https://paul.place/writing Journal entries by Paul Hanna — director, writer, and multimedia artist. en-us https://paul.place/before-sunset-intimacy-and-proximity https://paul.place/before-sunset-intimacy-and-proximity Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:00:00 GMT Suggested listening: A Waltz for a Night — Julie Delpy As I’ve come to write a lot more fiction and screenplays, I’ve (re)explored the whole notion of writing plot and developing characters; creating scenarios that feel rooted in some experienced reality or some extrapolated one. I’m revisiting... https://paul.place/debussys-1st-arabesque-lily-chou-chou-and-hyperfixation https://paul.place/debussys-1st-arabesque-lily-chou-chou-and-hyperfixation Fri, 17 Oct 2025 12:00:00 GMT Suggested listening: Claude Debussy - Arabesque No. 1 I recently rewatched All About Lily Chou Chou at the Metrograph. I must admit that before my first watch, I didn’t even realize that Lily Chou Chou was not a real artist, and listened to Glide because someone I had a crush on told me to check... https://paul.place/a-dream-i-had https://paul.place/a-dream-i-had Mon, 14 Apr 2025 12:00:00 GMT Suggested listening: Leaving Dreaming - Ellen Akbro I was standing on a rooftop—in front of me was the empire state building. There had been vertical and horizontal expansion on the empire state building, so weird blocky apartments that looked structurally unsound were being built right off of it.... https://paul.place/past-lives-before-sunrise-and-life-decisions https://paul.place/past-lives-before-sunrise-and-life-decisions Mon, 17 Feb 2025 12:00:00 GMT Suggested listening: Quiet Eyes - Sharon Van Etten, Kokomo IN - Japanese Breakfast In July of 2024, I began listening to the Past Lives soundtrack a lot. I think I clocked around 2,000+ minutes in less than four months from what I can gather (which is more than 50ish listen-throughs, which on paper... https://paul.place/voyeurism-and-gladiator-2 https://paul.place/voyeurism-and-gladiator-2 Wed, 18 Dec 2024 12:00:00 GMT About a month ago, I watched Gladiator 2. I have never seen the original Gladiator, nor did I attempt to pick up the lore prior to watching it. Really, I was incredibly excited to watch a new Ridley Scott film after the press tour of Napoleon. Scott, when badgered by French journalists for its... https://paul.place/gretchen-benders-dumping-core https://paul.place/gretchen-benders-dumping-core Wed, 16 Oct 2024 12:00:00 GMT Gretchen Bender wrote, “I believe that an acceleration into, rather than a resistance to, our multilayered visual environment will reveal structures or open windows to the development of a critical consciousness we can’t yet perceive as useful from within our immediate vantage point.” Dumping Core... https://paul.place/dinner-and-a-movie https://paul.place/dinner-and-a-movie Tue, 16 Jul 2024 12:00:00 GMT I recently went to see the film The Cook, the Thief, His Wife, & Her Lover, directed by Peter Greenaway, masterfully scored by Michael Nyman, and gorgeously costumed by Jean Paul Gaultier. Before going to watch the movie at the IFC Center, I took myself out to dinner. There’s this restaurant on... https://paul.place/covid-singularity https://paul.place/covid-singularity Thu, 11 Jul 2024 12:00:00 GMT Today, I’m finally able to reënter society after contracting COVID for the second time. This strain in particular is endearingly called “FLiRT,” an apt name for a disease spread through face-to-face contact, the exchanging of droplets, etc. etc. Both times I’ve contracted COVID, I was the sole... https://paul.place/hungover-sartre https://paul.place/hungover-sartre Fri, 05 Jul 2024 12:00:00 GMT I had put off reading Sartre’s Existentialism is a Humanism for quite some time. Perhaps I owe that to the following Google Books review posted by a Timothy Proffitt, which reads, in its entirety: “Sartre stays in the realm of obscurity, his credence of ‘Existence before Essence’ is just the flip... https://paul.place/a-quick-thought-concerning-a-yoga-class https://paul.place/a-quick-thought-concerning-a-yoga-class Sun, 30 Jun 2024 12:00:00 GMT The instructor instructed my class to pretend we were giving the earth a hug. I imagined myself in a forest with dense shrubbery. It reminded me of what I think the land in the Hobbit looks like, though I’ve never read the book or watched the film. There I was, laying atop the moist and squishy... https://paul.place/so-many-roads https://paul.place/so-many-roads Sat, 29 Jun 2024 12:00:00 GMT I often think to myself how lucky I am to live in a neighborhood where I can take so many different roads to get home. When I lived in Michigan, in a car-centric town, variety on the way home wasn’t ever an option—I may be able to attribute that to a constant reliance on Google Maps to get where I...