21 December 2021

 

My Jim obsession



When I was at Bard it was my first exposure to the American culture. But we were up in the mountains and I started there in the dead of winter, short of two weeks after I finished high school in the Netherlands. I was seventeen 


The snow was piled so high that you could not see out the windows in the commons where everyone went for meals. It was a strange place made up of international students, children of wealth or of whose parents were famous movie stars or somehow connected. 


I guess the only connection I had for even being there was for their theatre department as at the time their literary department was buried under the drunken minds of professors there of antiquity. I dropped my duel major because of that, but then—even the other department —theatre—was a huge disappointment 


but what I managed to get out of it were observations of people 


The film professor I had was pretentious as well as self impressed. He looked like he needed a good dip in a flea bath.  We would meet in this ancient building that was set up like a cinema. Seating in those uncomfortable pull-down seats with wood that jabbed your ass bones for two and a half hours. And it was freezing in there. But my first views of Cocteau came from those sessions. The shock of Avant-gard in film style 


I liked the crudeness of the cinema and the old projector 


The class was about fifty students and seemed to fill the theatre 


But there was this one odd guy in my class that stood out to me because —I guess he looked in a vague kind of way, like me —if I were male, had brown hair and was tall; that is, he dressed like me (boots, ponchos, hats), wore his hair like me (shoulder length and long bangs to the side) and sat far in the back hiding in the shadows like me. Back then I was searching for characters for the film I was constantly working on, Bard provided an interesting variety of odd character influences. But this guy—his name was Sean—so even his name was close to mine and I found out his birthday was a day or two near mine. I was not infatuated, more fascinated. As I liked to explore details for my characters, I found out, by chance, things about him from friends who knew him; he was shy and introverted; preferred being alone and …..was obsessed with Jim Morrison 


As I grew up in the Netherlands, I didn’t know about too many American bands or the culture going on. 


So this is how I discovered Jim Morrison. Sean was a film major like me and, as it turned out, so had been Jim Morrison. I happened upon Jim Morrison’s poetry soon after reading No One Here Gets Out Alive—which is what saved me from killing myself after my rape and —surviving my out of body death experience— at school and so, you see….once reading Jim Morrison’s words— I was changed forever. If anyone was like a mirror, it was Jim. The Oedipal I recognized right away and his methods of hiding his secrets with Socratic riddles 


a deeply philosophical and literary intellectual who used a persona as his soapbox 




 il semble donc que vous ayez disparu:( 

….. et je me demande ce que ça veut dire

mais alors….  n'as-tu jamais été là ????

  Je crains que tu me manques assez 

18 December 2021

here lies a poet. 

I can’t keep it up for much longer. what do I mean by that? it’s nothing deep; I’m just so exhausted and —so will I evaporate now…. ? it’s the first time I don’t care, without the pathos, truly 

but who was she before, 

you know? 

she never was. 

no, she never was, not ever. but on one side you have the world as it is now and then on the other, well….still, what to call it?identity; purpose; messenger ….misfit, maverick, maniac 

I am a master of reinvention so ….

who knows 

14 December 2021

some silences are more deafening than others

why the rush now—? ….well, it is something about necessity and timing; but as things turned out, I never got to proofread before she sent it. some things I’m not happy about; some missing dialogue and bad transitions, and worst of all, and rather quite important; a lot of missed details in the intro; some necessary archetype-like images of the dictionary never made it from my notes…. but dictionary, we will never say about what bombs were falling when I was writing it ….if they only knew …..such as, right now, I am in the middle of a Doctor Zhivago lifenovel….and trying not to let it show 

So, the draft; a very rough diamond in the rough; maybe it requires much more chipping but so burnt on what I cannot write here about…. well, how final is a final draft? flies in the ointment smear clarity; bad first impression/anyway

….these are the worst days, so absolutely out of battery is it just out of habit I cling? as it is mission, it is also lifeline; now such a threadbare rope…. 

13 December 2021

12 December 2021

 ja*

that damn witching hour

 

I could be Louise in the car sailing to my doom with Thelma as I write this from my phone 

but no, I am alone and contemplating that thought 

I know there is a flow between my “live work journey” as I alter it into drama as a living allegory; some is real, some isn’t but every detail has a point

So maybe what is happening now …. I should —turn it over to the dictionary for ….guidance because it guides in other ways as it maps the story —what about in real life?

well, darling…. it just always goes this way, doesn’t it? while I will not say, as is my way 

and instead use my drama and fiction….my symbols? my mythology? to say ….only I can’t —not now, no, I wish I could but I know one day if I make it out, that is; so camouflage —I mean, it is always something like this and now it is this and something else which is the cause of what is hampering the whole purpose of my life…. the project. It would be one thing if this was a new situation but no, it’s the same one that keeps happening ….Shit, Electra…. what to do…. And, if anything —it has allowed me —let me ….hit pause to think about my original purpose and intention; and why give that up….

it is the fragility of the artist ….I don’t think people quite understand 

if they are not also this way ….why does the individual turn to an altered place to think in; no—to BE in —the writer, the visual artist, the performing artist, musician, animator —any creator who works in another “realm”

it is —I suppose, a way to subjugate emotions or filter them through a kind of altered tonal landscape ….because it is safe

for some. I mean. Anyway. because it allows a release, it is a freedom to pretend it is not you at all …. it is not you at all

it is…. 

we paint a pretty screen

—it is you*

that is a form of intellectualizing those terrifying shadowy corners of mortal existence; this agonizing experience we live…. we think and feel and talk about what they gloss over and completely miss 

those people don’t live in this world and their world is filled with smog and pollution

I can’t live in their world.disasters everywhere, but there’s one that nobody can see; quietly, rupturing and burning; silently, and ….still people walk over them; they are just road kill to them. so tired of the people who prey upon —those; when they could have chosen not to