in the hall of mirrors

Palermo Shooting

The title of Wim Wenders' 2008 film. Not very successful, widely regarded as pretentious and self-indulgent; and it's true that the script isn't subtle or surprising (who would have thought Death would be so talkative and sententious?).

But this isn't a review... for real film people, it may be a failure; but for me it's enjoyable. Watching a tall, good-looking man with an expressive face and tattoos wander around Düsseldorf and (especially) Palermo and through his own dreams, taking photographs and being existentially depressed... it's actually fun. Moody and relaxing.

Of course, as I am I, although I can easily fall in with the mood of aimless self-examination and the circular, tangled obsessions with death and time, I can't help being annoyed by the fact that the protagonist is also very rich and successful. (You should see his studio – insanely spacious, a vast ultramodern German building with many computers and innovative windows and, well, a few expensive but tasteful shelves – the kind you put a lemon and a Hasselblad on, just to show that they're shelves.) As is Andreas Frege, the ex-punk star who plays him. As is Wenders.

So... frankly... I think I'd enjoy being disaffected, having a (late-ish) midlife crisis, being moody and unsure, much more – if I knew that my financial future was secure...

Then I'd go to Palermo. Probably without a camera: but, admittedly, with a lined notebook.

Je t'aime je t'aime

After a rather extreme version of the usual winter irresponsible incoherent dead-time day and night, I watched this 1968 film by Resnais – perhaps not the best choice for someone thinking about depression and the incoherence of his life. Or, perhaps, the best possible choice.

No, let me explain, briefly, or you'll think this is all stranger or more dramatic than it is. After reaching a certain point in Jung's autobiography (and being unwilling to read further into the relationship with Freud and its unhappy conflicts), and thinking about my own problems and concerns (winter depression, short and silent days, etc.), I'd downloaded a vast Internet collection of segments of Two and a Half Men, up to the present episode. A silly comedy, of course: which has, of course, gotten edgier over the past two years (has no one else noticed that Sheen looks markedly unhealthy in the past year, perhaps a bit too much like his alcoholic character?); which is about addiction and an incoherent life (but, unlike mine, a wealthy and pleasure-drenched version of an incoherent life, one embedded in my long-missed California). So when I found myself watching episode after episode, in order, up until the latest one which started on my computer at 9 am on a Sunday morning....

and then I went to bed, wondering about different kinds of addictive behavior and avoidance. At three in the afternoon David R. rang my doorbell, unannounced, to talk; I sent him away, unusually, and went back to bed; and then this evening saw this strange Resnais film about suicide, despair, time, fragmented time, memory, and les temps morts. It has a rather frightening premise: time travel limited to re-experiencing moments from one's own life – gone awry, where the moments are uncontrolled and out of order.

And now I shall go to bed, again, but at a more normal time, and tomorrow shall have a real and semi-normal day.

And yes, I know: what we're looking at here is simply a common experience: when passive television/film experiences can saturate a person, hypnotize a person, it can eat up their entire life – this is a familiar thing in Los Angeles, especially, but ever since the advent of videotapes it has been common everywhere. (And even before, in those strange habitués of repertory houses: early Woody Allen bears the mark of his having done this – obsessively spending too many afternoons seeing one film after another.) And now, with computers, it is even more common.

Watching too much: it is perhaps an experience that has grounded so many films of the nouvelle vague and other avant-garde forces... and their acute awareness of how bad we really are at handling time, how much it gets away from us, how by the time we have any idea what we wanted from it it's already gone. And of course, any scientist will be just as bewildered by time and experience: how can we live our lives in the face of the vast scale of things? (Even the many versions of the  Hitchhiker's Guide makes this problem an endless object of fun.)

But it still seems resonant – the problem of dead time, of repeated time, of imagined time; and the fairly insoluble problem of whether time spent alone writing is any more interesting than time spent watching actors on a screen. Which of those is really temps morts? Are they both?

And what else is there for me to do, anyway?...

You will say: I would have been better off sitting and talking to David. Yes, I say: but – how long, each day, can I wait for such things to occur – by chance?...

Italians and circuses

Reading a Fellini biography; and watching many Fellini movies, plus other bits of Italian neorealism – it's avoidant, I know (still fallow after that long trip, must get back to work).

I've always loved a few things of Fellini – notably Satyricon – but I didn't know any of the early work; it's addictive – sentimentally charged Italian lifestyles of the 1950s; I find it startlingly easy to identify with these people.

And with their problems, as in 8-1/2: "I really don't have anything to say... but I want to say it all the same."

It is even affecting my dreams: which are now of circuses and symbols....

Asa nisi masa! Asa nisi masa!

To the London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival

[A grumpy letter to the festival. Perhaps I should sign myself Brigadier-General, as in those parody Monty Python letters to the Times.]

Dear LLGFF,

So the 22nd London Lesbian & Gay Film Festival is on tour; and just three movies from its series will come to Newcastle, at the Tyneside Cinema, in mid-August, with about a week's notice through flyers in the cinema itself.

And there are at least three disappointments: that it was scheduled so late and casually (we didn't make the brochure this year, but are on a sticker attached to the brochure instead); Newcastle dates aren't mentioned on the LLGFF website, even today; and, most frustratingly for me, neither of the films about HIV+ men (Derek or Before I Forget) are coming here. Instead we're getting a lesbian film, a film about gay guys who act nearly straight, and a Gregg Araki film with no gay or lesbian content which has somehow weaseled into the already very skimpy programme.

As an 'aging' (51 y.o.) gay man with AIDS, who is a member of the local HIV patient group and who speaks fifteen or twenty times a year at a variety of classes and public venues about my experiences, I'm accustomed to semi-humorously dismissing the awareness of the local scene about either men or HIV. Although there are nearly six hundred HIV patients in the Northeast, and more than a third of them gay men, and probably more of those in the 'aging' category than not, I understand that the lesbian contingent tends to be more active here; and that nobody in the Northeast is ever very interested in the HIV+ community anyway.

I also understand that the Tyneside Cinema, although it has Neil Tennant as a major patron, has other things to do than pay much attention to the LLGF festival every year. It is always scheduled in August, when the fewest people are around; it always involves very few films, tucked in a corner as it were; and it is always hugely underpublicized.

I also understand, as I am myself a foreigner from California who moved here six years ago, that LGBT culture in the UK happens mostly in London and Manchester, and that nobody in London normally gives a toss about the provinces, especially the distant Northeast.

But it's still acutely disappointing. Six years in the UK provinces has made me accustomed to the mildly contemptuous disinterest of Londoners and their well-funded institutions, the uninvolvement of locals, and the avoidant boredom that the local community seems to feel at any mention of HIV; and of course it's disappointing to consider another pointless exercise by Araki that has nothing to do with anyone's personal experiences or needs up here.

But I can't help feeling that it could all be different.

Cheers,

...

[Sent also to the Tyneside Cinema, via its apparently carefully screened website e-mail, as well as to various LG figures in the Northeast.]

***

Hmm, well, helpful and polite answers from the LLGFF and the Tyneside Cinema, which have left me pretty mollified: it appears that they are going to show seven of the nine films from the tour, including both of the ones I want to see, but in two groups (the second in September). So clearly My Demographic, such as it is, is also included in this festival.

I still think that London institutions tend to ignore the UK provinces, but it appears that this one isn't doing that.

And I am still unenchanted to see Gregg Araki pushed to the front of the queue, but I guess that's a matter of personal taste....

Mamma mia

Well, well, two summer blockbuster films in one week: quite bizarre for me.

David C. and David R. wanted to go; I argued that I didn't really want to see Mamma Mia, but they wanted to, and it sounded pleasant to spend the time with them, so I went.

Well.

I suppose there are a host of reasons why I could expect not to like much of the film, including:

1. I'm not a fan of ABBA.

2.

... well actually that's sort of it, right there.

But that's enough. I do know that one of the only false notes struck in my time in Australia, as I was lamenting being sent away from Sydney, which looked so much like the promised land at the time, was that for some unfathomable reason the natives – practically all of them, as far as I could tell – really, really like ABBA. With no irony. It was, I suppose, the canker in the apple.

Okay, well, back to the present, such as it is: Meryl Streep is excellent, she's the best thing in the film, she's the only one you believe most of the time. Her backup girls, Christine Baranski and Julie Walters, are also fun to watch, although neither one does as much as their fans might have hoped. The only good musical numbers belong to the older women, when they're camping it up and making fun of themselves – everyone else is boring. Extremely boring.

Except, of course, the chorus of Greek [sic] boys. David R. liked the little one with the shaved head (who looked like a quasi-Greek version of a local Geordie lad, which is probably why he liked him – but who was actually, I'm sure, either a Broadway or a West End chorine with a trendoid look). I preferred the big one with the shoulders and the head of hair (whom I suspect was a nice Argentine lad named Juan Pablo di Pace, though it's hard to tell as the choristers rush past). In fact I kept elbowing both or either David when the studly one appeared; so it was rather wonderful when Colin Firth, in a sudden moment of rather unprepared gayness, jumps to embrace him at the end. (And isn't that one in the eye for all those British girls who swooned over Pride and Prejudice.)

Oh, and the brief, completely ridiculous choreography for the lads at the pier was funny. That was about twenty seconds' worth.

So that's another one well off the list (good thing I really don't have a Feature Film List, at least not a current one – that's the problem with buying DVDs, most movies are not worth seeing twice, or once).

But it was nice to see boys being sexy... of course since they were musical chorus boys no doubt they're all straight (ha ha)... and Meryl was actually quite good, almost throughout (although why was her big dramatic solo cut so awkwardly? must have been a lot of takes)... and it's nice to see old people (i.e. in their forties and fifties) finding love and/or sex and lots of fun on a Greek island.

Bodes well for me, I guess.

[PS: it appears that Juan Pablo di etc., a dancer/model/actor, is the same lad who was in the news for objecting to having his genitals airbrushed smaller in the Rigoletto poster. Hmm. A nice Argentine boy, with bells on....]

Too dark a knight

Today, a day of seeing the doctor, prescriptions, correcting paperwork, getting things done: a decent enough day, though there was no Writing of the Book in it. (And I can't help thinking that those are the dangerous days: when you really are busy but don't get any of the big stuff done. However, admittedly, there was less wasted time than in the past.)

Then Andrew took a bunch of us to see The Dark Knight, which was frankly hard to get in to on a Wednesday (here in the UK that's the day for 2-for-1 movies) – we were bumped from 7 o'clock to 8, then that was full, then we went to another theater. But we got in at that one.

No point in a long review: just – well, the hype is quite accurate. This is very, very good indeed, not even faintly camp, very serious, and quite violent – almost, in fact, deadly realistic, despite all the phantasmagoric elements. And yes: Heath Ledger, despite having died, despite any assumptions I (or you) might have made that all the accolades were exaggerated because he had died, does an absolutely authentic Joker – every split second real, every split second fascinating, humorous and sick-making and frightening. A grotesque that makes you shrink from it, but there are clips I'd love to see again (notably him in a wig, then the nurse's dress – utterly amazing work done in just a couple of minutes.) Even if he hadn't died, he far bypassed Nicholson on this one (and I know that sounds like heresy, but there you are – this was a considerably denser Joker than Nicholson's).

Which means we really did lose a major actor. Bummer.

I will confess, though: I was not in the mood for something that dark, that realistic – that much like a newspaper headline – although I do take away a certain appreciation of something artistic and well done. But the movie has shaken me, a bit at least (and on a day when I was thinking that the world of news and headlines and bad things happening was distracting me too much).

I hope I can clear my head and write tomorrow... though I admit that, if I can't, I've at least seen something really good.

Hildes Reise

It is rather wearing to see all of these films about AIDS. (Have I perhaps mentioned that already?...)

This one was well-made; coolly done – a lovely, simple ending. But the most disturbing part was the rich Swiss family, homophobic and controlling: ick – we may all be glad we're not rich Swiss people.

Of course, the mother got hers in the end: the scenes split, and as Martin/Hilde's friends take him to the sea burial he wanted, his mother is left putting kitty litter into a fake urn so that there's something for her mausoleum. Just what was coming to her, too....

Ach. Deutsche (oder Schweizerische) Krankenhäuser, kälte Familie. Geld und Tod.

Macht mich müde....

Oh, and like an idiot I forgot to take notes on the music in the last half hour. So I'll have to at least skim through it again.

I do wish somebody were here to give me a hug. Ah well.

Jarman's Garden

I've been watching Derek Jarman's The Garden (1990) in order to write about it for the book.

I wasn't looking forward to this, because I've conceived such an annoyed dislike for such films as Sebastiane and War Requiem – the glacial pace, the stiff acting, the cheesy tech. But I was immediately enchanted by this one – maybe I was brought in partly by the music, which is gorgeous, and by the textures and quality, which are considerably more polished than I'm used to in Jarman's work.

Maybe I need to see more of him.

Among watching are several phone calls, most of which suggest that I need to answer the phone less often: someone wants to chat, then someone else tells about some dreadful behavior by my least favorite UK academic (a nasty, small-minded, constantly hostile young man who teaches in the far South, and who has collided with me several times because we write some things on the same topics). Distracting; and stupid – I wanted for a while to call someone, perhaps Mitchell, to discuss being angry about it, then thought it would be better to simply let it go.

And, in fact, I'd like to let go of a lot of things: I keep thinking and dreaming of things that require some privacy, some quiet, and I'm not best pleased when the outside world invades. (Unless I go out to it, as I keep doing when I go out to cafés to work, or yesterday when I went to the first ever gay pride parade and fair here in Newcastle – which was fun.)

Isolation, a sense that people are irritating, difficult: anger is exhausting, people's needs are exhausting. A sense that I can concentrate on artistic and writerly things, on really thinking, on making and being aware – but I need more space, more time away from people and their needs (and television) than I have tended to have.

Risky, of course: since I complain so much of being alone too much, at this rate I'll become really, seriously, alone – ah well. Perhaps I'll have a clearer head.

***

Later: reading Chroma – one of Jarman's last diaries, which includes the text of Blue – I realize I am enjoying myself hugely. I really love Blue, also, though I've never seen it in (been trapped with other people in) a theater; I suspect I am coming to really like Jarman, and to like at least some of his work, having long disliked the few that I'd seen. This is really wonderful....

... But I still think Syberberg's Parsifal is a chore and a joke. And no, I don't feel like sitting down to watch my two DVDs of it to see if I'm right.

Don't confuse me with facts.

Les nuits fauves

I'll admit it: Savage Nights (Les nuits fauves), Cyril Collard's famous 1992 film about being bisexual, HIV+, and careless – by which I mean: really fucking careless: having sex with someone without telling them – is at least as exasperating as it is impressive. Does that make me a fuddy-duddy?...

Lots of drama about rebellion and being independent... and French quasi-intellectual messing around, complete with cigarettes, fights, threats and existential babbling. But, unlike Gregg Araki's The Living End (same year, similar concerns – and a film I dislike even more than this one), Collard's character isn't too young, dysfunctional and screwed up to know what he's doing. This is an educated young man, talented, capable, comfortable, who just wants to pretend he's not positive – without caring much about anybody else.

I've always been concerned that Foucault, whom I so respect, may have acted a bit like this....

Although I confess, I absolutely love the scene where, when a group of skinheads are attacking an Arab, he cuts his hand and threatens their leader with infection. And they back off – HIV becomes a weapon. And I can go with the ending... though I'm not sure he earns it (at least not – and I know it's cruel of me to say this as he died soon afterwards – not within the film).

But the infection bit... it reminds me of a creepy guy I know in Darlington, obviously wasting (and thus self-evidently with a non-negligible viral load) who justified not telling the many guys he had anonymous sex with that he was positive. Fortunately, he is by far the worst example I've known in twenty-five years; unfortunately, since I laid down the law to him, he no longer even talks to me.

Maybe it's the cheap justifications that repulse me so: if you're lying to yourself and to other people, and they aren't even the same lies, how can you expect...?

Stupid, stupid people.

•••

Later, after a drink: I'll admit, though I still think Collard was narcissistic and manipulative, he did indeed get to me. He's managed to make me feel careful: it's the old trope of Avoiding Life – which also assumes, Latin-style, that Life includes violence, stupid fights, threats, and doing incredibly vile things to other people – but now I wish I had a bit more of that left in me... aargh.

Of course, when I was younger, I was willing to allow awful things to happen to myself: but not to other people, there I drew a heavy black line. Perhaps that's why I ended up alone.

This will pass.

•••

And still later – and perhaps rather obviously: because, for years now, I don't have new experiences, I just revisit old ones by reading old poems, stories, writings; because there is no motion in my emotional life; and because I talk to medical students, in charmingly reasonable terms, about my experiences over the past twenty-five years, but obviously that's not the same as actually having those experiences; therefore going into these films, these songs, these novels, is actually creating new feelings: because even if I have had these ideas before, feelings are obviously not re-felt in the same way that ideas are.

That's the really tough part about doing this work: wading through new feelings, about AIDS....

Jarman

In the midst of watching all these AIDS films, a left turn, sort of: before sitting through Derek Jarman's Blue (I've never actually seen it with the blue screen throughout – which may hardly be necessary – but perhaps it's a good idea to do it), I thought I would see something that didn't require quite so much work: his film based on Britten's War Requiem (1989). I read the screenplay a couple of years ago, around the time that we performed the oratorio here with a mix of students and professionals, but I had never seen the film – this is a fairly okay DVD dubbed from a videotape (only one scene is practically ruined, the scene often shown in stills of the drag whores representing Britannia, which for some reason is completely overexposed).

Strange, messy, crazy: well, avant-garde – but actually seeing the film version of War Requiem is indeed more coherent than reading the screenplay. Perhaps not as many things are explained – although I don't have the screenplay to hand, I remember it is one of those that includes many notes, descripitions, and interpretations, as it's sort of a working document combined with a transcription – but, in actually seeing it, the emotional coherence of scenes is clear. (And it's nice to see a young Sean Bean, and a few startling scenes by Tilda Swinton; and the ending, with unexpectedly simple but overlapping gestures of care and memorial, over the gorgeous music of 'Let us sleep now/In paradisum' – sublime.)

I've always struggled with Jarman, since trying to endure the glacially paced Sebastiane years ago in San Francisco; he is always so chaotically strange – I mean I love the avant-garde, but let's face it, I like my experimentalism neatly and carefully calculated. (I'm never very enthusiastic about live albums or videos, either.) Jarman, on the other hand, is perfectly happy for the screen images to crowd on top of each other, drawn from different sources, different technologies, different patterns – he likes the messiness of them all, perhaps especially in this case, as they contrast with the polished craftmanship of the Britten. And, finally perhaps, I am a bit more in tune with all of that – this would still never be my favorite film, but it certainly is a striking one.

In fact, I have an urge to go see my recently acquired copy of his Wittgenstein – even though it has nothing whatsoever to do with what I'm working on; but it might be wonderful....