Fear of Loss

So I watched a documentary called Exit Through the Gift Shop over the weekend. Great movie. (I love documentaries, especially when they involve creative people as subjects.) It's about a guy who spent years filming street artists, and actually before the street artists, spent years filming everything (family especially), went everywhere with his camera. 

One of the questions raised in this movie was, what was this guy's obsession with filming? It's revealed halfway through that his mother died when he was 11, and he hadn't even been aware she was sick, so her death came as a total surprise/shock. And now he's got this compulsion to document everything--because he knows from experience that at any moment without any warning life as he knows it could end.

I keep thinking about this guy and what he lived through and how he responded to it. Poor thing--I can't even imagine losing your mother at age 11. But I do know about suddenly losing someone incredibly important to you, whose day-to-day life is woven into the fabric of yours. And since that loss (my brother, nearly 6 years ago now), I can't do a thing without having the thought that this might be the last time everything is OK. Tragedy could strike at any minute. Must make an indelible record of this time as it could end so suddenly, so easily. I don't film, but I write things down, and save voice mails, and take pictures. And there's never a time I talk to or see someone I love that I don't think maybe this is the last time ever, and what can I do to fix this moment in my mind just in case that's true?

Probably not too healthy an approach to life. But the guy in this movie, he made me feel like I'm not quite so crazy--and not quite so alone.

A Quote From Film Critic David Denby

"You must make a story out of your movie, and out of your life, too, or only stillness and death await you."

--David Denby, in The New Yorker, February 7, 2011

An Artsy Weekend...I'm a Happy Girl

So if I still lived in Seattle or San Francisco, or were in Boston, a weekend like this would be easy to put together. But not that much happens in Grand Junction, so having all this stuff in one weekend was such a treat. 

Friday: Went to a poetry reading, a fundraiser for the Western Colorado Writer's Forum. Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer writes gorgeous poems, sings with the prettiest voice imaginable and looks like a beauty queen...it was such a pleasure to be in her presence. I took home the book to the left and also learned of her poem-a-day blog, which you can access HERE.

Saturday: On our way to breakfast at the Dream Cafe, I saw a poster for a show that night at the Radio Room. Danielle Ate the Sandwich is a performer I wanted to see in Denver last summer but didn't get to, so how great to see her here, in a small venue. She's as funny as her songs are beautiful...it was the best show I've been to in a long time. Oh, and she plays the ukulele, which made me totally miss making music with my friend Charlie when we both lived at the Cota House in Santa Barbara. Her newest CD, which I took home, is above. Go see if she comes to your town...her website with her tour dates is HERE.

Sunday: I was really excited to see Black Swan, but I figured I’d have to wait for video, because art movies aren’t big here/don’t often make it to this small town (although some do come to the Avalon…so grateful for that). But I got to see it on the big screen! More than anything the movie is just so visually beautiful. The visual of the ballerina literally turning into a black swan was unbelievable and something that will stay in my head for a long time.

I love the arts and don't usually get enough. One of the hardest things about living in a small town. Grateful for weekends like this.

"Up in the Air"

Great movie, watched it for the second time last night and there are a couple of lines in it that I think are really profound.

First:

The movie's about a guy who flies around the country and fires people for a living, and he has the following exchange with someone he's firing, trying to show the guy he's firing that being let go from a boring corporate job is not necessarily the worst thing in the world (this is the rough exchange, not a direct quote):

Fire-er: Do you know why kids love athletes?

Fire-ee: No.

Fire-er: Because they followed their dreams. How much did they pay you to first come to work here and give up your dream?

I think it's so sad and so common...so many, many people give up their dreams to go into a respectable corporate career, me included. For me personally, I don't think it makes sense today to totally give up my corporate job, but I can work a lot less hours, and spend a lot more time focused on things I love.

Second:

Same guy is home for his sister's wedding. The groom has cold feet and the brother goes in to talk to him. The thing that he says that makes the groom realize it's going to be OK to get married is something along the lines of:

"Think back to your best memories, the days and times that you really treasure. Were you alone in those memories, or were you with other people?"

The answer of course is, other people, or at least it is unreservedly with me.

I've been thinking about that line since I first saw the movie, and since last night in a slightly different context. I'm in the middle of my 4th and last IVF cycle, and my husband will not be able to be with me for the transfer as he's in college, we need him to miss as little school as possible (our clinic's out of town). My mom would be the logical second choice, but she's in Costa Rica 'til March. So I've been thinking, do I ask a friend to come be with me, or do I go through it alone? Now I know the answer. I have a lovely friend in Denver I'm going to ask... 

Berlin, Day 7

The symphony hall, right next to the art museum. Berlin is filled with cool modern architecture.

1. Film museum this morning. Interesting exhibits on some important early German movies, that my husband learned about in film class last year (one of his required humanities). Metropolis, one of the very early science fiction movies, and Caligari (not full title), which appears to be very Tim Burton-esque, very surreal, made post-WW I, I believe, prior to sound. Learning about both was very cool
2. Gemaldegalerie, the classical art museum, after that. I really like modern (20th century) art, not always a huge fan of older, but it was really cool to be in this museum two days before Christmas, because there we many hundreds of years (help me out here, art history majors) when it seems like practically everything painted was Mary and baby Jesus. I must of seen a hundred of these paintings today, and it was really cool to see one after the other, because they all look so different. Of course there are no photographs so we have no idea what these people actually looked like, I just thought it was a so interesting to see dozens of artist's different interpretations
3. Went back to the Christmas market and each got a heart-shaped gingerbread cookie...so now our hotel room is decorated for Christmas :)
4. There is the biggest billboard I've ever seen next to our hotel. What's it got on it? An iPad
5. And, the Berlin wall used to stand right outside our hotel, it's marked by a double row of cobblestones. Pieces of the wall are on display, heavily and colorfully graffitied. Hard to imagine a wall going up in the middle of your city