Miranda July

Miranda July creates fascinating work about the every day. She takes narratives which stem from quiet moments in the everyday and makes them incredibly interesting and unsettling. She is a jack of all trades, having made two feature length films, countless independent short films and performances, and has three books published. Noone belongs here more than you is an exciting book of short stories that she has written, she's really good at getting inside the mind of a seemingly banal person and  injecting their lives with an element of fantasy and curiosity. 

Sometimes her stories have a level of dystopian impossibility nestled into a familiar language that makes us relate to them, sometimes they hold both the language and the circumstance but bring together unlikely components. She has a knack for making things seem both fantastical and benign at the same time. In her performance her use of her voice is the most inspiring thing, she manages to embody professional women to little girls to men in a sing-song story telling manner that make her stories come to life.

I like the pace of July's films, in which nothing much happens. There is a feeling in her work which is almost infectious, it seeps into your own life and leaves a resonance of intrigue.

“Do you have doubts about life? Are you unsure if it’s worth the trouble? Look at the sky: that is for you. Look at each person’s face as you pass on the street: those faces are for you. And the street itself, and the ground under the street and the ball of fire underneath the ground: all these things are for you. They are as much for you as they are for other people. Remember this when you wake up in the morning and think you have nothing. Stand up and face the east. Now praise the sky and praise the light within each person under the sky. It’s okay to be unsure. But praise, praise, praise.”

}ea vqa~}d`g'Dbt`q m`g—} kg`w fgt`ga(nfhh }ea `yasf}`s fg