How embarrassing
You know, I really was just making a movie. I had no idea all this would happen when I started. You have to admit though, it is a good ending. I hope you people are okay. I really didn’t know I left the war machine on while I was medicated, I mean I did remember I had lost internet contact for half a year or so due to poverty. But I had no way of getting back in touch in any regular sort of way so I ended up doing weird things. Anyway, yes, psychiatry works because it does destroy brains, which I guess is what the point was. So there you go.
But you can also recover from that, it’s just odd, and also sometimes people don’t allow other people to leave it behind, I mean a LOT of coercion and force is used in keeping people on pills.
You know how people get nervous when someone starts pacing, and how people pathologize that? Do you know, after working in two law offices I can tell you that when lawyers start thinking they pace. It’s true, they pace all the way around their offices over and over and over talking into little machines for HOURS. It’s just how people use their thought process sometimes. You can’t MAKE someone sit and stop fidgeting, because sometimes moving around is how they learn or think, which is why so many kids are on ritalin. But they need to move around.
I have a best friend who has been teaching inner city kids and she’s got some amazing insights into how to change learning environments for them. She’s a goof so the kids really like her, but she doesn’t take bullying at all. She is such an amazing elementary school teacher, she goes above and beyond the call of duty, to the point of visiting parents. And one thing she’s noticed about kids who need to move all the time is that if you let them chew gum in class it stops them from getting all wiggly. I should actually get her to start blogging, because she has some revolutionary ideas about how to reach kids these days, especially inner city kids. And she’s trying to think of ways to talk about spirituality in a completely non-denominational way. She likes Born Again church stuff, but she’s never pushed it on anyone else, and I mean yeah, if that’s what she likes the best I mean that’s her preference.
That’s the thing, I can only talk about some specific things in depth and kind of a generalized knowledge of the world, but I am perfectly willing to see other people grab the steering wheel and talk about things they’ve noticed specifically that could be better. Mostly I’m talking from the oppressed point of view because that’s what I’m most familiar with, but I’m not always some oppressed person. I’m actually a switch.
It’s funny, I was talking with cutie about stuff and she was like “Everyone seems to do what I say, why is that?” And I said “Maybe they are all submissives.” And she said “No, they can’t ALL be submissives!” I dunno. I do know we went on a date once where the waiter got all crazy about her and started bothering us every five minutes just to talk to her, and we were having an interesting conversation about mushrooms, and we were getting annoyed. And he kept paying all kinds of attention to her and ignoring me and then he asked her to rate the dinner on a scale of one to ten and she just snapped “I would give it a six!” It was so funny. And he was appalled and wandered away and then she said “No, I’m wrong, actually I would give it a five.” And I thought, yeah, it was about a five. She makes me laugh.
I think that’s the most frustrating thing about being a butch who dates high femmes, is that often guys totally don’t get that there’s a relationship going on. I dunno, maybe guys are just dumb like that. Who can really say? If it’s irritating to me I can’t imagine how irritating it must be to them to be involved with someone and always deflecting advances from clueless males. Probably ditto for gay men, I can’t imagine what it must be like to have to deal with your partner always being seen as heterosexual. Or worse, what happens when you start living a lie and then realize you’ve fucked up?
After high school she joined the army and I went to art school. I didn’t want her to join the army, it made me all fuss and bother and probably annoyed her, but really I just didn’t want to see her get hurt in combat. And she left the army in the end, so whatever. But maybe we just went where we had to go. She learned discipline and I learned to be fantastical and ridiculous. I think both are useful. First year at art school was great, because we learned world history through art. And I passed notes in class all the time to my friend Margaret. I remember there was one Mapplethorpe picture that the professor kept saying “What does this look like?” and all the first years were ridiculously shy. Afterwards I told this friend of mine “It looked like an ejaculation.” And he said “That’s what I thought too!” Colour theory was boring though, oh man. Some of the agit-prop art of the 80’s was amazing, because it was all about the AIDS pandemic and trying to get people to take it seriously, which was hard because back then it was mainly gay men getting sick and no one really thought about them being useful to society, so sad. Gay men are all over the place man, they give life fabulousness. It’s true they can be rude and bitchy, but at least they are honest.
My favorite boy in first year was Pat Mills, he made his rollerskates into disco balls and did a light show with them. Then he went off to Ryerson to do the film program there and I lost him. Aw. He’s around though, he was working for the TIFF for a while. I think that’s the weirdest thing about assumptions of queer girls, that we must hate men. Not at all. I think they’re pretty sweet, some of them. Quite a lot really, it’s just there’s that weird manhood thing in this culture. I don’t know, people often feel they have to prove their gender, why is that? What’s to prove?
My sister has been staying up late watching horror movies apparently. The last one she watched was Carrie. I’m just thinking, crap, we do not need her to learn how to set things on fire with her mind. She did set the armchair on fire once when we were kids, that was the last time she ever set a fire. I set the coffee table on fire, so we’re even. She’s changed a lot since we were kids, that’s for sure, she matured. She made me watch Drop Dead Fred and Flower Drum Song over and over and over.
By the way, I do not think people should set fires in their home, that’s obviously not very safe. Unless you have a fireplace and the flue isn’t congested.
One thing that drives me crazy about actors is for some reason a lot of them don’t know when to stop! Honestly, you people are actors, you don’t have to be on all the time. You can have a regular life. I think it’s because for some reason we’re okay with high profile actors ALWAYS being under surveillance, and it never occurs to the general public how traumatizing that could be to someone. Who cares if Britney was seen picking her nose at White Castle? Honestly, they are more interesting than just what they wear. I mean, they can pretend to be ANYBODY, don’t you think that’s a curious process? How do they do it? But there is such a stranglehold on Hollywood, I mean really, the censorship there is phenomenal. And it’s too bad.
In the “Golden Age” of Hollywood screenwriting they tried to bring in professional writers, like literary figures, and they never liked what they came up with. The creative process in Hollywood back then was like some producer running in to where the writers hung out and saying “I have an idea for a film, it is called ‘Where Is My Shoe’ and it stars Greta Garbo. We start shooting on Monday.” I mean, what the hell? How can you work a creative process with that kind of inanity? And so many stars were majorly fucked over back then, because Freudian concepts were used a LOT in filmmaking. So basically actors were pathologized from the get go and put on pills and got all weird. Look at Judy Garland! She is a tragic figure.
It’s so funny, I mean, people idolize them and yet judge them according to impossible standards. And they’re artists! They’re supposed to be weird. And they are fun weird, if you really know them. And they get pushed really hard in their work, I mean the hours on set are insane, and it is so intensive, you have to live that character for six weeks or so and at the same time deal with power trippers who don’t understand how fragile that process is. No wonder they flip out. I’ve seen directors do terrible things to their actors because they just aren’t being compassionate enough. Which is why I tried to be the only actor in my films for so long, because I didn’t want to push someone through something I didn’t understand myself. And it was good because I learned when stuff was way too much. But obviously I put myself under surveillance and this happened.
It’s about learning how power works, you can’t ever be domineering without understanding what it’s like to submit to that, otherwise you do mean things without noticing. Especially for actors who are using life experiences, you can’t just make them do it over and over because you’re getting off on it, you have to check in on them. Personally, I think actors should be allowed to yell cut too. Otherwise I have no idea when they are going way over their heads, and they do sometimes because they don’t know when they’re allowed to stop.