10 + 5 STEPS TO FORGET A MAN!

1- Stop hoping! Stop expecting! Force yourself to dream of something better.
2- Don´t restrict yourself from having all the chocolates, cakes, pizzas, chips, cigarettes, coffees and beers you feel like!
3- Keep a 24/7 schedule meeting friends every evening, even though if you haven´t seen them since kinder garden!
4- Clean your mp3 from all music related with this love. Fill it with silly and happy music that you usually consider bad taste music, the more superficial the better!
5- Keep away from your mobile and e-mail box! Sending sms and e-mails is strictly forbidden. When late at night and after a couple of drinks make sure your best friend keeps an eye on you and restricts you from having any contact with the guy!
6- When meeting him repeat to yourself 10 times: I am a stone. I am a stone. I am stone…
7- Compensate yourself with unlimited shopping, get yourself the mini skirt and the shirts with decoité and high heels you never trusted yourself to wear.
8- Burn your all your snoopy panties and get new sexy transparent underwear only: put your sexy out!
9- Look as an Hollywood star 24/7: you are way TOO COOL for this world!
10- Go out with male friends that like to touch your butt and enjoy it!
11- Flirt, flirt, flirt shamelessly… You are delicious!
12- Out with romantic comedies, in with action movies, the bloodier the better.
13 – Have a kitchen party with your best friend, drinking and dancing on top of the table and puke it out of your system!
14 – Think about all the gorgeous people out there who are singles and enjoy it!
15- Remember that “Sometimes Goodbye IS The ONLY Way!” – as Linkin Park puts it in “The Sun will Set for you”!

BREAKFAST AT TIFFANY´S

In Breakfast at Tiffany´s, Holly Golightly is set in surviving, and she´s having a plan on how to do exactly that. Apart some intimate moments when her fears, anxities and panick attacks surface, she doesn´t question her system, for she believes it to take her where she wants to go. Obstinately looking for wealth and security in the arms of a good-looking millionar, she doesn´t see what life is really offering her.

As a nomad travelling-searching for a place to belong – a place she never finds (at least in the novel) – she has both cut with her past and is blind to the chance life is offering her, for it doesn´t fit her survival pre-conceived scheme of how things should go.

Holly Golightly is a street cat. And as a woman with dreams that had to survive on her own, her forcefulness impedes her to see beyond her system. As we follow the plot in the movie, Holly ends grabing a „good oportunity“ with both hands, even though it doesn´t fit her system. But, she only gives it up in face of total disillusion and defeat, when there´s really no other option. When she throws her cat – significantly named cat – out of the taxi and the man who loves her with it, she is still denying the obvious: that, if her system brought her that far, only by finally giving it up will she be able to survive further. It brought her there but, it cannot bring her anywhere any longer.

Holly´s struggle is not simply one for survival, but a quest to find her place in the world, to find her identity to put it bluntly. She´s a sophisticated playgirl, taking on the role of the naive, young, entertaining woman, who is always the catch of every party. She doesn´t know who she is, except that she is someone else´s luxury doll. And that´s how she has been surviving, until love literally knocks on her door and forces her system to tumble down.

A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE

Talking to me, S. came up with this image: walking with your hands and a french baguette in between your legs. I knew immediately that a great image was born to stay, for it speaks of all the things and options that lay in between a simple black and white, a yes and a no, all the various laugthers and ironies as alternatives to escape control.

In his 1974 film „A Woman Under the Influence“, John Cassavetes brilliantly writes and directs Mabel´s story – interpreted by his own wife in real life -, and how her madness polarizes everyone around her. She is a force of nature.
Curiously, one never comes to a conclusion as to which influence Mabel is under, if alcohol, drugs, her family, her husband, society in general… in the end of the movie the question remains as open as in the beginning, together with the impression that we´ve only witness an excerpt of their on-going long story. And such story is made of routine, trust and love.

Their unconventional marriage and family life is the center of the plot. We are introduced into their core and we get to see how the outside world interferes and changes their codes everytime. This is a story of two people, that though disfunctional to the outside world, manage to get along together. It is about how they are strangely saving each other on an every day basis. The curtain of their bedroom literally functions as a stage curtain, which is opened and closed as guests come and go and situations change and tension explodes.

Mabel is a fascinating character, challenging conventional representations of madness in cinema. She is coached by her husband to act in a certain socializing, understable way while in the presence of guests. In these moments, she tries to control her emotions and ticks in a way which is sort of aceptable for others. And this is when she says: „It´s working!“. She is aware that in order to live one has to act according to already established social rules. The problem is she hasn´t lost her capacity to play, on the contrary to most grownups. Except, she finds no way to balance it. And so her eccentricity escalates, leaving her husband with no choice but to committ her to a mental institution for several months.

When Mabel finally returns, she’s a mere shadow of the woman she used to be. Gone are her chattiness, her warmth and naivety — and basically her personality. Nick, in his own typical inarticulate, brutish manner, tries to get his wife to return to the way she used to be. He keeps inciting her to „be herself“, to go back and do her assorted ticks, be spontaneous once again.

Cassavetes is an amazing director and screen writer. But some of the film´s brilliancy has to do directly with Gena Rowlands´magnetic performance and the psychological complexity of her character. Many of the scenes were born of the improvisation work between the actors, always under the spell of Rowland´s compelling performance and personality.

Women In Art

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Patrick Watson – Drifters

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NICHTS ALS GESPENSTER – the film and the book

Manchmal es ist so… Everything comes together. And books and movies find me, giving me clues on what intrigues me, on how life and the world in general work.
“Nichts als Gespenster“ (2007) by Martin Gypkens is a road movie based on Judith Hermann´s short stories. She was the first german author whose book I read entirely in the original language.

Five different stories, that don´t intersect, except for they speak of relationships between people and life in general, are interwined in a clever way. They meet in harmony due to the director´s sense of landscape and photography. By turning Judith Hermann´s stories into a genre – a road movie – a uniformity between the heterogeny of the stories is achieved in the film. And amazing image compositions together with great dramatic interpretations help visualizing the search for love and the beauty of melancholy, always present in Judith Hermann´s writing.

Of course it is about love. What else… But also, about much more than just that. Lately, I´ve been thinking about road movies – the nomadic condition is one of my dearest themes -, people encountering other people and the death of beloved ones. This film has come to meet me on exactly such a crossroad…
Travel becomes here an oportunity for freedom and revolution to take place in one´s life, an escape from routine that, interesting enough, works both ways.

People take journey´s for different reasons. Because they want change to happen or, because they want to prevent it from taking place. It´s either a running away from something or, a wish to take the bull by the horns.
Travelling becomes then, a breach in time, that can both prevent forthcoming events to happen, installing interruption and delay in one´s routine. Or, it can occasionate change and surprise, hastening difference.
Either travel suspends change or, reinforces it.
This is exactly where Ellen and Felix stand at. Their travel throughout the Nevada desert is a postpone of the invitabilty of the separation between the both. Their problems lie heavily, as ghosts, in the air throughout the entire travel. They are travelling together but not with each other really.
Just the same, Nora by avoiding returning to her life on purpose, is living a special time, a time outside her normal routine. She is trying to gain courage to pursue an unusual love.

All the stories are about how people deal with what destiny presents them, what they decide to make with this. It is about people finding strong and passionate connections. They immediately recognize the other with no need for words. The question is what to do with these encounters, how people handle them.
Should one break the rules or not? If one does so, do moral principles apply? Because miracles as such – connection on such a level – doesn´t happen every day…
One thing is for sure, and both the film and the writing have allowed me to realize just that, one cannot help to connect with others. One has only a limited choice of pursuing the full consequences of such connection or, on the contrary, leave it alone.
In this last case, to control it, takes a lot of disciplin, and in my opinion a strong refusal of what makes us truly human… I guess, that despite all the hurting and suffering, I still believe our higher purpose is, to move others with our passions, bringing them into our world or / and be moved by other´s passions just the same.

DIGITAL killed the professional photographer

I need a picture of myself for an official card. Because I am in a hurry but as I don´t feel like running to the next automaton in the busy subway and sit in it alone while people hush beside to their jobs, I decide to enter an old photographer´s shop in one of Lisbon´s poshest avenues.

The old man escorts me to the room where “it” will happen and gives me a moment to prepare. Suddenly I feel like an actress, I sit before the mirror framed with lights, where make up and brushes are lying around in a small table and think how purposeless it is to prepare; I always look pretty awful in every goddamn picture.

I sit where he tells me to and follow his instructions, head slightly pending to the side, chin up, strait back and looking into a designated fixed point. I think of K. always telling me to smile for photos. Despite the usual result I always enjoy when others take my photo, specially if unexpectedly. I have the theory that if someone likes you as a person this will somehow shine through the picture they take of you. For me it works like a scale. The people that loved me the best have taken the best photos of me.

Surprisingly, we only need one round this time. Usually it takes a lot longer, because I always shut my eyes or look as if I am not right in the head! The old photographer smiles and calls me up to see the result. He is happy with it. And so am I. Though I look so retro. We exchange approving looks and he hushes out of the room to print it meanwhile I collect my things. How interesting that a photo made just seconds ago can look so dated!

While I wait upstairs, I look at old photos from unknown people of every age filling the walls. Black and white photographs, color photographs, families in their best Sunday suits posing, people marrying, children posing, twins, mothers and daughters, people in love. They all belong to a different epoch, I think to myself. The store looks very old and not renovated. I think of digital cameras and computers, it´s obvious that business has seen better days. Albums that no one buys and very old analogue cameras are still available for sale.
I feel sorry for the lovely man. I want to tell him that it is all about PR, that he should advertise his services as purposely retro and traditional in an age where everything happens so fast and has no meaning any more. He is part of the story of the city, he has been registering generations of Portuguese people with his art.
It´s pure poetry, all those faces immortalized in time, seeking to grab a piece of eternity, leave something to be remembered for to the people that love them.

In the end he thanks “the model”, he looks very happy with my photo, and I thank the photographer, and he thanks me again, and I thank the photographer once more. (Goodbyes always take very long between Portuguese). I leave sad, because I know that his son wont pick up his business, he is one of a last kind.

INSOMNIA / Mourning

S. tells me he can´t sleep for a couple of days already and therefore he is taking sleeping pills. Before we part, he asks me if I think he will be able to sleep that night and, later, strangely, I am the one not being able to. I feel like calling him up at 4 in the morning to tell him just that.
I am too warm despite the room being too cold. In desperation, I take a sleeping pill. And then, unexpectedly, I dream of her.

I am walking down the stairs to finally see and understand her dead body. I am just one more in queue, I am not special.
I stop just before the entrance door, a second before stepping in. I redraw from the queue and lean against the corner of the house I grew up in, and raise my eyes to the sky. It´s blue.

I look down to the next person standing in line, who is looking and smiling back at me. A blank moment goes by, as I am not able to put two and two together. She is wearing a summer blouse that I´ve never seen her with before, looking at me and smiling quietly. I get back on my feet and hold her tight, a large embrace that gets tighter, and we laugh softly together. For a minute or two everything is in its right place until I realize that no one in line can see her, except for me.

I wake up.

Death doesn´t make any sense. My grandmother is simply not here anymore and there´s no point talking about how much I miss her. All that we shared and I miss is not communicable. It´s a very lonely feeling. I just can´t see the point in all this, in connecting with people, love them and watch them go. I am awake, and there´s no one to feed me with some comforting bullshit on why should love matter, despite the hurting. Maybe J. is right after all. Maybe it is best to be a stone, to go throughout life without any emotional attachments… I sit in bed, I will never sleep again, I´ve decided.

In my dream, when I held my grandmother in my arms, it seemed so real that I could almost smell her soft hair tickling my nose…