Lying on my floor again, eating strawberries and reading early hunter s with the mount eerie on full volume. I told my psychiatrist that I feel like a cliche. He often looks at me like he's slightly confused and doesn't know how to respond to certain things. It's awkward. I Just finished watching masculin/feminin. There are some great lines.
We'd often go to the movies. We'd shiver as the screen lit up. More often we'd be disappointed. The images flickered. Marilyn Monroe aged badly. It saddened us. It wasn't the film we had dreamed, the film we all carried in our hearts, the film we wanted to make and secretly wanted to live.
To have a conscience is to be open to the world.
To be faithful is to act as if time didn't exist.
Wisdom would be to see life, truly see it. That would be wisdom.
Ever notice there's the word "mask" in masculine? And also "ass"?
And in feminine?
There is nothing.
(pow! that's a fucking great line. Oh, Lacan, how you haunt me. Seriously, I really am haunted by Lacan.)
I flirted with the dude at the video store, not the asshole who wears the beret, the nice one that I would actually chill with, and he told me I was awesome because my favourite Godard movie is 2 or 3 things I know about her (oh my god that's his favourite toooo!!! what a goddam coincidence!!!!) and then reduced my late fees. It's like all you need for street cred in this fucking city is to "appreciate" Godard and know the definition of conceptual poetry and spout on about "the meaningless of art in our time" in a cynical blase tone like its "no big deal," etc. Excuse the "quotes." I really suck at floating on the surface of things. Apparently the psychiatrists are going to "fix" this so that I no longer feel performance anxiety in groups of people. Hm. Pyschiatry is a really funny thing. I find the process fascinating, the lists of questions, the questions that come from answers.
In an interview when asked about his favourite director, Bradford Cox said "not Godard." Classic. There are two different ways I respond to this. 1) he's safe because he confirms that he "knows what the cool artsy kids like" 2) and yet manages to secure a place for himself out of the new mainstream by disdaining what the cool artsy kids like. Insert reference to increasingly obscure film maker. Its such a fucking game and shit. I still love Bradford though.
Feeling good, feeling good.
"Drama is what happens when people get together and live"
this is a profound statement adam coates, this is exactly what I should have said last week when a man said that he "didn't want to be involved in my drama" this is exactly what I thought, while feeling very sad. instead I think I started to cry and stared at the ceiling for a little bit, feeling that something was ending. maybe he didn't think anything except 'get me the fuck out of this girls life.' I think a lot of men think that a lot about me, maybe I felt "this is starting in the same way and will end in the same way and I feel sad because I don't have the naivete to be excited anymore." there is a certain fatigue in that but we all keep on keeping on, etc. also, that song on your blog is so so beautiful.
I have only cried 5 times in the past two weeks. twice have been in the past two days as a result of blog posts. Here and here.
I know that noah cicero does not read my blog or whatever and I feel that if he did notice that I linked to that post he would probably feel some degree of disdain or distaste toward me. Fuck, that sounds like a lame disclaimer. But...these lines really hit me, really really hard, because this is something I have been trying to say to people over the last few months without feeling like anybody really knows what I'm saying at all:
but i don't want a lot of people around
they've really begun to drive me nuts
really crazy with their stupid shit
It is like I'm constantly overwhelmed by the present
there it is
the objects, the now, everything talking place
observing
hearing
other people have the knack of turning it off or not noticing it all
People say things like this all the time but I don't really feel it from them. But, truly, I always really feel stuff that Noah Cicero writes. I guess thats a sign of a good writer. Fuck I'm really lame tonight, I apologize.
I am oscillating between feeling very very alone and feeling very very free. when one component shifts or removes itself from my life I start throwing everything out the fucking window, I feel like every important component in my life has changed or dissipated in the last two weeks. This is somewhat terrifying and I am sorry if you are one of those people who has periodically been deleted from my life. I miss you, I miss you, I miss you.
I just want to feel important and loved by one single person for one single day. Someone, please, I need this very badly.
when I jumped into the air over the water for that split half-second before my body hit I felt shocked and euphoric and light and out of control. and then my body was submerged and everything was open and I felt like my skin was tearing and my brain was tugging out of my ears and then I was up again with the sun shining all over my naked exposed shoulders
"the condition of renewal means you cut your roots"
-Zizek
I'm just kind of sitting in the dark on the ground writing a long, frustrating paper with a coffee and endless cigarettes, listening to Neil Young Live at Massey Hall 1971 and the skies are dark and windy and on the verge of downpour. I have some candles going and I want to be in this dark candlelit thunderstorm head space for as long as possible. It's a very good vibe going on. Why do I feel the need to ruin it by writing about it in a blog post, that is the question. Reaching out for some sort of pseudo-human contact. Wanting someone to understand how I feel right now. I wish experiences could be shared. Too bad there's not a formula to reproduce the same feelings in other people, so I wouldn't feel "alone" all the time and little beautiful moments could actually be shared and I could look at you and think, yes, we are having a deep profound moment of mutual self-recognition right now, how interesting, maybe we have some deep spiritual connection or maybe we should have sex. Like it happens in the movies while an appropriately melancholic song plays in the background. We are all elaborate productions and producers of life and my little moments of feeling deeply connected to people or the universe or whatever the fuck are little stage plays that I create and relish in. Producing machine-bodies, c'est tout. I'm feeling cynical but willing to invest.
Music hasn't been a large part of my life in the past few weeks because sometimes I'm afraid. There are some albums that I put on and instantly feel like I'm cuddling in a bed with a friendly person who knows me really well. Like my body unwraps itself. These are those albums:
1)Elliott Smith. Either/Or
2)Jeff Buckley. Live at Sin-e
3)Neil Young. Live at Massey Hall 1971
4)Goldfrapp. Felt Mountain
5)Microphones. The Glow Pt.2
6)Emily Haines & the Soft Skeleton. Knives Don't Have Your Back
7)Nick Drake. Pink Moon
8)Wilco. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
9)Atlas Sound. Let the Blind...
10)Bonnie Prince Billy. The Letting Go
11)My Bloody Valentine. Loveless
12)Talk Talk. Spirit of Eden
13)Grouper. Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill
In no way is this a "GREATEST ALBUMS EVER" declaration. They're just the ones that keep me sane and feel like friends.
What are your favourite comfort-food albums? I'd like some suggestions.
This photo makes me feel so uncomfortable, its excellent.
The new Mount Eerie is blowing my fucking mind, I suggest listening to it. It'll be the perfect fall record. Phil Elverum is quiet but immense. His voice never breaks out of that space, even when the noise under it explodes. No music better describes how my brain works.
District 9 is probably one of the best movies I've seen recently. I kind of gave up on current movies having any impact on me whatsoever.
I don't know how to function on streets full of people wearing fedoras and high-waisted skirts and big glasses, pulling their vintage bikes along sidewalks. If I spend more than 20 minutes on the internet I get frustrated at the levels of irony going on. Ironic ironic irony/satire/what? and the number of 'post-posts' added onto the everything and the ever-receding levels of meta-bullshit. I feel that the last two years of my life have consisted in people whining about me "not living my life to the fullest" and "allowing anxiety to hold me back" as though their version of "living life to the fullest" is somehow preferable. I'm sick of beating myself up for not buying into some lifestyle brand obsession, a capitalized version of Youth that somehow requires I avoid difficult relationships and start taking artsy pictures of myself to post on facebook and network with other "like-minded creative individuals" and smoke weed and drink myself to oblivion on the weekends. None of that shit has ever made me happy, and I'm sick of people acting like it should, and if I could only "take life less seriously" I'd be a lot "happier" whatever the fuck that means. The more happy I am with myself, the more contempt I feel for society and the less I'm willing to buy into other people's bullshit versions of happiness. And its not some profound angsty contempt about whatever, the loss of meaning, blah blah blah. It's just a lingering fatigue. I'm finding peace in small things, like succint lines in Jacqueline Rose's theory and subtle movements in songs and my hands running over vegetables in Koreatown markets and Italian opera heard all the way down Queen from Dundas and men with scarred hands stopping me in Kensington to trade cigarettes and tell me I'm beautiful.
It must have been hard to exit the womb
with your hands clenched so tight
already fighting against walls
that only wanted to protect you
I cannot waltz through these doors,
indifferent
like you can.
I tried to dance but my legs and my tongue
periodically abandon
the rules of nerve centers
your body learns to move because it must.
I am not so invincible to escape the placenta
and the mediocrity of perfection
or sleep,
the pain of god telling me:
accept the emptiness of your vagina.
and Lacan telling me:
accept the emptiness of the words that describe your physiology
escape routes are still closed to me and
My raging hormones
and gender-bending,
my body's desire
is very open
for you to describe
with pretty
adjectives
you learned in text books
adapt me to suit a song
then leave me like you found me
you ought to be proud that I'm getting good marks.
