I have been quiet for much of 2023, but that doesn’t mean I have been silent. By the end of my Horror Month posts, I was pretty burnt out, and all of my saved drafts seemed irrelevant.
A co-worker once told me that they always listen to what I say because I don’t speak much, and what I do say is thoughtful. Now, I am pretty sure anyone that knows me outside of the workplace knows that this is far from the truth. I will speak on many things, too many things, without any thought. How could I be both?
I’ve always been fascinated by the multitude of selves. It’s only natural to have public and private faces with varying levels of social acceptability. It could be one little tweak in a personality to fit the environment, or something more nefarious. Hiding or highlighting.
Are the other parts of our personality a lie? Probably not. I think most people would say there are no truths except the ones we accept. I like art that tries to capture this dichotomy.
Honestly, these are just musings, there is no conclusion to draw. Honestly, I’m just listening to Lana Del Rey at a coffee shop right now, and I felt like writing something down. Honestly, I need to go to Target because I am out of face moisturizer and razor heads.
Being human is so simple and yet it isn’t — we just have to keep going, keep washing our faces, eating, and working — but the simplicity is what makes it so complicated. Maybe that it is the selves talking to each other?
I have nothing interesting to say, but I would like to keep going, if you don’t mind?
I have not been writing the newsletter, but I have been writing other things. I am 68,000 words into a rough draft. My goal is to end it around 90,000 words, but the last third is taking twice as long as the first two. I just don’t know how to end it.
I had the idea after spending a month talking about horror films. It is about a horror film. Original. I like it, but I am in a bit of rut. Writing is much like running. It is very easy to loose the stamina gained if you don’t continue to train.
Maybe I came back here, the newsletter, to get the muscles moving…
Below is something I wrote, a description of the fictitious director, Polvadore, who I picture as somewhere between John Carpenter and Pedro Almodóvar, a recluse, horror auteur, and Mora, his female lead from the last film he directed. They are reunited years later to work on a sequel:
Polvadore had always shown keen interest in human nature but only when viewed through a lens, or screen, as if he needed the delay of the filtered light to understand others.
Awkwardness is often an assumed requirement for genius. They never worry about how they were perceived except in the very narrow dimensions of their art and only by those who understand. Directors have quirks, mostly the combative kind, in Mora’s experience, but Polvadore was the only true artist she had ever worked for, his vision so singular and material. She saw now that his difficulty at forming relationships was not an act, that he had only been able to overcome the distance through his camera.
Now, she saw a lonely, old man with a dead wife and a career slipping as time loosened its grip.
One of the major themes I’ve thought about often while writing is the interpretation of the self, primarily through film. Mora is an out of work actress and mother who has struggled with her identity for many years, unable to mature past her last film, the slasher made with Polvadore. But I am also curious about how we interpret ourselves when we consume media. How can a film inform our understanding of the world?
I don’t know. It is still raw and unedited, but it is the closest I’ve ever comes to circling a unifying theme. Often my writing has been chopped up scenes that I thought up in the car or while out for a walk. The writing is often an impulsive reaction to a thought, and it recedes once I write it down. This one is lingering.
Maybe this could be something. Maybe it won’t.
But I’m going to Target now.
Bye.
See you next time!