So....
In between the last post and this one I've made posts on two other live journals, first I think it was defiant_dance followed by my latest, nada_pilot. The first was when I was missing Erik but also has random entries from high school's last year, or when David and I fiiiinally ended, and nada_pilot I haven't checked to see how far back it goes but probably to around where Erik and I ended and this last-ish year, so all of my fiction is on there. I plan to hereby continue to write fiction but also to maybe talk about real life things, such as the movies and books and research I am doing, plus stuff, so that I don't feel like writing all that nonsense into my handwritten journals, which I would like to reserve for irrational but lyrical forays. Yes, lyrical invasions.
So I guess to start of with I can talk about... the books I've been reading! They are far less numerous than the movies. Last week I read Nadja, which I enjoyed because he speaks about those surprising things that can be soul-shattering but really, with their ridiculous ability to pierce and make things incomprehensible, make life wonderful and (in the end) I think worth living. Also, I was reminded of that film-criticism book James had lying around his place that started off by telling me that film is special because it is comprised especially of all those fleeting and fragile things like gestures, glances, and light -- but in the sense of tiny details that are in and of themselves inconsequential. They gave an example of a falling leaf in some film I haven't seen and in the context of something that had just happened, and the lighting, and whatever it evoked, but I don't remember because I didn't see it, I just remember the idea, and in turn I like to think about how in Late Spring, just as she is going to sleep and she tells her father that even in his case, the idea of his remarrying had been disgusting to her. She has just met the second wife of a friend; she had told him he was disgusting for remarrying but upon meeting her and seeing how good she was, she changed her mind and here was telling her father that she felt bad for having told the friend she thought he was disgusting. Her father is perhaps already asleep, perhaps pretending to be asleep in order to not answer to her comment about having found it repulsive even in his case, and the camera is focusing alternately on her face, which is, as always, smiling but very much alert and almost troubled but more actually just thinking, her father's face who is calm-like sleeping, and the silhouette of a vase against the light from the windows and paper walls. I am dumb, so I don't know what precisely the vase is meant to evoke, but it's something like that that I think they are talking about. Other examples are the disheveledness and the make up of Maria Braun at the end of the movie about her marriage, or the ...well...
I was talking about Nadja. The first part, recalling the importance of details and coincidence and meaning and outrageous associations that because of their irrationality or because of something inexplicable, are shocking in a terrifying or painfully perfect way, made me realize that this, achieved best through real life but second best (to my senses, at least, it seems this is the case) through film, is why, now that I actually pay close attention to any film I see, I have become obsessed with them and how awesome they can be, i.e. have fallen in love with film. Okay, and then after that he goes on to tell us some examples of the little things that are touching to him, and then finally he meets Nadja, who I vainly interpret as a more wonderful version of myself. The way he characterizes and recounts their understand and affections is something I am familiar with in my own self and relationships and thus I loved the book, because I haven't talked to other people or heard from other people this same sort of thing as straightforwardly expressed. Perhaps it's not good to be so straigthforward but it was interesting and comforting nonetheless. Of course, if this means that besides James I must find someone like Andre Breton in order to have fullfilling interactions with people, I'm fucked, but that's besides the point; I think this is not the case and that there are many more like us everywhere just waiting to be found! It's just a question of my poor communication and the poor infrastructure of our society.
Also, Nadja had a bunch of references to things and art pieces and people who are interesting to think about. The poet who was during his napping phase for example, or Andre's dislike for opacity in writers, how he thinks it is criminal to do something like change a characters hair from brunette to blonde in a dimwitted attempt to conceal the identity of the person behind the conception of the said character. It makes me think about what I write, what I read. :-)
OK AND THEN LAST NIGHT
I read Venus in Furs. See next post.
So I guess to start of with I can talk about... the books I've been reading! They are far less numerous than the movies. Last week I read Nadja, which I enjoyed because he speaks about those surprising things that can be soul-shattering but really, with their ridiculous ability to pierce and make things incomprehensible, make life wonderful and (in the end) I think worth living. Also, I was reminded of that film-criticism book James had lying around his place that started off by telling me that film is special because it is comprised especially of all those fleeting and fragile things like gestures, glances, and light -- but in the sense of tiny details that are in and of themselves inconsequential. They gave an example of a falling leaf in some film I haven't seen and in the context of something that had just happened, and the lighting, and whatever it evoked, but I don't remember because I didn't see it, I just remember the idea, and in turn I like to think about how in Late Spring, just as she is going to sleep and she tells her father that even in his case, the idea of his remarrying had been disgusting to her. She has just met the second wife of a friend; she had told him he was disgusting for remarrying but upon meeting her and seeing how good she was, she changed her mind and here was telling her father that she felt bad for having told the friend she thought he was disgusting. Her father is perhaps already asleep, perhaps pretending to be asleep in order to not answer to her comment about having found it repulsive even in his case, and the camera is focusing alternately on her face, which is, as always, smiling but very much alert and almost troubled but more actually just thinking, her father's face who is calm-like sleeping, and the silhouette of a vase against the light from the windows and paper walls. I am dumb, so I don't know what precisely the vase is meant to evoke, but it's something like that that I think they are talking about. Other examples are the disheveledness and the make up of Maria Braun at the end of the movie about her marriage, or the ...well...
I was talking about Nadja. The first part, recalling the importance of details and coincidence and meaning and outrageous associations that because of their irrationality or because of something inexplicable, are shocking in a terrifying or painfully perfect way, made me realize that this, achieved best through real life but second best (to my senses, at least, it seems this is the case) through film, is why, now that I actually pay close attention to any film I see, I have become obsessed with them and how awesome they can be, i.e. have fallen in love with film. Okay, and then after that he goes on to tell us some examples of the little things that are touching to him, and then finally he meets Nadja, who I vainly interpret as a more wonderful version of myself. The way he characterizes and recounts their understand and affections is something I am familiar with in my own self and relationships and thus I loved the book, because I haven't talked to other people or heard from other people this same sort of thing as straightforwardly expressed. Perhaps it's not good to be so straigthforward but it was interesting and comforting nonetheless. Of course, if this means that besides James I must find someone like Andre Breton in order to have fullfilling interactions with people, I'm fucked, but that's besides the point; I think this is not the case and that there are many more like us everywhere just waiting to be found! It's just a question of my poor communication and the poor infrastructure of our society.
Also, Nadja had a bunch of references to things and art pieces and people who are interesting to think about. The poet who was during his napping phase for example, or Andre's dislike for opacity in writers, how he thinks it is criminal to do something like change a characters hair from brunette to blonde in a dimwitted attempt to conceal the identity of the person behind the conception of the said character. It makes me think about what I write, what I read. :-)
OK AND THEN LAST NIGHT
I read Venus in Furs. See next post.