homo erotiques: realism re-visited

tonight i watched and appreciated le beau serge. but as i watched, i craved more tortured male romance. i loved françois. i loved beautiful, troubled serge. they loved each other. and theirs was a tortured relationship. erotically so. despite the absence of a kiss scene.

i found myself editing it as i watched. i think i need to make a new version. it will be set in regional australia, and be more of a love story between françois and serge. i mean, it's already a love story, but it needs a bit of a make-over.

my version is set in a small farming town. there was enough sexual chemistry between them, so i'd leave that as is. and i'd leave the snow - that's too beautiful and important to remove for the sake of realism. i will de-real its realism; it will snow in regional queensland. the dramatic music will be exactly the same. it will jar (as it does here, but more so, because it's 2010). they would still be called françois and serge, despite their australian accents.

main scenes that need altering:

when serge has dirt on the seat of his pants, françois, while they have that chat, will say 'turn around' and lightly pat the dirt off his butt. this fits with their other scenes of touching each other.

when françois bonds with yvonne, and she says 'this one feels different', he will also put his hand to her pregnant belly. doing so, they will look each other in the eye. a moment of transference.

in the dance scene, amongst the female-male and female-female dancers, when françois and serge are standing amidst them and talking, they will in fact be dancing. not necessarily homoerotic, but it would just make sense. another scene of touching. and some eye to eye moments. okay, it would be erotic.

at some point, towards the end, marie would have a monologue. she deserves one. she needs to say something so she doesn't just become the immoral slut archetype.

i could write more on the final scene, but i won't, so as not to spoil. but i would like to add a teardrop to someone's face.

pablo and the utterance

tomorrow i'm heading west. six hours on a train. i just did the math and that's 6 hours without coffee! so i bought some choc-coated beans in my travels, between pool and desk. hopefully that will suffice.

i booked the train yesterday and keep forgetting that it's tomorrow. this feels unlike the me of late. i've not been so motivated and tend to pike on most outings. unmotivated and unproductive. and uncertain about continuing my phd. today i saw the uni counselor. it was my first counseling session ever. an event. one i wasn't going to write about here, but umm...

i went for at least 2 reasons. the first was strategic: i wanted to record something of what i'm feeling at the moment in an official way. i feel somewhat harassed and unloved by my 'school', so i wanted to register this. and if my school wants to initiate stuff (like my review panel), then maybe i've got a piece of paper to say 'back the fuck off.' the second reason: i want to stop whining so much to friends and people around me. they've got their own shit to deal with and lately my conversations have been one-sided. not that i won't continue to whine, but it'll be good to try and disburse that whining. and maybe the counselor can help me get through this. i guess that's a third reason, but one imbued with cynicism.

i fill out a survey, i do some reading in the waiting room, and then He comes to get me, shakes my hand, takes me to His chamber.

i was told i have depression. at least that's what my survey results suggested. He did paraphrase it nicely with 'according to your survey you have severe depression.' ouch. really? no way! that's what the survey says anyway, which is what i said. and so here i am in a confessional zone. but i'm still cynical, so it's okay. and i'm not really here, for real, but as a tourist. i've read foucault, i know how it goes, etc. but regardless, those words caused some sort of ripple sensation. conscious of reason #1 for being here, i felt that actually, this is good. 'severe' is good. take that director, supervisor, and panel chair! you've been hammering away at a severely depressed individual. how horrible you must be. no wonder the 'school' is turning to shit. ha! but for other reasons, i wasn't so happy about the utterance.

it was conversational, i was lucid, i talked about my other coping strategies - swimming, writing, though i neglected to mention knitting. we figured out that things are better when i have a routine going. that's when i eat better, sleep better, get more exercise. and i guess i'm more phd-productive too. so this is something to continue. i already knew this, but it was a good reminder. i wasn't given any tasks (i expected tasks), but He did talk about how i need to ask more of my supervisors, requesting what i need from them. i need to ask for positive feedback. He said that most supervisors aren't good at this, but since they're getting 'buckets of money' we students need to make sure we get what we need. i liked the image of SV getting handed buckets of money. i like the thought of getting what i need.

He thinks we should meet again. so do i. He gave me things to read. He said they might be of use, that there's probably one sentence in there that's useful. i like His approach - He either senses my cynicism or shares it.

so that was it. we shall meet again and talk some more in a few weeks time. He will sit before me and write more things behind his manilla folder. and i'll wish that He was my supervisor.

my swim was good. i lost count on my second or third lap. i tried to make myself not count laps (this should be about enjoyment), but i did. i pushed myself hard, early. it was great and severe, just like my depression. why do things in halves?

and i write everything but a thesis. but that's okay. maybe now i have an excuse. or a lever with which to ease my guilt.

the joy of quitting

i'm on the verge of quitting the phd. well, 'suspending' it indefinitely. quitting comes later perhaps.

i've had some nice times over the last few days, forgetting the looming phd cloud. but it always returns and brings feelings of guilt (for not working) and failure (for not being able to do this). it's the abusive partner that i can't shake, because some days, when i look at her, i think 'she's not so bad. we could make this work. it's me, not her. i need to work harder on this...'

yesterday i learnt to knit. last night (whilst knitting) jessie and i spoke about playing tennis today. the smiths were in the background. at that moment i considered a life of knitting, playing tennis, and listening to the smiths. a perfect life. a fantasy, but maybe it's possible. and maybe it comes back to my happiness and ways to find it once again.

though i'm not always unhappy. as mentioned, i sometimes forget my thesis and then i can be happy. i can even meet someone (as i did last week) with whom to start something (not yet sure what that thing is). but when the cloud re-emerges, so does my paralysis, of not knowing what to do.

everyone tells me to keep going, to not give up, to persist. why is nobody telling me their stories of quitting and it being the best thing ever? because surely i'd be happier. and surely that's more important than this. but 'this' has come to represent my future career prospects, my entry into academia, a place where many of these other people reside. many advisers are also doing their phds, so maybe their 'don't quit' advice is tinged by their own desire to keep going, and their thinking that quitting cannot be an option. but it is, for me. it's a very real option, and i feel its joyous pinch. and i think about the novels i can read, the writing i can do, the relaxation that might become available to me. i think of working for money (not love - ie. proving myself as a potential researcher/academic). i think of weekends that are really weekends. all this is immense and wonderful. i think of reading kristeva, foucault, irigaray, lyotard, etc, because i want to lose myself in the rhythm of their words, not because i need to know them, pilfer what i can, and prove myself.

these days

3 things that occupy me today:

1) this song by nico and everything it stirred in me when i listened to it on the bus.



2) christophe honoré's film making plans for léna (aka non ma fille, tu n'iras pas danser). i watched it last night, in a dark and not so crowded cinema (norton st) where it screens as part of the french film festival. last week i re-watched dans paris, so this was a fitting follow up. and again, so much to think about. this is family drama, but it hovers somewhere between realism, comedy, philosophical statement, and cinema nouvelle vague. it's not easy to summarise these characters. a halfway summary might be: erratic, emotional, impulsive, beautiful, lost. so of course, i wept and laughed and totally submitted myself to its uneven narrative.



i think this is why i love it (and other honoré films). there's no sense of grand narrative, there's no obvious motives of audience pleasing or appealing to the narrative structure that most audiences expect. it's just an experience that you either submit to or not. reading online reviews, it seems that many do not. the more i watch such films, the less i'm able to watch most american & australian films. which is a good thing, non?

3) lyotard and dissension. but more on that later

tired of being sleepless

it's dark, late, very late, and i'm here. can't sleep.

things are a bit scrambled. another blow to my confidence came with a supervisor email on a sunday afternoon. and then another. and i'm left wondering if i should run and hide or pick myself up and get ready for the next blow. two years in and the blows are harder and more frequent. am i that bad? am i that difficult to work with? how do i not take this personally? how do they not expect me to take it personally? what the fuck is happening here? i would like to enjoy my life. this is really fucked.

and maybe i do it to myself. and maybe i make it harder than it should be. and maybe i deserve it all because i'm just not that good.

i need to get beyond this.

but at this point it's like i'm having to decide between two paths, none of which i want to take. the first will see me fighting and dodging and weaving and clamouring to the finish post. at which point i can't be guaranteed that i'll be standing upright. i'll have made it, but i'll probably be bitter and angry and scarred. maybe i'll be so miserable that all the good things in my life will dissolve.

the second path is called retreat and involves a white flag. it's me, walking away, failed. it's me trying to find a real job or something that i can tolerate doing that doesn't destroy me in other ways.

but maybe there's a third way, a new path. in talking through some of this today it started to look possible. i guess i just need a few days of dusting myself off.

it's horrible finding yourself looking back and regretting most decisions that you ever made, reaching the conclusion that you're not who/where/how you think you should be right now. today was one of those days.

avant la haine, avant les coups

i stayed in tonight, ate dumplings, ate cheese, drank beer, and watched Dans Paris. a beautiful film that explores sadness like no other. a topic i've been writing and thinking about. the story of a broken and fucked up family, sadness featuring on several levels. yet, there's also a careful thread of tenderness between each of the characters. kissing, embraces, hands on faces, arms around bodies. and these are the moments where this film soars for me. there's a language to their bodily interactions, with less need for characters to form words around their love for each other.

in one scene, paul tells his brother's friend about his theory of sadness - that it's something we all carry from birth, and it can't be taken out of us, and some carry more than others. he says that while people always try to help you cope with your sadness, they can't. because only the person who has the sadness in them can look after it.

whose problem am i?

i suspect that i always find resonance in song lyrics because i'm always looking to validate and clarify the way i feel. the lyrics find me and take hold and i sink my teeth around them. i participate in a re-writing of self through words penned elsewhere. re-writing the song that sings to me. it becomes my own and it plays real (and) loud.

i still carry a mist of being 'broken up'. i've said much about this situation but nothing as vivid as this song. whose problem am i if i'm not his?

the post-battle blues. the knowing that you're better off now but being disgruntled with having to focus more squarely on your self. nobody's problem but my own. and now, a realisation that this 'adjusting' is some sort of re-responsibilisation. learning not to always blame the other person is easier when there is no other person.

life was pronounced extinct

last night i took some self-portraits. when i uploaded the photos i deleted most of them, as is usual. but a few of them i liked. looking at them gave me the impression of change. as though maybe i'm an adult now. it was a nice moment.

preceding this was a night of facebook spying on people i used to know, mostly those i went to school with. it became a household venture and we compared notes on long gone acquaintances. strangely, a lot of people i went to school with are fans of hey hey it's saturday. i remember watching it in early high-school and being quite into it then. but that was 1987!

i wonder if staying where you grew up, settling down with someone from school, and having a truckload of kids means that not a lot changes from 1987 until now. well, obviously having kids is a change, but yeah, i just can't imagine.

many of them have their kids as their profile picture. and one person's 'about me' section only gave details of who she was married to and her kids names and ages. fuck!

must admit, there was a smug satisfaction in seeing that people hadn't changed, that people were burdened with kids and ugliness. guess i still resent my high-school. i feel a sense of achievement in transcending that place, those values, the hopelessness of it all. though maybe i haven't transcended it at all, because there i was, last night, looking back.

and maybe this is what changed my visage in those photos, or my reading of those photos. regardless, i like being an adult. so i hope the feeling stays.

and returning to the theme of death, i was earlier reading about a british tv guy whose life was pronounced extinct. so says a scotland yard spokesperson. i stumbled over this expression and can't stop thinking about it. it's both horrible (official, cold, blankfaced) and poetic. a phrase that arrested me, in reading about this man i'd never heard of.