Severance, Mobiles, and the Illusion of Balance
Mobile: “Ovalteenie” sharing the screen with Adam Scott in Severance on Apple+
On severance
“But how can an end be a beginning?” asked crow.
“Perhaps,” replied fox, “the better question is how can a beginning also be an end?”
Thoughts while making
He always left before I was awake, worn leather soles with laces tight echoing quietly down that cold white hallway of my childhood.
Some mornings, I’d look out my window just in time to see him backing out of the driveway, his muted brake lights tapping an SOS perhaps, before he shifted into first and vanished into the mist.
The sound of loose change and keys dropping into that black bowl by the front door signaled his return each night. His day away done, for now.
It was 1976. And 81. And 85. And all the years before and between. And many after.
As an adult, I’ve wondered more and more about those few moments for my dad, his leaving and returning; that transition from home to work, work to home - his wide tie tightening, his wide tie loosening, repeat.
What happened in those liminal steps between two wholly dissimilar worlds? One with a wife and five kids. Another as head of two large architecture firms.
“The problem with hamster wheels,” he once said, “isn’t that they go nowhere. It’s that, once on, it’s very hard to get off.”
Directed by Ben Stiller, Severance on Apple+ tackles the mythic dystopian construction of work-life balance head on; unpacking the boxes within which we so readily compartmentalize our experience of living; this here, that there, disconnecting and separating.
That said, I couldn’t think of a better mobile for the show to choose than Ovalteenie, a visual representation of the tenuous balance between, together yet disparate.
And the scene where Jen Tullock and Michael Chernus leave Adam Scott to sleeplessly, wordlessly ponder the mobile spinning above him is perfect (thank you!).
As the many and varied parts of your day present, how can you pause between those transitions to acknowledge and honor the beauty who is you moving fluidly from one to another?
