1 November

Michael was a film from 1996 that doesn’t rate a lot of mentions, but which I really enjoyed. Travolta plays an angel on a mission. One of the things I most enjoyed about it was his passion for ‘battle!’. That’s what good people have forgotten how to do, how to love the battle. I see so much of it on social media, how they retreat to curated happiness here, to enforced ‘positivity’, in defiance of the events they see happening around them, like a form of escapism. As if things will just go away or get better, if they ignore them and focus only on fun and ’nice’ things. Nothing makes you feel more alive than battle. Than jumping headfirst into problems, to help solve them, with humour and passion and intelligence. It’s an exquisite form of happiness, far greater than the happiness of retreat and diversionary fun like travel, eating out and gigs. It’s passion. It’s what grown-up life used to be about, before all of society became a high school.