Mapa hacia las estrellas de David Cronenberg

Toda psicoterapia que muestre rasgos psicoanalíticos nos ofrece una temporalidad en la que el pasado intrusiona de manera intermitente el presente, redirigiéndolo hacia una narrativa mitológica que enuncia en clave trágica su eterna repetición. Esto es, el paciente debe enfrentarse a (ponerse en frente de) su pasado y resolver el misterio de su propio trauma invocándolo hacia el presente. Debe viajar en el tiempo para sustituir el yo de antes, que de alguna manera falló en vivir su presente, por el yo de ahora, supuestamente más sabio y capaz. El trauma no cesa de regresar al futuro, el mismo pavor reconfigurándose en nuevas situaciones. El proceso de la terapia es una historia de fantasmas: el fantasma y el trauma funcionan igual, mediante proyecciones: apariciones en la noche de la incomprensión de lo sucedido. El fantasma siempre reclama algo a los vivos, de ahí la narrativa común de necesitar la ayuda de un vivo -el yo presente- para resolver un asunto pendiente.

Aunque el terapeuta, Stafford, sea un gurú new age amante de mantras y fórmulas, y aunque la paciente, Havana,  sea una actriz narcisista y consentida enfrentándose a la mediana edad, nos encontramos ante un relato victoriano en el que remordimiento, rencor y dolor deben figurarse, hacerse figuras.Ya sea en fuerzas naturales que resuenan como símbolos, ya sea en los ecos constantes que asolan el castillo de la familia: la hija que debe simultáneamente escapar de y convertirse en la madre, la pareja de hermanos transformada en su reverso (el del matrimonio), y en el acorde más victoriano de todos: el repudiado, ya sea el hermano deforme encerrado en el sótano o la esposa loca recluida en el ático -el personaje (¿protagonista?) de la heroína Agatha es una tristísima y preciosa combinación de ellos.

Maps to the Stars es una película de horror y un drama familiar, además de una reflexión metacinemática sobre el mundo de Hollywood. También es una muy cómica (por extremadamente realista) sátira de una determinada clase social (productora de entretenimiento de consumo) y sus muchas enfermades, a las que todos quedamos expuestos a través de la cultura de masas. Quizás el momento que capta mejor nuestro zeitgeist (aunque se pueda decir esto casi de cada escena en la película) sea Havana practicando la posición de loto mientras aúlla de dolor.

Meshes of the Afternoon

"One of the few films that I remember fondly [laughs] is Meshes of the Afternoon and I saw it when I was sixteen, so thirteen years ago, and I saw it in school, and it really affected me, strongly. As I remember the plot is pretty cyclical and I’m sure my memory of it will be even more convoluted [laughs]. Am... there is this woman walking down the street in LA, it’s in black and white, and it feels immediately drugged or dreamlike, and... there are these stark shadows. Maybe some flowers in a gate, she goes into a house, it’s maybe her friend’s house, it’s not her house, and takes a nap and then what follows is a dream, but not quite a dream of... there is this malevolent kind of male figure, creeping in the corners, and doubles her... and then certain objects that, I can’t remember what, if they had any significance or role but they are early distinct; there is like a knife, a key, a loaf of bread, kind of like violent domesticity, and... maybe more flowers and maybe they are still outside. At some point the male figure appears to be this figure in a cloak with a mirror face, it was terrifying, to me [laughs]. But then other times I think it’s a, I can’t remember if we can actually see his face or not, but I think I remember that it was actually her husband or her lover that played him, and then they made the film together. Am, there is a scene where she is sitting at the table with herself, and... I believe she awakens, and then she’s still in the dream or realizes the dream is not real. Am... there is a death. She is killed, I read it as a suicide, at the time, she is looking at herself and, I can’t remember how it ends at all. 

Pulp Fiction

"So... am... the movie that I am, that I’ve always really loved and that I kind of can’t get over how entertaining and sort of just like infinitely visually rich for me is Pulp Fiction. I saw Pulp Fiction with my dad on cable tv in Colombia when I was fourteen, which was about a year after it had come out. I think at the time I didn’t go... I was too young to see it in the theater, because it was so violent, but my dad and I watched it together and we just really really loved it. Am, the beginning,I remember, well I have the soundtrack and the soundtrack has like a lot of the dialog in it and the dialog is really like clever and funny, and the, I love the opening scene because the opening scene really misdirects you about what the movie is going to be about. At first, there is Pumpkin and Honey Bunny and they’re robbing a diner. So you think, when you don’t have any information about the movie, you think that the movie is going to be about two robbers, am, like two, like Bonny and Clyde kind of people, but then, it kind of is, is totally about like, all these other people, and all these other kind of shady people in the LA underworld. And then, I actually, like I really don’t remember, I don’t remember the fragments of the movie in order at all, I just remember parts that I really love, because every unit of the movie is really visually striking in its own way, and, so like the,the all the scenes between Mia Wallace and Vincent Vega are just like so kind of weird and romantic and incredible, and I think like, when I saw it I was fourteen, and I just like found Mia Wallace to be like my model of femininity. I thought she was like so... glamorous, and beautiful, and cool, and I love how she talks to Vincent Vega, and how she kind of like punks him out all the time, and, he thinks he’s like this kind of tough (hiff?) man but he ends up being totally intimidated by this mobster’s wife. Am, I love when they go into the diner and they do the twist, they dance to Chuck Berry’s “Jack Rabbit Slims”, or no, they da- they dance to Chuck Berry’s song at “Jack Rabbit Slims”. The lyrics to that song are incredible, “it was a teenage wedding and the old folks wished them well... you could tell that monsieur really loved the mademoiselle, am, something something rang the chapel bell...” Ah.... I forget the lyrics, but it’s a totally narrative song, which is really amazing because it’s like, the Chuck Berry song becomes a narrative within a narrative within a narrative, and it’s totally superimposed into these people that don’t have any kind of familial relationships, so it’s just like, it’s totally disorienting and bizarre but also really like nostalgic and kind of funny and ironized and I just like love, that whole part of the movie, where, then like Vincent Vega  takes Mia Wallace home and she tells him about how she was in a trailer for a... for a Charlie’s Angels style show, called, “Fox Five” or “Fox Fire”, and like she says that she told the joke and she resists telling him the joke and then she says: what did... what did mama tomato, or what did papa tomato tell baby tomato when he’s squashed and, and she says “ketchup,” and she is so sexy when she says that... So she looks at him so meaningfully and then she goes, am, into the apartment and has the drug overdose, but it’s like, it’s really incredibly like, I’ve, a drug overdose is like really, you know, an incredibly like, ugly, and scary thing, but the way like, the way that it gets stylized is like amazing, and the way it’s sexualized, it’s just like, it’s just like this moment of total ecstasy, and the, the Urge Overkill song is like: “Girl... pum pum pum pum-pum, you’ll be a woman... soon”, and it’s like, the camera angle, and her dancing, I think it’s like the most beautiful scene of a woman dancing that I’ve ever seen on film, and it’s like, I don’t know, for me it’s just like... it has nothing... it has very little to do with like cultural context or anything, it’s, it’s like the beauty of this, like, they create this totally rapturous ecstatic environment and like, just like her, she moves with so much grace, but also with this kind of sense of irony, and... So, that’s like my favorite scene from the movie ever, and just for that reason alone I’ll never be able to get that movie out of my head. Am, and, what else, I really... the scenes between John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson are really amazing, am, they’re really funny,  and like ah... this is more towards the beginning, this is definitely like before, Mia Wallace has the overdose, but,am, when they’re talking about what they call Big Macs in France, that’s really really great, and, um, yeah, the dialogues are like really... really hilarious. Am, but, there is like this certain point after Mia Wallace overdoses, where the latter half of the movie is just like all blood baths, and all of a sudden everything is, like this kind of intense stylized bloody violence, and I had never, what struck me was that, I think that like, in a certain way Tarantino was a kind of sentimental education in violence for me, I always was taught that visual violence was bad, and that I didn’t like it, and then all of a sudden I find myself like really really enjoying that kind of stylized visual violence, and learning to love like the choreography of violence,like when they accidentally shoot the guy in the face in the back of the car, and all of a sudden the back seat of the car is completely splattered with blood, it’s just like, it’s so satisfying and it’s so visceral. Am, yeah, I’m trying to, I’m trying to think what else, oh, and you know, there is just the whole matter that it’s a very circular movie and, I mean now, that kind of narrative is really common and so we don’t feel the originality of it that much, but, of course, a lot of it is stolen from Godard,and it’s very, it’s very much patterned after movies like Weekend, but the way he appropriates that makes it feel so fresh and makes it feel like, like a real tecni- like a real way of disrupting narrative conventions that felt like, really satisfying as the viewer that seemed to suggest that like but disrupting narrative conventions you’re [recording stops here.]

Suicide notes

Single female, 21
My dearest Andrew,
It seems as if I have been spending all my life apologizing to you for things that happened whether they were my fault or not.
I am enclosing your pin because I want you to think of what you took from me every time you see it.
I don't want you to think I would kill myself over you because you're not worth any emotion at all. It is what you cost me that hurts and nothing can replace it.

Married male, 45
My darling,
May her guts rot in hell -I loved her so much.
Henry

Divorced female, 61
You cops will want to know why I did it, well, just let us say that I lived 61 years too many. People have always put obstacles in my way. One of the great ones is leaving this world when you want to and have nothing to live for.
I am not insane. My mind was never more clear. It has been a long day. The motor got so hot it would not run so I just had to sit here and wait. The breaks were against me to the last. The sun is leaving the hill now so hope nothing else happens.

Single male, 13
I know what I am doing. Annette found out. Ask Cara. I love you all.
Bill

Busted

Winter Trees

West Virginia.

Ubi sunt

tijeretazo totedumbre
de impervia ajurazón
fulmíname
Tatarde tarde tarde más nunca
que tarde nunca más tarde
El desgajo abromunal
en ríos coronarios
negrumbre. Negrumbría, negrumbría
pero negrumbre.
Y naná. Sotenado que mancará
mi yambe, mi yambe tuya, naná.
Permeazca suligo, suligo hasta
las nádenas, suligo hasta
sorir. Permeazca, llorígame
contigo y sulubros catén.
Dónde, dónde mulias, dónde tus
lartas, dónde me aligas, desde
dónde exatás. Pormágrimas
te coleo, introempre, introempre
nosotras las.

Es la primera vez que no hay consuelo. No se entiende, no. ¿A dónde van los patos cuando se hiela el lago? ¿Cómo se diferencia lo recordado de lo inventado tras la pérdida? ¿Nos volveremos a ver? El punzón de que no está, no está, no está, pero eso será que no está aquí, pero en otra parte tiene que estar. No se entiende. Va por días: incredulidad, miedo, rabia, dolor, añoranza y vuelta a empezar. Hoy es el último resto de mi primera vida.

stagnant, contemplation

Serendipity Icicles, by Philip Maier

inabarcable: que no tiene barcos

Oceanic Feeling, Paul Klee.

Me voy a la playa. Echo de menos el mar; el mar es para mí un extraño nudo contemplativo entre el pasado y el futuro. El pasado porque el mar significa veraneos, cúspide de la monotonía de la niñez, medida del tiempo repetido. Futuro porque entonces, al mirar al mar, sentía que la vida era inacabable e infinita, que todo lo mejor estaba por llegar. Mi versión esperanzada del sentimiento oceánico de Freud, de lo que viene, abundante e incontenible, antes del ego.

"The right hand = the hand that is aggressive, the hand that masturbates. Therefore, to prefer the left hand! ... To romanticize it, to sentimentalize it!"
"Buster Keaton: Candide with a frontal lobotomy."
"Sensibility is humus for the intellect.
There's no syntax for sensibility -hence, it's ignored."
"A sense of the inevitability of a style -the sense that the artist had no alternatives, so wholly centered is he   in his style."
"The greatest art is secreted, not constructed."

-Susan Sontag

Today I got the second volume of Susan Sontag's journals, As Consciousness Is Harnessed to Flesh, for which I've been waiting for a year. A sense of violation, the excitement of trespassing. But, most importantly, a process of alignment, a tuning of myself according to her. Periodically, we all get out of tune: from where to feel? Then I go back to her.