Afterlove EP (Pikselnesia / Fellow Traveler, 2025)

    It’s quite strange to think about a video game character going to therapy. Less so in a text-driven role-playing game, I suppose. Still less strange if the role played is of a young man grieving the simultaneous end of a life and the loss of a relationship. That’s the situation Rama, protagonist of Pikselnesia’s Afterlove EP, finds himself in as the game begins. As Rama, you have to get the band back together and try to write songs for an EP that’ll be released at a gig at the end of the month. The narrative picks up one year after his girlfriend Cinta’s unexpected death from an unspecified health complication.

    In grief, Rama has coped by having Cinta’s voice in his head at all times. It may not be just her voice actually. Her words are vivid enough for Rama that he can hold one-on-one conversations with her. Other characters cannot hear Cinta’s voice, so Rama’s sudden comments or replies seem a little out of the blue when he’s trying to have an in-person conversation with friends and also managing an internal dialogue with Cinta. They’ll call him out on it, but he remains oblivious to his condition. 

    All of the conversations with these characters happen through on-screen text. Cinta is the only character whose text is supplemented with voice acting. You are essentially getting to hear the voice in Rama’s head as he grieves his loss. This choice is very effective in drawing the player into Rama’s perspective while also not completely sharing it. As a player, you’re aware of the conversation Cinta and Rama are having even as Rama discusses other topics with whoever is with him in real life. You can sense the confusion he’s feeling and may even share the frustration of his friends when they cannot parse his seemingly random contributions to their discussions.

    Two of those friends, Adit and Tasya, play with him in the incredibly named SIGMUND FEUD. Their three-piece approach to slacker-y, pop-leaning shoegaze is soundtracked by L’ALPHALPHA, an actual band from Jakarta, Indonesia. Rama’s the principal songwriter and lyricist, so his lost year of catatonic depression has made it difficult for the band to continue. Practices are tense and both Tasya and Adit question their own interest in continuing the band beyond the scheduled gig at the end of the month. Even if the band members aren’t getting along super well, it’s still fun to practice with them. There’s a light rhythm game element to working through songs in the practice space or going over them alone in your room. Thankfully, there are no consequences for missing notes. Had there been, I think Tasya would have threatened to quit even earlier than she did in the plot!

    Most of your days as Rama are spend shuffling around Jakarta. You’re a minor celebrity, so you will get rockignized when you stop by the cafe, record store, ramen shop, or therapist’s office. The locations are spread out enough that you will occasionally make use of fast travel (via your phone’s map app; if only real life were so simple!), but it is relaxing to walk around the neighborhood and check in on the regulars who are waiting for their bus or trying to get up the courage to ask out their crush. You will also have a chance to try your hand at romance with one of three possible partners. I was either so devoted to being a good band member or was just as oblivious as Rama that I didn’t end up in a relationship at the end of the game. I guess the Rama I was playing was still carrying a torch for Cinta. Something about playing a noncommittal slacker in his 20s must have really hit home for me.

    Unlike mid-20s me, Rama understands the value of therapy. In his sessions, he works to understand why he is still able to have conversations with Cinta and also how those conversations might be getting in the way of his continued growth. These sessions are entirely optional, though the game gives you reminders to check in with your therapist every few days. One of my favorite minor characters is the receptionist in the office who brings up her Christian metal fandom repeatedly. It would have been hilarious if Rama could recruit her to join his band and completely alienate Adit and Tasya into quitting music entirely. He’s already speaking aloud to the voices in his head, so it’s easy to imagine a new version of SIGMUND FEUD that involves Rama speaking in tongues over some ripping thrash riffs while the demure receptionist hammers blast beats for Jesus. Maybe that’ll be the sequel—the Afterlife EP. 

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:

Neo Cab

Death Glitch: How Techno-solutionism Fails us in this Life and Beyond by Tamara Kneese

Don't Read the Comments by Eric Smith

Dead Poets Society (Peter Weir, Touchstone Pictures, 1989)

    Now here is a movie about education or based in a school that stands firmly on its own as a film. There is so much to praise and discuss with Dead Poets Society that I will not be covering in this post. I’ll be focusing on what comes to mind in terms of how Mr. Keating and his students interact as a community of learners.

    It’s so wonderful to see a movie dedicated to the full-throated support of the humanities, specifically poetry. It is earnest in its argument for making the examined life worth living. There is a catch, though. All students deserve this caliber of education. Yet, the opening convocation features the headmaster telling the students and their families that “75 percent” of the young men who attend Welton will eventually enroll in an Ivy League institution. That’s remarkable and is also a reminder that this is fiction. The implication is that the curriculum is so robust that these boys cannot fail. Less evident is whether this elite prep school is the kind of place where the old-monied or legacy-admitted may send their kids in the first place. Getting to the why behind that statement could make for an equally interesting, but also much less inspiring, film. A deeply cynical look at the kind of students and families involved in the Varsity Blues scandal could be a modern take on that idea.

    Robin Williams as John Keating is magnetic and magnificent. I have had teachers whose unorthodox methods must have been inspired by Keating’s approach. As a viewer, it’s easy to be taken in by the gimmicks he uses and then draw the conclusion that all teaching should be like that. Jumping off desks, marching through the courtyard, tearing pages from textbooks, inspiring clandestine poetry recitals… these are not pedagogical models just because of their shape. Keating has an evident, deep love for the written word and observation. He’s also seen enough of the world to know what these boys haven’t, and he knows how to play with that gap in their experience constructively. It’s certainly dramatic and attention getting to ask students to climb on their desks to get a new view of the world, or to offer a muscular repudiation of staid interpretations of poetry. The motions themselves are incidental, even though they make for exciting on-screen action.

    The film’s iconic final scene reveals that it wasn’t the mere appreciation of poetry that he was teaching. He was showing the way for these 17-year-olds to avoid the narrow, gilded path their parents and society forced them down. To have these genteel, patrician sons understand that there is a life outside of being a banker, lawyer, or doctor is a huge undertaking. Keating opens their eyes to the idea that there is a conflict between conformity and integrity that they have to resolve. He never tells them to take "the path less traveled by" but that they should know it exists and make an informed choice about where to go.

    Neil Perry’s pathetic complaint “can’t I even enjoy it for a little while?” is revelatory in this regard. He says these words in response to his roommate’s quick emphasis on the logistics involved in concealing his participation in a local performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In this scene, Anderson doesn’t see the point in Neil honoring his own interest in acting; all he can consider is how pissed Perry’s old man will be when he finds out. Perry is rightfully upset with Anderson’s response because he did not need another reminder of how constrained his choices are. It’s always on his mind. Keating showed him a looser way of looking at the world and it’s not the way he thought it had been. Perry is unable to escape the conformity and authority of his father’s dreams.

    Anderson and the others who stand for their captain in the final scene do so not because they love poetry or the written word or because they hate their replacement teacher. Those who move do so because they know there is a world out there larger than the one they’ve known until this point. They are acknowledging the lesson of needing a different view on the world that Keating had taught them earlier. They love him for how he opened their minds.

    Although there are boys of various ages at Welton, it’s not clear whether Keating or the other teachers are responsible for all grade levels with their subject. We never see Keating teaching other classes nor is there evidence of younger students having reading, writing, literature, or English classes. This situation raises the question of whether Keating has only one prep. If so, then that is one hell of a position. What little we know of his life outside the classroom is that he has a love interest who is in London and that he has taught similar courses in England before coming to Welton. It would be nice to know whether he has only this one class because that information could explain his teaching methods. If he has all day to plan, then it makes sense that he would come up with some out of the box ideas and that he would have the patience to adjust them when they do not work the first time. As before, all students (not just those in cloistered academies) deserve teachers who can give this much time and attention to their subject and their students.

    It’s worth noting that the only women and girls in the movie have extremely minor roles. The few times we see the students’ parents, their mothers are simply appendages of their fathers. The domineering Mr. Perry has hundreds more words that Mrs. Perry. The boys’ love interests are similarly one-dimensional. The boys have three girls who are peers and they exist solely as subjects of arousal. Even Keating argues that the purpose of language is to “woo women.” If that’s what he has to say about gender roles, I’m terrified of how he would explain the whiteness of Welton. He graduated from the institution, so he may be unable to see its whiteness as problematic. The fish is the last to notice the water and all that. It’s far too generous of an interpretation of the film to think that it does not directly say anything about gender or race because it is attempting to show just how sheltered the lives of these people are.

    That’s the one thought that bugs me still about this otherwise extraordinary film. No one text can do everything, so maybe I’m expecting too much of a movie from 1989 to have thoughtful commentary on race and gender in addition to its convincing argument in support of a liberal arts education. The tensions of social class are readily apparent in the characters’ interactions with the local public high schoolers and with Mr. Perry’s repeated comments about the sacrifices he has made to get Neil into Welton. It’s entirely possible that there is nothing interesting to say about the maleness or whiteness of Welton: it is white and masculine because that is its raison d’être. The exclusion is the point.

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:

Adolescence

Mr. Holland's Opus

The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Times and Seasons: The Rise and Fall and Rise of The ZOMBIES (Robin Platts, HoZac Books, 2025)

    Jesus Christ, The fucking ZOMBIES!

    What a great band. They’re a bunch of school friends in England in the 1960s who won a battle of the bands competition and got signed to Decca Records and whose first single, “She’s Not There,” was an overnight sensation. That would be an interesting enough story on its own. But, as Robin Platts covers in the 350-plus pages of this extensive biography of the band and its members, there is so much more to the story. Even more than their other two most famous singles (“Tell Her No” and “Time of the Season”) as well as their magnificent second album.

    The core members of Rod Argent (songwriter and organist), Chris White (songwriter and bassist), and Colin Blunstone (vocalist) are the ones whose lives and experiences comprise most of the text. I learned more about Argent’s and Blunstone’s solo careers than I thought possible because nearly a third of the book is dedicated to the years-in-between, when The ZOMBIES broke up and before these core members began to play together again on a regular basis. The subtitle of the book is not merely clever phrasing. Those years of “the fall” were much longer than the initial career of the band or their subsequent reunion. I am keen to explore some of the work these men did during this time, but it was a bit much to get through without having prior knowledge. If you are a fan of either one’s solo careers, I can’t imagine there could be a better or more meticulously researched resource than this book.

    For me, though, thoughts of The ZOMBIES mean the conversation turns to “Odessey and Oracle.” It’s the best album of the 1960s. Better than “Black Monk Time,” and “Forever Changes.” Of course better than “Revolver,” “Let it Bleed,” and “Pet Sounds.” Better, too, than “Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake”, “SF Sorrow,” and, yes, even “Village Green Preservation Society” and “Arthur.” I haven’t revisited this opinion in 18 years and I’m sure it still holds up… It’s important to have thoughts like these because it shows you’re a serious music fanatic… There’s no need to expand your horizons, Rob…

    To learn more about the recording of that album is a pure delight. Even when I got my mom a copy of the CD reissue in 2004, I didn’t know all of the ins and outs of its recording. They were the next band to go into Abbey Road Studios after The BEATLES had finished “Sgt. Pepper” and benefitted directly from some of the recording set-ups that the Fab Four had used. As there were no eight-track recording consoles in England at the time, it was kind of a big deal that engineers Geoff Emerick and Phil MacDonald had daisy-chained multiple four-tracks together to achieve the illusion of eight-tracks of mixing, generation loss on the tapes be damned. The ZOMBIES insisted on keeping the set-up, even though it was a pain to work with for the recording staff. If they hadn’t come into the room at that time, before the equipment had been disassembled, it’s unlikely that the vocal harmonies and instrumental complexity of certain passages of “Odessey and Oracle” would have sounded so lush and delightful. It’s really something to learn that The ZOMBIES were able to piggyback off of The BEATLES in this way, even before “Sgt. Pepper” began to make waves.

    If not for the recording quality, the compositions of tracks such as “Friends of Mine” could have easily made the album worthwhile. As a friend of a friend of mine once put it, it’s a unique song because it’s about being happy for other people who are in love. He pointed out that there are plenty of songs about being in love, or no longer being in love, or being envious of those in love because you are single. There’s not many songs about this particular perspective. As the liner notes of that 2004 reissue indicate, only one of the named couples in the chorus stuck together for the long term. Ah well.

    Turns out “Changes,” the first track on the second side of the album, is the only song where all five members of The ZOMBIES sing together. Deep down, I already knew this to be true. It was extremely validating to have it confirmed in the text, though. You see, there is a moment after the second chorus where the instruments drop out and the vocals are all you can hear. It is in this precise moment that you can hear at least one, if not all five, of The ZOMBIES smack their lips in unison to sing the next line. You may have to turn your stereo up quite loud to hear it, and then immediately back down to not blow out your speakers or your ears when the song begins again. This one moment is the quintessence of being a Friday Night Part. It sounds like a frog being born. I absolutely love it. Maybe you do, too?

    In all seriousness, this book is an excellent overview of the career of The ZOMBIES. Their tentative comeback around the turn of the millennium wasn’t some kind of cash-in on their name. Except for drummer Hugh Grundy, all members had continued to be involved with music whether as writers, performers, or promoters. (Turns out guitarist Paul Atkinson is the A&R guy who got JUDAS PRIEST signed to CBS; I am so glad there is a connection between these bands!) So, when Argent and Blunstone began to write together again in the late 1990s, they were pleasantly surprised to learn that “Odessey and Oracle” had developed a cult following since its 1968 release. Instead of resting on the laurels of doing the front-to-back, album-in-its-entirety tour forever (they did do so for a time), they have put out new music. Platts makes their constant writing and touring—for musicians in their 60s and 70s—seem necessary, unavoidable. There was no cataclysmic split in the band’s original run. They all were on the same page about calling it quits, even before they bestowed us with the majesty of “Odessey and Oracle.” There were never any competing factions vying for the rights to the band’s name. Well, not within their camp, at least; Platts recounts the grifters who took advantage of the name recognition of the band after they split and “Time of the Season” became a surprise hit in the U.S. in 1969. It’s the kind of scam that would be unimaginable now—trying to pass off a couple of bearded schlubs from Michigan as a British Invasion band. The surviving members have continued to enjoy each other’s company enough to keep the band going in some form or another after 30 years apart. It seems the genuine awe of feeling so good about seeing friends of theirs so in love represented a deep way of connecting with others that would eventually give The ZOMBIES eternal life.

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:

Good Pop, Bad Pop: An Inventory by Jarvis Cocker

This is What It Sounds Like: What the Music You Love Says About You by Susan Rogers & Ogi Ogas

BILLY STEWART "Sitting in the Park" b/w "Once Again"

Mr. Holland’s Opus (Stephen Herek, Hollywood Pictures, 1995)

    This movie is so saccharine that it contains a week’s worth of sugar content for the average American. Good thing I’m not looking at movies like this one as an example of cinema qua cinema. Let’s be clear that there’s not a whole lot to be gleaned from it in terms of teaching and learning, either.

    One wonders about the motivating factors behind writing a screenplay for a movie like Mr. Holland’s Opus. After a casual watch, it’s clear that Stephen Herek likes his warmed-over ’60s nostalgia as much as he likes hero narratives and cheerleading for music education. Something like American Graffiti, a tepid drama, and The Miracle Worker mashed together. Those pieces don’t fit. There’s too much happening and it takes way too long to happen, which is a dreadful combination.

    You’re not here to hear me crab about bad movies, so let’s get to what the movie is saying about or doing with the educational setting. Richard Dreyfuss’ Glenn Holland is of a type: the second-career teacher who thinks the job is a “fall-back position” that he can just walk into. His principal correctly chides him for thinking that way as she walks him to his class on the first day. I’d love to know what the interview process looks like for a position of music director in a public high school. It’s evident that his first passion is music composition and not anything to do with education. He begins his first class with a closed, known-answer question: What is music? The students do not know what you think music is or how you define it—that is why you are there! Give them ideas to consider and then explain to them how to critique those ideas, at a minimum. His principal has a similarly limited view of teaching. She thinks it involves the filling of young minds with information and then giving them a compass to navigate the world. She suggests Holland does not have a compass, but is just filling their heads with information. Fair. I’m reminded of a comment the director of my grad program in teacher training made early in our coursework. We were aspiring high school English teachers in our early 20s. She made it clear that we should not get into teaching high school English if we wanted to share a love of literature, of Shakespeare, with our students because that is not what the daily life of a teacher is about. Her comment was a bit overstated, but it does capture the vision of teaching and learning that Holland holds. He thinks his passion will carry the day with teenagers, at least, at first.

    One student in particular provides him with a learning opportunity that he eventually capitalizes on, though it’s not clear whether he applies this learning in later years. Gertrude Lang, a clarinetist in the school’s band, can’t form notes with her instrument without squeaking. He tries to teach her directly with private lessons before school, but her frustration mounts. She is ready to quit the instrument when he tells her that music is more than notes on a page. He knows that she knows the music “in her head, her heart, and her fingers” but needs her to develop the self-trust to perform it fluently. She, of course, excels once he gives her the chance to mediate her thinking by reflecting on what she already knows about her skills. He’s becoming aware that his students’ emotional lives and their motivations matter as much as their “pure music” knowledge.

    The other student who we are meant to have feel-good moments about is Louie Russ, one of the only Black characters in the film, and the only one who gets a name. The football coach tells Holland that Russ is academically ineligible for football, but that he could make the wrestling team with the academic credit that Holland’s music class could offer. As the coach tells Holland, Russ has “got nothing else,” so he needs Holland to do this favor. (In return, coach will help Holland’s scrappy group of instrumentalists learn to march in formation so they can perform during football games.) Just so we’re on the same page, it’s 1965 and the only thing a Black student has going for him is sports because he is “not a school kind of person” but he “can work hard.” This is reductive stereotyping at its racist worst. The movie is from 1995, so maybe we are meant to think that these white teachers’ views of this student are retrograde with the passing of 30 years. I don’t think so. When Holland works with Russ, he learns that Russ isn’t able to keep a beat on the drum. In a montage, we see Holland trying to get Russ to clap along with him, tap his feet with him, and bang his drum with him. Here are some of the only moments of physical humiliation in the film. Holland is so fed up with Russ’ lack of progress at toe-tapping that he begins to tap on Russ’ foot forcefully. Is this feedback meant to tell Russ to press down when Holland presses down, or is it meant to tell Russ to stop pressing down and keep his foot still at that moment? I guess his intent is clearer when he grabs the laces of Russ’ Chuck Taylors and jerks his foot up and down in frustration. Worse yet, Holland has Russ don a football helmet while sitting to play his bass drum. Holland then pounds on Russ’ head with a mallet in time with the song. Oh, but it’s OK because “Mr. Russ has found the beat” by the end of the sequence. This result would be heart-warming if it weren’t so revolting. Russ later dies in Vietnam, just to reinforce that he is disposable as a character.

    Those moments should have been enough for this film, really. The principal who hired him retires and kisses him goodbye because he’s her favorite. Gross for a few reasons. Then, she gives him a compass, as if it weren’t obvious enough that he has “found his way” as a teacher. Too much. When that scene faded to black, I was glad because I was sure there was nothing more to cover. But, of course it went on. There’s an even more cloying moment still to come when Holland sings and signs JOHN LENNON’s “Beautiful Boy” to his son who has 90 percent hearing loss.

    Despite all of the changes Holland and his students have been through over the 30 years of time that the movie encapsulates, the board still eliminates his position along with all of the other art programs at school. Here is where the most real part of the movie happens. A despondent Holland is talking with his football coach teacher friend and he observes that it would be the end of Western civilization if a high school cut its sports budget. His buddy reassures Holland that “they’ll miss [him]” when he’s gone. Holland counters that he feels “expendable.” That’s a succinct summation of what teaching feels like. Some may remember you, or how you made them feel, but you are still a line item on the budget of an institution that cannot love you back, no matter what trinkets it provides you with. A triumphant exit with a supportive crowd at your back does not take away from the fact that teaching is more than just a deeply emotional labor. Recognizing and managing those emotions is necessary, but it is not enough. Beyond respect, teachers deserve much higher levels of the kind of compensation that goes into gas tanks, grocery tills, and mortgage accounts.

YOU MAY ALSO ENJOY THESE REVIEWS:

TAYLOR SWIFT The Life of a Showgirl

BILLY STEWART "Sitting in the Park" b/w "Once Again"

Teachers