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I think I'm overdue for another Lady Gaga is the best thing to happen to popular culture tangent. Her reissue of The Fame was leaked yesterday just a week before it was officially going to be released. So, who in the Gaga camp leaked it in such a timely manner? If I can speculate just a little bit, I'd say it was Gaga herself (or she asked one of her minions in the Haus of Gaga). A leak just one week before the official release will create the perfect amount of buzz a record release needs. Before everyone can get their grimy little monster hands on a copy (of a copy of a copy) and make their judgments and critiques of all the songs, The Fame Monster will already be properly released banking on iTunes. The Fame Monster has already been trending on Twitter and every other tweet in my newsfeed is someone confessing their admiration for Gaga. Of course I am aware that my newsfeed is skewed. I follow other media/pop junkies like myself and the occasional "celebrity." But those trending topics are not lies and people are talking Gaga. The anticipation for Gaga guest-starring on Gossip Girl last night was enough for us monsters to ejaculate in our skinny jeans. But this isn't your ordinary reissue. This reissue has eight new songs including the remarkable "Bad Romance," which has everyone singing (even if they don't want to) "Gaga oooh la la" as they are browsing the shelves of bread at the supermarket or walking down the street. She is cleverly releasing just the eight new songs as its own record called The Fame Monster and that is what I downloaded just moments before heading to the gym yesterday morning. Just last week Gaga released (arguably) the best music video of her career (we must not forget Gaga is still just a newborn in a pop lifespan). I have friends that have probably watched the music video for "Bad Romance" close to one-hundred times. I can only admit to watching it twice and in just those two viewings I was aghast. My mouth gaped open, jaw dropping to the floor. Like someone other than me said, Gaga has made music videos relevant again. This couldn't be a more accurate statement. I can't remember the last time I've been excited about a music video since Marilyn Manson was relevant.* With the "Bad Romance" music video, Lady Gaga reminds us that pop matters. That pop and "high art" can meet somewhere in the middle. There is no distinction between highbrow and lowbrow culture in terms of Lady Gaga. Like Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup cans, Gaga doesn't signify corporate culture but something else. She signifies something subversive. In the music video she wears Alexander McQueen's "armadillo" 10-inch shoes that look like lobster claws. High fashion meets a pop video. When one first listens to "Bad Romance" it might be easy to dismiss it as every other pop tune on the radio but upon multiple listens you realize how layered the song actually is. Not only is she referring to Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho and Vertigo but she somehow incorporates "Gaga" into Hitchcock's psychological narrative by referring to a "vertigo stick." So, now not only does a "disco stick" exist in the Gaga canon, but now there is a "vertigo stick" for us monsters to contemplate. Hedi Slimane even did the photography for the new single covers!
What inspired me most to write this entry was this article found on The Vigilant Citizen. In this fascinating article (and two previous articles about Lady Gaga) Vigilant reads the "Bad Romance" video to prove his/her theory that Gaga is an "Illuminati Puppet." Vigilant defines the Illuminati as a group of elite people who seek a "single world government (New World Order), the elimination of organized religions and the creation of a single world currency. [Also] mass medias are used to shape and mold public opinion to facilitate the implementation of those projects." I'm not well versed in all things Illuminati but I did get a few lessons from Dan Brown's Angels & Demons which I've read rather recently. The occult symbolism permeates Gaga's oeuvre. Whether it be her photographs, music videos, or lyrics, there is no denying she is consciously choosing such blatant references to occultism. She may be always hiding one eye with her hand or the brim of her couture hat, or mounting gazelle heads on the wall of her videos which could signify her involvement with such a "secret" organization, but I don't believe she has any affiliation. Like Gaga has borrowed the "road to pop stardom" narrative to become the pop starlet that she is, she is only borrowing the Illuminati symbolism to perpetuate her significance in popular culture and further her career. The image of her eye and two fingers are a staple in the Gagaverse.
I mean Gaga's album is titled The Fame. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta plays the character "Lady Gaga." Lady Gaga is nothing but fiction. A pop construct to maneuver in a pop world. Lady Gaga is a non-person, she becomes the ideal "Pop Star." The epitome of pop stardom. Lady Gaga's strive for pop stardom follows empty pop culture tropes. With clichéd dreams filled of fame, money, and success, Gaga strives for a career in the music industry. But this path becomes a pop pastiche. Gaga is just imitating the artist's before her, but what makes her different is her self-awareness. The self-conscious and self-aware pop star is something new. This is what makes Gaga the post-postmodern pop star. This is what makes her different than Britney Spears. And what makes it beyond brilliant is that Lady Gaga (or whoever is behind that facade) has crafted this persona/image all herself. These are not music executives planning her every move. The Swedes are not writing her songs. Gaga is doing the songwriting and the crafting of her image. She has all creative control. Through her self-conscious rise to fame she is critiquing the very system and institution she is borrowing to get there in the first place.
Like every good "text," from the Bible to your simple pop song, "Bad Romance" can have many interpretations. You might not believe that Gaga is a product of the Illuminati (representing all the vacuous citizens of the world the Illuminati cannot tolerate) but I can't help to think this "bad romance" is not with a boy but with the record industry itself. Don't get me wrong, I believe the song can be just that simple, a song about a romance gone wrong. But reading the song in a deeper way, brings a more complex meaning to the music video. Gaga is so conscious of her place in the record industry, as this character, she is able to critique the entire system itself. When she kills the handsome "Russian" with the highest bid after her initiation into either the Illuminati/record industry, I can't help but see Gaga, or the woman behind the mask winking at me as the last shot pulls away. There Gaga is, lying in bed, next to a blackened corpse (who embodied all things wrong with the music industry) who she killed. Since Gaga has infiltrated the record industry to get where she is now, she no longer needs them. At this point where is Gaga to go? Perhaps she's ready to take down the artists she shares the stage with. Beyonce? I'm not sure, but I'll be there with my monster hands, eyes, and heart open.
*I will never stop the comparisons to Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson. Let's not forget about the collaboration between Marilyn Manson and Lady Gaga where Manson lends vocals to the Chew Fu remix of "LoveGame." Manson was even quoted in Rolling Stone magazine saying, "She knows exactly what she's doing. She's very smart, she's not selling out, she's a great musician, she's a great singer, and she's laughing when she's doing it, the same way that I am." The self-conscious artist, knowing exactly what to do to grab the attention of our culture. What Manson did in the late-90s was create a movement in rock and roll. He denounces the term "shock rock" but that is what he will be known for. He shocked the world with his antics on stage. Breaking glass bottles and cutting his stomach open with the jagged pieces on stage at music festivals. He was rumored to giving his bassist Twiggy Rameriz fellatio on multiple occasions while playing. Even if the blowjob was staged it shocked America. People condemned him for all of society's immorality. He became the scapegoat for the Columbine shootings, the reason a teenager in Texas committed suicide, etc. The list of Manson's antics could go on. But what Manson didn't have that Gaga does is the entire world in her hands. That is what makes Lady Gaga so brilliant. Her immersion in popular culture is endless. She leaks into every crevice of our culture. Gaga is on on Ellen's talk-show. They are not only playing Gaga's music on television shows but she becomes part of the fictional narrative of a scripted show like Gossip Girl playing "herself." Gaga is on SNL in skits with her predecessor Madonna. My little cousin who is only six years old plays "Poker Face" on YouTube and mimics the dance and sings the lyrics with all the gyration and Gaga-esque mannerisms. Here, I am...a twenty-seven year old who used to denounce pop music entirely who is completely enamored with her. My four year old brother is singing "Paparazzi" in the backseat of my car. She is everywhere we turn. Marilyn Manson was only able to court a small population of culturists. Only people who are already predisposed to metal, goth, and industrial sounds were actually listening to him. That is only a fraction of our population. Lady Gaga has crept into our pop consciousness so cunningly. Like I've said in previous entries, not only has Gaga made her presence known, producing incessant but brilliant melodies but she has cultivated our musical tastes. Before becoming Lady Gaga, she was crafting songs for pop princesses like Britney Spears. We watched (and listened) to the rise and fall and (multiple) resurrections of Britney. Listening to songs Britney couldn't write herself. We liked Gaga even before Gaga was Gaga. (That sentence terrifies me. I feel as if I've retreated to baby talk.) But that's just the point. To run with a cliché, we are all goo goo for Gaga. I'm left speechless when trying to talk/write about her effect on our pop landscape. I even regress to baby talk. Lady Gaga is not only an artist for the masses but an artist that completely encapsulates our current post-postmodern condition. She's both plague and cure. Because "everyone" listens to her, if they like it or not, she has so much power. Gaga disseminates this brand of "weird" that Marilyn Manson and Bjork could only push so far. Marilyn Manson dismissed as a Satan worshiper, Bjork as the crazy singer from Iceland who once wore a swan dress. These artists are trivialized and forgotten. Gaga is both loved and adored, so when she shows up at the Video Music Awards in ridiculous avant-garde outfits she is applauded and acclaimed. All the different media outlets are at a loss of words. They can't trash one of the (undeniable) best new artists in the world. They don't want to put her on the Worst Dressed Lists. They are left biting their tongue when talking about her blood stained chest on stage and her eventual "suicide." This brand of "weird" will inspire the world to think outside of staged performances (within a staged performance), media packaging, and elegant gowns. Gaga will inspire others to think outside the box. Our stagnant American culture is evolving thanks to Gaga. Her aura of "weird" will stimulate conversation about anything and everything. When she appeared at an HRC event and sings John Lennon's "Imagine" tweaking the lyrics (something she is brilliant at) to have an even more empathetic tone towards equality for ALL people, people will listen. People who wouldn't normally consider human rights will consider human rights. Conservatives who dance at clubs to "Poker Face" will stumble upon her speech on YouTube and hear her refer to Matthew Shephard in one of the most famous songs in the world. The potential for humankind is in the hands of Gaga. She has become a vessel, an empty platform where she can write in any politics or ideology. And if you are "Vigilant" you might believe Lady Gaga is here to start a New World Order, the Illuminati's puppet. I'm not sure if I believe all the things V is declaring but I can't denounce Gaga is the beginning of something new.
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I was just carded at the supermarket to purchase NyQuil. Supposedly you must be 19 to buy such things. If I was paying close attention I would have learned that from Breaking Bad. Isn't that what they use to make meth? I think I'm wrong. I just wanted an excuse to reference Breaking Bad because I am having withdrawal from my favorite meth cooker Walt. Funny thing is, I never take conventional medicines like NyQuil. I just feel as if I need them in desperate times. I think Cold #2 is approaching my immune system and I just want to be prepared for the worst. Since I'm vampire, I've been trying to sleep all day but I failed in my mission. For some reason my heart kept thumping at an irregular speed which then caused my temperature to rise and I began to sweat underneath my blankets and sheets. Tossing and turning. Earplugs plugged in my ears. It's nearing six in the morning and I've been wrestling this restlessness for two hours. Buffy the Vampire Slayer has been my nighttime lullaby. I'm currently watching season two. Angel reaches full contentment/pure happiness (in other words orgasms) and becomes Angelus again. The gypsy curse is broken and Buffy cries in the fetal position on her teenage bed with her black boots still on. Joss Whedon, I love you. An hour or two later I'm still trying to fall asleep. I feel congested. I can't breathe through my nose properly. My thoughts linger on what I'm going to talk about in therapy in the afternoon. But if I don't get any sleep I'm not going to want to talk at all. Sleep. I need sleep. I reach down my boxer-briefs and start jerking off because sometimes that helps. I think about the boy who jumped in my car one night and immediately started giving me head. He was wearing flannel pajama pants. And his name was Lenny. I cum all over my stomach and chest and I'm still as restless as I was before. I pull out the only Nietzsche book I own. Thus Spoke Zarathustra. I read the introduction by Walter Kaufman and the first paragraph of the prologue and turn the book over on my nightstand. I can't do this at seven in the morning when I have the sniffles. My body still aches from the pilates class I went to the night before. I struggled through all those poses. The instructor made sure to correct me and spoke with me after the class. I blame my inflexibility and fatigue. I woke up from a four-hour sleep just to torture myself at the gym. I start thinking about Los Angeles and the weekend I spent out there in September. I think about Disneyland and how much I was opposed to giving into the experience. I couldn't have fun there. I had to see Disneyland as the institution, as the corporate monster who feeds off of us as consumers. The generalized worlds and cultures in the "It's a Small World" ride. The credit schemes and the sad sad people who suspend their disbelief so much they believe in the artifice. I did let my guard down because I was being a jaded Negative Nancy. But why am I thinking of these thoughts at seven in the morning when I'm trying to fall asleep? I pull out my notebook and start writing these thoughts down. I blame Baudrillard, hyperreality, and E.L. Doctorow. A feeling of desperation comes over me as I'm sweating underneath my blanket. This restlessness is not helping my already deteriorating will to live. I start thinking of how meaningless everything is. I think about the amount of suffering that continues to cripple every human being I know. I start thinking of Richard Kelly's The Box and how strange it made me feel. Especially when Gabrielle and I were walking out of the theater in the Tanger Outlets at 1:30 in the morning. This fictional "city" of stores built in the middle of Deer Park. Perfect design and perfect architecture. Places like this don't usually exist in New York. They only exist in places like Florida and Arizona. Water fountains, clear-cut sidewalks and Muzak playing from speakers hidden in artificial rocks and plants. This song playing from the rocks had a really sad woman singing as we are walking around this desolate city of stores, with no one else around. Who is this woman singing to and where is the rest of the world in relation to us? We expected zombies to come running for us. Why do zombies alway run now? Danny Boyle you corrupted the genre! The Box was a brilliant brilliant movie. A lazy postmodern dissertation on human nature. Richard Kelly always makes movies with his influences on his sleeves. Blatant references to the 70s sci-fic genre. The Box was a Twilight Zone episode lengthened into 115 minutes of existential dread. As pacifistic as Richard Kelly can be without using standard political tropes. Sartre being quoted by a man with half a face and references to No Exit throughout. Cameron Diaz as Norma Lewis with painful tears in her bloodshot eyes. Who knew she could move me in such a way. But I'm in bed...my heart palpitating and I remember hearing the song playing during the closing credits while I'm in the bathroom at the urinal. There I am standing facing the tiled wall, pissing into a ceramic square relieving the pressure on my bladder, feeling so animalistic and insignificant. Realizing I'm part of a species without any empathy left, or a species that never had any empathy to begin with. Plagued with this corporeal "box." A body which deteriorates and ages with every moment, beginning at birth. This insignificance, or the realization of it, is what plagues my current existence. It kept me from falling asleep this morning. It's the reason I have been experiencing this life as a murky haze lately. I spend hours sleeping or not sleeping. Ugh...even in my writing I can't get out of bed. It's been my current affliction and I'm oh so tired of it.
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For some reason I missed out on how good Nirvana's "Something In The Way" is. I recently downloaded Nevermind and I have been listening to "Something In The Way" on repeat ever since. I'm really confused about capitalization of song titles. In iTunes every word is usually capitalized but according to English grammar that is not the case for titles of books, films, and poems. Can someone enlighten me? But there is something about this song (pun intended) that keeps me hooked to its passive melody. It doesn't sound very "Nirvana." It's quiet, dark, and introspective. When I realized there were strings backing up Kurt Cobain's vocals, I was hooked. It's strange that a song this good would only last two minutes but that's usually the case. It seems as though a lot of my favorite songs are really short, which requires you to listen to them on repeat. Unless you're talking about Sigur Rós...then the opposite is true. It's as if Kurt knew he wrote a brilliant song and adding a verse or a complicated guitar would just ruin the song all together.
[I was just yelled at by a librarian because my music was too loud. I'm wearing headphones! She claimed the percussion/bass was audible. I'm listening to one of the most quiet Nirvana songs ever recorded. I feel like such a rebel. I'm scared to change songs because I don't want a looping drumbeat to disturb the librarian. But I have to...I have to...put on Kleerup's track "Until We Bleed" with Lykke Li. I feel as if my typing on this keyboard is louder than anything else. I think the librarian is a bitter old lady with an ugly pink cardigan who perpetuates every stereotype a librarian has ever encountered. Where's Parker Posey when you need her?]
Not only have I been obsessing over Nirvana's "Something In The Way" and Kleerup's "Until We Bleed," but also the following songs:
Ke$ha- "Tik Tok"
The xx- "Do You Mind" (Kyla Cover)
beat radio- "sunday matinee"
Former Ghosts- "Dreams"
La Roux- "Cover My Eyes"
The Tiny- "Last Weekend"
Los Campensinos!- "The Sea Is A Good Place To Think Of The Future"
and of course Lady Gaga's "Bad Romance." Gosh, this pop genius can't do no wrong even if all her intentions were nothing but wrong. "Bad Romance" sounds like a roller skating party on Christmas Day. I imagine red and green lights strung all around a late-80s roller-rink. The smell of popcorn and all the girls are wearing daisy dukes and red and white Santa hats with blonde wigs tucked underneath. The song sounds like a Christmas song with an early 90s feel but somehow sounds new, refreshing and e(x/r)otic. The many transitions of sound and melody are at first bizarre (I can't seem to get this word out of my vocabulary lately. Please edit accordingly!) and seemingly aloof but after a few more listens they begin to mend together seamlessly into pure pop perfection. Up until the point where Gaga starts singing in French, I could imagine Marilyn Manson singing the entire song and trust me that is a good thing! I just wish the "collaboration" with Lady Gaga and Marilyn Manson was actually this good and not the boring Chew Fu remix of "LoveGame." It has been rumored the video for "Bad Romance" takes place in a bathhouse and Gaga walked away from the shoot saying she couldn't believe what just happened. Can she top the brilliant "LoveGame" music video? I'm not sure but I can't wait. Thankfully, Gaga was kind enough to actually schedule her two last shows in New York on my days off but tickets haven't went on sale yet. I have been contemplating purchasing VIP tickets to reserve good seats at Radio City. I missed her at Terminal 5 because of my own personal ignorance. She was spotted in the Lower East Side on Halloween (by friends of mine and they scored tickets to the show) while I was in Bushwick Brooklyn waiting for Mount Eerie to take the stage at Market Hotel. I might need more trendy tastes to have an encounter with Gaga but it will happen and I will not gush. I will play cool and we will become BFFs. She broke my heart in this video:
Here Lady Gaga is at a HRC event changing lyrics and melodies to one of the most well known songs in the world to further the song's original message. "People of the nation. Are you listening? It isn't equal if it's sometimes. I want a real democracy," she sings at one point so clear and poignant. Gaga is fully aware that the lyrics (and what they mean and signify) are more important than anything else. More important than her image, more important than her character as "Lady Gaga." She becomes an empty but influential vessel to spread equality. She has obtained so much power and influence over popular culture (and the consumers of popular culture) and uses it to emphasize the different ways homophobia still exists in our society. The last lyric she tweaked that almost made me cry when I first watched this at six in the morning was, "No hell below us. And only Matthew in the sky." I've never been preachy, and never use words like "equality" because it all seems so impersonal and conventional. I'm moved by art not politics, but somehow Gaga moved me in a way a politician never could.
Time for dinner. Then off to the The Drums and beat radio show at my old university. Next chapter will include thoughts and "reviews" of An Education, Antichrist, and Where the Wild Things Are. I will attempt at documenting what happened on my birthday that fell on Election Day and what I learned in therapy this week.
Photograph of me on Halloween:
Hippie? Or an outtake from Taxi Driver or a David Lynch film?
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I'm on my second cup of coffee trying to shake off this fatigue. I fell asleep around 9pm last night while watching Hocus Pocus on ABC Family. There is something so fulfilling, spontaneously catching a movie on television. Even though I own Hocus Pocus on DVD it takes too much thought to actually take it off the shelf and put the disc into the DVD player. There is something so organic about stumbling upon a movie you haven't seen in years on the television. Flipping through channels while images are in disarray. You hear fragments of conversation that make up a very fractured whole. But it only takes one familiar scene to stop your thumb from pressing further. Either it be in image, song, or voice. In this case it was Sarah Jessica Parker singing "Come Little Children" while Thackery Binx wakes up from a deep sleep chasing after his little sister Emily. According to Verizon FiOS the movie was released in 1993. That was 16 years ago! How in the world can sixteen years pass by so fast? While watching the movie, I find myself quoting lines I didn't know I still remembered. What caught me so off guard was how well Hocus Pocus stood up over time. It is certainly a classic. For some reason I remember Thora Birch being so much younger than me. Watching the movie in 1993, I remember relating more with "Hollywood" than Dani. Or perhaps, I just had a crush on him and wasn't aware of it yet. I was only eleven when I watched Max, a virgin, light the candle that brought back the witches.
On Election Day I have the honor of turning another year older. 27. I always forget how close my birthday is to Halloween. 27 really is a dark age and I already know I'm doomed. Upon graduation from Stony Brook University I have been spiraling downward. It is going to be a quiet birthday because I don't want to acknowledge it. I also don't want to be disappointed with the amount of friends and family that won't show up to a dinner or party. I tried that once, when I graduated college last May and I was devastated. But 27 was hard for everyone. I am in no way comparing myself to the genius of these artists but this is the age where Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Basquiat, and Jim Morisson have died. This was predicated before I was even born. Life is nothing but a struggle; a constant one with only fleeting moments of joy and contentment. Only enough time to loosen the rope around your neck for a few breaths until the chair legs are ground down to stumps and you're choking choking on sawdust and embers of memories fading into ash and getting caught in your left lung. I have been coughing a lot lately. But that's because I caught a cold which kept me indoors for an entire week. I'm finally feeling a little better (physically that is) these past few days. I've ventured out and got breakfast with Gabrielle this morning at our favorite diner. Green teas and coffee. Omelets and French toast. There, we sat across from each other sharing our neuroses. A bit of solipsism in her maple butter; too much depression smothered on my whole wheat toast. I stumble over words as usual and she patiently waits for me to catch up to her way of conversation which usually involves her jumping from subject to subject without any relationship to the other. Her thought patterns are unusual but executed resolutely as if she is intentionally trying to throw you off. I surrender to her method of thinking and find it endearing and brilliant. But we're staggering 20-something year olds seeking our place in the world and wondering if we will ever find the person to share those moments of desolation (and jubilation) with.
I just got back from my appointment with Dr. Gregory Alexander.* He is one of the few psychologists that actually called me back. I think my health insurance needs to reevaluate their mental health specialist directory because they are not very helpful, nor are they therapeutic when they don't asnwer the phone or respond to voicemails. I have been on an almost three-year hiatus from therapy. This is the first time I'm seeing a male therapist too. I've been going to therapy since I was 19, during my first nervous breakdown. I've gone through many therapists since then. Social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, counselors, etc. They have always been women. And there was a conscious reason why I called upon a few male therapists this time around. In the past, therapy sessions with female therapists would become stagnant after a few months. They no longer took notes on the legal pads and they would smile too much. I would become friendly with these therapists, as if they were my friends and that would create this awkward "line" I feared to cross when in session. The sessions would become more of a friendly conversation about life rather than concentrating on my dejected disposition. Some therapists would take a lazy approach and share a few nods and the occasional "go on" and "how does that make you feel?" But this time around, I wanted more. I want a therapist that will engage with me. Someone who will take notes during most sessions. Someone who will critique my way of thinking and refer me to texts I should be reading to better myself. The "venting" approach many patients (and therapists) use doesn't work for me. I can only speak so much in an hour session until I run out of things to say. I'm always the listener....the friend who listens. It usually ends up with me pausing for awkward lengths of time. Famously, I actually had a therapist fall asleep on me during one of these awkward silences. Dr. Gregory Alexander is not any of the above. He is male. He didn't fall asleep in his thinking chair. He took notes. And he doesn't smile (or at least he saves those expressions for salutations). I know this is our first session and I cannot measure how our sessions will unfold in the future but it was a good first session. I awkwardly stumbled through the initial proprieties. He asked me if I found his office okay and I couldn't simply answer yes. I ended up answering in a very convoluted way that probably made me seem peculiar.
Dr. Gregory Alexander is an older gentleman who speaks slowly, seemingly choosing the best words to use in every sentence. He wears a brown suit that seems to hang on him like a nightgown. When he sits on his chair he slightly crosses his leg over the other. His suit pants ride up his shin and it exposes his dress socks that have completely rolled down to his ankle. There seems to be a small round abrasion on his shin that makes me a little squeamish. Despite being really thin, he does has a rotund stomach which his tie rests on like its own accessory. I try to examine his office around him but I'm scared to lose eye contact. I picked up my cell phone at one point and put it on my lap and we had a five-minute discussion about it. He told me it would be a disadvantage for me to look at my cell phone during a session. That I would be taking away from bettering myself. "Can I ask you what was so important?" he asked in a friendly, non-interrogative way. "Do you want me to be really honest? I'm not sure what I was about to do was against the law or not," I replied. "Yes. Honesty in therapy is always best." "Well, you were about to tell me what you have summarized about me so far and I wanted to record it so I can listen to it again." I realized what I did. I chose the worst time imaginable to grab my phone and "distract" myself. Dr. Gregory Alexander was about to summarize our session and offer me insight into what he could do for me as a psychologist and map out our therapeutic plan. He viewed my picking up the phone as a way for me to distract myself from his analysis, but I had to explain to him that that was furthest from the truth. I told him, "I was picking up the phone to record you. So I could refer to it in the future. You know when someone is going to tell you something important you can only hear and retain so much. Upon multiple listens I could really understand your analysis better." I wasn't looking for a distraction, I was looking for a way to absolutely and wholeheartedly listen. He was surprised by my reason to pick up my cell phone but explained to me that he would rather I not record our sessions and if I ever needed something repeated or better explained then all I have to do is just ask him to pause for a moment and he will do just that. He also thanked me for my honesty.
The inevitable question I feared most was then introduced. So, what brings you here today? In whatever form that question comes in, the answer requires acknowledgement of a problem on the answeree's part. It was at that moment I listed the things that have been bothering me. Of course this mental list that I compiled illustrates my acute and agonizing self-awareness. The bane of my existence He probably wondered why I was sitting on his deteriorating black leather couch (which was too comfortable for a doctor's office) next to his bookshelf he kept eyeing as he talked to me, if I already knew all of my symptoms. The symptoms of my "major depressive episode," as Dr. Gregory Alexander will later diagnose me at the end of our session. I explained my feelings of forfeit and how life seems so meaningless and empty. I didn't ask to be here, I should have the option to leave. "By 'leave' do you mean suicide?" he asks. "I wish there was a button I could press. A button to end it all instantaneously," I responded. I quickly offered my disclaimer: I'm not suicidal I just have thoughts about suicide. These suicidal thoughts may happen more frequently as of late, but I have no intention of ever following through with the scenarios I have imagined in my mind. He asks me how long I have been feeling this way and I couldn't help but say my entire life, though, the intensity varied over time. I told him upon graduation I experienced two conflicting emotions. With a sigh of relief, there was a sense of accomplishment that was hacked into bits by consternation. A fear of purposelessness, meaninglessness, a...void. "What you are experiencing is what Viktor Frankl calls 'The Existential Vacuum'. After spending eight or nine years of your life in a college classroom, no wonder you are experiencing a lack purpose after graduation." I was amazed that Dr. Gregory Alexander treated me as an equal. I was glad he was able to throw psychoanalytical theory my way without hesitation. He didn't have to sugarcoat his analysis and he explained himself thoroughly when I questioned him. At the end of our session he recommended two types of therapy along with regular "talk therapy." Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Logotherapy. I've experienced the former and it has helped in the past, but I'm intrigued by what logotherapy has to offer. A quest or will for finding meaning in life. Who knew there was such an existential psychotherapy? I'm not sure how the approach works but I am willing to test drive Viktor Frankl's theory. We joked about how large the DSM and he informed me that there is a much smaller manual that psychologists refer to. He even pulled it out of his tote bag to show me. Paperwork followed the session and I had to change seats to fill out forms on the table. This is always awkward. I hear him shuffling through papers as I sign my name and write my insurance policy number down. We plan to meet once a week until I feel we should meet every two weeks. We shake hands and I walk to the door. I ask him if he wants the door closed after I leave and he says yes and I walk out of his office into the parking lot and I notice the leaves on the trees are all different colors and I'm sweating. The slight wind sends a chill down my back and I step into the car and take a seat. I throw my head back on to the headrest and take a deep breath. I guess this is what therapy feels like. I almost forgot.
*I only use his full name because he has such an epic distinguished name.
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It's October 1st. I think Fall is officially here.
It's October 25th, do you know where my thoughts are?
I can't stop singing humming Happy Birthday each time I wash my hands. Thank you Woody Allen. I am currently wearing a Cure shirt that is a few sizes too small I think it might be cutting off some blood circulation. My hands feel really dry from washing my hands and I have a paper cut on my middle finger. I'm too lazy to get out of bed to fix either problem, even if the lotion is just a few feet away. This has been my problem the last three days. After a long-winded (last) week...of concerts and mingling with friends I have found myself hibernating in my bed.
I am listening to Dead Man's Bones. It's not too bad. I still don't understand the Ryan Gosling obsession. But I still haven't seen Half Nelson so my opinion is obviously invalid. Facial hairy and drug addiction is where sexiness resides according to all my friends.
jksdfjodifjewifdkcnv.affadsakfmAWIEofmc K:gnefefwe, is all I can muster at this moment in time. I haven't posted an entry in about a month and as more and more time passes, more of you linger away from this site through other mediums asking me if I am okay. You have no idea how much that means to me. Your text messages and emails are very kind. The truth is...I have no real reason why I haven't posted here. I'm in this staggering post-graduate haze. Feeling the pointlessness of life. I'm beginning to feel insignificant in the grand scheme of things. The same thoughts that haunted me at eighteen/ninenteen are haunting me again. It would be premature to call this Nervous Breakdown Part II. This feels more like a dark foggy depression. Panic attacks used to surge through my mind and body. But I've learned to program myself to avoid those electric pains. Heightened anxiety for no apparent reason. A sudden fear of death and going crazy doesn't exist this time around. What scares me now is how welcoming I am to death. It doesn't frighten me, the way it should. In a deeply subconscious (though not that deep if I'm acknowledging it and writing about it here) way I'm eagerly anticipating it. A place where I can non-exist. Everything can find an end and I don't have to keep questioning, keep worrying, keep wondering what pain is next. I don't need to figure out what I want to be, or who I want to be, or who I was, or what and who I am today. I'm just so tired of the inquiries, personal and interpersonal. My birthday is just a few weeks away and I'm going to be 27. How in the world did that happen? All of a sudden I'm just going to start my late-20s? In mere seconds, I'm that much closer to 30. This doesn't feel right. I don't feel comfortable in my own body. My age reflects nothing about me. All my life, I've felt like an "old soul" and have been told I've always acted in such a way. There are certainly many reasons for this but that is for another time. At this moment, it seems I'm regressing. I feel as clueless as I was when I was nineteen. I'm still questioning the same things but instead of dead ends, I can refer to theorists, philosophies, and novels to help ease the ambiguity. But they usually just create more questions--much deeper ones that frighten me when I realize how deep I dug my existential hole and I can barely see the sky above me. An educated mind seems worse than an ignorant one sometimes. Now, I can rationalize the depression, the fears, the anxities. There are reasons why I feel this way and I can list them. Some of them internal and others are external and out of my control. Class after class of theory. Postmodernism, romanticism, revenge tragedy, existentialism, structuralism, feminism and even ecofeminism. Not to mention the novels and films that portray my biggest fears. Fictional (and sometimes not) landscapes that I can relate to in so many ways.The illusion of free will and how one can never exist outside the system(s) that oppress you. It's old news and the Kindle 2 is here to propagate control over all your texts. I still feel 19 at 27. Some will say that is a problem. I'm still living at home (after a five-year hiatus), sleeping in a twin-sized bed. My father seems to have as much control over me now than he had over me when I was 16. I can't make a decision without his stamp of approval. There is a constant need within me for his support and approval. Example: I'm still working for the federal government; I'm still a postal worker, despite wanting to quit every year that passes by. This summer will be ten years. 10 fucking years I have been working for a company I have passionate disdain for. But good news is just a few weeks away, because I may be fired in the next few months. If I can't resign by my own volition (because of my incessant need for my father's approval) I might as well get fired. This is something I am accustomed to. It happened in high school. It happened with tae kwon do. I couldn't resign from the institutions so I did all I can for them to kick me out. I tried and tried with Boy Scouts but nothing would stop my father from attending meetings with me. I would make myself vomit in the toilet just to get out of camping trips. Though, it never worked, I still tried fervently with my fingers down my throat every Friday night I wanted to spend with my girlfriend instead of in the woods setting up a tent in the freezing rain. Of course the timing is perfect, since the country's in a recession and all. And don't think my father hasn't reminded me of that very fact every single day I decide to call in "sick" to work when nothing hurts physically. How long do these father/son motifs exist in a person's life? In the television series Lost they seem to stick around until one of them dies (and it takes them a seemingly long time to bury them). I don't think I can last that long. Jack seemed to (emotionally) bury his father, but with every flashback I wonder how he ever got to that point. Don't get me started on Sawyer or the emotional saga of Locke and his father. You'd think a man like Locke would drop everything for a Peg Bundy (Katy Segal) but even after his father "died" he couldn't keep him away.
But I don't always see this father/son trope in just fiction. These are credible and honest stories on Lost; narratives you could imagine the writers actually going through with their own fathers (or sons). Of course the packaged moments you see during scenes in which a father and son exist, don't actually happen with such fluid dialogue and tailored suits, but the idea and truths are still there. I was working with a coworker the other night. A man in his mid-40s. Introspective and anxious. The USPS eliminated his bid and forced him to change shifts. He now struggles with a graveyard shift and insomnia. He's almost bald with a a few patches a gray here and there. I only work with him a few times a month but when we do we usually start conversing. Our conversation gets very heavy (as many of my conversations do) and we begin addressing these daddy issues. He is still figuring himself out. Even in his mid-40s. He started a family and still has not found his place in the world. Not that I think anyone ever actually does. The discomfort becomes your comfort. The unknown becomes your crutch. A job's a job. Death is death. "Dennis" comes from a literary past. He is well read and we sometimes talk books. He has actually written his own book, left unpublished, after a few failed attempts with publishers. He questions things. He questions the institutions around him. The federal government, the police, the executive branch, his bank's loan and all the other systems we are so immersed in. Like me, he doesn't understand why people can't see the oppression; the brilliantly illusive socially constructed oppression we encounter every day. Television commercials not only selling us anti-depressants but other medications (i.e. Abilify) to help enhance our anti-depressants. An anti-depressant for your anti-depressant. Just ask your doctor if this medication is right for you. It's creepy and Dennis and I are aware of this. In China (or was it Japan? I don't remember) pharmaceutical companies are not allowed to market to consumers. I think that is a good thing. These advertisements are just putting the idea of "depression" or your "depression's depression" if you will, in our heads. It no longer alleviates the symptoms but it creates the (supposed) disease instead. While feeding letters into the machine, Dennis tells me about his family history. How he no longer talks to his older brother or sister. "My sister was always my father's favorite and he let us know that in all his subtle and not so subtle ways," he confesses. "My older brother never saw me as an equal because of our significant age difference. To this day, at forty-six, he still treats me like a child. I'm an adult now and he can't accept it." I begin explaining my relationship with my father. "I have spent my entire life being critiqued by him. From something so simple as opening a carton of orange juice in the kitchen. He will sit there at the table and tell me I should open it this way instead of the way I'm doing it. It happened all my life. I eventually was scared to do anything (especially in front of him) because I knew he would be there ready to critique. So here, I am nearing twenty-seven and I'm living at home, scared to take any kind of risk!" Who knew the conversation would get this far. It's nearing four in the morning and I'm working in this large factory with latex clothes on, having a very intimate realization, epiphany almost about why I feel so stuck. I am finally realizing why I have been so indecisive my entire life. "My father was the kind of father that would only notice me when I did something wrong. It would seem as if I didn't exist until my report card came in the mail or I didn't rake the leaves in the backyard," Dennis confided. Different narratives with the same theme. I'm 26 and he's 46 and we are still struggling with our place in this world. A shared past, a common present, and a presumably darker future with ghosts which will always haunt. He tells me about a handwritten letter he received from his father that solidified the end to their relationship. After years of not speaking, an eighty year old man attempts to reconnect with his son and in his passive-aggressive diction he pushes him away even further.
False deaths...
Sometimes get fleeting feelings of self-confidence, parading on the streets of Manhattan with my own soundtrack playing in my ears from my iPod. But it is all a stage, an act, an empty facade, on the verge of a collapse. The moments I love most are spent in the kitchen of my best friend's house on Manor Lane trying to eat the veggie burger I just ordered from Milk & Sugar Café, while her little brother (who is not that little anymore and is about twice the size of me) stampedes in with his friends with metal tee shirts on wanting leftovers from the dinner her mother made. I don't think there is ever an escape and that realization scares me.
Perhaps I need to read more Kafka to make more sense of this...
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Life has been a whirlwind of fleeting moments stringed together in some morose but staggering way. I imagine it looks like those images of DNA. Or at least one of those psychedelic screensavers everyone used to use on their desktops in the 90s. The same screensaver I stared at while tripping out on acid when I just a teenager dodging headlights and pavement on a foggy Long Island night. Death stares back at me with grueling but sympathetic eyes. I imagine what death is like in Arizona. A desert backdrop full of mountains, cactuses and a Walmart. That would be their Hollywood set. I would know after spending some time in Los Angeles last week. The world Andy Warhol talked about. The blending of the artificial with The Real. The city Nathanael West warned me about in his novel The Day of the Locust. I've been to Los Angeles once before but that was on a dizzying tour with a boyfriend and his mother. I remember what the sky looked like at night while crying on a Santa Monica beach. In the distance the pier lit up with fluorescent lights, a ferris wheel spinning spinning spinning. Though the lights were blurred by my tears, like rain on a car windshield, it was stunning. I was reminded of how beautiful the world can be.
And it's happening again...I'm sitting in a predictable setting...an experience mapped out by the sociologists, psychologists and corporate heads of Starbucks. I am reminded of how beautiful the world is...But it isn't the cheap chair I'm sitting in...it's the song that is playing from the speakers above me. It disturbs me how beautiful the world can seem with just one song. I promise I wasn't intentionally quoting a Hole lyric. But Courtney Love is right...
"If the world is so wrong, yeah, you can break them all with one song. If the world is so wrong, yeah, you can take it all with one song."
Seriously though...I'm at a Starbucks right now and just heard Rosie Thomas cover John Lennon's song "Love" and I thought it was Azure Ray or at least Maria Taylor. I begin to wonder how can three women have such sad beautiful voices? A few minutes later Sun Kil Moon comes on at this stale coffeehouse and Mark Kozelek's voice is breaking my already splintered heart. These are songs that I'm not even listening to. I have my headphones on, listening to the new Early Day Miners album which is puncturing the valves in my heart. I didn't need other musicians to tug at my heartstrings tonight. As I'm typing this Bright Eyes comes and Conor Oberst is singing about the sad model/actress who I always imagined was Winona Ryder in his song "Lua." Here is another song that incorporates how sad addiction is and sang in such a dejected melancholic way. Conor's voice quivers at all the right moments, no wonder it's my favorite song off his record I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning.
Popular culture right now is inundated with too many amazing things. There is so much music I can't keep up with it. This upcoming week is super busy and I'm not sure I have the motivation to pull through it all. I feel as if I was able to balance a lot more when I was in school. Days and nights were scheduled around classes. Alarm clocks were always set and there was a rhythm to it...a rhythm to the chaos. It wasn't a coherent melody but the resemblance of one, and I was the only who could hum along to it. Lately, I spend too much time sleeping or just lying in bed staring at all the novels stacked up in colossal piles that I haven't read yet. I will admit...I watch too much television. I spend every lunch break at work watching episodes of either Lost and Gossip Girl. Not to mention all the brilliant new shows I have downloaded on my laptop that I started watching: The Beautiful Life, Glee and Melrose Place. I still need to watch the season finale of True Blood but can't seem to bring myself to watch it. I don't want to let go of the series for an entire year. I need Hoyt and Eric in my life...and I don't want their narrative to end. So, in a weird and twisted way, I think if I don't watch the last episode for another week or two I'll be able to wonder about how the characters will resolve or not resolve Maryann's wrath. It is a way for me to live with the True Blood narrative, always knowing there is a new unwatched episode still to consume whenever I need to. I learned that mistake during a bulimic binge with Nurse Jackie. I rushed through the last few episodes without realizing I watched the season finale too. I returned a week later to check up on Jackie, Zoe and Mo-Mo and realized I watched the last episode during my late night TV binge and was heartbroken. How can I live without Nurse Jackie? I'm managing only because there is so much television to replace it. Project Runway satisfies my reality TV cravings and Heroes promises to be good again. The new shows V and Flashforward look promising. Greek started a new chapter but I'm still Netflixing the earlier chapters.
And that is just television. What about music? What about all the live shows happening this week? Japandroids, Why? and Sunny Day Real Estate. Sunny Day Real Estate got back together and is doing a reunion tour? They are one of my favorite bands of all time. They are playing at the awful Terminal 5 but I wouldn't miss it for anything. Movies movies movies. Diablo Cody's Jennifer's Body was good but Sorority Row was even better. The former is not only named after a Hole song but ended with one. Every movie should end with Hole's "Violet." I love really bad horror films. Especially self-aware ones. I started writing a review of Tarintino's Inglourious Basterds and I cannot begin to describe here how amazing that film was. Rob Zombie's Halloween 2 wasn't as bad as the first one he did. Cold Souls was Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind without a heart or soul. The Final Destination was horrible trash. Certainly not as good as the ones before it. Orphan was probably the best movie I have seen this year. Next to Surveillance, Away We Go and Drag Me to Hell. I missed Taxidermia when it was playing at Cinema Village. According to Michael Seth it took three years for it to have an US release date. I have seen so many more movies and I can't begin to remember them all in these last moments before I find something to eat. One of my favorite movies from Sundance this year was John Krasinski's Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (David Foster Wallace!) supposedly opens this week. Next month An Education, Whip It, A Serious Man, Where the Wild Things Are, New York, I Love You and Antichrist.
Speaking of movies...The Hampton's International Film Festival runs from October 8-12. The New York Film Festival runs September 25- October 11. These two film festivals actually have movies I want to see. I am trying to plan to attend both...come with?
NEW YORK FILM FESTIVAL
Trash Humpers (Harmony Korine)*
Thursday 10/1...10pm
Antichrist (Lars von Trier)*
Saturday 10/3...1pm
The White Ribbon (Michael Haneke)*
Wednesday 10/7...6pm
Thursday 10/8...9pm
Bluebeard (Catherine Breillat)
Sunday 10/11...2pm
Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz)
Sunday 10/11...11am
HAMPTON'S INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL
Uncertainty (with Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Olivia Thirlby)
Sunday 10/11...3:30pm
Monday 10/12....1:30pm
The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond (Tennessee Williams screenplay with Bryce Dallas Howard, Ellen Burstyn and Mamie Gummer)
Saturday 10/10...5pm
Sunday 10/11...6:45pm
Tanner Hall
Friday 10/9...7pm
Sunday 10/11...7:15pm
*Trailers
Trash Humpers (you will never see a more disturbing trailer!)
Antichrist
The White Ribbon
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On just three hours of sleep, my alarm goes off and I pull myself out of bed. I place the iPhone on the the Bose sound dock and put on The xx because I can't get enough of that record. Grab my blue kahki shorts from Topshop, a pair of gray briefs and my blue collared shirt into the bathroom. Run the water in the newly renovated bathroom and cleanse myself of a sweaty slumbering sleep. My hair is a complete mess. I've needed a haircut for the last two weeks, impatiently waiting for a friend of a friend who is in beauty school to cut my hair...because no one can seem to cut my hair without making me look either twelve years old or from ancient Greece. The latter seems very appropriate after a strange strange experience last week. But I won't get into that because every boy needs his secrets. I have forty minutes to get ready. I am out of the shower already putting sunblock on my face. The ferry leaves Sayville on time, always...even if a flock of lesbians are running from the parking lot to the dock and their in sight. I know my car's gas tank is empty because the gas pump light came on as I was driving home from work that morning. I need coffee or this afternoon will be miserable. I also need a pack of gum because I chewed my last piece the night before and we all know I have a fear of having bad breath. Seven-Eleven it is! It's too hot for coffee and I certainly don't have enough time to drink it before I get to the the ferries. So I get iced coffee from Seven-Eleven for the first time in my entire life. The instructions on the machine tells me to fill my cup up with ice. I wonder where to get ice from? There is no ice machine anywhere near the coffee. I circle the counter a few times and forfeit. I'll just drink it without ice. I also decide I will drink it black...no sugar...and no milk...711 isn't kind to vegetarians/vegans and milk makes me want to vomit. In retrospect...I realized the ice was by the fountain drinks. A pack of Trident and the coffee is purchased and I run back to my car. I'm running just two minutes behind schedule. I've never been to the Sayville ferries so I get directions using my iPhone. I'm blasting The xx and chugging my black iced coffee. It's not that bad. Supposedly 100% Columbian. But I imagine the coffee I'm drinking is not even really coffee but rather water with coffee flavoring. Artificial flavoring always disturbs me. I wonder where my sister is because I haven't heard from her in awhile. I push pause on my iPhone and The xx is cut off...I still want to drown, whenever you leave, please teach me gently, how to breathe...and I'll cross oceans... I call my sister and her phone goes straight to voicemail. The xx is put back on. Get directions to Sayville ferries on the iPhone...end up just following the green signs with the ship on it. I meet Ryan and Chris at their friend's gas station, so we could carpool in the parking lot of the ferries. I'm delirious...just beginning to feel the effects of caffeine I just chugged in my car. Before getting out of the car I have this inner battle...sweatshirt versus no sweatshirt. To be honest I was having this battle upon waking up. It is always the same dilemma when the summer comes to a close. I forfeit indecision and opt for no sweatshirt...I will suffer the cold winds for high fashion. I jump into the backseat and Chris stomps on the gas pedal as we peel away....running just a few minutes behind. He drops us off so we can purchase tickets and he parks the car. The ferry that just came in is disembarking sunburned gays and lesbians. Beautiful people...toned...tanned...laughing...sunglasses hiding most of their faces. Lesbians wearing cargo shorts and visors and gays in short shorts and extra-large tees. Chris is still parking when they start boarding the freshly showered gays we were waiting on line with. We miss that boat (I have always wanted to say that in a genuine context) and wait for the next one which leaves the next hour. I'm fine with that because I could watch these awkward, beautiful and sometimes and ugly people come and go. The alt-gays in their black pair of skinny jeans and shaggy hair, the lesbians in polo shirts and sandals. We step to the side and wait. Chris tells us how a lesbian in a Subaru cut him off in the parking lot and stole his spot. How cliche is that? It was probably one of the lesbians that were running up to the ferry just before it left the dock screaming and laughing about how they are too old to be running around like this. I tell some ridiculous stories that have happened to me in the last few weeks since I have seen them. Chris remembers me from the AOL days. He remembers me because not many people had photographs of themselves back then and I was one of the few. He remembers the very famous shot of me in front of the deli near my high school.
What was I thinking? So we find a seat on the top deck of the ferry. Some of the seats are wet. I find a spot that isn't and sit down. A group of lesbians sit nearby. They are very loud. We depart from the dock and off we are through the water. It's very choppy and the saltwater is coming up to us. Half my face is slightly wet with every splash of a wave. I take my hat off because it feels as if the wind might blow it away. A lesbian put her wallet and cellphone behind her as she sat on the seat and I knew it was a bad idea before we even took off. Thankfully Chris was able to grab her cell phone when it leaped off the seat and onto the floor. Another lesbian in the same group had a "I Killed Jenny Schetcher" shirt on and I thought how brilliant that was of her. What a good conversation starter. I even wanted to talk to her and I don't like lesbians anymore.* Brilliant marketing on her part. I'm sure she acquired quite a few phone numbers by the end of the night. We continue our journey across the water to Fire Island and I'm dodging as many drops of water as possible sometimes hiding behind Chris's back. There is a woman sitting up near the Captain's area with sunglasses on with her arms folded across her chest. She looks like a tour guide and we all imagine her pointing out lighthouses, sharks, and explaining the currents of the water. Instead she just stands there chatting with her friends as if she owns the boat we're on. We reached Fire Island! We step off the boat and walk past the huge line of people heading back to the mainland. Eyes meeting eyes. I felt as if all us new folk were walking down some wooden runway. We reached Cherry Grove safely and only just a little bit wet. We walk past a few shops on our left and climb up a wooden ascent to what I think was called the Ice Palace. No cover. IDs are checked and we walk through the patio and through the dance floor and out back. I need to use the bathroom already and of course there is a line. I accidentally make eye contact with someone who decides to throw water on his cute friend while he is the bathroom stall. From the sink, he cups his hands and throws water over the stall. I giggle because I don't know what else to do and the Water Boy decides it's a good idea to wipe his wet hands on my arm. I giggle some more and rush to the open urinal to avoid anymore more awkward moments. Chris and Ryan are standing outside waiting for me and we I tell them what happened in the bathroom. We're not all even standing there for a full three minutes before a boy starts chatting with us from the table he is sitting at. I forgot what his introductory question was, but it was enough to get us to sit with them and introduce ourselves. Handshakes and mispronounced names go around the table. Chris gets us some drinks so we can perhaps be on the same page, or at least reading the same book as everyone else around us. Mississippi Boy is interrogating me about where I'm from and what I do...conversations I hate having but are just normal conversation starters I know. He's cute. Has a beard, a neat haircut and is wearing cut-off jean shorts. If you couldn't tell already he is from Mississippi (hence his nickname I gave him) and he now lives in Manhattan doing something in fashion. Aren't they all doing something in fashion? The conversation gets more interesting when we both realize we are (and his best friend Daniel) are fans of HBO"s severely underrated Lisa Kudrow show The Comeback. A few impersonations later, I have a beer in my hand which is unfortunately not a Blue Moon but a Budweiser. Jack texts me and says he is on his way to the bar we're at. He's been working, courting email addresses and telephone numbers. We are dressed very similar and it's cute. He hangs around for a bit and then leaves to seek out a place to put the knapsack he has been carrying all day. We play a game and go around the table trying to guess what each person does. I'm already feeling buzzed off of the one beer I had and the sip of a margarita I had. I don't want to play this game and make up generic answers for everyone. Consultant. Lawyer. Teacher. Daniel guesses I'm an architect and I think that's funny. I never do tell anyone the correct answer. I mentioned to Mississippi Boy that I graduated recently with an English degree and he immediately referred to me as a writer. So, for awhile half of his friends believed I was a writer even if I didn't look the disgruntled part with poet hair and an alcohol problem. I confessed it was my first time to Cherry Grove and the Pines. But I made up for it because I have hung out and had friends that lived in Ocean Beach. The sequence of events after this are little blurred. I remember leaving and Mississippi Boy putting his number into my phone. I couldn't wait to be released from his aggressive and blatant flirting. It was exhausting and awkward. There was even a moment when he was like, "Put your arm around me, I'm cold..." and all I could muster was "I don't do that!" I'm not even sure what that is. Was it awkwardly putting my arm around a complete stranger? Probably. We leave and walk up to the beach. We walk past a restaurant with a shirtless waiter leaning over the counter writing on a piece of paper. On the back patio another beautiful boy was out to dinner with his friends. Tattoos up and down his arms. We get to the beach and I forgot how much I dislike sand in sneakers. It's even chillier near the ocean so we end up walking back. We decide to walk to the Pines before it gets too dark. On the boardwalk we walk past beautiful houses that seem so deserted. About five or six deer were in the front yard of one house just munching on the ground. Not frightened that so many people were walking by. This island really is some gay utopian society. The boardwalk ends and we reach the infamous woods which separate Cherry Grove and the Pines. I've always heard stories or fables, if you will about this area. The Meat Rack. It was just about dusk so following the marked trail wasn't to difficult. Mostly everyone on the trail was friendly and said hello when they walked past. There were many trails which lingered off the main path which was a bit confusing because they were just as clear as the main path with the exception of a dead end of trees and bushes. Every once in awhile we encountered large black trash bags hanging from the trees or the occasional condom wrapper. But any actual sex? Nope. Relieved we made it through the woods safely and not raped we continued into the Pines. What a difference in architecture, in the size of houses. For some reason I ended up leading the way even though I have never been to the Pines before. We just followed the music we heard in the far distance. Finally we reached the Pines proper and took a seat near the docks and watched all the pretty people walk by. Some older but they were mostly young. These are the men with large chest sizes from a ruthless gym schedule. This must be the Chelsea of Fire Island. Pretty boys with pretty clothes with lucrative jobs. This is confirmed when I order Ryan and I a vodka and Red Bull which cost me $26 from the club we went to. Before that we walked through an amazing grocery store. We each had a protein bar (Chris had a Snickers bar) and ate it outside the club. My protein bar looked like bird seed. We're standing near the bar sipping our drinks watching the crowd of gays dance in the pretty lights, when Daniel walks in and not too long after Mississippi Boy behind him. We decide we're going to dance and Chris stays behind. There is barely enough room to stand how can one dance? We end up being pulled up Daniel and his friends on some small platform and get our groove on to a song I wish I didn't like. Mississippi Boy is grinding up against me. His forehead is sunburned and he keeps leaning in for a kiss but I'm trying to discreetly avoid his lips. Ryan found the friend he ran into on Sayville dock and danced with him. I remember pictures being taken and D complaining that I didn't smile in any of them. MB finally got the kiss he wanted and I felt bad we were gone so long so we went and looked for Chris. We returned to the corner we left him at and he was no longer there. I thought I left MB behind but he followed us through the entire crowd of sweaty gays. A few minutes later we find Chris and check out the upstairs. MB hands me his margarita and I keep sipping it while he looks for a lighter to light his cigarette. We decide to head back to the Grove even though MB has invited us back to the house he's staying at for dinner multiple times. I tell him I will text him later. Off we are to the Meat Rack...in the pitch dark...drunk. This will be fun. We walk down the boardwalk we came down and some tall boy is walking behind us and I feel weird leading this tall gentleman through the unfamiliar woods so we stop so he can walk ahead of us. I take a deep breath when we reach the woods. It's dark. I wonder why I always forget to download that flashlight app on my iPhone but I turn up the brightness on my iPhone screen and it is a wonderful flashlight. I think I blinded Chris and Ryan a dozen times. I'm all about walking the same way we came but somehow we don't. Ryan is really quiet during our hike and Chris realizes a drunk boy is leading him through the woods. I turn down a dead end path and I forfeit. Chris takes my flashlight and leads us through the woods. We take a break out on the sand to look up at the moon. It's beautiful just floating up there above us. Back into the woods, I see a man smoking a cigarette nearby. Not hiking, but strolling. This is when we see the plastic lawn chair he is standing nearby. We ponder what this plastic white lawn chair is used for and it must be where all the twinks sit down to receive oral sex from the creepy man smoking a cigarette. The sight of a random lawn chair in the middle of the woods is quite the scare but not as scary as finding a path we weren't on and talking about how we are not on the same path we were on and that we might be lost and the nervous laughter and the drunken stupor that we are in and audible to anyone else in the woods....and two random men are just standing in the dark, just standing there. Quiet and black. My heart jumped to my throat because I realized they were there right when I walked right past them screaming about being lost and how much fun it is. I ran up to Chris with the flashlight in a panic...thinking these creepy men were going to tie us up to the lawn chair back a few yards away but we managed to get away safely. We reached the Grove and a boardwalk never looked so satisfyingly safe. We walked past the house decorated for Halloween and then I knew for sure we were in the right spot. Back to the Ice Palace we run into a mutual friend (a mutual friend we didn't know we all had). This mutual friend became our leader for the rest of the night. Introducing us to folks, courting gays, and avoiding the people we should avoid. I remember buying a round of drinks. Mutual Gay taught me a game of hard to get...I followed all of his instructions and it was working. It was working a little too perfect, I was almost convinced Mutual Gay was in cahoots with the Italian Stallion that was following me around the bar. We get some pizza underneath the Ice Palace. It's delicious. Change falls out of my pocket. There is vomit in the bathroom sink and I have to hold my breath as I urinate. But the pizza is light and delicious. I wasn't even hungry and I still ate it. We climb the stairs one more time...things are a bit blurry. I'm not sure what happens next. We take the ferry back to the mainland. We sit in the cabin squeezed amongst the queers. In front of us a Sugar Daddy has his boything (who is way too good looking) resting his head on his shoulder. When the lesbians start screaming at decibels that just pierce...the gays decide to counteract their deafening roar. It is a gender battle I don't want to be part of. The Boything participates and starts talking to us about how much he dislikes lesbians. A boy in a red sweatshirt starts conversing with us...he singles me out at some point and manages to put his phone number into my phone. I tell C that he looks fun to cuddle with. We actually drive Red Sweatshirt and his friend to the train station. When I stand up, I realize my shirt is soaked with saltwater on one side. I didn't even realize water was splashing through the crack in the window. We can't find the car in the parking lot and I can't find a conclusion to this...I got home and ran a really hot bath. It was my first time taking a bath in the new bathroom. I remember holding my breath underwater and the the water slightly burning my skin...
"Heart skipped a beat, And when I caught it you were out of reach, But I'm sure, I'm sure, You've heard it before..."
The xx- Heart Skipped A Beat
The xx- Basic Space
*There was a time when I adored lesbians but that time has certainly ended post-high school when we had to share spaces at clubs and bars in New York. But those angry lesbians will not stop me from consuming their culture. The L Word! Ani DiFranco! Sleater-Kinney just to name a few.
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As you already know I'm really into music. I spend most of my days and nights with my ears plugged with earbuds or headphones. If not through my iPod or iPhone I'm listening through the various speakers on my laptop, desktop or in my bedroom or car. I consume a lot of music. I'm always downloading new albums or random tracks off blogs so it makes sense that I enjoy live music. Wednesday I found myself at the CocoRosie show at Highline Ballroom. They are a band I have been listening to for years but have unfortunately missed them play whenever they booked a show in New York. I have seen one half of CocoRosie perform with Spleen once at Joe's Pub but that doesn't count. It was just a tease. Below, is a list of shows I would like to go to. Not having a significant other anymore, nor any reliable friends to depend on to roam the streets of New York City with, I'm asking you dear internet if you would like to attend any shows with me. I didn't list any of the CMJ shows because no dates or bands have officially been released yet but in due time I'm sure there will be quite a few shows I'd like to attend come October 20-24 (even though I don't like to attend festivals or showcases). If you know of any shows that you'd think I'd like to attend and it isn't listed please don't hesitate to inform me. I need some concert/show buddies. Will you be my friend? I'm trying to get rid of my Get Up Kids tickets for their Irving Plaza show...any takers? Also, what records are all you listening to these days? Are you infatuated with The xx record like I am? Their lazy allthewordsrunintoeachother singing is ridiculously good.
Ducktails @ Ash's Place...Thurs 9/10
The Race/Hane Hukkelberg/Telefon Tel Aviv @ Bell House...Fri 9/11 #
Kate Havenik @ Bowery...Tues 9/15
Ida Maria @ Irving Plaza...Wed 9/16
The Race/Telefon Tel Aviv @ Mercury Lounge...Sat 9/16
Little Boots @ Bowery...Wed 9/16
Asobi Seksu (acoustic) @ Joe's Pub...Wed 9/16
Thursday @ Bowery...Sun 9/20^
Greg Laswell @ Joe's Pub...Tues 9/22
Japandroids @ Mercury Lounge...Thurs 9/24**
Wavves @ Santos...Thurs 9/24
Wavves @ Market Hotel...Fri 9/25
Why? @ Le Poission Rogue...Sat 9/26
Sunny Day Real Estate @ Terminal 5...Sun 9/27**
Great Lake Swimmers @ Bowery...Sun 9/27
Tracy Bonham @ Southpaw...Wed 9/30
Owen @ Mercury Lounge...Fri 10/9
Owen @ Union Hall...Sat 10/10
Mirah @ Bowery...Sat 10/10
Placebo @ Terminal 5...Sun 10/11
Woods/No Age @ LPR...Wed 10/14
Dead Man's Bones @ LPR...Thurs 10/15 (Ryan Gosling's band!!)
Melissa Auf der Maur @ Knitting Factory...Sat 10/17
David Bazan (of Pedro the Lion) @ Bowery...Sun 10/18
Múm @ LPR...Sat 10/24
La Roux @ Highline...Mon 10/26 #
Finch @ Highline....Tues 10/27^
Tegan and Sara @ Town Hall...Fri 10/30
Get Up Kids @ Irving...Sat 10/31** (but want to get rid of tickets!)
Junior Boys @ Bell House...Sat 10/31
Mount Eerie @ Market Hotel...Sat 10/31#
Mount Eerie @ LPR...Sun 11/1 #
Amy Millan (of Stars) @ Mercury Lounge...Thurs 11/5
Julie Doiron @ Bell House...Thurs 11/5 # (she is opening up for Herman Dune)
Amy Millan (of Stars) @ Bell House...Fri 11/6
Fran Healy (of Travis) @ Joe's Pub...Wed 11/11**
Final Fantasy/Mountain Goats @ Bell House...Wed 12/2
The Wrens @ Maxwells...Thurs 12/3
^ for nostalgic purposes
** already purchased tickets
# really really really want to go!
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I just had an invigorating conversation with my boss. For about forty-five minutes we discussed death, bad Broadway shows, and my affinity for dark/depressing things. I printed out my 3,000+ word entry I wrote about my grandmother and how her death affected me and gave it my supervisor. I feel as if I am better understood through written words and I wanted to convey to her my genuine feelings about losing my Nanny. She informed me that my writing is very self-aware and introspective. On the surface, the former is not conveyed very well because my actions don't represent how I truly feel. For forty-five minutes we discussed how I can approach my depression and not use it as crutch. To not use it as an excuse for non-living. Earlier tonight at work, a coworker that reminds me too much of my mother worked with me for an hour. We don't talk much because I find her endearing and strange. "Why do you always look so sad?" she asked me when approaching my area. I was really caught off guard by her candid forthrightness. "I don't like being here," I answered facetiously. I wanted to ask her the same thing. Each night I catch her eye, I'm reminded of all the sadness in the world. It is one of the reasons why I avoid her on the workroom floor. Those deep watery eyes outlined with black eyeliner and mascara. I can't endure running mascara down such sloping cheeks. The tissues in my back pocket are for me. She stands as a testament of human strength. Withered but strong, she has endured human suffering. She has an alcoholic's skin...tanned and bruised. She speaks in an abrading whisper, barely audible over the belts moving in the machines. Here is a woman who probably smoked cigarettes her entire life, beginning at sixteen in the girl's bathroom of her high school. She is very Long Island and I'm not sure if that means anything to anyone outside of New York state. She tans, straightens her hair and wears large sweatshirts even in the summer. She was probably beautiful before the introduction of alcohol and an abusive ex-husband. The problem with women like her, are their hearts. Those hearts could pump blood for an army of men. They would give a stranger that Yankees sweatshirt off their back. Their hearts beat a genuine rhythm, unlike any melody you've ever heard. You've only heard glimpses of this song...perhaps when you were just an organism with no eyes in your mother's belly. My mother is very similar to this type of woman. In a sky of dark clouds and black rain here rests a "heart of gold." Selflessness protected with a burning Marlboro Light between their lipsticked lips. A cigarette filter painted a dark shade of pink, not red, but pink from their lips. I know this woman...this woman is a version of my mother. Despite the physical abuse from a husband but sad stories told through their glossy eyes. Me and this woman work together and I truthfully answer the question she proposed. Why do you always look so sad? I now have a real explicit answer. "My grandmother died last week," I muster out. Her mouth gasps open and she tells me she has only been a grandmother for eight months and already can't see a life without her grandchild. I don't know why, but I find myself elucidating why this loss weighs so heavy on my mind. All guards are dropped and we are sharing our stories of loss and abuse. We talk about about the suffering and the emotional battles we all face in day to day life. This is why I kept a safe distance from this woman for so long...I knew I would drop my guard and I knew it would be hard but I see the tears in her eyes when her mind wanders, when she puts herself in my "shoes" as I tell her about my mother and she feels the feelings I'm feeling and I know she can't help but feel them because her empathy levels are even higher than mine...and we both know that is a reckless and dangerous way to live but it's not a choice...it's instinctual. I can feel more for a complete stranger than I feel for myself. A vicarious connection with another being...
because when you can't feel and you can't cry there is always fiction (or someone else) to turn to when you want to inspire tears...
I'm buried in fiction.
Later in our shift Empathy walks over to where I am and hugs me. She hands me a photo album filled with photographs of her family. Photographs of her now sober husband and their camper set up near a beach. There she is with her arms around her oldest daughter. There her husband is, shirtless and bald. She is documenting the happy ending...she is constructing the narrative she wants to believe in. She shows me another photo album...from a year ago. They are the same pictures. Or at least the setting is the same. A bunch of family and friends outside their modest camper enjoying drinks on a picnic table. The redundancy is comforting and Empathy even says, "They are basically the same photos." I'm happy she is sharing, convincing a complete stranger that she pulled through the Dark Times. It's her way of showing me there is a way out of the muddled thoughts and feelings of forfeit. I just wish I could believe her. I wish something as simple as an imperfect family portrait spending the weekend in their camper on the shore of the Atlantic Ocean could pull me away from myself.
I don't know why, but I have been listening to this Sparta song on repeat since I started writing this. Wiretap Scars was an amazing record, released in 2002. Who knew that when At the Drive-In would break up, Jim Ward would make an album so emotionally raw and beautifully arranged. To be honest, I didn't think Wiretap Scars would hold up over the years but I stumbled upon the CD (yes, an actual store-bought compact disc) and I had to rip the tracks on to my laptop. After seven years, "Collapse" remains the standout track and still pulls at my already frayed heartstrings.
Sparta- Collapse
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 "Brucie, my mom passed away last nite," read the message from my Uncle Bobby on Facebook. No subject...just poor grammar and the nickname I have always despised since middle school. I read it a few more times. Not believing what I just read. I couldn't comprehend such words. It is probably the only personal message I have ever received from my uncle. My entire family is quickly adapting to the functions of Facebook. Posting images and updating their statuses about how proud they are of their children. Don't forget about their Mafia Wars and "What Supermodel Am I?" quizzes. Amongst all the quiz results and photo albums filled with photos from the 80s, there exists status updates...updates about my grandmother's health..."Mom just got back from the hospital. She's feeling great!" They wore their emotions on their electronic sleeves on Facebook. Every status was usually in caps lock with the appropriate amount of exclamation points and XOXO's. My Aunt Emilie was the ultimate culprit of clogging everyone's news feed with silly quiz results and poor grammar. But she kept us all informed about my nanny. We all knew what was going on and we read it through her eyes. She mediated the facts and expressed them through Facebook. I wouldn't want it any other way. That is the most charming aspect of social networking and that is why I'm here on Livejournal writing and sharing. Since my mother's side of the family live on the opposite coast, I always receive late night phone calls while working the graveyard shift at the post office. Phone calls updating me about my grandmother's battle with cancer or just informing me of what's happening in Arizona. We stay connected through so many mediums it's impossible not to hear the cries on the other side of the telephone call or hear the whimpering within the text in a status update. It was August 21st. My mother's birthday. Another year has gone by and my mother is still missing. Another year and my mother still has not called one family member. My mother left her apartment with almost everything behind. Letters I have written, home videos, and most of her clothes and belongings. Never heard from again. I called into work that night because I couldn't handle another eight hours being awake. So I slept that night to turn my mind off. But I lack control over my subconscious and there were dreams that wove both my nanny and mother together. Upon waking up in the morning I tried to make sense of all the images I dreamed and all the emotions those images conjured up. This year was much more difficult than the year before. Another birthday goes uncelebrated, another year I didn't hear my mother's voice. I woke up sweating and realized the house was empty. The family went to Pennsylvania. I open my laptop and check my email and discover the message from my Uncle Bobby. Before I clicked on it, I just knew, I just knew it wasn't good. Out of my mother's five brother and sisters he is the one I'm the least closest with. Why wouldn't my Aunt Laurie call? Or my Aunt Irene? I'm sitting in my bed with my laptop open and the tears start falling and I can't breathe. It feels like I'm suffocating. I try and stifle the moans and whimpering but I can't. I don't know what to do. The panic sets in and the room is spinning. I struggle for composure but I just fold into myself even more than before. I reach for tissues and my body is tingling. I haven't cried like this in years. Just when I stop whimpering, I think about my aunts in Arizona that have probably spent hours in the hospital at my Nanny's bedside. I think about how my family is going to fall apart without her. She was the backbone of the Post family. Her five children followed her from New York to Florida to Arizona, changing their lives and their spouses and children's lives too to be near her. She had this encompassing allure about her. She walked into a room and everyone would notice. Her laugh, her smile...her compassion was intoxicating. When I was younger my parent's sent my sister and I on a plane to Florida every summer. For the entire month of August we would stay with my Nanny. I would make her soda for her, cutting up lemon and filling the glass with ice and finding a straw, leaving the paper on the top like restaurants sometimes do. I would sit on the end of her bed and talk with her for hours. She would tell me stories about my mother growing up or complain about my Uncle Richie. When she would stay with us in New York on vacation we would stay up late and laugh for hours. Her laugh was contagious. We'd laugh for hours...tears falling from our eyes. She would yawn and then I would yawn and we'd laugh about how funny it is that yawns are contagious. In secret she would always tell me I was her favorite grandchild. But a few years ago that secret was not so secret anymore and everyone knew. Out of all my cousins (and my sister) I was her favorite and she used to tell me this every time we spoke. And I knew it was the truth. "I love Tiffany [my sister] but you were my first, my first grandson. I love all my grandchildren but there is something about you," she would always say. I believed her. When I was younger we would sing for each other. She had the most beautiful voice. She always used to talk about how good of a singer she was back in the day when she lived in Queens. Every summer when we stayed with her, I never left my grandmother's side. My sister would always make friends with the kids in the neighborhood but I wouldn't want to be anywhere else. I would lay next to her in bed and we would watch television. She always used Baby Magic lotion and always smelled of it. Back home in New York, I would purchase the same lotion, just so my skin would be as soft as hers, just so I could be reminded of her. I was always a "mama's boy." From birth, I never left my mother's side. It would take me forever to leave the house every morning for school. I would say "I love you" at least eight or nine times before I walked out the front door, sometimes running up the stairs for just one more kiss. In retrospect, it seems very strange; my affection for my mother was extraordinary. It was as if each time I left the house, I genuinely believed that would be the last time I would see my mother. Of course there are reasons why I thought that. My mother wasn't always the most healthy, nurturing mother in the world. She would make poor decisions that would devastate me. Sometimes those decisions were reckless and crucial to my unusual fear that my mother wouldn't be there when I returned home from school. So, when my mother just picked up and left one day a few years ago I was devastated, along with my entire family. The mother figure I have always had was gone. Though that "mother figure" or "ideal" was quickly fading and decaying with every attempted suicide or relapse, she was still there when I needed her. Her hugs and kisses were genuine. I would visit her every summer when she moved to Arizona and we'd spend hours together. My head rested on her lap while we watched The View or getting coffee from Starbucks driving around my Aunt's Escalade. When my mother disappeared I looked to my Nanny more than ever as the "mother figure" I desperately needed. I loved her more than anything. Last year my sister and I made an epic trip out there to visit her which was documented here and here. It was when she was going through chemotherapy. We got to spend a lot of time with her even though she was being pumped with chemicals which made her really tired. We spent nights with our cousins exploring the dark roads of Arizona and eating Dairy Queen. This past June, I traveled to Arizona to see my grandmother. Now that she was feeling better and not being pumped up with chemicals, I could take her out to dinner and be by her side as much as possible. I arrived in Arizona and she wasn't feeling well again. She just ended radiation and went for a full body scan and was feeling ill from the liquid they made her drink. She kept her distance and stayed in bed most of the time. She didn't look well and it frightened me. I lied to her and told her she looked amazing, especially after everything she has been through. She cancelled our dinner date at the steakhouse she loves because she wasn't feeling any better but she still managed to cook me the her world famous fettuccine alfredo the evening before I left Arizona. Even my aunts came over and threw me a small graduation party with cake and greeting cards. We listened to a little boy on YouTube sing an old song my Nanny loved. She looked so fragile and fatigued sitting on the couch. Despite her fragility and pain she still was running the house. Two doberman pinschers run throughout the house and the kitchen is spotless. Her husband just had open heart surgery...twice. She remained strong and independent until....That night I said good bye to her. Hugging and kissing her small frame, thanking her so much for the delicious dinner and graduation party. Unknown to me at the time is that would be the last time I would say good bye to her, the last time I would kiss her, the last time she would cook me my favorite pasta. In the back of my mind I thought it might be the last time I saw her but I repressed that thought as much as possible because it was the same thought I thought last year and she pulled through her cancer. She was in remission for months. My grandmother passed away, my grandmother passed away. My nanny is dead. My nanny is dead. I couldn't stop repeating it in my head on Saturday morning. I was hysterical. I didn't know what to do. I picked up the phone and dialed Michael Novick's number. He doesn't answer and I cry into the phone as I leave a message. I hang up choking on my own tears and dial Gabrielle's number. She doesn't answer either. Michael calls me back a minute later and just his voice is enough to help stifle the whimpering. He more than anyone knows my affection for my grandmother. A few years back when my mother was rushed to the hospital in Arizona, after an attempted suicide and my entire family thought she was on her deathbed, without any hesitation he was on a plane with my sister and I. He spent days and nights sitting in a hospital waiting room while my sister and I took turns talking to my unconscious mother with IVs, tubes, and needles in her body. He met my grandmother for the first time and immediately realized what an amazing woman she was. My mother's entire side of the family was in love with him (almost as much as I was). On the phone, he was on his way to the dog groomer to drop Spike off. At the time I wasn't sure why he was the first person I called but I think it makes sense now. Next, I call my sister...and the moment the words come out...I'm hysterical once again. My sister is momentarily in shock and denial but hears me whimpering on the phone. It isn't often that I cry and she knows my world is shattered. She realizes I'm home alone and rushes me off the phone and calls up my nearest friend to get to my house. Gabrielle and Paul are over in just a few minutes and I make the phone call to Arizona. I get more details I really don't want to know. None of my aunts are answering their phones. I call the wrong Aunt Emily...and have to tell her one of her best friends are dead. Her gasp just killed me. I imagine all my aunts in Arizona on the hospital floor with broken hearts crying puddles of tears doctors are slipping on. They can't even remember how to answer a phone and no, they don't want to share the horrible news with anyone. I check Facebook to see if any of them mentioned anything and they haven't...and I just want to talk to them...to know what really happened to know they are all right. I got my Aunt Laurie on the phone...one of the strongest of my aunts and she can barely form words. She didn't know she had power of attorney and spent three hours deciding when to take my grandmother off the machines that were keeping her alive. We all think my grandmother was holding out for one more year, one more year to hear from my mother, her firstborn child. My Nanny would have died on the night of my mother's birthday if my Aunt made the decision sooner. Her voice sounded hoarse and exhausted. She informed me that my Nanny didn't want a funeral service, she wanted people to remember her at her best and not laying cold in a coffin. She didn't want a spectacle made of her death. She wanted to be cremated. Part of me understands this completely, but the Italian upbringing I had on my father's side of the family believed in the contrary. Funerals were part of life as much as death and I spent a lot of time in funeral homes when family members I never even met had passed away. It didn't help that my father had eleven brothers and sisters...so the probability of experiencing another death seemed much higher than the average person. My sister and I were planning to rush to Arizona but realized they were not having any type of service. We remain in an emotional standstill. I find it difficult to acknowledge my grandmother's death without some spectacle...we need to go to Arizona but realized right now is not the best time for us, and we might burden everyone out in Arizona with flights and things. Everyone is grieving in their own personal ways. Aunt Emilie has been participating in YoVille on Facebook and each time I call my Aunt Irene she is sleeping. I have been distracting myself with mundane errands with friends. Sleeping helps and staying away from work helps too. I worry about my sister up in Albany with all her personal demons and apartment issues. I want her here with me. My best defense mechanism is repression...and I can ignore The Worst...until that wall shatters and my emotional state crumbles with it. But this time I can't keep the wall from falling over. It hits me out of nowhere. Just before, while I was driving I burst into tears. Gabrielle asked why my eyes were bloodshot and...it didn't help that I was listening to one of Fitzgerald's sadder songs. Sad songs used to help medicate my depression...they seemed to comfort me in those foggy dazes but in devastating matters like this...sad songs are the worst things imaginable. No wonder I haven't put my headphones on until today. 90% of my music library is sad...another sleepless night even after staying up until 4am watching episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can't stay asleep longer than ten minute intervals. My father is doing construction around the house. Our bathroom got a makeover and I hold cabinets up to wall while he screws in screws in a dreary fog. I'm in need of a haircut...I wear my baseball cap to hide the mess, hoping it will disguise the bloodshot eyes. I read comments on my aunts Facebook profiles and so many people are writing their sympathies, sending their regards with a bunch of XOXO's. They speak in a discourse I'm just not familiar with. Angels, God, Jesus. I can't comprehend those things. All the angels I imagine are frightening. Dark black wings and rotten teeth. A god without a conscience. The suffering never ends. I call my best friend who just moved to Colorado. I can hear her whimpering even before she answers the phone. She knows my nanny; she has met her hundreds of times. "I want to tell you that it can only get better but I feel like I have been telling you that for ten years," she tells me. And it's true. It never stops. "I just don't want you to give up," she continues. "You mean forfeit?" I ask. "Yeah. I don't want you to think that this is all there is." I don't want to become some jaded broken soul walking through life with a blank stare. It's just so hard to feel when things feel this bad. I walk around desensitized and hollow. Purely existing never living. I just keep thinking about her smile and tiny lips. I think about the time she surprised my sister at her wedding and when she went out to dinner with Michael and I. The fact that she loved me unconditionally, without any deceit or unspoken discomfort. She loved me even if I was in love with another boy. And this is from a woman born in 1938. I remember how cold the milk used to be when we ate cereal in the morning and spending hours in the supermarket. She would make stuffed peppers and Lenny would read his paperback novels in the living room on the couch. I remain here in these vivid memories of her warm embraces and her hard kisses to the cheek. Our hourlong phone calls when she would tell me stories about how ugly my sister was when she was born. I loved hearing how excited she was for every Christmas Eve at Aunt Laurie's...a holiday I never got to spend with her. I can't believe she is gone. This is death...and I linger here in this elusive condition, shaking, trembling, wondering what is supposed to happen next... 
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I was running late to see Funny People, a movie most of my friends don't seem to care to see. Is the Apatow fatigue finally settling in? I think most people don't realize that this is only his third film. I will admit that these bromance comedies are a bit exhausting. Seth Rogen seriously needs to take a deep breath. For playing such an anti-hero stoned slacker he really is quite productive. I can barely get out of bed in the morning (or night depending on what sleep schedule I am currently following). I fell asleep at six in the morning and woke up at four in the afternoon today. What a lazy summer Sunday. I wish I were conscious for some of it because a Sunday is not worth being lazy for if you are not reading the New York Times in bed with some kind of marathon on Bravo playing lowly on the television. Instead I found myself knitting dream after dream together. Trying to make sense of some of the narratives. I forfeited because your subconscious is not something you can make sense of. That's what a therapist is for. This past weekend was my last weekend off for the summer. I wanted to go out with a BANG. But all I was left with was friends scattered across Long Island and Brooklyn. Some didn't want to go out, others were hungover from the night before, and others had other plans. The Brooklyn pub crawl I was anticipating did not happen. I couldn't order a bottle of Red Stripe at Metropolitan. Or dance with the sweaty hipsters at Sugarland. Christopher didn't want to hang out on the roof and converse about the possibilities (or impossibilities) of happiness while a cool summer breeze hit us in the face. The door that leads to the sky, the door that leads to nowhere on the roof of a building on North 9th. I would have been content if we were on Long Island, paying the ridiculous cover to get into Luxe. There we would watch the plastic gays bitch, dance, and mingle. I would maybe order a gross Bud Light in those futuristic-looking bottles that are so cold you can barely hold them in your hand. There we cold dance to Katy Perry or Rihanna and not feel ashamed. Or perhaps they could play that dance version of Oasis's "Wonderwall" or "Blister in the Sun" by the Violent Femmes that I have heard them play one night. An epic car ride to Montauk or drinking beers in someone's backyard would have sufficed. It is my own fault, because I didn't prepare. Spontaneity doesn't work for everyone. Instead of roaming the streets of the East Village, I found myself in the Bed & Bath section of a Kohl's in Massapequa with my friend as she chatted up a boy she knew. We met him at the top of the escalator on the second floor. I felt like we were in a scene from Garden State. So we conversed with this "hiker-biker" while he folded towels. We all talk about how much of our lives are spent doing meaningless tasks like folding towels at Kohl's at nine o'clock on a Saturday night. All three of us have stories about Austin and they all involve love (or the potential for love). We have nothing bad to say about the city. Hiker-Biker and I speak about how awesome the people and movie theaters there. Hiker-Biker has a beard and it is need of a trim and Gabrielle calls him out on it. He says his trimmer broke. He also tells us he came into work the night before with a red flannel shirt and no one would speak to him. He must have looked like a lumberjack. He is now aware that he must neutralize his beard with light colors to not scare customers away. He speaks with passion and enthusiasm you don't always hear in others. He cried during (500) Days of Summer and actually saw and loved Away We Go. What a catch this guy is. Too bad he likes girls and is pining over a girl who lives in Austin, Texas. After our conversation in the department store, G and I found dinner at our favorite Italian restaurant. An awkward waitress took our pasta orders and stuffed we were. We watch last week's episode of True Blood and I realized that I cannot share my television with anyone. I can't be distracted while watching my stories. I can't miss one part of the dialogue or one shot. That is why I love watching TV on my laptop so much. I plug in my headphones and there is not a sound or thing that could distract me. I have spent the last few weeks watching episodes of Lost on my lunch break at work. I pull out my laptop in the cafeteria and stare into the screen while everything else around me dissipates. The only thing that distracts me is the notebook I have open to take notes while I watch, but that is why a pause button exists. The only unfortunate thing about watching Lost on my laptop at five in the morning on my lunch break is how scared I get when Kate, Jack, or Shannon are running through the jungle. When there is not much distance from you and a screen (and nothing to obstruct the sound) the intense scenes become that much more intense. I have literally jumped out of my seat while watching Michael and Walter run from hungry polar bears. It's embarrassing when coworkers acknowledge your epileptic reaction to your laptop. I can't believe I have only three more episodes of the first season of Lost. I went through them so quickly. I'm such a junkie.
The track marks are not found on my arms but my attention span...I think I developed a mild case of schizophrenia. Moods shift from an enlightened state to panic in just a few minutes. I bought Thomas Pynchon's new "hippie noir" novel Inherent Vice a few days ago with the fervor of the English major that I am (or was rather). I only got through the first page. It's as if I didn't want to get to know another character. It's as if I didn't want to get lost in another Pynchon narrative I couldn't fully comprehend. But that is why I love Pynchon so much; it is the "dizzying narrative" that I find so compelling. But for some reason I was turned off by the first page. A guy named Doc I didn't know was already known by the author and the author is writing about him without introducing him first. But most novels don't introduce characters the moment they begin, but I knew, I just knew Pynchon will never really tell me who Doc or Shasta really is. I will sit through the entire book wondering who they are. But I blame my manic shifts in moods, not Pynchon. I couldn't finish Them by Joyce Carol Oates or get through the fourth chapter of Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash. It's as if I can't sit still long enough to really sit, to really exist, to really exist in my own skin. I'm always running. From bed to coffee shop to department store. I spend $54 on a tee shirt from Opening Ceremony that was originally $170 and think it is a bargain. According to the price tag on the tee shirt it might be, but do I really need to own a piece of clothing that costs even $54? No. I'm not fashion conscious. I can appreciate design and styling. I can tell when someone looks good and doesn't. But fashion is not my thing, so why am I walking through SoHo thumbing through sales racks. Perhaps clothing is self-expression. It can be art. It can be something more than just expensive clothing purchased by people who can afford them. But this is not the point. This is not the point.
I find myself in someone's bed I shouldn't be in. You play a remix of one of your songs. We sleep entangled in each others arms and legs. You brew me a cup of coffee in the morning and I find one of the most delicious donuts from the Doughnut Plant. It's hot in New York City and I'm not wearing socks with my Converse. I meet Pfluger for brunch at Bliss. I haven't seen him since we were in San Francisco together. I already have a coffee from El Beit. Vegan scramble and so much conversation spilling over our table. I love this kid so damn much. Secrets are spilled, lives are talked about, and I'm wearing his sneakers. He asked if I would see A Perfect Getaway with him this weekend and I hid in the corner of our conversation. Sometimes he can like really bad movies. Elusive Kyle was working at Topshop. After many attempts, I found him. Here is another friend, I don't see often enough, and each time I see him I am reminded how much I love him. I walk to the Lower East Side. Ring a bell at a men's boutique shop. First Among Equals. Nico buzzes me in and we talk for what seems like hours as he steams a new shipment of clothes. Fatigue sets in. He teaches me about fashion and so does his coworker. A vegan sandwich at Earthmatters and I'm ready to head home.
I end up taking an oxycontin last night. It was 2am. After my attempt at going out failed miserably, I thought perhaps I could make my night interesting alone in my bedroom. My head got numb and then my body followed. I felt tingly all over. I started reading my Livejournal friend's page and it made me sad. It made me sad that not many people are sharing their lives there anymore. Instead we get 140 characters of text through Twitter or Facebook. I miss the confessions, the sharing, the connecting that happened there. Blogs seem so scattered now. Tumblr makes no sense to me. Where do people go to share? To connect? To tell stories, either personal or fiction.
We're becoming more like androids. We can barely make eye contact with out waiters and waitresses. And if we do, it is in a condescending way. Pure solipsism. I see these kids in suburban Starbucks without any human characteristics. They stare blindly forward, unaware of anything around them. Thoughtless and narcissistic. It frightens me...
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It's three in the morning. I slept twelve hours trying to avoid the migraine that has been hammering from the inside of my skull for the past 24 hours. For some reason I never use actual numbers when I refer to them when writing. I usually write them out. But the 24 that appears in the sentence prior seems appropriate and I cannot explain why. I'm sitting on Gabrielle's couch and there is an infomercial on I can't hear because I am listening to Regina Spektor's "Us" on repeat. She is an artist I have always kept my distance from. She is one of those artists with an oeuvre that is overwhelming. Where would one begin if they wanted to like such a musician? It's the same way I have felt with The Smiths. Pssst. I'm still looking for an epic compilation of songs by The Smiths. I am looking for someone to walk me through their fractured lyrics and sad melodies. I feel this way about Regina Spektor too. Anything I have ever heard, I have fallen for. And it wasn't any different when her song "Us" played during the opening credits of (500) Days of Summer. A movie I watched tonight for the second time. A movie I couldn't wait to see again. A movie I was pining over since January thanks to constant praise by two best friends. For the past two years some of my friends and I have met in Park City, Utah to attend the Sundance Film Festival. There we find ourselves in dark movie theaters for eight hours a day, dodging the cold brisk air and snowy streets of Utah. There we share cinematic experiences and pullout mattreseses. On the one day I went snowboarding, Alex and Ryan decided to go see (500) Days of Summer. It was the one movie they couldn't stop talking about the entire trip. It didn't help that any time we spent in the car or in the condo they were playing The Temper Trap's "Sweet Disposition." The song that gets the most play in the Marc Webb film. The Temper Trap is what The Shins are in Garden State. But that's not really true, because the headphone scene in (500) Days of Summer uses The Smiths instead of The Temper Trap. But anyway, I secretly despised The Temper Trap song because it was an inside joke between my two best friends and I wasn't part of it. I know, I know I sound like I'm twelve years old. But I wanted to converse about the use of The Smiths and how cute Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel was. It didn't help that Alex spread a (believable) rumor that Ryan made out with Joseph Gordon-Levitt in the bathroom at the Eccles Center either. Their glowing reviews continued throughout the year, through Facebook updates and blog posts. It would be an understatement if I said I was excited for the release of the movie. I courted two friends the week it came out and we drove into Manhattan to see it. Through rain, lightning, and gusts of wind we found ourselves in Union Square, tickets purchased and our hearts and eyes ready...
As expected, I fell completely in love with Joseph Gordon-Levitt (as if I weren't already in love with him from Mysterious Skin) and Zooey Deschanel (who I feel in love with back in 2003 in All The Real Girls and with her indie-country collaboration with M. Ward She & Him). Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I fell in love with Tom Hansen and Summer Finn, the two characters both actors play in the movie. Despite the latter breaking poor Tom's heart I still fell for Summer. I understood her distant, non-committal stance on relationships. She doesn't subscribe to the ideologies of love depicted in the movies, pop songs, and greeting cards. She believes it is all an illusion. But according to the narrator, Tom was destined for a broken heart. He grew up watching The Graduate repeatedly and listening to sad British-pop songs. Songs that depicted a loneliness only created by the lack of a love, or the pining of a lover who had since moved on. (But we all know Morrissey was in a more grueling position falling for straight boys). So (500) Days of Summer takes Tom's point of view and exposes both the suffering and thrill of new love. In a very postmodern way, Marc Webb, the director structures the film. The story is fragmented and nonlinear. Beginning the movie at the end and jumping from one moment to the next. Like our own minds, we remember memories in jagged and fragmented ways. Why tell a story from the beginning if you can create something more captivating? We spend 500 days with Tom and Summer, through drunken karaoke nights (where they sing Nancy Sinatra and The Pixies!) to thumbing through vinyl at a local record store. From the awkward pillow talk when your current crush asks you about your ex-boyfriend or when you talk about your nightmares and what keeps you up at night. The first argument in a public place and walking through a contemporary art museum hoping the other person is as bored as you are so you can run to the theater instead. All the beautiful moments are there. The Ikea scene being my favorite. Marc Webb films in Los Angeles and it isn't the LA I have known. It's beautiful. The parks, the architecture...Joseph Gordon-Levitt has sold me on the city. I almost have forgiven Zooey for talking trash about New York City during an interview with the New York Times, where she says, “I think there are so many films that romanticize New York in that way, but it’s not like a perfect city. It’s dirty, and if you blow your nose, there’s dirt coming out." If she can show me more of the Los Angeles that is shown in the film, than I might forgive her for good.
But as a viewer, viewing this self-conscious movie about love gone wrong, I know tragedy will interrupt Summer's intoxicating large blue eyes and the way Tom tucks her hair behind her ear. Beneath the surface of the film, beneath the romantic comedy label, a deep pessimistic riptide of emotions and tribulations will begin to pull the narrative along. Tom loses Summer and weeks later spends a night dancing with her at their coworkers wedding. Summer invites him over for a rooftop party she is throwing the next Friday. Brilliantly, a split-screen illustrates the "Expectation" and "Reality" of how Tom's night will pan out at Summer's party. Without the use of a narrator or Tom expressing his severe disappointment through confrontation, we can see what he truly wants to happen in his mind, but we can also see what is actually happening outside of it.
I am a sucker for any movie with a good soundtrack. It is why I was able to watch The Invisible and Wicker Park multiple times. Okay the latter is actually a good movie that made me cry. I remember walking up the stairs of the basement into Michael Seth's bedroom with tears running down my face, completely heartbroken. I think what (500) Days of Summer might lack in originality, it makes up for in its soundtrack. What movie have you seen that uses The Smiths during such a pivotal scene? Regina Spektor, Simon & Garfunkel, Doves, The Temper Trap, and Carla Bruni! The movie itself even uses a Hall & Oates song during a musical number with Joseph Gordon-Levitt dancing through the streets of LA. As much as I wanted (500) Days of Summer to be the movie I run to the theaters to see when I'm feeling down, it is not. It is not my own personal brand of heroin, if you will. Instead of a cold beer or a handful of vicodin to help ease the bleakness of everyday life, it is always good to have a movie to run to. When work is wearing you thin, or your friends are not being the friends you thought they were. Or when your apartment is filled with roommates you can't stand to see, or your boyfriend's video game addiction annoys you there is nothing like escaping reality for the fictions found in a dark, air-conditioned movie theater. Juno was that movie for me in 2007. I probably saw it six times in the theater. Five out of six of those times I saw it alone. But (500) Days of Summer is not that movie. Not because it isn't good, it just shows us weary lonely viewers that love is not found, it just happens. Life is full of coincidences, a series of coincidences. Fortuity. The movie makes me sad. Experiencing the first moments of "love" with Summer and Tom. I immediately attach my own experiences with love to their cinematic romance. I couldn't help remembering those moments at Lake Minnewaska when you tripped over a rock and smashed your mother's camera. Or when we used to make-out in my Chrysler Fifth Avenue, around the corner from your house because we didn't want to tell your cousin that we were dating. If I could change things I would, I'd hold your hand in the hallways in high school. But I remember the carnival in the parking lot of the mall when we climbed up on the rides when they weren't turned on. Bush, The Microphones, and Taking Back Sunday. Yes, I'm talking about three different people. The three people I ever truly loved. But here I am, two year since my last relationship. I feel doomed with loneliness. Don't get me wrong, I love being alone. It's incredible. But the need for someone to fall asleep on my shoulder, on a late night train ride home, or me being the one with the heavy head is increasing. I want someone to share the television with. Share my stories with. Share my fears with. I want a boy who wears Joy Division t-shirts. Or a girl whose favorite Beatle is Ringo Starr. I want someone to be the reason I wake in the morning, like Tom speaks of Summer. But the more I wonder, the more time I spend wondering if I will ever meet that someone who makes my heart jump to my throat, who turns me on the moment they grab my hand, the more it seems implausible. I might have loved enough love for one lifetime. I have spoiled it. Took it for granted. All that's left are the scars and jagged memories of past love. I have been on a few dates. I have kissed more than a few boys since, but nothing has left an enduring impression. Nothing feels the way I remembered it. There is no spark, no fire, no passion. No deep emotional connection, just a pair of lips and a pair of skinny jeans. We will schedule weekly dates but you still hide behind those glasses, never showing me what you really are beneath, beneath the surface of you.
As much as (500) Days of Summer tries to stray away from the cliche romantic comedies it's trying to subvert, it perpetuates the same type of sentimental longing. Its pessimism only lasts so long until the boy gets girl, even if that girl isn't Summer. I want to read The Picture of Dorian Gray in a deli and have a boy come up to me and ask me about it. Instead I log into Craigslist and read "Missed Connections" that are never about me. Not that I expect them to be. It just seems so distant. Even if someone did notice me on the train, they wouldn't approach me. The same way I wouldn't approach anyone else either. We whisper on the internet, hoping that person will hear us. But what if they are listening to Kings of Leon instead? It doesn't stop me from reading the sometimes poetic and sometimes pornographic posts on Craigslist. They are both beautiful and sad. A tragic longing for a connection, hoping a shared coincidence can turn into something real. Perhaps something epic and cinematic. A story fit for the screen, whether it be a movie screen or a computer screen.
Here is the song to fall in love to: Regina Spektor- Us
Here is the song to fall out of love to: Regina Spektor- Hero
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I don't understand how Ani DiFranco can evoke such emotions. I currently found my copy of Little Plastic Castle. A record I got into during the summer of 2000. Two years after it was released. I just graduated high school. My father got me a temporary position at the post office. My hair was blue and I wore a baseball cap backwards. I used to wear Dickies and a wallet with a chain. I drove a 1987 Chrysler Fifth Avenue which was referred to as my "boat." I had a Discman plugged into the tape deck and would blast The Juliana Theory and sometimes Goldfinger when I was feeling more punk than emotional. I had this leather journal my sister stole for me from a fancy boutique in Lake Placid the winter before. I think it was close to $60. As a family we would drive Upstate, New York to snowboard and ski at Whiteface Mountain. We'd go snow tubing at night on to a frozen lake. Sometimes we would travel up with Matt and Jeff Green. Twin brothers with intense blue eyes. As blue as Ian Somerhalder's on Lost. Actually, when I think about it, it almost seems like everyone on Lost has a pair of striking blue eyes. It's really distracting. But the Greens were both in my Boy Scout troop. Troop 207. We graduated the same year from high school. My father was good friends with their father. And since I can't find them on any social networking site I think they might have fell of the face of the earth. But I was working in the distribution center in 2000 (the same mail plant I work in now) and it seemed like the best gig. I didn't have to be at work until 3:30pm, there were a handful of kids my age who were also temporary employees just making some money sorting through letters and strapping up trays and buckets of mail. I made friends with an older German woman who had a very thick accent. She was strangely beautiful with an admirable work ethic. When she talked a lot of saliva would form in her mouth and her poorly pronounced English would come equipped with webbed strings of saliva. But I didn't find it revolting. It was interesting. She had really thin lips she would color over with a light shade of pink and would talk to me about Germany and her adopted sons. She would always bring dinner and offer me some in the cafeteria. I would oblige. It was usually take-out from California Pizza Kitchen. But I used to work with this guy named Rich. He was Jewish. He was about 30. His father worked in postal management. He got him the temporary gig of mindless sorting. This was before iPods so there was a communal radio with a CD player in our area. Rich was usually my main partner in postal crime. I would bring binders full of sleeves of CDs and he would bring in a handful of jewel cases with the most random albums. Sometimes he would play Wire and other times he would play Natalie Merchant. But the one artist he admired most was Ani DiFranco. The same bisexual musician my best friend Gillian had been listening to for years. After repeated listens in the post office, I finally understood the allure. The fast and abrupt strums of the guitar, the raw guitar strings buzzing and her voice, Ani's voice, that would quiver with jagged emotion but knock someone out if need be. And the lyrics? Brilliant narratives tucked into incredible melodies. I thought it was so strange that Rich would listen to such a musician. He wore the same pair of jeans every day. Dark shaggy hair and always in need of a shave. He was a dreamer. Always writing on little scraps of paper or in the little notebook he kept in his back pocket. He loved Charles Bukowski. He even let me borrow his copy of Ham on Rye. He lived a very Bukowski life. Had a bottle of liquor stashed in his car in the parking lot. Smoked cigarettes and wrote brilliant poetry he would sometimes share with me. I have him to thank for Ani DiFranco. Nine years later, and I own half her catalog and have seen her play more times than I can count. The summer of 2000 was epic. It was pre-Livejournal so I can't even reminisce through written word. I could thumb through my awful attempts at poetry in that leather journal but they are usually stunted poems about girls I was infatuated with or over-developed messy drama I instigated to make my prose more interesting. But that was the summer of drunken debauchery. Getting off at midnight and heading to Dave's house to drink and save his house from bursting into flames. I had a life-sized Buffy cardboard cutout in my bedroom. I met Justine working on one of the machines at work. Jesse caught me listening to Mineral one night from the stereo. Then we started conversing about emo. He even gave me a bunch of albums he didn't listen to anymore including but not limited to Cursive's Such Blinding Stars For Starving Eyes. I was attending classes at a community college. Loving my composition class but despising math. I remember writing about the color yellow and using Coldplay as motivation. That was before Coldplay was the biggest band in the world. Weird. But where was I going with this?
If you know me at all, you know that My Girl is my Favorite Movie of All-Time. I remember seeing the trailer for it on the television and begging my mother to bring me to the theater to see it. It was released in 1991. A year after Home Alone. And Home Alone was one of the only movies my parents took me to the theater to see as a kid. If I went to the movies, I went with my friend's parents or when I was old enough and allowed to, I would walk to the movie theater behind my house. My parents always complained of "back pain" where they couldn't sit comfortably in the seats at the movies. My father's excuse was legitimate. He has dislocated discs in his back. Dislocated discs indirectly caused by me where he played hero and saved me from my demise. Supposedly, a rabid and hyper dog came running towards me, ready to jump or pounce on me in my neighbor's backyard and my father lunged in front of me to stop the dog from demolishing my four-year-old self. I don't remember any of this. But I imagine it happening in slow motion. It's a typical summer day. A summer day without sun. It's overcast and I'm wearing shorts and a light green tank top. What I do remember is my father in the hospital. The memories are jagged and elusive but I remember he was alone in his room. Everything was white. Sheets, curtains and walls. I remember a large truck pulling up to my house, delivering a special bed that would curl and contort in different shapes with just the push of a button. I really need to inquire about this memory. Get the facts straightened out. Was my father really heroic and saved my life or did he just slip out his van one morning going to work. Why do I keep finding myself running off on tangents? I remember standing on line at the Commack movie theater for Home Alone. There were so many boys my age, standing in line outside the theater with their families. It seemed everyone on Long Island wanted to see this movie. Home Alone was a success. Macauly Culkin was officially the coolest kid in the world. Defeating robbers in such unique ways! Purchasing groceries and clipping coupons like an adult. How charming! I wanted to be Macauly Culkin, or at least be his best friend. A few months later the advertisements for My Girl start inundating the TVs, magazines, and newspapers. I wanted nothing more than to see the new Macauly Culkin movie. I have been reading about his likes and dislikes in those glossy magazines at the supermarket for months. I was never allowed to buy them but I thumbed through them with efficiency, learning his birthday and how many siblings he had. Macauly Culkin was not just Kevin McCallister, Macauly was a real person with favorite foods and a shoe size. I remember begging my mother to see My Girl. The movie reviews were pouring in. My mother loved her Newsday. It was delivered every morning on our driveway. This was still when Newsday was a respectable newspaper. She read the reviews or watched the news programs that mentioned how "sad" and "depressing" the movie was. The movie was finally released in the theaters and my mother refused to take me. She told me, "a little boy dies of bee stings, it is not appropriate for a nine year old." What? This is the same woman that never censored my reading habits. She would buy me Stephen King novels without a problem. We rented every horror movie imaginable. From Candyman to Sleepaway Camp. My sister and I would ride our bikes to Video Hut with a note signed by my mother stating we were allowed to rent any movie we wanted (despite the rating). I guess my mother believed there was a difference between ridiculous horror (blood, gore, superfluous violence) than a realistic movie about death, friendship, and a family-run funeral home. She was probably right. My Girl probably did affect my overall disposition. I always had an affinity for dark things. Why was I reading Stephen King novels in fourth grade? But My Girl was probably the first realistic narrative about death and all things morbid that I have been subjected to. As life progressed, I continued immersing myself in similar narratives (family-run funeral homes?) including but not limited to Alan Ball's Six Feet Under, which is just a very adult version of My Girl with many many sequels. I never did convince my mother to take me to the theater. Despite being only nine years old, I was determined to see this movie. Once I learned what date it would be released on VHS, I would be at the video store that morning with my mother's signed note in hand.
But before the movie was even released in theaters or VHS there was a novel to tie-in with the movie. I didn't know this until my school's annual book fair. Each class was able to head to the library and scope out what was on sale and write down the titles of the books we wanted. As I was browsing the shelves, my heart jumped to my throat when I saw Macauly Culkin on the cover of a book. It was My Girl! The poster of the movie printed on the cover of a book with pages and pages of words. Words I wanted to immediately consume. Fortunately, my mother didn't mind buying me books and she never cared enough to really know what I was reading. So, a few days later I had the novel in my possession. I read and savored every page. I'm not sure if the book was just a novelization of the movie or the book existed first. But I can tell you there were more than a few chapters that didn't make it into the film. I guess you can't really film a See Who Can Pee The Longest contest. But you can certainly write about it. So the VHS release date was nearing and I knew my mother was very perceptive. She always asked my sister and I what we rented (out of pure curiosity). I couldn't just rent My Girl and watch it on the television in the living room without my mother realizing it. So, I became a conniving son for a night and planned to hang out with my friend Dominic on a Friday night. My mother dropped me off at his house and his mother took us to Blockbuster to rent a movie. His mother was beautiful and used to meditate for hours in the living room while we played in his basement. I remember rummaging through the movies at the video store, looking for a copy of My Girl. All of the copies were out. We walked over to the clerk behind the counter and asked if any had returned yet. No. I remember standing outside of Blockbuster in the rain. My heart was pounding in my chest. I remember being so heartbroken that the movie was not in my possession. But I was determined to obtain a copy. I pouted and was on the verge of tears. I don't know how all this was possible in retrospect, because I was a very shy, reserved kid. How did I stifle such emotions? But I think Dom and his mother sensed my sadness. We lingered in the store for a few minutes longer and asked the clerk again if there were any copies of the movie returned. To my relief, there was! We finally had a copy in our possession, there was finally a copy in my possession. I remember sitting inches from the television screen in Dom's basement. Eyes glued to the precocious Vada Sultenfuss. Enamored by the dialogue, the summer romance, and riding bikes with "no feet." ("Oh. Wow. Evel Knievel!"). It was the first movie to ever make me cry. I remember tears just falling down my face. An emotional response I don't think I have ever had from a work of fiction. I didn't care that Dominic was sitting behind me, watching me cry. Nothing seemed to exist outside of me and the fictional world of My Girl. It depicted the same friendship and awkward adolescent romance I had with my best friend Gillian. Gillian was Vada. Though, she wasn't much of a hypochondriac, but she was definitely a tomboy. And I was Thomas J! Though, I wasn't allergic to anything and I didn't prematurely die of bee stings. But Gillian and I have shared many bee stings together. Throwing rocks at bee hives and being stung a dozen times. We rode bicycles together and wrote each other letters. I shared Vada's writing sensibilities but didn't write a poem titled " Ode to Ice Cream," but I did write horror short stories about werewolves. Gillian had a divorced mother who was dating again just like Harry (Dan Aykroyd). Though her mother wasn't a funeral director, but she was an LPN who came home with stories about blood and death. Gillian and I shared awkward first kisses and climbed trees together. We spent hours of our lives watching My Girl. Repeated viewings until we learned each and every word. We even caught continuity errors and awkward moments that would have been edited out of the movie if noticed, but kind of made the movie that much more special because it wasn't omitted (i.e. the spillage of soda in Shelly's camper). Whenever we wrote each other letters we signed the letters Vada and Thomas J. Our identities immersed with the film itself. We could have entire conversations just borrowing quotes from the movie. When we started publishing our writing in our friend's zines Incognito and Apple Sauce our pen names or pseudonyms if you will, were Vada and Thomas J. This movie meant everything to us. Along with singing to The Beatles on her father's vinyl My Girl became synonymous with our friendship.
That's why it meant everything in this fucking world to have Gillian with me when we met Anna Chlumsky (Vada Sultenfuss) in New York City on Sunday night. Gillian just got back from her honeymoon in Hawaii. Next week she is moving to Colorado. Life keeps moving along shoving memories out car and train windows. We are no longer children, spending summers watching sad movies about growing up or catching lightning bugs and putting them in pickle jars. Gillian is actually married! We are no longer playing Memory in her bedroom stealing kisses here and there while her babysitter is in the living room. It seemed eerily fitting and appropriate that Anna Chlumsky decides to jump-start her film career with the new political satire In the Loop when our epic childhood friendship has shifted into adulthood. Anna Chlumsky just happened to be doing a Q & A after a screening of the movie at the IFC Center and I knew we had to be there. So, I meet her on Sixth Avenue in front of the theater. Running a bit late, we miss the movie and decide to head back to theater when the movie is over to just catch a glimpse of Vada Sultenfuss. We walk over to Washington Square Park, watching people watch a man covered with pigeons. Then the rain starts. An epic downpour. Almost a monsoon. We run for cover in Urban Outfitters. We purchase cheap umbrellas from a store down the street and walk back to theater. We leap over puddles and cross Sixth Avenue. It's still pouring and the wind is pushing us around. As we approach the corner of the street Gillian's umbrella turns inside-out and she is hysterical. I see a man across the street filming the entire scene. Us laughing hysterical trying to fight the wind from stealing our umbrellas. The man has this huge smile on his face as we walk past him. Gillian had no idea we were on camera. We stand under the marquee and wait for Anna Chlumsky's arrival. A few minutes later, I spot her. There is Vada Sultenfuss wearing a pair of jeans just like everyone else. She looks exactly the same. Huge lips. Piercing blue eyes. She's beautiful. Awkwardly beautiful. I point her out of the crowd in front of the theater nonchalantly to Gillian. I get more starstruck than I have ever been my entire life. More so than Courtney Love, Gregg Araki, or Gwen Stefani. Gillian gasps and hides her excitement with her hand over her mouth. I take really deep breaths but my heart is somewhere in my throat. How are we going to approach her? We don't want to seem creepy but we don't want to act as if it isn't a big deal. I tell Gillian we won't even explain our intense affection for the movie and her. We will just casually ask if we can take a photograph with her. So, we walk over and that plan quickly deteriorated the moment I open my mouth. "Hi Anna! I'm Bruce. This is my best friend Gillian. We are huge fans of you and My Girl!" That is the only thing I remember verbatim. We ask if we can take a photograph with her and she asks her friend (who we later find out is actually her husband) to take the photo. There we are! Vada Sultenfuss, I mean Anna Chlumsky's arm is around Vada, I mean Gillian and I'm on the other side probably standing a little too close; we pose and smile. I can't remember the last time I genuinely smiled like that. Especially in a photograph. Anna's phone is buzzing and she says it's the theater wondering where she is so she can talk about the film. We part ways and Gillian and I stand outside the theater shaking with excitement and nervousness. We just met Vada Sultenfuss! A woman that was standing next to us is smiling at our giddiness. It was probably our last adventure in New York City together before she leaves for Denver, Colorado. I don't think there could have been a better conclusion to our narrative. The last chapter in this novel of adolescence and juvenility. We are in our mid-twenties beginning new unwritten stories leaving an epic childhood past behind. We reminisce about sleeping on city streets just to purchase concert tickets, walking to every music venue in the city. Quoting the strange characters we met on the adventure while carrying our sleeping bags over our shoulders. The rain didn't matter anymore. We used to run in puddles and it isn't any different now. Gillian will always be my Vada and I'll always be her Thomas J.
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I am writing in TextEdit for the first time after Christopher's recommendation. Last night, I was expressing my disdain for Microsoft Word and all its supposedly helpful tools that just seem to complicate and distort anything I attempt to write. The worst crime it commits is the irritating DING each time you save your document. I know there is probably a way to turn off the sound in the "Options" tab but who really wants to struggle with that when they are in mid-thought and about to burst into flames if they don't get it all out. And that is only the first offense. There are others but I will leave my complaints for another time. So far, TextEdit is wonderfully simple. Just a simple white screen, with no weird spacing or margins. Just a blinking cursor ready to embark on journeys in the past, present, and near future. Near future? I still can't seem to get away from French tenses. I am currently eating a vegan muffin with goji berries in it. It's quite delicious but I am not very hungry. I'm more into the cup of coffee that Arielle poured for me. Caffeine is the drug I cannot live without. It is the only reason I left my house. Not only was I was watching Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead but I started watching The Invasion. I feel manipulated when I allow the television to control my viewing habits. At least they were premium cable channels without commercials for antidepressants and birth control. I was amazed that Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead still holds up, even with its chic early 90s fashion. Arielle, the barista and friend, and I were talking about how that was probably one of Christina Applegate's only good roles. But she is perfect as Dingbat in Gregg Araki's Nowhere. Here she is in the trailer. You might not recognize her with the braces but she is the girl that says, "Oh My God!" I love her. And I adore that film. I even mentioned the film while walking around Prospect Park with Christopher yesterday. He said he enjoyed how genuine it sounded when I said, "Nowhere changed my life. It seriously did and Christopher and I have the same issues with the lack of authenticity in the world and our generation.
I have been following the Riceboy Sleeps side project of Jonsi (of Sigur Ros) and his boyfriend Alex Somers for a few years now. But I must admit I was more intrigued with the music that would accompany the visual picture book. I think it was finally released (or at least leaked) and I am currently listening to it right now. It sounds like a much less melodic Sigur Ros record but certainly something that will still pull at heartstrings and hamstrings. Scott Heim (author of Mysterious Skin with superb taste in music) posted a song of theirs on his Facebook earlier this afternoon and I immediately had to turn off the television and process the eerie beautiful sonic landscapes coming from my laptop. This is exactly what I need right now. It's strange how Sigur Ros have always managed to release records at significant times in my life. Times where I needed direction or consolation or something to keep me afloat. They have this ghostly emotional cadence that whispers and screams simultaneously. At times melodic and at times gutted and raw. I remember falling in love with a boy for the first time with ( ) playing in the background. It became our soundtrack, our lullaby, our distraction from the chaos around us. His eyes only mattered and it was autumn and I had Christmas lights hung around my bedroom. The relationship was flawed in ways words would only harm, but it was a beautiful journey I would never regret. So, here I am, at a coffeehouse drowning out the atmosphere around me. The chatty elderly women, drinking coffee from green plastic straws. One has a baseball cap placed awkwardly on her head. Behind me a Hispanic couple are speaking Spanish and rubbing each other's hands from across the table. There to my left, a man sits reading from a book I can't see the cover of, with one of his hands on his hip. He's wearing dark blue denim jeans and boat shoes. A jazz song is playing from the speakers above me but I can barely hear it. But every so often a saxophone bursts through my headphones and interrupts the tranquil Riceboy Sleeps. All of the songs are in English which is a first for Jonsi, with the exception of the song named after an Icelandic town. Until Mount Eerie's new record Wind's Poem is done downloading Riceboy Sleeps is the only thing I'll be listening to.
Riceboy Sleeps- All The Big Trees
I don't know why I'm attracted to such sad songs. It is always the somber, slow, and sometimes acoustic songs that always get me. My heart is ripped from my chest and I bleed from my empty cavity. I have always fallen for the instrumental, The Incoherent, and the ethereal. I love ambient sounds and epic crescendos and decrescendos. The space between the music where thoughts can chase after each other in open fields. Overcast, cloudy and perhaps some puddles here and there. Thoughts playing tag in the woods in a pair of Nike's and crew socks. I can see them leaping over puddles, barely clearing the water; a splash of mud on their striped seersucker shorts creates an abstract stain difficult to interpret but marvelous to look at. Thunder cracks through the sky like the pavement in the cities. A meadow without words or a single remnant of human history. Embrace the burn caused by the tree's lingering branch that caught your thought's open neck. Wound by wound, we spill ourselves on the grass of the valley. Creepy crawler, mouthy mother a new distraction to wake the soul with a soiled pair of eyes and a stitch stitched heart, thumping, pumping ripping sutures with every breath of insolence for comfort. This is where I break the pattern...
Mount Eerie's Wind's Poem finished downloading and I have already listened to the first track. I remember Phil describing the new record as "black metal" which frightened me a bit. Phil's last album "Lost Wisdom" released last year was my #1 record of the year, because of how raw and organic the sound was. It was recorded in one room, with one guitar, and with limited percussion. Julie Doiron collaborated with Phil and tagged along with his vocals, with sometimes a strong presence and at other times just barely a whisper. I saw Julie Doiron perform at Union Hall in Brooklyn about a month ago and asked her about working with Phil and how it went. She basically told me that she barely knew the songs she was recording with him. I remember reading Phil's website last year sometime where he stated that Julie Doiron has "one of the saddest voices on earth" and I couldn't agree with him more. The pairing of both of their voices is both tragic and beautiful. Julie said she was in talks with Phil about doing another record together and I think she acknowledged my excitement. Imagine if they crafted songs together instead of Phil borrowing Julie's voice to further depress us listener's with his dark melodies? But Julie Doiron just released her most enthusiastic and happy record yet. I Can Wonder What You Did With Your Day was a personal testament in her catalog/life. Julie finally conquered her fears, depression, and doubts about the world around her. There are a few songs on that album that just scream how happy and comfortable she is in her own skin ("Spill Yer Lungs"). But then there she is with the song "Blue" which changes the pace. Instead of skipping through the town with lover's hands in each other's back pockets she is singing about making choices; she is making a conscious choice to never cry again, to never retreat back to loneliness that permeates her previous records. But here is Phil releasing Wind's Poem a self-proclaimed record with songs of "impermanence, dark change, destruction, temporary blossoming, mortality, and an immense river of air tearing through the world." I'm not sure if Julie is ready for such a leap into the void. But if she just lends that tragic voice, they can move mountains together. While I'm writing this, Wind's Poem has been playing. I just reached a song called "Between Two Mysteries." It begins and this strange and disturbing feeling smothers me. Is that David Lynch's Twin Peaks theme being sampled in the beginning of the song? It can't be. As the song progresses Phil references "twin peaks" and I know for sure that was the theme song playing in the beginning of the song. There can be no other twin peaks. Twin Peaks is a fictional town in Washington created by that evil genius. A few years ago I visited Snoqualmie Falls, the waterfall that is in the opening credits of Twin Peaks. I even stopped by Twin Peaks Cafe on the way home. I have climbed on top of Mount Erie in Anacortes, Washington both during the day and at night. David Lynch and Phil Elverum have created these fictions and not-so-fictions about Washington. A continuing narrative about the Pacific Northwest landscape. Dark woods. Rivers. Streams. A dark and mysterious allure. But Phil is using the fictions of David Lynch's creepy television series to further his quest for spirituality and purpose. Wind's Poem attempts to find the right words to describe our impermanence and the language of the wind. Nature has always been a huge part of The Microphones/Mount Eerie/Phil Elverum narrative. And I will walk the paths, meadows, and mountaintops with Phil with every record. As the last song plays while I write this, I realize there is nothing "black metal" about this album. It is Mount Eerie at its loudest (percussion, distortion) but it also Mount Eerie at its softest (harmonizing over what sounds like an organ). I recommend listening with no flashlight, with just the light of the moon moon moon moon as your guide.
Mount Eerie- Between Two Mysteries
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| 2009-07-17 05:19 |
| Tainted Love |
| Public |
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| Japandroids- Young Hearts Spark Fire |
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Stopped at the Rose Garden in Portland, Oregon to smell the roses, if you will..this photograph will inspire a future narrative about all things botanical and human through the rose-colored glasses eyes of an unreliable narrator with no background in botany with the exception of obtaining both the nature and environmental science merit badges as a Boy Scout at summer camp in Rhode Island.
I’ve been trying to be the good little Proust that I am attempting to document the past. Not a long ago past, just the past of two weeks ago where I was traveling the west coast of the United States visiting family and friends. Sipping delicious mochas in coffeehouses that probably shouldn’t be playing Beyonce or Lady Gaga. When I go to a coffeehouse I expect to hear acoustic guitars or some low-fi detuned guitars with sometimes an electronic beat. I don’t want to dance to “LoveGame” when I’m attempting to be reflective or contemplative. I just downloaded the Black Eyed Peas song, “I Gotta Feeling,” thinking it would help inspire the creative flow, because when I’m driving, when I’m driving my car it feels fucking epic. Epic like I can conquer the world. All the self-doubt and self-consciousness fades and I feel fabulous, gentle, and focused. But it’s all an illusion. The song. The self-confidence. Because it only lasts for the duration of the song. The #1 single in the States doesn't hold up well from my headphones on my laptop. Nope. The blank white Microsoft document still remains blank with a cursor blinking blinking blinking. It isn’t until I put on Thom Yorke’s cover of “All For the Best” that I start painting these white walls black in Times font. If it isn’t Thom Yorke it happens when I play The Temper Trap’s “Sweet Position” on repeat. It’s quite the song and I imagine falling in love with Zooey Deschanel just the way I suppose Joseph Gordon-Levitt does in (500) Days of Summer. Will they be the next Shins? I think so. But the Japandroids have something even more satisfying. They have this old sound—fuzzy guitars, muted vocals, and lyrics that are heartbreaking but not sappy. Well, I just found their new record Post-Nothing and it has been all I’ve been listening to. I just bought tickets to their Mercury Lounge show in September because I know my relationship with this band can only grow. With lyrics like, “Lets go to France, so we can French kiss some French girls “ and “We used to dream, now we worry about dying, I don’t want to worry about dying, I just want to worry about those sunshine girls," I swear I am right there with them, experiencing the same things. I swear they don’t always refer to girls in theirs songs but there is something genuine there in their staggering for a place in the world, in their existential crisis. Even though they are borrowing sounds from older bands like Dinosaur Jr. and Mineral, it still sounds new and I’m completely hooked.
I keep eating donuts. I need to remember I’m not on vacation anymore and I don’t live in Paris. But Top Pot doughnuts at Starbucks are so tempting. The old-fashioned and the apple fritter are equally delicious. I can’t help myself. It is just a little bit of Seattle in New York, the only other city I can see myself living life in. Not that I’m actually living. I’m more like swimming on the surface of the water. Not fully submerged. Scared to put my head under the salty ocean water. What about those dangerous riptides or undertows? How about that huge basking shark that swam up to the Long Island shore the other day? I’ve never been frightened of the ocean. I’m a certified scuba diver! But here I am barely swimming, barely drowning. Speaking of the ocean, Gabrielle and I have been frequent beach goers this week. I even got her in the ocean despite its frigid temperatures. I held her hand as we leaped over waves. One wave actually came up behind her and smacked her in the head. I couldn’t help but giggle. The bottom of her bathing suit kept untying and I kept my arms failing to keep warm. I’ve been going to the gym every morning. Running on the elliptical machine watching my heart rate increase with every push. The calories I was burning were ticking off and I was reminded of how science has pinned our bodies like butterflies in laboratories. Sterilized and examined. Must burn this many calories and only consume this many to keep thin. Eating donuts just counteracts the hard work I put in at the gym. But I wouldn’t be Bruce, if I didn’t constantly contradict myself. In just a few hours I’m heading to Park Slope to pick up Michael Seth so we can get some heroes at some famous deli in New Jersey then we are off to Philadelphia to see The Veronicas play at a really small venue. I’m not much of a Veronicas fan, but I’m going anyway. We might see a movie that has Swoosie Kurtz in it at the 15th Annual Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. Why do film festivals have to have such long names anyway? I think it goes by the nickname QFest.
I started watching Lost and I think it might be a big mistake. I fear it taking all my free time hostage. I just watched the fifth episode of the first season and I’m already fascinated by the storytelling. The homoerotic drowning in the beginning of the episode where a shirtless Jack (Matthew Fox) saves the blue-eyed pretty boy Boone (Ian Somerhalder) and not the woman drowning even further out in the ocean. This is the episode where we learn about Jack and why he was in Australia. The man in the suit he keeps seeing on the island is his father. The father that kept his distance as a father and constantly reminded his son he was too compassionate, too empathetic to play hero. He can’t play hero because he can’t accept failure. The episode is titled “White Rabbit” after Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. Jack’s suit-wearing, ice-in-glass father is the white rabbit leading him into the woods. The entire episode is about visibility. What we see and what we try not to see. Either it be what we see in ourselves or what we see in others. An intentional obliviousness. There are always filters and subjectivities to cloud our truths and realities. Claire, the pregnant Australian thinks people won’t make eye contact with her because they see her as a ticking time bomb, a woman near birth, without the proper help found in a maternity ward of a hospital. But there is Charlie, looking her in the eye, giving her water when she needs it. All Jack can focus on is his failings. The fact that he saved Boone instead of the woman further out in the sea. Charlie’s upper arm has (which I did not see until this point in the season) has The Beatles quote, “Living is easy with eyes closed” tattooed on him. Not only are the writers of Lost using the mythical tropes of a Lewis Carroll children’s story about a “wonderland” but they borrow a line from one of John Lennon’s best songs, “Strawberry Fields Forever” where he famously sings about another “wonderland” where “nothing is real.” It is these literary and musical references, which make the show. Are all these survivors really survivors or are they already dead, "living" in this in-between state like purgatory? I can't trust what I see framed in on my television/laptop. I watched the pilot episode several times and I just didn’t care about seeing people “survive” on an island. I’m not into action movies, but I’m certainly into cerebral action movies. I know the television show is much more than that now. The character development is just in its beginning stages for me. I’m only on the fifth episode of about one-thousand! And with each flashback, I grow more and more empathetic for each person. I was nearly in tears when I watched “Walkabout”when they tell John Locke’s story. I was intrigued by the opening shot of the episode, which lingered on his foot, dressed in a black, gold-toed sock. It was so eerie seeing him smile to himself when all this chaos was happening around him. Screaming women and the cries of children, smoke, and everything else that happens after a plane crash and there Locke is staring at his foot with a smile. It was disturbing but thoughtfully executed. I feared this day would come, where I would spend entire entries deconstructing episodes of Lost. I promise you dear journal (and those few readers) that I will keep it to a minimum.
Until next time, this is Bruce signing off...
But before I go here are a few songs to help make your summer that much better:
Japandroids- Young Hearts Spark Fire
The Temper Trap- Sweet Disposition
Chris Garneau- The Leaving Song
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Phew, is the only word I can muster right now. These past three weeks have been a whirlwind of emotions, turbulence, exultation, and peanuts on airplanes. When did airlines start offering free peanuts on flights anyway? It seems very 1980. Airplanes, airtrains, BART, and automobiles. Wheels, electric, and gas keeping the world moving. Never stationary, a fixed motion of wheels turning, conversations going, thoughts cycling, and an array of feelings swamped in my heart. My little cousin drawing me a picture of Lady Gaga before I leave Arizona and Ralph’s British impatience when the Escalade won’t start or the wait staff has no idea what beer is on tap. Best friends are in the same city as me: San Francisco. We fly into SFO together, get lunch in the Mission, watch some pet adoption advertisements on the television and I never see him again. I never made it to the Phoenix police department with the paperwork I brought from New York. My mother will forever be M.I.A. Over wine and classical music from the television’s speakers, I listen to stories about criminal justice classes, while they butter up baguettes and spread foie gras. It smells like cat food but his jeans are dark blue and his Lacoste shirts fits well. Falling for a boy who barely even knows me, who is preparing for law school in Tucson. Share a love of Dexter. I’m at a coffee house right now and there is a boy who is seemingly beautiful, sitting on a couch drinking a bottle of Jones soda. The soda with the black and white photography on its label. It looks like he is reading Greek philosophy. His hair is dark and he keeps running his fingers through it as if Plato’s words are not making sense to him at 8:43pm on a Sunday night when a new episode of True Blood starts soon. I sat on a memorial bench for Kurt Cobain in Seattle. The bench was right next to the house he used to live in with Courtney Love. I think it was the house he committed suicide in. Though, I think it was the garage or shed or greenhouse, what was it? where he forfeited.
Courtney had the dwelling demolished. But we have this bench to remember grunge. To remember Kurt and all his brilliant melodies and creepy lyrics. It is in a beautiful area of Seattle, right near Lake Washington. Jed brought us there. But the house looked just like the house in Gus Van Sant’s Last Days. A severely underrated film, a film that was much better than Milk, a film that made me feel more about a character than a cinematic take on a politician. Perhaps biopics are not for me. The sound of soda cans opening in the small cabin of an airplane while you’re trying to sleep and the smell of burning grass in the suburbs of Seattle when fireworks go wrong. Grand opening flags and and shirtless boys walking down the street. A hippie riding a bike knocking down orange cones with his feet. Rose gardens in Portland and closed cafes. Reminiscing with music from back in the early 2000s while Phil is asleep in the backseat and Matt is immersed in the text on his iPhone. If only I could read in a moving car...My recent playlist held up through all four cities. Phoenix, San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. Passion Pit, Japandroids, Lady Gaga, The Gossip, LMFAO, Iron & Wine, Carina Round, and Katy Perry remixes. The week before I left on my epic adventure I dog-sitted Penelope in Gabrielle’s apartment. I called into work every night and sat and stared into the screen of my laptop. I watched infomercials as the pangs of existence pulled me to the floor; I sobbed without the sobs because depression doesn’t work its usual symptoms with me. I shrug, struggle, and fight the upchuck of deadening desires and wild vices. There is no shoulder to fall asleep on or pull to the side on. Instead I am issued three tickets from a Nassau County police officer. Just another reason to relapse into another emotional decline. But at least this time there are visible causes. But this existential black void I have been drowning in since graduating from college is very dark and I am doing all I can to distract myself and avoid it. I went to see Jennifer Lynch’s Surveillance at Cinema Village. It might be one of the best films of the year. But I’m going to a screening of (500) Days of Summer tomorrow so we will have to see if it holds up. Zooey singing The Smiths in an elevator...my BEST FRIEND got married on Friday. At her Lutheran church she walked down the aisle and there was Tony waiting for her. The same Lutheran church we went to vacation bible school during a week in July, spitting grapes at each other in the gym area. It was where we learned that "Father Abraham" song. The priest/pastor dropped the wedding rings during the ceremony and it made the ritualistic, mundane ceremony actually memorable and distinct. It took them a solid ten minutes to find the wedding bands. Nervous laughter filled the church with too many wooden beams exposed. I still can’t stop listening to Ani DiFranco’s “Not a Pretty Girl” and Gillian looked beautiful in her dress. She was going through the motions of a being a human being, but she was aware of it all. She could see right through the mannerisms and typical salutations that are expected of her. It was amazing to see the irony behind her eyes. Looking like a self-proclaimed mushroom while dancing on the dance floor. The Toast happens and I tried to imagine myself up there with a glass of champagne and a microphone reading my speech but just couldn’t see it going well. I already declined the offer to do so just the night before because I can't speak to too many pairs of eyes. But her cousin was able to pull it off with charm and some good lines. But I must say, my speech was kind of epic. But it will stay tucked in my back pocket for the rest of my life. I am not as willing or comfortable to be part of the machinery of everyday living. I am just too weird, too self-conscious. I wish I were a functioning human being. I just want things to slow down. It is already July and I have only been to the Atlantic Ocean once. Is ocean even capitalized in a sentence like that? I’m a failed English major. I have tickets to see Sunny Day Real Estate and it feels like high school again. A good memory of high school, on senior cut day and talking to Kristin Fracc about how amazing "Diary" is. I finally get to see one of the best bands in the world reunite on stage. Mixers at art galleries that mask as bars and talk to my sister drunkenly on the phone on the sidewalk in Seattle. I tell her that I love her but she doesn’t always listen. To be honest I don't think she ever genuinely listens. When she reads, she adds words that are not there, I can only imagine her listening skills are just as selective.I meet J and C one evening. And J impersonates an infomercial. It’s brilliant. Blake is out to dinner at Oddfellows just a few tables away and barely waves to us. Our waiter is awkward and I can’t hear one word he says. It's almost as annoying as his mustache. We get ice cream around the corner. This time I don’t order the honey and lavender and we walk to Vivace and this is when I realize they don’t brew drip coffee, so I get an americano instead. We see Tetro at my favorite theater in Seattle....Harvard Exit Theatre. It’s old and rickety, but beautiful and charming. Vincent Gallo is beautiful. Paul was wearing a lavender dress shirt under his suit jacket. I love how Gabrielle and Paul feud in the car. It’s a charming conversation. I play covers of 90s songs on the way to the reception. I’m told I look like a young George Harrision dressed up. I was also told I look like Hitler and a CIA agent from the 1950s. But here I am, making a poor attempt at documenting, a poor attempt at documenting the last three or four weeks. But life won’t stop rushing through the days and nights. I can’t even read a novel without a distraction or obligation pulling me away. I anticipated this summer for so long and here I am sleeping through a beautiful sunny Sunday because I was running through the streets of Brooklyn in thunderstorms last night. But the raindrops were worth it. But I miss Brett’s bed in San Francisco but not the crowded streets in the Castro during Pride. I miss Bauhaus’ coffee even if they play the Top 40 during the day. Upstairs there is a nice view of the space needle. I miss my Aunt’s swimming pool in Arizona and gossiping with my aunts and talking with my grandmother. I just wish my heart wasn’t scattered across these cities and states. I’m wearing a Muse shirt I forgot I owned and the Nike’s I bought from a thrift store in San Francisco a few summers ago. I love summer nights and all I want to do is watch Greek on dvd. Michael Seth saw Brand New last night in Williamsburg. We’re supposed to see The Vernoicas in Philadelphia next weekend. I was sitting on the sidewalk on Fifth Avenue conversing with him on the phone the other night. I was eating a falafel. I miss Spike, teenage angst and the threat of the morning from a basement window.
Me with the Bride...taken with an iPhone:
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I haven’t washed my hair in about a week and my monthly pimple has exposed itself on my forehead. It must be my time of the month. When I was younger I used to hate when people called me by the wrong gender (by either insult or mistake). Now, here I am, referring to myself as a “girl.” I’m a highly evolved individual. I remember when I was around ten years old with long brown hair and being mistaken for a girl at the mall when I was with a bunch of friends. It was devastating. It didn’t help that I was with a bunch of girls and I was wearing a Miami Dolphins Starter jacket (with the bright teal and orange colors!) and still burning off baby fat. I should have never downloaded two Matthew Good Band albums. It is all I have been listening to. Way to retreat back to 2000/2001. I remember when Beautiful Midnight came out in the states and Best Buy was advertising it for a super low price I could afford as a seventeen year old. They sold out of all the copies and I went to the customer service desk and demanded a rain check. Two weeks later it was in my possession. Do rain checks even exist anymore? It seems like such a dated, grandma policy. Along with layaway. Does anyone put things on layaway anymore? Sometimes I confuse layaway with layover when I talk travel with people. Those people must think I’m 80. I am drinking black coffee because the soymilk I have likes to rise to the top of the mug in a disgusting volcanic cloud. I’m on my second cup and my stomach wants something more nourishing but there is nothing in this house to eat but brownies and Girl Scout cookies. I was supposed to accomplish many things today but instead I slept twelve hours. Twelve hours of nightmares. I would wake up every few hours and return back to the same narrative without any delay. It was horrible and terrifying. I was basically dreaming of Freddy Krueger in Friday the 13th. Sequel upon sequel. It was exhausting. I don’t know why I can never dream of puppies and clouds, it’s always the end of the world or me trying to save my life while my teeth are falling out of my mouth. I had an appointment at my car dealership to get a new tire. A $100 tire that decided to go flat when I was forced to detour off a certain road I drive down to get home from work, to another road that is sketchy and full of potholes! So there goes my car right over a pothole and it instantly goes flat. (Mind you this is the second time within six months I need new tires on my new car). I pull into the creepy parking lot of some business at seven in the morning. I call roadside assistance because I don’t trust myself changing a car tire, despite knowing how to do it. Plus, my father put locks on the tires after someone stole all four tires off my stepmother’s car in the driveway of our house, which makes changing the tire a bit more complicated, figuring out which key goes on which lock. That was a long-winded sentence but I refuse to edit it. I guess Honda knows how frequent their tires go flat, so they offer free roadside assistance with the sale of a new car. Fortunately, roadside assistance arrives in twenty minutes. I’m surprised by their speedy response to my “emergency.” It was warm out that morning. The overcast and clouds keep it that way. It has been like this in New York for almost three weeks. A selfish (on the cloud’s part) and horrible start to the summer, a summer I have been eagerly anticipating since I graduated college—the first summer without classes, a summer spent summering in the sun, shade, and saltwater. I have been hoping for warm weather, warm oceans, and warm sand to sit and contemplate in. Finally a few collective moments to just exist. To think and submerge, without the threat of a French exam or a thesis on George Bernard Shaw. But this deep contemplation has not come because all it does is rain rain rain. So, the windows are rolled down in my car and I’m listening to the Andy & Muzz track my friend Jack put on a mix for me. I start reading Rolling Stone with Lady Gaga on the cover.* A nice elderly Polish man in slip-on Vans comes to the rescue, telling me how often he rescues cars and their drivers on New Highway because of potholes and debris. The donut on my car prevents me from doing anything I wanted to this lazy Sunday. Brunch with Michael Seth in Brooklyn? No. Ida Maria at the Bell House in Gowanus? Nope. Just sleep.
I just took a bath. Since I ran out of shampoo, I used my stepmother’s Filipino shampoo she purchases from the Filipino grocery store in Hicksville. I wonder if my hair will turn black, long, and silky like the woman depicted on the bottle. I use the Dead Sea salt scrub I bought from the Beautiful Jew in the mall a year ago and wonder if I’ll turn Jewish after this bap(th)ism. I don’t think the Jews do that though. I’m always trying to escape the self. Isn’t that what capitalism is for? Purchasing an identity that isn’t yours to begin with. Friends who left Brooklyn for Barcelona and Armenia sent an email documenting parts of her journey. It sounds beautiful and poetic. She unveiled the “secret” blog she has been updating for about a year and there are beautiful excerpts of her inner thoughts. Thoughts on people in crowded cafés, oysters, and how wrong sometimes a New York way of thinking is. I’m in awe. This is the same friend that inspires me to keep at writing, the same friend that wanted to start a magazine awhile back. I know it’ll happen, the zine that is, the timing was just off off off. I keep thinking about writing and if I see a creative future for myself there. I don’t know. I spend too much time fearing, doubting, and distracted to even begin anything. I have dreams of renting a cabin somewhere in the woods for three months. Without a telephone or neighbor for miles. I think I’d need the internet if that is possible, just for research purposes. I just need to escape, so I could concentrate on the novel(s) I have mapped out in my mind. You know the ones that are loosely-based on my own life, or the part science-fiction narrative I started awhile back, or my own Last Exit to Brooklyn. I’ll be the postmodern Emerson. Pen, paper, laptop, whatever. I just need the finances to keep me afloat while not working so I can focus focus focus. All I need is a french press, coffee beans, and running water. Perhaps I can find a grant or ask for donations from my lovely friends.
When I’m done writing, I think I am going to watch Sleepless in Seattle on Netflix Instant Viewing because it is the first movie I thought of that Netflix actually had streaming on their site. It seems appropriate because I am currently “sleepless.” But I’m in New York. But I’ve been having waking dreams of Seattle ever since I booked my trip there in July. Plus, I’ve never watched the movie before and it seems sappy enough to quench my lonely aching heart. Okay, my heart is not really aching but these late late nights spent not working and in my bedroom are quite lonely. I’ve been chatting with a boy online. He has scruff like me and has nice lips. We are also both Eagle Scouts. We both realized that we went to same summer camp in Rhode Island during the same week of July every summer. Though he stayed in Sandy Beach and I stayed in Three Point (which are only ten minute walks between each other at Yawgoog Boy Scout camp). We thought it funny, that we were probably in the same merit badge classes. Perhaps Wilderness Survival or Reptile and Amphibian Study? I don’t think anything will come of it but I think it’s strange that we were on the same ferry crossing the Long Island Sound to Rhode Island or on the same bus from the waterfront to the camp. Coincidences. Last night, or should I say Saturday night, I went to my cousin’s wedding. Before leaving the house I was feeling the pockets of an old suit and actually found matches from 1997. They were matches from her first wedding. Another coincident I couldn’t stop thinking about while people hit wine glasses with silver forks for the bride and groom to kiss. There was a pianist in one of the other rooms at Breakers (in New Jersey) and she was playing (and singing!) a Coldplay song. It was beautiful. Even though I looked ridiculous in my ill-fitting Italian suit, I got compliments with my choice of footwear. A brand new pair of black Converse. There was lots of awkward conversation. It didn’t help that I had to sit next to the groom’s father who called Bruce Springsteen “one of those very liberal Jersey boys.” His wife made us all hold hands and say grace before eating our main courses. Who does that at a wedding? It was a very Italian wedding and the Long Island and New Jersey accents seemed to be competing with each other. It’s awful, because being vegetarian in a situation like this unbearable and only mildly amusing for the first three minutes. “No wonder you’re so skinny!” or “You don’t eat chicken?! Or Sausage?” No, I don’t eat those animals because that’s what they are, animals. I fell in love with one of the staff members at the restaurant. Each time I went to the bathroom, my heart jumped a little when I saw him. Photographs were taken outside in the drizzling rain. The ocean roared behind us because the wind would not stop blowing. My aunt wore slippers for the entire evening and we blew bubbles instead of throwing rice. On the drive home my father and I talked about music and our love for 101.9 XRP, the self-proclaimed “The New York Rock Experience.” They play good songs from every decade. Sometimes Bush, sometimes Death Cab For Cutie, and sometimes The Who or the Sex Pistols. Even Matt Pinfield has his own morning show. We talked about where my father was during Woodstock—in a bowling alley, fourteen years old, with no money to get Upstate. I told him I met 3 Doors Down at Roseland once in the VIP area, when I really wanted to meet Oleander. Does anyone (except Cher and I) remember that band from 1999? They were great. I’ve written about running into M in this here journal lately. All throughout New York City. At the bar, on the L train, in front of Crunch…Well, we’re now Facebook friends. And we were chatting last night and he was a bit drunk and I was a bit sleep-deprived and he was apologizing for last summer…oh this is so boring. There were things I wanted to tell him but I just couldn’t. This third cup of coffee is too bitter. I’m coffee-d out. I think it’s about time for Sleepless in Seattle. I’m about fifteen years too late.
*Speaking of Lady Gaga, have “you” seen this David LaChapelle photograph?
It’s pitch perfect. I don’t know why I keep saying “pitch perfect” so much lately. It couldn’t be more appropriate that Lady Gaga is naked and covered up with bubbles. Bubbles, which are about to pop because she is Pop, personified. A pure confection of Pop with a capitalized P. Fully aware of her Pop ways she uses the tropes and modes of any other pop sensation. But she is in on the joke; she understands her confectionary ways, like sugar dissolving on your tongue. But she’ll shop at Opening Ceremony for Yahoo and drink from Chinese teacups on the sidewalk. But it’s something political ore ecological. Let’s not waste paper cups from Starbucks, reuse and recycle. And that is just what Lady Gaga is. She not only recycles cups, but she recycles sounds and fashion. She will play consumer and product. The ultimate commodity you can believe in. The meta commodity you don’t have to feel guilty for after consumption. Have you heard Marilyn Manson's remix of "Love Game?" She’s wonderful and I will leave it at that.
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...slowly unravels, in a ball of yarn, the devil collects it, with a grin, our love, in a ball of yarn, he'll never return it, so when you come back we'll have to make new love...
I’ve gone twenty-six years of my life without a tattoo. I've watched all my friends around me make appointments with their tattooist. I've seen the ugly and beautiful ink jobs. But I wasn't spending all the time admiring everyone else's artful tattoos, I’ve spent those twenty-six years contemplating my own perfect tattoo. Lyrics? Quotes from Ulysses or Lolita? Roman numerals? I even had dreams about certain tattoos forever marked on my skin. A favorite Sunny Day Real Estate lyric. But what stops me is the permanency. The fact that it will always be there. And all the questions. What color? How large or how small? In what font? What if the tattooist messes up? What if s/he can’t write in Hopelandish? Do I find a Scandinavian to stick inky needles into me to get Sigur Ros lyrics spelled correctly? A few months back, I was inspired, more inspired than ever to get a tattoo. Unexpectedly, I was hit with inspiration and intrigue. I was listening to Bjork’s “Unravel” on repeat and had visions of the “ball of yarn” she was singing about. It’s one of my favorite Bjork songs. One that breaks my heart, that makes me feel feelings I wasn’t sure I still had. And I realized it made sense. Even though my relationship with Bjork is rather new. We’ve only really connected about three years ago. It has taken me close to twelve years to discover how beautiful and epic Homogenic was as a record. It is the record that hosts the unbelievably tragic “Unravel.” It just made sense. How hard I fell for this song when I first heard it. It was on a mix a friend made me of all Bjork songs. A mix he compiled to help win me over, to make me a fan of hers, outside of the usual “Joga” and “Hyperballad” appreciation. She was an artist I always admired from afar. Her discography too large and epic, I didn’t know where to start. But thankfully Christopher guided me through her “emotional landscapes.” So, here I am, desiring a Bjork-isnpired tattoo. I’ll get a ball of yarn tattooed on me. Questions were asked. Where? How large? Who could draw a ball of yarn? Thankfully, knitting has been quite the hip hobby these past few years and those knitters love to share their knitting accomplishments on the internet. They are such aficionados that they even get tattoos of needles and yarn! As I googled searched I was inspired over and over again, through every page result. I think I found a tattoo similar to the one I desire on this random girl’s arm:
It’s more of a ball of twine than yarn and it lacks color. It’s simple but intricate and I can envision it on my body. I now ask you, dear friends, of your input. I want you to listen to this song that I conveniently uploaded for you. Even if you know the song, I want you to listen to it again and again and inform me of what you think. Tell me what images are conjured up in your mind while you listen. Do you see a devil with the other end of yarn? What color is that yarn? Where does it start unraveling? Where can you see it on my body? My arm? Left shoulder?
Now watch the YouTube clip above of Bjork performing it “acoustic” without all the electronic noises filling out the beautiful sonic landscape. Does it make you feel any different? Does it inspire you? Does it break your heart? Please. Please. I beg of you to help me out in this quest for a beautiful tattoo. You will forever be remembered each time I look at it.
Post.Script.
Do you recommend a specific type of ink? Do you have a tattoo artist you can recommend?
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Since I couldn’t find my copy of Matthew Good Band’s Beautiful Midnight, I had to download it illegally. It was necessary. I have been craving Matthew Good’s voice for a few weeks now. His voice is both sad and aggressive. It fits certain moods. And we all know, God, angels, and queers that my mood is shifty lately. One moment, while riding a caffeine high, everything feels aligned. The stars, the painted lines on the lanes of a highway, the bloody lines on a cutter’s arm. Even the telephone lines seem connected throughout each neighborhood I walk through. I remember this one time, when I was about nine years old, lightning hit a telephone pole on the corner of my block and I watched the live wire, dance in white and orange electric sparks on the wet pavement. My mother wouldn’t let us outside the house. The lights went out, so she opened the drawer in the living room with the unused candles from Christmas, that were reserved for emergencies like this. My sister and I loved chaos; nothing was better than feeling our way around the house in the dark. I remember one summer night, someone had to hold a flashlight over me while I showered in the dark. But the electric wire dance and zapped, like some modern skinny dragon. Neighbors stood out on their front porches, watching in amazement. My sister and I finally convinced my mother to let us out to get a little closer to the dancing wire breathing sparks. “Don’t go out barefoot! Put sneakers on, the rubber will prevent you from getting electrocuted!” she exclaimed as we opened the front door. Where was my father? He never seemed to be around during emergencies. We walked over to Phyllis’s house and stood on her front lawn to get a better look. Her house was the only house on the block that actually had power. Maybe it was because she was Jewish. We felt safe there. On her manufactured green lawn. The police finally came and told everyone to go back in their houses. I think my sister and I were the only one’s who listened. Back in the house the red taper candles were dripping red wax and we fingered it until my mother realized what we were doing. Where am I going with this? I’m not sure. A meaningless tangent. Perhaps it relates to the disconnection felt when the lights go out throughout the whole neighborhood. When the entire block is drowning in a viscous blackness. Dark. Dark to any coherent thought. Dark and isolating. A temporary escape from the television, telephone, and computer. Did I even have a computer back then? I don’t think so. Another reason this memory hitched a ride on this thought is because the thunder outside my window is rumbling. And the lightning is lighting up the entire sky. The surge protector went off in my bedroom and killed the internet connection. A sudden disconnect from the rest of the world. The reason I started writing was because things felt somewhat “aligned,” somewhat “connected.” I was ready to write this epic narrative about adventures past and adventures I plan to have. But here I am, inundated with feelings without faces. Feelings without names and meaning. Just another late night turned early morning spent alone, in my bedroom. The inspired feeling I had while driving on the Long Island Expressway is long gone. The blue veins running underneath my skin don’t feel connected at all. But lately there has been a kind of dialogue between my mind and body. A relationship is building. I have been going to the gym and my body is reacting to each thrust, pull, and stretch. Muscles in my arms, I didn’t know I had are responding when I grab a glass from my kitchen cupboard. And it’s not pain; it is a kind of awareness. Perhaps my mind is really linked to my body. Isn’t that philosophy 101? The mind/body problem? Well, I’m no philosopher, so I will keep out of the debate. The hour after I work out, there is this endorphin rush. This inspirational energy that aids my thoughts to pursue questions and answers. I usually can only conjure up the question, standing amongst a thousand question marks wondering why why why.
But once that hour is over, fatigue sets in, and I wonder how long these cardio runs on the elliptical and treadmill are going to last. I wonder how long I can stare out the window of the gym, glancing every so often to CNBC on the television, or the person next to me, sweating like a pig. I wonder how long I can run at the same speed, feeling like a mouse running in a wheel, watching my heart rate fluctuate between 154 and 170. It’s depressing, realizing how animalistic we really are. The senior citizens with their snowbird tanned floppy skin chatting away with each other, in the way of the weight machines. The women with their large asses, I see every day, but still have the same huge ass. I think about how insignificant it really is desiring the body I would like to have and is it even healthy for someone to push their heart and body so hard? But I listen to Lady Gaga’s The Fame and Phoenix as motivation; their records distract me from feeling like an animal, a mouse in a wheel.
[Transition from Matthew Good Band to This Mortal Coil]
It took me too long to get to Brooklyn Heights but I went to the Brooklyn Film Fest last night to see a film called Borderline. Michael Seth invited me along. It was French Canadian. It was probably the worst movie I have ever seen. No, really, it was. Only because it was completely heartbreakingly realistic. Only because Kiki, the protagonist reminds me too much of myself. It doesn’t help that she comes with her own disclaimer, something I should probably adopt. I’m a private menace, she tells the baker who is trying to win her heart wholeheartedly but she won’t love him back because she doesn’t know how to love. She has spent her entire life distancing herself from her emotions. Unable to cry, unable to feel, only able to feel in glimpses, in glances, in slight moments. And those moments are the darkest ones, the ones where she finds herself being fucked from behind by her “lit professor” who she jokingly refers to as her “lit therapist.” She also feels when she is being penetrated by the guy with the guitar, or when she shatters a mirror and cuts herself with a jagged piece. She feels human when there is pain; when Antoine walks out on her at a party because she is taking swigs from a vodka bottle and dancing topless with other fêtards. In the stairwell they argue and she pulls him closer but he pulls away. She cries and watches him walk out the door. She walks back up the stairs to the party and continues her reckless trajectory. She sleeps with her best friend’s lesbian lover, she uses the word cock as a young girl, explaining how she wants her foster dad to choke her with it, trying to get a rise to her best friend. But it all makes sense in context. Her mother was negligent, dealing with her own personal menace, her mind in a medicated mélange of antidepressants, painkillers, and mood stabilizers. In one scene, when Kiki is a just a child, her mother is a mess, telling her how much she loves her, articulating it in a slurring intoxicated way. Her mother ends up falling into the Christmas tree standing beside the couch they are sitting on. She wrestles with the tree in hysteria. Frenzied and manic, she is laughing as little Kiki just sits there on the couch stone cold. When Kiki is in grade school, she draws a creepy picture of her mother. Large blue eyes with tears streaming down her face. The picture still haunts me now, hours later. The most heartbreaking scene is when Kiki’s mother stops by her classroom while Kiki is in class. It’s Kiki’s birthday and she baked her a pale blue cake. Her mother looks disheveled, still in her night garments holding the blue cake for her, singing Happy Birthday. The other students in the class are silent. As her mother is singing she sees the portrait of her that Kiki drew and she drops the cake in shock and grief. The tears that I have been repressing the entire movie begin to fall down my face. I know this scene. I know this mother. I know this little girl. My mother collapses on the kitchen floor in purple dresses; she was the “class mother” every year, embarrassing me with her slurring and emotional outbursts. I am fucking Kiki. The protagonist with “cancer of the personality.” I am the girl suffering from borderline personality disorder. The trailer for Lyne Charlebois’s Borderline exists here. Don’t be fooled by the generic editing or music. This movie is devastating. The opening scene is beautiful. It is so still it looks like a painting. As the camera pulls closer to the two naked bodies on the mattress, you realize these two people are not so still and their exposed bodies will make more sense when you finish the film. There is even a penis in the opening scene, and it isn’t there for comedic purposes (like that Jason Segel movie). Kiki is in a master’s program, writing a novel she can’t seem to write. But when she starts writing it’s beautiful. Poetic.
When Michael Seth and I walked out of the theater he asked me if I liked the movie. “No, it was worst movie I have ever seen!” was all I could say. I didn’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about how heartbreaking it was. I didn’t want to talk about how much I related to the film. Revealing that I knew every feeling and every emotion that Kiki felt, was somehow admitting I have borderline personality disorder. I may suffer from some of the symptoms but I am not so sure I do. Michael Seth and I have argued about this last year through email. He linked me to psychoanalytical articles about the disorder and I considered their thoughts and how it related to me. But I was also able to refute his claims of me being borderline. I guess my next psychologist will have a lot on his or her plate when I actually find one in my health plan’s directory. We walked to Grimaldi’s for some pizza. Supposedly, it is an infamous pizzeria just under the Brooklyn Bridge. We lined up outside and listened while (seemingly) the owner with white hair went down the line asking how many was in each party. A party of seven without any brains gave the man a hard time. “I am going to ask you one more time, how many people?” he asked in a very Italian mafia-like way. Michael and I knew to simply say two. We were seated first, on top of other pizza eating folk. We stole their menus they stole our red pepper. I confessed to loving the film and we discussed how much of it is my life. I said I would never see it again. The pizza was stupendous. I ate three slices of the flat coal-oven pie. There was even a point where I started eating a slice and the next moment it was gone. I had no memory of ever eating it. It was surreal. I blame it on how good it was. We talked about me looking like a sunburn creep in LA and Michael looking like a stud when we stayed at the Viceroy in Santa Monica a few years ago. I put Just Buried on my Netflix queue, we listened to strange acoustic/electronic versions of pop songs, like Ednaswap’s “Torn” in the pizzeria, wondering why such songs were playing in such a place. I agreed to take a trip to Philadelphia to see The Veronicas and eat sandwiches “bigger than my head.” I think one of the waiters is a tranny but Michael said, “that doesn’t happen here.” He is probably right. We walk back to my car and we listen to the RAC remix of Kings of Leon’s “Use Somebody” on the stereo. I’ve been obsessed with it. I drive Michael Seth back to his apartment in Park Slope. I ask if I can use the bathroom but I already know the answer. Spike is inside and he doesn’t want to torture his bichon frise. Spike and I used to best friends. He loved me more than anyone else. Michael doesn’t want Spike to go through another depression without me. I understand.
Good bye Michael Seth. Since I’m vampire, 9pm is too early for me to head home so I decide to drive over the Manhattan Bridge into the Lower East Side to see The Girlfriend Experience at the Sunshine. Find a fantastic parking spot and purchase my ticket at the concession stand and find a seat in the theater. The lights are already off and the opening credits of the movie are playing. What happened to the trailers? I feel gypped. The movie is amazing. I really didn’t expect it to be. I really enjoyed how invested Chelsea (Sasha Grey) was in her clients. Her documentation afterwards to keep names and professions right was intriguing. After watching this movie I realized being an escort is not just about sex, it is about companionship and these rich men needed someone to listen, someone to share their troubles with. But what happens when the “stars align” and you fall for a client even though you are in a committed relationship? There is only so much façade and false appearances before the “real” Chelsea steps through the door and sleeps beside you in bed. The movie ends and I’m left feeling empty. Emotionally spent from two devastating movies. I realize I spend too much time sitting alone in dark movie theaters. I unintentionally follow two girls out of the theater. They smell good. One lights up a cigarette when we get outside and I rush past them down Houston. Home is where I go…
I found a website that is hosting/streaming the pilot episode of the never aired Gregg Araki television show This Is How the World Ends that he did for MTV. I always thought it was a myth but IMDB always said otherwise. I watched the first two minutes and I thought it was an outtake from Nowhere. I was too scared to watch any further because I hyped it up so much in my mind. Thunderstorms and lightning. That is all New York has to offer lately. At least a new season of Weeds started and True Blood starts Sunday and Nurse Jackie looks promising. I finished watching Make Me a Supermodel and the second season of Damages. Still watching The Real Housewives of New Jersey. I caught my father singing along to Passion Pit’s “Seaweed Song.” Gabrielle and I stayed up until 5 in the morning compiling the ultimate playlist from 2002 which includes and not limited to bands like Last Days of April, Hot Rod Circuit, Sunny Day Real Estate, Mineral, The Gloria Record, Brandtson, Elliott, Dashboard Confessional, Red House Painters, Inside, Blood Red, and The Anniversary. I went to the Massapequa Diner with Christopher (the bear) and we had amazing conversation as always over pizza bagels. We barely even talked about Lost (phew!). Saturday morning bagpipes, flea markets, pina coloda Italian ices, thai food, seeing Drag Me to Hell twice, horrible dining experiences at PF Changs. But had so much fun taking this awesome photograph in a Japanese photo booth in the mall:
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