It's true. I remember a friend of mine used to tell me her dreams every day at school and it was the most boring thing I could imagine. I mean, it didn't even happen...it's of no consequence...and I can't/won't decipher it, so why are you telling me?
Anyway, the title of this post was my favourite line from THE DIVING BELL AND THE BUTTERFLY (that's a truly hideous and misleading schmaltzy website by the way). I went with my dearie Johanna (who just applied to Yale among other schools to do her MFA...let's wish her luckies!) after a gorgeous dinner at the A&W in the food court under The Bay.
Sooooooo...I expected to be manipulated to death as the film is about Jean-Dominique Bauby, the former editor of Elle France who suffers a stroke. The stroke causes "Locked-In Syndrome," meaning that he is completely paralyzed (save for his left eye) but can see, hear, and think as usual. He is literally a prisoner inside his body. It's pretty heavy. But, as I was saying, it wasn't depressing. In fact, the film was quite uplifting through its pained lens.
It's shot very cleverly, making you feel the panic and claustrophobia of being trapped in paralysis as well as feeling nostalgia and hope through the lens that mimics Jean-Dominique's good eye as well as his mind's eye.
Johanna turned to me after the credits and said "That was sad." My response was "Yet, I'm jealous of him." HA! How terrible. But it's true...at this point I'd rather be the editor of Elle with 3 kids, an ex-wife, a hot lover, a wicked car, who then strokes out in France and gets a cool rare condition and then writes a best-seller turned posthumous bio-pic than a lonely, bitter, head-shaving, pancake eating, Oprah watching, Canadian. Oh well.
Labels: BOOKS MOVIES AND OTHER CULTURALISTICALITIES, DESPERATE AND SAD, MAYBE THE FUTURE WILL BE BETTER, NARCISSISM
POSTED BY GRAYDON AT 1/09/2008 -
6 Comments:
It's okay. I'll be in Toronto in a few days and then you won't be lonely in your self-loathing.
6:36 PM
Thing about dreaming is that it's delicious. Especially when crossing the thresholds of consciousness—waking up and falling asleep, between conflicting commitments to one's entirely imagined dreamworlds and waking life—it's not so obvious which side of life is the bore. Anyone who's hit snooze bar, or better still, unwittingly disarmed an alarm clock and been late for something ostensibly more important than oversleeping knows this. We believe in the realities of our dreams so devoutly that they're worth staying in bed for. (It can't merely be tiredness that perpetuates our enchantment; it's certainly not tiredness that brings us to share these curious and hauntingly virile scenes with each other at lunch recess).
While drifting through this blurry realm in the early morning hours of Saturday, Ian McEwan's protagonist, Henry, stumbles upon acuity: "there is grandeur in this view of life". Recognizing the grandeur is McEwan’s nod to Marcel's nightmarish anxieties that kick off Swann’s Way, as well as to Molly's Bloom’s long acquiescence into sleep through the final episode of Ulysses, and, I can only imagine, is precisely what you envy in the paralytic, bleary-eyed (singular) Jean-Dominique Bauby. Maybe it’s also the Burberry, but regardless, you’ve set yourself a goal here that can be easily reached: just stay really still all day and wait for your mind to wash over in aesthetic reveries.
On another note: well-done on content-production in '08! Your beating out Stanley Fish and the Sartorialist in my RSS Reader. See you soon, Buddy.
8:04 AM
I'm not saying that dreaming isn't worthwhile, interesting, or important. Believe in your dreams all you will, but if we're ever hanging out please keep them to yourself. Paint them, recreate them, use elements of them to enhance or twist other media, but if we're ever hanging out and you start telling me about a dream you've had my eyes will glass over and I'll start thinking about Rihanna just to get through it without falling asleep.
Dreams are worth talking about but not worth re-telling. I think dreams where you actually believe you have been killed are really fascinating (because you believe your dreams are real and so the mental experience of dying in a dream must be the same as the mental experience of dying in waking life), but the details of your dream-death are inconsequential.
It's not the immobility of Jean-do that I envy, it's the attention. Bad dog.
11:02 AM
canadian? ouch! that sucks.
3:05 PM
Ugh...doesn't it though?
5:33 PM
I had a dream the other night... 3 women from New Jersey we're trying to save the world, and almost ended up destroying it. When I awoke it was quite frightening, but became comical as the day progressed.
1:26 AM
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