Nothing wants to come out.
I was optimistic about this weekend, about finally feeling ready and excited to write about Vivre sa vie. Everything was in order; the film was loaded in the DVD player, my notes gathered together on my clean sofa, in short, I was ready. And then, not an hour into my groove, I get the call that “MLPP has decided to go with the other candidate.” MLPP stands for Museum Learning and Public Programs, a huge department within the museum under which Film falls alongside dozens of other museum offices. So apparently the entire department, not just film and concerts, didn’t want me to have the position.Nothing can upset your writing enthusiasm like a giant blow to your ego, and needless to say I’ve done “nothing” this weekend. By nothing I mean no words, no writing, and at this point, with my due date less than ten days away, it is written words on the computer screen that count as work. I did manage to get the grunt work done, and I have a much clearer idea of what I want to say, but even as I sit at the last seat available in Starbucks I cannot come up with anything. I’ve recently been recalling a word of advise from Roy that he gave Andra a few weeks ago, which is that she (I) should be doing some writing for fun. So here I am, doing “fun” writing in hopes that it gets me over this last hurdle.
It is rather interesting, though, that as I try to argue that Godard’s use of Karina is an exercise in transference I find myself and everyone around me doing the same thing in their own way. As I note in the intro of my thesis, it’s too bad I can’t use this impulse to create films that will blow the world away, but I guess it’s really more important that one gets passed this practice of avoiding their issues rather than continuing in unhealthy relationships for the sake of their art, especially when one does not have the artistic genius within them. But despite the fact that the ways in which each person goes about “acknowledging, confronting, and releasing” their ghost is as varied as the New England spring weather we’ve experienced this weekend, sometimes people just don’t want to acknowledge in the first place, and I’ve found you can’t force someone to do so no matter how often you yell and scream in their face. Maybe, even, that yelling and screaming produces the opposite of your desired outcome, pushing that person further and further into silence and disavowal. Or maybe I just need therapy.
The good news, I suppose, is that my due date is less than ten days away. It’s strange, perhaps even a bit masochistic at times, but I like knowing that in ten days, whether I like it or not, it will be over, finished, and out of my hands. It just serves as a reminder that this is not the end all, be all, and that, like all things good and bad (though usually bad), this too shall pass. Thankfully I have some good final papers to turn my attention to after this, something fresh and short and, thankfully, about topics, filmmakers, and films that I truly love rather than just like. It’s kind of like coming full circle, first with a paper on Chinatown v. The Long Goodbye. I will never forget the first time I saw Chinatown. Jeffrey Morris, at that time a very new face in Laughlin, was teaching us the basic principles of screenwriting, and it was in this semester, Sophomore year, between Jeffrey and Sabrina's classes, that I turned from production to studies, even if only in my mind.
And then there’s my Bergman paper, which will be very different from all the other papers I’ve done for Warren (except, perhaps, this thesis) in that it will be both personal and essayistic. We are “strongly encouraged” to bring The Magic Lantern, Bergman’s autobiography that affected me so, to our film analysis, and I can’t help but want to talk about religion and faith, the aspect of Bergman that I connect with the most. His father was a strict, Lutheran pastor and it is this religious upbringing that Bergman has struggled with most of his life, an idea of faith that would come to shape his worldview even as he rejected the idea of his father’s God. In The Magic Lantern he writes:
“Twenty years ago, I underwent an operation, a minor one, but I had to be anaesthesized and, due to an error, was given too much anaesthetic. Six hours of my life vanished. I don’t remember any dreams; time ceased to exist, six hours, six micro-seconds – or eternity. The operation was successful. I have struggled all my life with a tormented and joyless relationship with God. Faith and lack of faith, punishment, grace and rejection, all were real to me, all were imperative. My prayers stank of anguish, entreaty, trust, loathing and despair. God spoke, God said nothing. Do not turn from me Thy face. The lost hours of that operation provided me with a calming message. You were born without purpose, you live without meaning, living is its own meaning. When you die, you are extinguished. From being you will be transformed to non-being. A god does not necessarily dwell among out increasingly capricious atoms. This insight has brought with it a certain security that has resolutely eliminated anguish and tumult, though on the other hand I have never denied my second (or first) life, that of the spirit.”
I think I'll just run away to France. Running away to other countries has always proved therapeutic.
Labels: Bergman, crushed spirit, museum bitch, psychoanalysis, Reformed Theology, thesis
posted by Alison @ 2:58 PM
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