The question is not "to be or not to be" but "okay..... I be, but how do I get through all these slings and arrows?" And you do through your writing. This piece is so beautiful and funny and vulnerable and dear. Sometimes I have no idea what you're writing about, but sometimes I totally get it.
Reading this reminded me of a close friend I had in sixth grade (?) Tony G. His family was from Mexico, he was first generation, I was oblivious to immigration back then... we hung out a lot and I remember someone ... I can’t recall who, but it was a girl, asking if we were gay... it was my first time where that was even a possibility because doesn’t everyone have friends they ride bikes with, steal tacos from the Taco John’s across the street with, watch tv with... hang with? No? Just girls? Yeah... his whole family moved away from their house one day... just... gone, no goodbye from him, nothing... we were so close and yet... I often wonder what happened to him... I see him laughing in my minds eye, followed by a far-off stare... it plays over and over like that, like a gif.
Maybe. It’s been 50+ years and the details are missing, but his face and ... shoes of all things, platform shoes were in... odd stuff... I’ve tried to write it for years; I’m not sure what the narrative is. Male friendship? Not sure if you follow Liz Plank on here, but she’s got me thinking a lot about this... maybe... someday...
Dear Brandon, I don't always read your newsletter, just due to too much to read in my life, etc. But, I did read this one, and I was impelled to reach out. Your words are raw, your feelings right there, and I felt for you, and I wanted to say, You are valuable and loved. I love your analysis of the films, and I will see "Close" -- thank you. When you wrote, "We talked about the messy implications of turning life into art," tears came, but I think they'd been building for a while, since you described the weird feeling you have of alienation in your own life. I just want to remind you, Don't believe everything you think. The mind is tricky. Maybe now is the time to focus on the breath, the miracle of the breath, of being breathed by the life force. Hang in there. I know more than the average Joe about depression--it's a beast. Just know, this too will pass. I love your words, your writing, your mind. Thank you for putting yourself out there. It's immeasurably helpful.
Your newsletters make me think and sometimes I agree the fuck out of them and sometimes I disagree so strongly I'll spend a whole day mounting a counter-argument in my head. And I love it! Your writing lights up my brain, even and maybe especially when I don't agree (or, more often, agree on a slant).
Then every so often though, you post something like this and it makes me want to hold your hand. Not in a weird way. Just like. I feel overwhelmed with tenderness for you, this other person feeling through the world. It's not easy. You are lovable and I'm sorry you feel so alone.
I'm slowly absorbing this, thinking of one of my own brothers who has become unreachable, the existential ache I too am feeling lately, the desire to feel loveable. Now I'm sinking into melancholy.
“I feel somehow that American cinema has ceased to portray people who read or look at paintings or know about music, any kind of music.” This sees what I couldn’t see.
“ that clench-release fast brightness of betrayal.” Yes, that’s the exact feeling, described exquisitely. It’s an exquisitely awful feeling. I know it well — I think it comes quite naturally and often to children like I was (I resist speaking for you) who have experienced deep betrayal and humiliation in their early relationships with adults. I think it’s why I need to tell people about it so they know where the emotional land mines are.
Anyway, thank you for saying it so beautifully and making all those times it happened to me more beautiful in retrospect for a lovely way of describing it. I mean it.
Also, I love the Roxy for films. I used to book myself a room for a night now and then at the Roxy when I needed to hide during a year of deep bereavement. A friend gave me some money and that’s what I used it for: to sit in a hotel room out of a Jason Bourne/James Bond movie set and look out the window at the neon light of the bar outside below, and order room service.
Thank you for this post. It fit my mood perfectly.
My brother is ten years older and this captured something ineffable for me. Thank you. We were so interdependent before our father died when I was 18 and he was 28. Never been anywhere near that since and it has been 26 years. I don't think we'll ever see that place again. Too many years and too much shared pain.
I completely loved everything about this and am stunned by the rawness and beauty. Here is the singular power of art - writing that gives us the sense of bodies moving through space and fills the void you point us toward, while also being the very revelation that was withheld in the story. I feel so seen in all of this and the reader in me wants MORE (the writer in me has a sense of the cost of a piece of writing like this... and it wants more too, but gently and kindly 🙂).
I am improved by everything you write here--but wish with all my might that you didn't have to bleed to be such a sensitive and generous essayist. Hope solstice and the holidays speed past so that we can be on our sleepy downhill way to spring's warmer cruelties.
oh, so much here i loved. you make me feel the pathos and strangeness, yes alien-ness, all the tender sad funny parts of being alive that are so hard to articulate, but you do. i want to see "close" but even the preview let me know it'll be a heartbreaker. your thots about "tár" are all spot-on. i loved every minute—visually, sonically—except the last 10 or so. it's not a great movie, but blanchett's performance is WOW.
The question is not "to be or not to be" but "okay..... I be, but how do I get through all these slings and arrows?" And you do through your writing. This piece is so beautiful and funny and vulnerable and dear. Sometimes I have no idea what you're writing about, but sometimes I totally get it.
Reading this reminded me of a close friend I had in sixth grade (?) Tony G. His family was from Mexico, he was first generation, I was oblivious to immigration back then... we hung out a lot and I remember someone ... I can’t recall who, but it was a girl, asking if we were gay... it was my first time where that was even a possibility because doesn’t everyone have friends they ride bikes with, steal tacos from the Taco John’s across the street with, watch tv with... hang with? No? Just girls? Yeah... his whole family moved away from their house one day... just... gone, no goodbye from him, nothing... we were so close and yet... I often wonder what happened to him... I see him laughing in my minds eye, followed by a far-off stare... it plays over and over like that, like a gif.
This is heart-breaking and important. I hope you write more about it.
Maybe. It’s been 50+ years and the details are missing, but his face and ... shoes of all things, platform shoes were in... odd stuff... I’ve tried to write it for years; I’m not sure what the narrative is. Male friendship? Not sure if you follow Liz Plank on here, but she’s got me thinking a lot about this... maybe... someday...
Thanks, Gerard! I'll check out Liz Plank. You may not know the story until you write it. The sub-story can come out then...
Thank you for the encouragement. It means a lot.
That first paragraph describes how I’ve felt for 42 years.
Dear Brandon, I don't always read your newsletter, just due to too much to read in my life, etc. But, I did read this one, and I was impelled to reach out. Your words are raw, your feelings right there, and I felt for you, and I wanted to say, You are valuable and loved. I love your analysis of the films, and I will see "Close" -- thank you. When you wrote, "We talked about the messy implications of turning life into art," tears came, but I think they'd been building for a while, since you described the weird feeling you have of alienation in your own life. I just want to remind you, Don't believe everything you think. The mind is tricky. Maybe now is the time to focus on the breath, the miracle of the breath, of being breathed by the life force. Hang in there. I know more than the average Joe about depression--it's a beast. Just know, this too will pass. I love your words, your writing, your mind. Thank you for putting yourself out there. It's immeasurably helpful.
Your newsletters make me think and sometimes I agree the fuck out of them and sometimes I disagree so strongly I'll spend a whole day mounting a counter-argument in my head. And I love it! Your writing lights up my brain, even and maybe especially when I don't agree (or, more often, agree on a slant).
Then every so often though, you post something like this and it makes me want to hold your hand. Not in a weird way. Just like. I feel overwhelmed with tenderness for you, this other person feeling through the world. It's not easy. You are lovable and I'm sorry you feel so alone.
I'm slowly absorbing this, thinking of one of my own brothers who has become unreachable, the existential ache I too am feeling lately, the desire to feel loveable. Now I'm sinking into melancholy.
There it is...there's always one sentence in your invariably brilliant and disturbing essays that leaves me breathless: "I feel alien in my life".
“I feel somehow that American cinema has ceased to portray people who read or look at paintings or know about music, any kind of music.” This sees what I couldn’t see.
“ that clench-release fast brightness of betrayal.” Yes, that’s the exact feeling, described exquisitely. It’s an exquisitely awful feeling. I know it well — I think it comes quite naturally and often to children like I was (I resist speaking for you) who have experienced deep betrayal and humiliation in their early relationships with adults. I think it’s why I need to tell people about it so they know where the emotional land mines are.
Anyway, thank you for saying it so beautifully and making all those times it happened to me more beautiful in retrospect for a lovely way of describing it. I mean it.
Also, I love the Roxy for films. I used to book myself a room for a night now and then at the Roxy when I needed to hide during a year of deep bereavement. A friend gave me some money and that’s what I used it for: to sit in a hotel room out of a Jason Bourne/James Bond movie set and look out the window at the neon light of the bar outside below, and order room service.
Thank you for this post. It fit my mood perfectly.
This is an open offer to take you to lunch.
My brother is ten years older and this captured something ineffable for me. Thank you. We were so interdependent before our father died when I was 18 and he was 28. Never been anywhere near that since and it has been 26 years. I don't think we'll ever see that place again. Too many years and too much shared pain.
I completely loved everything about this and am stunned by the rawness and beauty. Here is the singular power of art - writing that gives us the sense of bodies moving through space and fills the void you point us toward, while also being the very revelation that was withheld in the story. I feel so seen in all of this and the reader in me wants MORE (the writer in me has a sense of the cost of a piece of writing like this... and it wants more too, but gently and kindly 🙂).
I don't know the words to respond to this essay. It hurts my heart to read it and know that you are struggling. You are loveable and loved.
I am improved by everything you write here--but wish with all my might that you didn't have to bleed to be such a sensitive and generous essayist. Hope solstice and the holidays speed past so that we can be on our sleepy downhill way to spring's warmer cruelties.
oh, so much here i loved. you make me feel the pathos and strangeness, yes alien-ness, all the tender sad funny parts of being alive that are so hard to articulate, but you do. i want to see "close" but even the preview let me know it'll be a heartbreaker. your thots about "tár" are all spot-on. i loved every minute—visually, sonically—except the last 10 or so. it's not a great movie, but blanchett's performance is WOW.
so honest, profound, and raw. my chest aches with the weight of these thoughts...