"from the cunt to the head is/ a Mobius strip/ that connects us to death" --Eleni Sikelianos, excerpted from "Notes Toward the Township of Cause of Trouble (Venus Cabinet Revealed)"
A couple of nights ago, I got stood up. Hard to believe, I know, given my undeniable nerd-tastic allure. I'll allow he had a reasonable reason, but that doesn't mean I'm above milking it a little. Really, I mention it now only because I'm sort of hoping this modestly public (and very gentle) guilt trip will win me a (not so gentle) spankin' at some point in the future. Well, a girl can dream, right? And drop hints?
In any case, faced with a lonely Thursday evening, I had a choice. I figured I could either do some internet shopping for vibrators so as to assuage my pining... or I could watch a movie about suicide. Yep, I chose the latter. And a couple of other movies, too. I haven't done a film round-up in a while anyway, so maybe it's time for some reviews-in-short. Yeah?
First up is the aforementioned suicide film. Wristcutters: A Love Story is probably one of the best comedies I've seen since Being John Malkovich. Admittedly, the ending is a little on the treacly sentimental side, but given my spring-is-coming serotonin level uptake lately, my mood's been so good that even I can stomach a little of that mushy kissy-face love crap. Moreover though, it's like a Matthea Harvey poem come to life (Pity the Bathroom Sink Its Receptivity of Human Blood?). It both despairs and smirks with regard to the human condition. It posits a world in which people who commit suicide all wind up in a parallel universe that's pretty much like a bleached-out, Southern Cali wasteland... but just a little bit worse than the one in our world. Everyone's clothes fit a little funny. Everything's a little rusty. There's an actual black hole beneath the passenger-side front seat of the car, as opposed to a metaphorical one. No one can smile. And you can bet you'll wake up with sand in your asscrack every morning. Patrick Fugit, who was saucer-eyed sweet in Almost Famous, seems to have acquired a patina of young-adult disenfranchisement that's really awfully soulful. And the music... well, between Tom Waits and Gogol Bordello (yep, same funky-ass-fantastic Russian band who had all that weirdness on the Everything Is Illuminated soundtrack), the whole movie crankily chortles at itself in pitch-perfect ennui. Also, Tom Waits has an actorly presence in this film alongside his musical one. His character might have something in common with The Chink from Even Cowgirls Get the Blues... maybe: a poker-faced sage with a missing dog and absence of dogma. With all it's idiosyncracies and malaise, there's not much about this film that doesn't appeal to my sense of what human-ness is: sweet and sad, a little put out, awash in resignation... or so it thinks, as it just can't help itself-- it seems even suicide can't squelch our ultimate instinct towards optimism. In other words, life sucks... but at least it's funny.
Next up is Dancing at the Blue Iguana. This one's been out for quite a while, but I don't think I'd really heard of it until recently. Judging from its cover, you'd think it'd be the sort of movie I'd really like: it's about strippers! Given my fixation with the profession of peeling, it's kind of too bad that I found this sad-sack movie so lackluster. It capitalizes on every stereotype of pitiful stripperhood I've ever heard. It's got the ditzy love-starved Angel, who is simply CONVINCED one of the patrons is gonna wisk her away into a life of luxury. There's the rubber-clad dominatrix who overflows her corsetry in such a way as to bely her pregnancy. There's the golden and resplendent porn star, narcotized into an automaton. There's teenage beauty, simultaneously innocent and damaged, lost to her own erotic thrall. There's the poet, the smart one, knowing she's "better than this," but unable to walk off the stage. And there's Stormy: enigmatic and angry-- a veteran. The thing that differentiates this sort of stripper story from that of Diablo Cody's Candy Girl is its utter absence of joy (even if it's snarky joy) with regard to that which is sexual. All these women feel trapped by their vocations. Cody's narrator persona recognizes the pitfalls of the stripper life, but that recognition doesn't ruin sex for her. It doesn't even ruin stripping for her! It seems to me that there's a subtle judgmentalism underpinning the story of all these women-- as in, the only way a girl would choose this line of work for herself is if she had no alternatives. Or as if the only people pathetic enough to take off their clothes for money simply MUST be victim-y in the worst senses. And that arch, removed rendering of these women undermines my sympathy for them-- who can feel anything for a cardboard cut-out of a fallen woman? Now, this isn't to say that there's no fun to be had in the watching of this film. It's pretty much an endless parade of perfect tits-- of all sizes and remarkable symmetries. Jennifer Tilly, Kristen Bauer, Charlotte Ayanna, Daryl Hannah and Sandra Oh are ALL fairly flawlessly endowed. And here, too, the soundtrack is impressive. It's mostly slow, languid strip-grooves, with nary a pump-n-grind in the midst. Can you imagine stripping to "Lips Like Sugar?" Or something Leonard Cohen? I wonder, perhaps if there had been a pump-n-grind, though, it might have resurrected this film from its abyss of joylessness. Ah, well.
And this brings me to a little nugget of nostalgic guilty pleasure. They've been running Empire Records on cable lately. I've caught bits and pieces of it here and there-- and, I must admit, I've stopped to watch it every time. This thing was released the year I graduated high school. At the time, I pretty much thought it was the best crappy teen movie ever made. Come to think of it, I still kinda think that. I know, I know... a snob like me isn't supposed to like schlock like this. But, oh, how I do. Most of the characters in it are the sorts of people I wished I could be when I was that age-- ironically cool, slightly silly, sexy without being too pretty, pierced, foul-mouthed, irreverent, beautifully self-involved as only teenagers can be -- and fuck-ups, every one of them. I was merely nerdy and sullen (hey, at least I gave up the sullen part, eh?). I won't say that it's a good movie because, ultimately, it's nearly as formulaic as anything else in its genre. But I still heart it. And though I've sat through this movie at least 13 times in the 13 years since I first saw it, I still laugh at Brendan Sexton's voice-cracky, Staten-Island-y yawp, "My name's not fucking WAR-ren!!" And, really, what film isn't complete without a guest appearance from Gwar?
And now, you'll allow me to return to my regularly scheduled internet shopping, yes?
While I was in Honolulu last December for work, I spent most of my time off tooling around town with one of my colleagues, who is somewhere in the progression of her creative non-fiction MFA. There seemed to be two recurring themes in our conversations: whether or not irony was still a valid mode of communication, both in writing and in ordinary conversation... and the fact that she's rather ecstatically in love with a new-ish boyfriend. And then, this Saturday morning, I made coffee and then got back into bed to read Anna Moschovakis' incisive and remarkable book, I Have Not Been Able to Get Through to Everyone, and I found the following excerpt from "The Blue Book" section, which I felt like conflated those two strands of conversation. And she's masterfully crafted it, as well. Enjoy!
Many people change their names.
Afterward, they are not seen as different by most people.
They may have private or public reasons for changing their names.
They may change their names to buck or bolster tradition, for example.
(The change may or may not, in fact, buck or bolster tradition.)
Some people change their sex.
They may have private or public reasons for doing so.
Afterward, they are seen as different by most people.
Some traditions only become buckable with progress.
Sex is a noun that can be both active and descriptive.
A view of sunlight filtering through trees can seem corny or kitsch.
Sex seems to retain the ability to be experienced non-ironically.
This may be due to the doubling inherent in sex with another person.
Irony may be inherent rather than apparent in this doubling.
Heterosexual couples may experience a stronger/weaker doubling than homosexual couples.
Couples in which one person takes on the other's name seem to be addressing this doubling.
I wonder what it does for them. Name is a word that can be both active and descriptive.
Like many people, I like hearing my name spoken during sex.
A feeling of intimacy after sex can often be mutual and sincere.
This can be true even in a setting of filtered sunlight.
Intimacy is only possible because people are seen as different.
My name comes from my father's side of the family.
I sometimes wish I had a different name, or no name at all.
I sometimes imagine what sex would be like in a world without names.
I really love the way Moschovakis is able to make these assertions without doubling back on herself, questioning herself, but, in the same space of this poem, leaves herself plenty of room for theorizing. I'm not entirely sure how she does that. And the seams between each line are so logical! And there are seams that connect different, non-adjacent parts of the poem together in a masterfully-planned sort of way. She is god to this poem in a way that I don't really see too often. And if you were to read the whole "The Blue Book" section, you being to notice that her clarity of thought and organizational structure emerge in a way that feels a little foreign and very exciting, when pushed into verse form. She is an algebrist (my spell-check makes me think I just coined that word) to this poem as well.
To anyone familiar at will with the lingo of the enneagram, I think I might characterize this poem as rather 5-ish. Its tone, I think, seems to be trying very hard to establish an intellectual distance between the speaker and the subject matter of sex... yet there is this just-below-the surface, powerfully emotive yearning for sincerity and connectivity in the context of the sex act itself. The reason this seems 5-like to me is because 5s are often characterized as being all head, no heart-- which I think is a pitiful misrepresentation of 5-ishness. It's just that, because big emotions often leave a 5 feeling drained, they have a difficulty processing them without establishing the aforementioned emotional distance. But that certainly doesn't mean that heart isn't thumping away under the nerdy surface, right? Anyway, perhaps this is part of why I've been so suckered in by the cool, aloof tone this poet adopts here. How does she do it???
The question we always asked in poetry workshops, when something really great turned up in class, was "Do you wish you wrote it?" And about this poem, and this book, really, I would say, unequivocally, yes. Apparently, she's giving a reading in Brooklyn as part of Sommer Browning's reading series at Pete's Candy Store at the end of the month, and oh, how I would love to go. I may, however, have to settle for going to hear her when she's in Baltimore in May. I found my voice getting tired as I was reading this book, the desire to hear them aloud was so great. Surely, she'll do a better job of it than I.
