I'm The Fixer
New year, new things.
I have some openings in my work as a creative consultant. Book me now while the slots are available. Purchase a one-hour phone call or Zoom meeting with me on Gumroad or email me (susannahbreslin at gmail dot com) to set up a session.
I fix words. From book manuscripts to personal essays, movie scripts to television series treatments, content strategy to social media copy, I'm an expert when it comes to making your words better. My clients include Academy Award-winning directors, New York Times best-selling authors, and some of the world's biggest brands.
Whether you want to improve your writing or develop a new content strategy for your company, I can help. Get started by booking a one-hour phone call or Zoom meeting with me today! After you pay, I'll reach out to you by email to set up a session.
[Photo and illustration by Clayton Cubitt]
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2020 in Review
Mannequin with Bangs
Possessor
“Possessor” isn’t a good movie. Which is too bad. Because it has some interesting ideas and some interesting imagery. Basically, it’s set in a future in which people use technology to inhabit other people’s bodies. In this case, Tasya is a hitwoman who occupies other people’s bodies to kill other people for reasons that are financially motivated. Andrea Riseborough does a fine / creepy job with the role of Tasya, and it’s interesting to watch the body-hijackings take place. Jennifer Jason Leigh plays her super-creepy boss, Girder. And Christopher Abbott does a forgettable job as the main story line’s victim. The most interesting sequence in the film is a CGI representation of Tasya melting into her victim’s psyche; bodies turn liquid and boundaries go fluid. But the film falls apart on the plot level, leaving us wondering why we should care. Even the hyper-gruesome gore murder parts come across as more of an aesthetic exercise than something we should care about. The ending is super grim, but a curious twist. In any case, I guess when the director is the son of David Cronenberg, happy endings aren’t on the menu.
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The Pool
The Lonely Mannequin
She May Destroy You
I love this cover portrait of Michaela Coel by Tim Walker for W Magazine. If you haven’t seen HBO’s “I May Destroy You,” which is terrific, you should.
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The Pig Sofa
I really enjoyed reading this bizarre account of a pig couch. It features a kind of soft-core faux grifter who uses Craigslist for a curious kind of performance art.
An excerpt:
“She moved on to other lighthearted posts. In one, she posed as a snail who had upgraded to a larger shell and sought to rent the old one. (‘It’s perfect for the adolescent gastropod looking to expand his/her living space while avoiding predators. You’ll love the rare left-handed spiraling, steep aperture, and funky asymmetrical whorls.’) In another, she advertised her services as a ‘fragmented consciousness technician,’ offering to repair people’s broken brains.”
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#mood
The Canary Chirps
Image credit: Merry Alpern
The latest edition of my new privacy newsletter, The Canary in the Data Mine, features scopophilia, baby spying, and surveillance couture. Read it here. Subscribe here.
An excerpt:
One of my favorite instances of artistic surveillance is photographer Merry Alpern’s Dirty Windows. In the winter of ‘93, Alpern visited a friend and discovered a window in the friend’s apartment faced the window of a bathroom in a strip club in the opposite building. Alpern became obsessed with the narratives playing out across the way and returned many times to record a series of gritty black-and-white images starring sex, drugs, and bathroom activities.
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All Her Dying Lovers
Loved this short from The New York Times Op-Docs: “All Her Dying Lovers.” It combines animation and assemblage audio to recount the enigmatic tale of a woman who sought revenge. A fascinating parsing of truth, memory, and myth.
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Footsi
Behold: “Footsi.” It’s an amazing black and white video by artist Pat Oleszko. It stars a pair of mini-Mary Janes-clad fingers exploring the world. [via NYT]
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The Hyatt Girls
If you don’t subscribe to Nick Cave’s The Red Hand Files newsletter, you should. It’s a quirky and curious mix of sage advice, odd confessions, and creative inspiration. Today’s is “So Who Are the Hyatt Girls?”
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How to Write a Memoir
Here’s my advice on writing a memoir:
Write about something more than just yourself. Navel gazing is boring.
Expand the genre. Incorporate narrative nonfiction, investigative journalism, images, drawings, experimental prose, data analyses, etc.
Divide it into pieces. Every brick wall was laid brick by brick.
Ignore gender stereotypes. Eat Pray Love is pablum. Angela’s Ashes is steak.
Good may be the enemy of great, but who wants to settle for good?
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Ignore the Man in the White House
I was somewhat surprised this tweet was as popular as it was—liked by a couple hundred and tweeted by a few dozen. It’s the basic best practices strategy in dealing with bullies: ignore them into nonexistence. I really admired Biden’s Delaware speech and realized afterwards that it was charmingly and largely absent the looming lummox that is Trump. This is how you disempower people who have no real power. You render them invisible. Trump has been annihilated.
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