The "Bright Star" of Jane Campion

I'm noticing this is a feminist blog. Right on. I just saw the film Bright Star and it has affected me deeply. The script is so well written I would be surprised if it were not nominated for an academy award. The dialogue & intelligence of the writing is understated, brilliant and sublime. The cinematography and scene pacing remind me of Terry Malick, who must be Jane Campion's filmmaking soul mate. At times the film reminded me of the exquisite and underrated "The New World." The soulful use of natural light, the grit & mud of the period, the absolute faith in the beauty of the script to carry the film without the tawdry props that characterize so many American films: there are no tight clothes, ravaged sex scenes or anything even hinting of the sexual. But this is a movie so brimming with sensual passion and the longing of pure love that it rocked my cynical world of therapized views on "relationships."

Sometimes great acting is the result of the actors themselves and sometimes it is the result of great directing. It is obvious that Woody Allen is controlling his actors, but Ms. Campion, as great an auteur that exists today, gives her actors free reign while still allowing her restrained directing to hold immense power. This is a film that cracks open the heart of one whose ever been madly, passionately and purely in love to the point where nothing else mattered. But there is nothing sick or twisted or wrong about this love. It is just love. In this modern society that therapizes human love & sexual relations to the point where if one has feelings like the ones displayed in this film one would be labelled "love addicted" or "co-dependent." How did this happen to us as a society that two young people can be madly in love and we mistrust it as some sort of malady that needs treatment. Maybe I am projecting too much here, because many of the people I know who were loose & cynical about love & sex in their 20's don't feel that this kind of pure and innocent love could ever happen for them. But the great thing about this flick is that it reminds you of the time when your heart was pure and open and you felt this way about someone or something. It may not have even been a person, but the awakening in the heart of passion for anything is a beautiful thing. I saw this film two days ago and have been thinking about it non-stop. And it is not just because it is a wonderful film - probably the greatest on she's even made, the cinematography and mood on par with what the Swedes usually do - but because of the bravery of Jane Campion: in the tough, hip, cynical, show-off world of groovy films made by men, Ms. Campion had made a work of art so visually exquisite, so well written, so willing to touch upon the most vulnerable parts of the heart that I question whether the new Coen brothers film I just saw was truly as good as I'd thought. In risking showing such young vulnerable raw emotion in such a well made film, Jane is not just a great female filmmaker, she is simply a great filmmaker - in league with Terrence Malick, Hal Hartley and Ross McElwee - other auteurs working straight from the heart.

When Things Fall Apart

One of the coolest things about getting older is that things that used to piss me off so much either don't anymore, or I can let them go easier. What I've realized is that my brain has to work so hard to remember things and learn stuff that used to come easy to me, that I am more unwilling to use valuable brain power to obsess over something I'm upset over that is usually none of my business anyway. When I think about when I was in my 20's my mind (& consequently, my life) were like that ball in a pinball machine, just tossed from one place to another without any sort of control over myself. I was highly responsible & competent in work, etc, but my emotional life was a war zone. I was so unaware that my thoughts ran my life that I was consumed with changing everything on the outside in an attempt to have some sort of sanity. I thought it was my job or my boyfriend or my family that was upsetting me, and it has taken me about 20 years of hard work to get to a point where I actually can pause after an "upset" and make a choice about how, or even if, I'll respond. This is miraculous. I don't have this ability in every area, but to have it at all is something I am deeply greatful for - and something I worked very hard for. I did not work for it out of pride or fear of looking bad or external approval - I worked for it because I as in so much fucking pain. And this time instead of treating that pain with my usual tools of self destruction (which had stopped working,) I turned, or was rather forced, onto a new path.

It all stared when I was 27 years old. The beginning of the End that is. I had just moved back from Nebraska, where I'd spent a wild & glorious 3 months living with my friend J____, making plans to earn some money, sell our posessions & cars & then move to Ireland, our big dream. Well, I got cold feet about it & moved back to Austin, & she went ahead with the plan & moved to Ireland. I immediately got hired at my first job at the University, and for the first time I had financial security, health insurance, paid holidays, and & cool audio-visual related job. But deep in my heart I knew I had taken the safe way out...& knowing that J___ had followed her dream while I sat in sheer boredom in a basement audtiorium on campus was starting to get knaw at me. I also was dating a man who was off for 10 weeks vacationing in Ireland & then Paris, and I was insanely jealous. I couldn't just quit my cushy state job! So my dear friend was off pursuing her dream & my boyfreind (who I was completely emotionally dependent on) was off having fun, and I started to fall apart. I started crying. I cried all night, I cried at work, I had to pull over in my car becasue I was crying so hard I couldn't see to drive. I was terrified of this because I'd never experienced it before. I was so unaware that my poor soul was needing to cry a river of tears for the years of damage & abuse I'd done to it, and I'd never experienced being comforted as a child so this vulnerability brought on by the tears made me think I was going to die. Sure I'd cried in histrionics over boys & while drunk or hungover but this was different...this was deep grief like sobbing (and I was terrified of these feelings as I'd had to stuff my feelings while I was growing up) which was cracking through my steel defensive wall I'd built since I was, well since forever I guess. The survival part of me knew I could never "fall apart" because then I might fall into a black hole of utter aloneness. So now my soul decided it was time to take down the wall and what happened was amazing. For days I cried, and everytime I would stop I would breathe a sigh of relief that this was the last time. But I would lay down at night & feel a hot ball of burning something in my gut that was more powerful than anything I could do to stop it start to move up towards my throat and it was forcing the sadness up again. My mind would freak out & scream at this powerful thing & try to force it down and the battle made me crazy until one time, one night I decided to surrender to this terrifying "thing" that was happening to me. I decided I would let it kill me, as this is what I believed giving over to this pain would do to me. I was lying in bed (I don't remember how many nights this went on) and these emotions that I was so afraid of were starting to grip me again (at the time, I didn't see them simply as emotions but as some alien unknown horror trying to take me over) and this time I just let go. I stopped fighting it & decided to surrender to whatever it was. I was certain that I would not live through this, but the fighting & controlling of it was not working. I let the wave wash over me & instead of just crying I was howling like a wild animal who'd just had her baby ripped away from her & murdered in front of her own eyes. I was deeply sobbing and not resisting this time and amazingly enough, something I had never experienced before happened: I felt supported. I felt a presence there with me that was holding me (not physically) and supporting me, and something else even more keenly: it loved me. I felt this in my bones. It was my first experience of feeling truly loved and cared for. And not only that, but I knew I was not alone. The presence started to recede after a few hours but I woke up in the morning a different person. I was transformed. I felt euphoric for the first time without chemicals. And now 22 years later I know that I can surrender, indeed must surrender to these waves that want to pass through me. In the next few postings I will transcribe the journey I made from that fearful time to slightly more centered one I am currently inhabiting.

Crossing the Line

I will be 49 years old this year. My mother always told me it was awful to get older as a woman but I've just been having an awesome time, and it appears to be getting awesomer as the months go by. I notice I look my age when I'm feeling off kilter mentally, but usually I'm either preparing for/looking forward to/ or doing something exciting so that I beam with a sort of glow that softens my chicken-y skinned neck and makes me look early forties rather than late maybe - and most the time I don't even think about this kind of crap but I'm starting to notice that I look old in a lot of photos & it's kind of startled me. I come from a genetically blessed family - very little gray hair, strong lean bodies until death, and youthful looking faces. I have always thought I'd feel sexy forever but in the last year or so I've noticed that a line has been crossed - one that I have sort of read about but ignored, thinking it is way too far off for me, but it is right here. Now. I am middle aged. But at the same time feeling more rascally & mischevious each day. I feel I am without a map to navigate my middle years because I am in an small demographic: single, childfree, nomadic lifestyle, utterly non-domestic. I am not going to be the respectable middle aged woman whose a bit plump & wears Eileen Fishher tasteful clothing. I don't want to do the full on scraggly hippy thing, so I think I am going to have to create my own look. I may have to cut my hair short - not because it's more flattering, but because it might be more edgy. If I keep the RPGs I will have to construct a look around them, and that will involve creativity as these glasses are unforgiving on a sagging face. I feel safe about my body as I feel certain I will stay under 130 pounds and an ok shape as long as I keep up my moderately physical lifestyle. I tried blonde hair last year. People said it looked nice, but I was always uncomfortable with it. It was so boring & just didn't feel like "me." I just wanted something different & let a hairdresser talk me into something that was too conventional looking. I even went & spent $200 more dollars making it more blonde, and it depressed me even more. I didn't notice if men looked at me more -I think they don't really look at 50 year old women that much, no matter what color their hair is. I also don't want to fall into the trap I see women my age doing: trying to look 30 forever...staying super skinny, botox, college girl clothing. It will eventually look like just what is is: buying into the incredibly deep & sick programming this country supports by making women over 40 invisible through advertising & media. We are no longer sex object so we are to be ignored. My only option is to be myself. This has always worked in past, but every once in a while I think I need an updating. I get lots of comments about how I could make myself more "feminine" or more "pretty" or how if I got rid of these giant glasses I always wear that people could see my eyes. I admit my fashion & dress stems from my punk rock days in college, and the fact that I have never spent more than 3 minutes on grooming before I leave the house (sometimes I even see a crumb of last nights dinner on my face after I get to work). I have never felt so good or empowered as when I was in black army boots & old jeans & a black t-shirt. I have always had dyed hair - I don't like natural hair - it just seems to boring. I guess I'll continue to dress the way I always have & not have a glowing transformation into cronehood. I still absolutely adore black clunky soled boots, and have always felt embarrased in girl footwear. I don't own a thong, and my swimwear is guys trunks. Some of my fashion choices are based in feminism, but mostly I like that comfortable swagger of loose jeans & boots, and the relaxed feel of not wearing tight clothes or having to feel like I have to show off my figure, which isn't great anymore. If I continue to have a cool lifestyle, I can probably get away with the slacker appearance I have always had. It feels like a shallow thing to be contemplating in such depth, but actually it feels quite like it could be a great feminist act: refusing to follow convention. I hope I can resist the plastic surgery that is so obvious to me on some of my 60 year old friends. I will probably always dress like a college student, and my hair is just always going to be unstyled. I stopped dying it red & now have it a sort of reddish brown color that looks very natural, which I never thought I'd like, but do acutally. I owe it to other women my age to take risks in fashion. I owe it to myself to fight against the media machine that says a middle aged woman has to hide in billowy clothing and clunky jewelry. I have my fashion heroes: Annie Liebovitz, Gloria Stienem, Patty Smith. Annie actually looks like she's just rolled out of bed most of the time.

I remember when I was in a yoga class where an attractive man entered. For the first time I was looked over as if I wasn't there. He spent the class looking at the younger girls in tight clothes. I always wear a baggy t-shirt & sweatpants to yoga so I'm not helping myself if I want attention. I'll always have my writing, my art, my love of my life, my memories. Such great memories. But every once in a while that girly part of me screams for attention...she wants to parade around like she's 19. What's funny is I like who I am so much more now - when I was 19 and gorgeous, I didn't give a rat's ass about it!