing to break and why (and for whom).
The Book of Boba Fett grapples with...?
For me, the best episodes of Boba Fett were his time with the Tuskens, a very clear analog to the indigenous peoples in most western stories. Those episodes seemed to have a Point, issues that the show was trying to explore (if somewhat clumsily). The issue of land rights and ownership, the issue of what makes you part of a tribe, the issue of who you claim and who claims you.
But the rest of the show never followed up on any of those themes or ideas, never expounded upon or elaborated on any of it. By the end of the show, we had some backstory about a crime boss trying to rule...ethically? Humanely? Was this the lesson Boba took from the Tuskens? Or was it about a former bounty trying to put the guilt of his past deeds behind him? I couldn’t tell. What exactly is The Book of Boba Fett about? Does it even matter?
Of course it doesn’t matter. It’s a show about space cowboys and space kingpins. The vibes are perfectly adequate — excellent, even. It’s still Art™ even if doesn’t have a Point.
I still wanted a Point though.
The first seven drafts of the first Guardians of Dawn book did not have a Point.
Turns out, I can’t do art unless I have a Point. A question I’m trying to find the answer to by telling myself a story. I don’t care about producing high-brow Art,™ the sort that wins accolades or awards or is lauded for being a searing look at humanity or some nonsense like that. But I do care about making Art™ with a Point, just as I care about consuming Art™ with a Point. I resent this part of me sometimes, to be honest. Why — why — can’t I just consume vibes? Why can’t I be content with being full instead fulfilled? Sated instead of satisfied? God, if only. I would have gotten this first book out a whole lot sooner if I could.
And there’s nothing wrong with vibes. Sometimes you want vibes. Sometimes you need vibes as a palate cleanser, as inspiration, as a mood. It’s the difference between a decorative object and a functional object. Sometimes you need a good frying pan. Sometimes you just want to decorate your bookshelves with tchotchkes you’ve picked up from your travels around the world, to remind you where you’ve been, and to put you back in the mood you were in when you went there. Sometimes, you can even have both.
I want both.
I’m eminently practical when it comes to my hobbies. I’m teaching myself watercolor because I have Art™ I want to make, and the best way to realize that Point is with that particular medium. I’ve come to understand that I create because I have a Point to make. The Point might be inane and known only to myself, but it’s there nonetheless. I might not even know what that Point is until I finish a first (or seventh) draft, but I can’t consider something right until I find it.
I really wish I had known this about myself before I had sold Guardians of Dawn.
All I wanted to do was write something fun inspired by Sailor Moon, East Asian tropes, elemental magic, and western fairy tales. The vibes! The vibes were great. Himbos! Water lilies! Lanterns floating along canals! The scent of lemongrass, chiles, cumin, and garlic sizzling on an iron wok! Kisses under fireworks! Makeovers! BTS making a cameo! It was delicious, and insubstantial. It was cotton candy, dissolving the instant I thought about it, the moment the heat of my actual feelings touched it. Why — why — couldn’t I care about this? Why couldn’t I feel anything about this? Fun! Have fun, goddammit! It’s a fucking pandemic, so have some fucking fun!
Art™ doesn’t work like that for me, apparently.
Lucky me, I guess.
Lately I’ve been obsessed with the work of Makoto Shinkai, a Japanese animator and director, but more specifically, I’m obsessed with just one work of his.
2019’s Tenki No Ko (Weathering With You).
A few months ago, I had gone down the ADHD hyperfixation rabbit hole of mainlining every single one of Makoto Shinkai’s films I could find after watching Kimi No Na Wa (Your Name). Kimi No Na Wa was extremely My Shit — from the color palette to the aesthetic to the tone to the premise. I laughed, I cooed, I gasped, I bawled, I raged, I bawled some more, and then I bawled even more while feeling happy.
The vibes, as they say, were immaculate.
Does Kimi No Na Wa have a Point? Maybe? It’s about connection, about musubi, as the grandmother in the film says. Does it matter in light of the rollercoaster of emotions it took me on? Probably not.
Tenki No Ko might be even more gorgeously animated than Kimi No Na Wa but in every other way, it falls completely flat for me, except in one regard — the ending. Oh the ending.
The ending was the Point. And oh what a Point it was.
If you were to ask me what Tenki No Ko was about, I’m not sure I could tell you. It’s about two kids — one runaway, one orphan — who fall in love in a very rainy Tokyo? Or it’s about a boy who falls in love with a girl he can’t have because she’s supposed to bring balance to nature by sacrificing herself? Or it’s about a girl who metaphorically grieves herself to death? Or it’s about two selfish children who choose each other over the end of the world?
It’s all of these things, and none. Truthfully, Tenki No Ko is so muddled you spend almost the entire movie wondering where it’s going...until the end. The titular Weather Girl can bring sunshine to a rainy Tokyo when she prays, but at what cost? She begins turning into water the more she uses her power, and it turns out that a weather maiden has to be sacrificed to prevent the city from drowning. The Weather Girl sacrifices herself, her lovesick runaway boyfriend brings her back and...
...dooms Tokyo to drown.
To be honest, I love this. I love the question it makes me want to resolve. If this is actually a story about two underaged assholes who choose each other over the world, I wish it had been better set up. Hodaka, the boy character, runs away from home and then finds himself living on scraps and showering in PC rooms. Hina, the Weather Girl, loses both her parents, and pretends to be an adult in order to find jobs to keep herself and her younger brother alive. There is a story to be told here about how the system fails children like these — the runaways, the orphans, and the desperate and downtrodden. If Hodaka and Hina have no one but each other, of course he would choose her over the end of the world. His world has ended already.
But that’s not the movie I watched. Tenki No Ko is, I think, intended to be a story about love against impossible odds, similar to yet different from 2016’s Kimi No No Wa. If that’s what Makoto Shinkai intended — and I do think that’s what he intended — then he failed.
This is what fascinates me. When intention and the Point do not align. This disconnect is also what terrifies me when it comes to my own work, and probably why I resent the fact that I can’t write without something to say. I am afraid of being incomprehensible. Incompetent. A hot mess. I’m afraid that if I can’t make myself properly understood, then I will be a bad writer.
This fear paralyzed me for five years.
I tried to get around this by telling myself I shouldn’t care. But the honest truth is I should care, otherwise why should anyone even bother to read my work? Why would anything I write be worth the time a reader invests in it?
When that didn’t work, I moved onto convincing myself that just vibes were enough. I’ve loved plenty of things that are just vibes. Like...uh, that movie. Or that, uh, book. You know. That one. I can’t think of it off the top of my head, but vibes are totally enough for me. Right?
Right?
I hate how precious and pretentious I am about Art.â„¢ I hate how my tastes tend toward the low-brow and brilliant because it would be so much easier if they were literally anything else. High-brow and brilliant. Low-brow and despicable. Even high-brow and despicable would work in a pinch because at least then I could make fun of myself.
But you can’t help but take yourself seriously when your tastes are low-brow and brilliant. I want good trash, and while it’s easy to find things that are good or things that are trash, it’s not easy to find things that are both at once. I don’t want to take myself seriously, yet somehow, I want to make and consume art that is serious. Art that has a Point. Art that has something say.
Yet at the same time, I don’t want you, 친구들, to think that I’m a serious person. I’m not. I don’t think readers of my work need to take anything away but a few hours of a decently enjoyable time. And I don’t think I owe anyone more than that, nor does anyone owe me anything more in return. The world is shit for fuck’s sake, so let’s all just eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we may die in some sort cataclysmic climate disaster or witness the decline of our society into a series of authoritarian theocracies.
And yet, no matter where I turn, the Point is always there.
Maybe it’s that I need a Point to fall in love with something. The something is the Point. It feels a long time since I’ve fallen in love with something new, and I’m out here on dating apps, trying to sus out whether or not there’s any There there based solely on vibes.
Any of y’all feel like matchmaking?
That’s all for now. Please do recommend me books, shows, and movies with Points that you’ve enjoyed lately because I don’t know where to start anymore. I’m in-between projects at the moment, so naturally my brain is working over time to fill in the boredom time. I’ve spent so long on the first Guardians of Dawn book that I don’t know where to refill the creative well anymore.
사랑해,
JJ
Yes I know that himbo is a masc version of bimbo, but I would argue that himbo and bimbo are two entirely different kinds of -imbo.
Whoa...this was such a lovely deep dive into your brain and I related to it a LOT. I've actually been meaning to watch Your Name for a while now and I think this may be my sign to stop putting it off! I found so much strength and honesty through his and just--thank you for sharing with us! It makes me feel like less of a bad writer and understand why "vibes" aren't working for me anymore and why. *hugs*
In terms of shows, if you want one with Points and a message, It's Okay Not to Be Okay is a MUST watch and the memoir WHAT WE BECOME IN FLIGHT really helped me creatively as well.