I rewatched one of my favorite movies last night, The Wings of Desire, and my breath caught at the moment when Bruno Ganz (his angel name escapes me at the moment) touches Marion's bare shoulder after she has unzipped her circus costume. So gorgeous. This movie is so ridiculously me, with its numerous philosophical and historical ruminations via oodles of voice-over and dreamy montages. It's a fluid visual poem, with its sing-song German phrases and circus imagery (I'll always associate this film with Paris, where I first saw it, and where I became captivated by Cirque Plume). Weirdly enough, whenever I watch it, I yearn to be like the angels...to hear the secret thoughts of passersby, to get a taste of the inner workings of minds other than my own. I've always felt imprisoned by the confines of my own body. At times I've been truly desperate to break free from myself, to release all the stuff (emotional and spiritual and intellectual and otherwise) that seems trapped inside of my physical being. Although I generally am unimpressed with Lord Byron's poetry, I do feel a twinge of sympathy whenever he describes (with palpable anguish) his violent desire to break free from the lowly earthly prison of his body and take flight into the heavens. There are so many limits to human existence: time, place, discrete physical selfhood (biology, physics, etc). These are the same things that the angels in the film, especially Bruno Ganz's character, wish so desperately to experience. I would much rather be light of step and to melt in and out and between space and time, and to feel true empathy and a sense of connection with all these strangers swarming around me, who seem so alien to me right now. I find it so strange when Marion comments that she is at last alone when she finally finds her "man." I suppose she means that he is part of her, and thus she maintains the integrity of her selfhood, since it encompasses him. Is one more alone if she can physically exist and interact with other people but with exposure only to their external selves, or if she can hear their innermost thoughts and spiritual yearnings while not having a physical presence for interaction? I would vote for the former, but of course, that's the only option I've actually experienced.

While driving back from home today I heard an ad on NPR for a new Horatio Hornblower miniseries. I've never read the books or seen the TV movies, but "Horatio Hornblower" sounds like an elegant porn star name, if such a thing can exist.

Since I'm in the mood to talk about movies, I also caught The Opposite of Sex recently on television, and eagerly waited for the scene with one of the worst movie lines ever written, uttered by Lyle Lovett as Carl the police officer who woos Lisa Kudrow's Lucia: "Say the point of sex isn't recreation or procreation or any of that stuff. Say it's concentration. Say it's supposed to focus your attention on the person you're sleeping with, like a biological highlighter. Otherwise there's just too many people in the world." I remember watching this movie when it was first released in a tiny artsy movie theater in New Haven, and groaning painfully after that simile. I'm sorry, but sex as biological highlighter is just about the most laughably dopey image I've ever encountered. I do give props to whoever wrote it for taking the risk to write something like that. As a writer of occasional cheezy over-the-top similes and metaphors myself, I'm the last one who should be casting stones. But still...biological highlighter? Gah.

The color of this background is so purty. I'm amazed I even figured out how to make the background this color, given my complete lack of familiarity with anything html. Anyway, this color is a slightly yellowed version of my favorite Crayola crayon from childhood, sea green. Whenever my five-year-old self drew pictures of princesses and villainesses, the princesses would always be at least partly colored with that particular crayon to showcase their goodness. I don't remember which crayon was the evil counterpart...burnt sienna perhaps?

Not long ago I saw a movie called Judy Berlin. Before renting it, I had remembered vaguely that it was praised in reviews as a less ironic and more gentle take on suburban life than that of American Beauty. It took several tries for me to get past the first ten minutes of the film (which were incredibly slow...and the black and white photography did not help the soporific effect), but once I did, I fell under its spell. Edie Falco (who I have yet to see in the Sopranos) as Judy Berlin was just so bright that she really lit up this suburban town with its depressed ghostly inhabitants. She was one of those people who draws you towards her, because she is so spontaneous and unaffected and determined to follow her dreams, no matter what anyone else says. One of those people who "takes a licking and keeps on ticking." While I was jolted by her energetic presence, I much more identified with the lethargic and subdued David Gold. He lost faith in his dreams...he still continues to dream, of making a documentary about his hometown and the beauty he sees in it, but lacks the conviction in order to make his dream happen. He's a pessimist, frankly. When he tried to discourage Judy from going to California, attempting to crush her spirit, my heart ached; he was trying to crush her spirit like his own had been crushed. But she would not listen to him, because she knew what she wanted to do, and refused to even acknowledge the possibility of failure. Beyond that, I was eerily touched by David's mom, who was kind of a suburban Blanche Dubois, clearly teetering on the edge of crazy with her frequent cry of "moon explorers" (I also liked the sci fi twilight zone music that accompanied this segment), but with occasional flashes of insight into how unfulfilling and sad her life was, before she disappeared again into fantasy. Judy's mom struck me as one of those manipulative borderline cases (like one of the patients with whom I spent so much time on the psych ward), and provoked immediate revulsion in me, although perhaps she was just another lost soul looking for comfort in her coworker. Anyway, James Berardinelli did a really fantastic job in his review about the central theme of the movie: "Judy Berlin is about the paralyzing power of inertia. With the exception of the title character, everyone in this movie is trapped - and they all know it. They have small moments of rebellion, but they mostly survive to the end of every day by relying on two timeless methods: self-delusion and rigorous adherence to a soul-sapping routine. Sue and Arthur find a moment's respite by confiding in one another, but they lack the innate courage to move further. Alice takes refuge in a fantasy land as a way of ignoring the basic facts of her life - that her son pities her and her husband no longer loves her. Meanwhile David looks on in horror at the people around him and recognizes that he will share their fate. Then there's Judy, who has the energy and courage to get out of Babylon to make a life for herself - if not as a actress, then as something else. Failure brought David back; we sense that the same will not be true of Judy. In a town full of zombies, she is the only animate being, and her glow is like that of a too-bright light bulb in an otherwise dark, murky room."

God, can I relate with the non-Judys. Each time I feel like something (epiphany after epiphany after epiphany) pushes me away from being David to Judy, I seem to fall right back into David. Like a ball trying to roll out of a deep pit, but always falling back into to the nadir. I don't want to be Principal Gold when I'm in my fifties.

Oh, for more on the phenomenon that is Neutral Milk Hotel (and more about other people who have fallen under their spell and cry into their pillows at night about Jeff Mangum's willful disappearing act), there's a nice article on salon.com. I'll have to check out the Decembrists sometime.

So, yeah. I'm Liz. These are thoughts of mine. I'll try to keep the pretension to a minimum. But just to warn you, I have spent so much of my life completely in my head that my writing style can be a tad self-conscious and self-absorbed. Okay, maybe more than "a tad."

The title of this blog refers to recurring images in Neutral Milk Hotel's "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea," one of the most intense and gorgeous and life-changing albums ever made. If you haven't heard it yet, procure it immediately and prepare yourself for the turbulent emotional journey which will inevitably follow. Usually I can convince myself that I'm doing just fine without love, until I hear any part of this album or read John Donne's love poems. And then there's that ache that eats me up from the inside. Dammit. Out, out, damn thought, damn dream. Come back to me, numbness and denial and distraction by intellectual playthings. Ahhhh. Thank you, old friends.

And...sleep.