show and tell - uncut w/ unfathomable affection
so as part of my xmas gifts for the past two years, my aunt has given me subscriptions to utne magazine, and I have always made a point of perusing them because (a) it is a Thinking-Person's magazine, (b) I'd like to be a Thinking-Person one day, and (c) I feel obligated. however, I've never really latched onto it as something I read cover to cover and keep back-issues of in stacks under my bed. I seem to allot those carpet spots to more 'important' things, such as InStyle, People's 50 Most Beautiful, pirated software, bad movies, and gay porn.
though when it does have me reading, it is because it compiles excellent articles from other lesser-read/distributed magazines like alternative medicine, orion, and bitch. I don't have to sift through crap to get to a few precious goods. even the advertisements are for things I would purchase, like tea and music, and by the way, aimee mann has a new album out; it's called the forgotton arm and you can get it in barnes & noble and all music stores starting may third.
getting to the point, I was reading perusing my may-june issue yesterday, when I happened upon the aforementioned Gleanings section (wisdom and whimsy from all over, reads the tagline), where there was an article from black book magazine. the artwork header of said article caught my eye - all retro, very nineteen-seventies, a little anime-sequence-ala-kill bill. a girl sprawls on tacky flowered carpet, surrounded by records, and there's a kink in the cord of her headphones that makes the shape of a heart. I was enchanted.
as I started to read, I thought back to being in the used-book store last week, where I used to work all surrounded by the scents of old cigar smoke and incense and zone out to the pipes of Zamfir on the lowfi stereo system while pricing. I thought about being in that classics section, in front of the Dickens and the Bronté and the Chaucer. I thought about seeing that nearly onehundred-year-old copy of Dante's the divine comedy, the memory that came flooding in and nearly shoved me into the bookcase of westerns at my back, of my first boyfriend - Brian, who made me feel good after five years of feeling bad, who told lies when the truth was better, and recommended probably half of the music I listen to today - who always wanted a used copy of the same but could never find one. I thought about all of the things the people I have loved have introduced/lead me to over the years without being aware of it.
it made me think about many of you, whom I've seen talk sometimes about songs, books, films, scents, and so many other things that will forever be associated with people you love, have loved, and/or always will love, whether that be a good or bad thing. I thought about ink_stain and Damien Rice or the Josh Dion Band, I thought about minervacat and The Boondock Saints, I thought about everyone who has ever had a moot and the fandom that brought them together, anyone who has ever shared a yousendit link to something new and mysterious.
everyone has at least one thing that brings them brutal, strong, instant memories, and everyone has at least one thing that they may not have had without the influence of another person. it is with this in mind that I share this article with you. it made me smile, it made me cry, it made me think, and it made me remember, and I hope it causes at least one of those reactions in you.
*
The Art of Breaking Up
Harold and Maude is forever, even if love aint
BY EMMA FOREST, from BLACKBOOK
*
I remember being 21 and watching Harold and Maude with a writer who kept grabbing my ass. "You're like dessert," he whispered in my ear as Harold gave Maude the locket inscribed "Harold loves Maude," and I thought, "Hey, would you squeeze the profiteroles?" As Maude throws the locket into the sea--"so I'll always know where it is!"--he suggested we retire to the bedroom. It made me furious. He had no notion of the gift I was opening up to him, a real window into my soul. Harold and Maude, for Christ's sake: one of the pop-culture cornerstones that make up my id. I could have played him Darkness on the Edge of Town by Bruce Springsteen, loaned him the translated Novel with Cocaine by M. Ageyev, taken him to see Ophelia, which, as a little girl at the Tate Gallery, I stood before, transfixed.
Some people fear that they are no more than the sum of their cultural reference points: the books read, the films sen, the posters on the walls, and records on rotation. I am happy to admit this. What then remains for a vampire of pop-culture when love is over? What of the books loaned, the records recommended? What gets passed to the next lover, what gets sold for cash? When a relationship ends, I sell none of it, filing it all away for future reference, marvelling at how the most dreadful person can turn you on to the most beautiful music or film. These gifts, given in ego--this is me, this is me, have some more of me--are like transferable tattoos. These books and videos, they are stronger than those ephemeral fights, even the ephemeral sex.
Years after the writer, I was with a younger man, Harold's age, 19, and I wanted him to see the film with me before we parted. I sat next to him and watched his face as he watched. We did break up that week, as I sensed we would, but I was never sorry that I had introduced him to that film. He was special enough and sensitive enough. He understood what I was giving him. When the Dalai Lama dies, a new one is born. He became, in my head, the Dalai Harold. The Dalai Harold gave me a lot of music, turning up on my doorstep flushed with excitement, carrying a bag of CDs. For the first three months after the breakup I kept the discs he gave me hidden in a cupboard, then moved them like a premature baby first to the nursery and then "home," to the shelves above my desk: Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Point by Cornelius. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by David Byrne and Brian Eno.
It amazed me, as it always had, that there could be so much out there I had neither heard nor heard of before my love introduced me to it. It can feel frightening at first--if there are so many records I didn't know about, perhaps there are whole worlds out there, too--yet, when love is over, it becomes comforting. Perhaps there are whole worlds out there.
Once upon a time I made the world's most halfhearted attempt to kill myself over a man: eight aspirin and a long sleep. When I woke up, my friend David, who had long been in love with me, took me to the Hard Rock Café where he asked that we sit under the gold record for Darkness on the Edge of Town; thus I saw it before I ever heard it. David was a handsome Welshman, coarse black hair and language. "Hey," he said, as the aspirin kicked around my stomach, "You look like Elizabeth Taylor if she'd just been screwed by Richard Burton." All Welsh men are in love with Elizabeth Taylor, and so, in a double whammy of affection, he introduced me to both Bruce and Liz, the archetypes of manhood and femininity. He'd come to my house and we'd lie in bed and watch Springsteen concert films and he'd sigh, "I love you, Bruce!" then turn to me in his Welshness: "Not in a gay way. I just want to hug him."
David and I were going to take a road trip, listening to Springsteen on repeat, but we ended up taking the trip alone. I have no idea where he is now, but Darkness on the Edge of Town still makes frustration and sorrow turn, in my mouth, to a fine wine, swirled, enjoyed, wallowed in. And on the cover of the record, which hangs in my bedroom, Bruce looks, with his dark curly hair and white V-neck T-shirt, like David.
It feels very different when the breakup is acrimonious. What I would give--a Shylock's lump of flesh--to take back having played Darkness on the Edge of Town to that fool who squirmed during Harold and Maude. I was ashamed to return David's calls for a long time, because I had disgraced our album. That's how we drifted apart.
I ended up drifting into the most handsome man I had ever seen, a divorced father of an equally gorgeous 5-year-old boy. On a drive between Los Angeles and San Diego I played him "Thirteen" by Blur. "White people's music," he sneered at first--frontman Damon Albarn's upturned nose a world away, the dreams of young Britain resting on Albarn's slender shoulders, the dreams of our own future here in the car. And when I left him, he told me he listened to it over and over again, longing shot into his veins.
I found myself back in touch with Dalai Harold, who, sweet as he ever was, told me that he had passed Harold and Maude on to other people. "The value of those things you gave to me," he said, voice deeper than I remembered, "maintained after things fell apart. I've kept them in my life because of you, but also because of their own value. I'm sure it's all wrapped up together."
These are the three most important men I've had in my life, although I was not with any of them the longest (Dalai Harold a month, the Welsh Bruce a recurring theme for a year and a half, the father 11 months and three weeks). When people you love die, it is common to take on some of their traits in order to keep them alive. The loss of love is like mourning; instead of tics you keep the records, books, movies.
The father, who was--if such things exist--the love of my life, gave me nothing. No books, no records, although he always promised to. I had no cultural help. All I had was him. I could not understand it when it ended. There was no Tom Waits to help me, no Milan Kundera, no unsung Altman movie. Well, there's one thing: One night when we were about to watch Harold and Maude he ran out to pick up two tubs of Tasty-D-Lite at the frozen yogurt store that I had passed a hundred times but never entered. "You've never had a Tasty-D-Lite?" he gasped. When the mother of his child was pregnant she became addicted to the stuff. He did midnight runs for her and now he was doing them for me, who was trying very hard not to get pregnant but still grateful for frozen yogurt in August. He brought it back and we watched Harold and Maude, and at the end he turned to me and said, "I want to make love to you when you're 80." He had put his finger on my fixation with the movie, which is, quite simply: Will you still love me tomorrow?
The last night we spent together he walked me from one branch of Tasty-D-Lite to another, downing three cups in one hour. In his frozen frenzy he was painting himself as a man who consumes, who takes what he wants when he wants it, who throws caution to the wind. He is none of these things. But here, in a tiny gesture, he offered a vision of how our relationship could have been.
Movies, books, and records, fixed, pinned like butterflies, unchanging and serene, are never going to melt. Thinking of him, I take just a few licks of a Tasty-D-Lite--it is enough, it is too much--and then throw it in the trash. Harold loves Maude. There. So I'll always know where it is.
*
a lot of you have given me so much over the years, and I can only hope that I have given something back in some form. you are in my mix CDs and on my bookshelves, under my bed and collected in binders, hanging in my closet and stowed in my luggage, and though I have lost some of you, I retain a great number of you, and for that, for everything, I will be eternally grateful.
though when it does have me reading, it is because it compiles excellent articles from other lesser-read/distributed magazines like alternative medicine, orion, and bitch. I don't have to sift through crap to get to a few precious goods. even the advertisements are for things I would purchase, like tea and music, and by the way, aimee mann has a new album out; it's called the forgotton arm and you can get it in barnes & noble and all music stores starting may third.
getting to the point, I was reading perusing my may-june issue yesterday, when I happened upon the aforementioned Gleanings section (wisdom and whimsy from all over, reads the tagline), where there was an article from black book magazine. the artwork header of said article caught my eye - all retro, very nineteen-seventies, a little anime-sequence-ala-kill bill. a girl sprawls on tacky flowered carpet, surrounded by records, and there's a kink in the cord of her headphones that makes the shape of a heart. I was enchanted.
as I started to read, I thought back to being in the used-book store last week, where I used to work all surrounded by the scents of old cigar smoke and incense and zone out to the pipes of Zamfir on the lowfi stereo system while pricing. I thought about being in that classics section, in front of the Dickens and the Bronté and the Chaucer. I thought about seeing that nearly onehundred-year-old copy of Dante's the divine comedy, the memory that came flooding in and nearly shoved me into the bookcase of westerns at my back, of my first boyfriend - Brian, who made me feel good after five years of feeling bad, who told lies when the truth was better, and recommended probably half of the music I listen to today - who always wanted a used copy of the same but could never find one. I thought about all of the things the people I have loved have introduced/lead me to over the years without being aware of it.
it made me think about many of you, whom I've seen talk sometimes about songs, books, films, scents, and so many other things that will forever be associated with people you love, have loved, and/or always will love, whether that be a good or bad thing. I thought about ink_stain and Damien Rice or the Josh Dion Band, I thought about minervacat and The Boondock Saints, I thought about everyone who has ever had a moot and the fandom that brought them together, anyone who has ever shared a yousendit link to something new and mysterious.
everyone has at least one thing that brings them brutal, strong, instant memories, and everyone has at least one thing that they may not have had without the influence of another person. it is with this in mind that I share this article with you. it made me smile, it made me cry, it made me think, and it made me remember, and I hope it causes at least one of those reactions in you.
*
The Art of Breaking Up
Harold and Maude is forever, even if love aint
BY EMMA FOREST, from BLACKBOOK
*
I remember being 21 and watching Harold and Maude with a writer who kept grabbing my ass. "You're like dessert," he whispered in my ear as Harold gave Maude the locket inscribed "Harold loves Maude," and I thought, "Hey, would you squeeze the profiteroles?" As Maude throws the locket into the sea--"so I'll always know where it is!"--he suggested we retire to the bedroom. It made me furious. He had no notion of the gift I was opening up to him, a real window into my soul. Harold and Maude, for Christ's sake: one of the pop-culture cornerstones that make up my id. I could have played him Darkness on the Edge of Town by Bruce Springsteen, loaned him the translated Novel with Cocaine by M. Ageyev, taken him to see Ophelia, which, as a little girl at the Tate Gallery, I stood before, transfixed.
Some people fear that they are no more than the sum of their cultural reference points: the books read, the films sen, the posters on the walls, and records on rotation. I am happy to admit this. What then remains for a vampire of pop-culture when love is over? What of the books loaned, the records recommended? What gets passed to the next lover, what gets sold for cash? When a relationship ends, I sell none of it, filing it all away for future reference, marvelling at how the most dreadful person can turn you on to the most beautiful music or film. These gifts, given in ego--this is me, this is me, have some more of me--are like transferable tattoos. These books and videos, they are stronger than those ephemeral fights, even the ephemeral sex.
Years after the writer, I was with a younger man, Harold's age, 19, and I wanted him to see the film with me before we parted. I sat next to him and watched his face as he watched. We did break up that week, as I sensed we would, but I was never sorry that I had introduced him to that film. He was special enough and sensitive enough. He understood what I was giving him. When the Dalai Lama dies, a new one is born. He became, in my head, the Dalai Harold. The Dalai Harold gave me a lot of music, turning up on my doorstep flushed with excitement, carrying a bag of CDs. For the first three months after the breakup I kept the discs he gave me hidden in a cupboard, then moved them like a premature baby first to the nursery and then "home," to the shelves above my desk: Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Point by Cornelius. My Life in the Bush of Ghosts by David Byrne and Brian Eno.
It amazed me, as it always had, that there could be so much out there I had neither heard nor heard of before my love introduced me to it. It can feel frightening at first--if there are so many records I didn't know about, perhaps there are whole worlds out there, too--yet, when love is over, it becomes comforting. Perhaps there are whole worlds out there.
Once upon a time I made the world's most halfhearted attempt to kill myself over a man: eight aspirin and a long sleep. When I woke up, my friend David, who had long been in love with me, took me to the Hard Rock Café where he asked that we sit under the gold record for Darkness on the Edge of Town; thus I saw it before I ever heard it. David was a handsome Welshman, coarse black hair and language. "Hey," he said, as the aspirin kicked around my stomach, "You look like Elizabeth Taylor if she'd just been screwed by Richard Burton." All Welsh men are in love with Elizabeth Taylor, and so, in a double whammy of affection, he introduced me to both Bruce and Liz, the archetypes of manhood and femininity. He'd come to my house and we'd lie in bed and watch Springsteen concert films and he'd sigh, "I love you, Bruce!" then turn to me in his Welshness: "Not in a gay way. I just want to hug him."
David and I were going to take a road trip, listening to Springsteen on repeat, but we ended up taking the trip alone. I have no idea where he is now, but Darkness on the Edge of Town still makes frustration and sorrow turn, in my mouth, to a fine wine, swirled, enjoyed, wallowed in. And on the cover of the record, which hangs in my bedroom, Bruce looks, with his dark curly hair and white V-neck T-shirt, like David.
It feels very different when the breakup is acrimonious. What I would give--a Shylock's lump of flesh--to take back having played Darkness on the Edge of Town to that fool who squirmed during Harold and Maude. I was ashamed to return David's calls for a long time, because I had disgraced our album. That's how we drifted apart.
I ended up drifting into the most handsome man I had ever seen, a divorced father of an equally gorgeous 5-year-old boy. On a drive between Los Angeles and San Diego I played him "Thirteen" by Blur. "White people's music," he sneered at first--frontman Damon Albarn's upturned nose a world away, the dreams of young Britain resting on Albarn's slender shoulders, the dreams of our own future here in the car. And when I left him, he told me he listened to it over and over again, longing shot into his veins.
I found myself back in touch with Dalai Harold, who, sweet as he ever was, told me that he had passed Harold and Maude on to other people. "The value of those things you gave to me," he said, voice deeper than I remembered, "maintained after things fell apart. I've kept them in my life because of you, but also because of their own value. I'm sure it's all wrapped up together."
These are the three most important men I've had in my life, although I was not with any of them the longest (Dalai Harold a month, the Welsh Bruce a recurring theme for a year and a half, the father 11 months and three weeks). When people you love die, it is common to take on some of their traits in order to keep them alive. The loss of love is like mourning; instead of tics you keep the records, books, movies.
The father, who was--if such things exist--the love of my life, gave me nothing. No books, no records, although he always promised to. I had no cultural help. All I had was him. I could not understand it when it ended. There was no Tom Waits to help me, no Milan Kundera, no unsung Altman movie. Well, there's one thing: One night when we were about to watch Harold and Maude he ran out to pick up two tubs of Tasty-D-Lite at the frozen yogurt store that I had passed a hundred times but never entered. "You've never had a Tasty-D-Lite?" he gasped. When the mother of his child was pregnant she became addicted to the stuff. He did midnight runs for her and now he was doing them for me, who was trying very hard not to get pregnant but still grateful for frozen yogurt in August. He brought it back and we watched Harold and Maude, and at the end he turned to me and said, "I want to make love to you when you're 80." He had put his finger on my fixation with the movie, which is, quite simply: Will you still love me tomorrow?
The last night we spent together he walked me from one branch of Tasty-D-Lite to another, downing three cups in one hour. In his frozen frenzy he was painting himself as a man who consumes, who takes what he wants when he wants it, who throws caution to the wind. He is none of these things. But here, in a tiny gesture, he offered a vision of how our relationship could have been.
Movies, books, and records, fixed, pinned like butterflies, unchanging and serene, are never going to melt. Thinking of him, I take just a few licks of a Tasty-D-Lite--it is enough, it is too much--and then throw it in the trash. Harold loves Maude. There. So I'll always know where it is.
*
a lot of you have given me so much over the years, and I can only hope that I have given something back in some form. you are in my mix CDs and on my bookshelves, under my bed and collected in binders, hanging in my closet and stowed in my luggage, and though I have lost some of you, I retain a great number of you, and for that, for everything, I will be eternally grateful.