xtcian

10/10/03 You went through your

10/10/03

You went through your friendships so fast, perhaps I should consider myself lucky that ours lasted as long as it did. When we first got together, our affection for one another verged on the homoerotic, the childhood crush of two grown men so happy to have the other that all people, even women, were pointless distractions to our laser-like intensity. When I read "Brideshead Revisited," I saw our relationship in Charles and Sebastian, and recalled those days with a pit of fondness in my stomach.

But the pendulum is a nasty beast, and swung as far backward. I couldn't believe the vitriol that flew out of you, the way you took things said at 4am in a rapturous, delirious, slumber-party-like confidence and then offered them to the people we once ridiculed. Betrayal doesn't begin to encompass my feelings, in fact, I thought I might be going crazy. I had never known a reality so distorted - I was there, I saw the same things, or had I? - but you quickly divested me of any quick trusts for the rest of my life. Perhaps I need to thank you for that.

Years later, when we saw each other again, you didn't even register that this had happened, just continued on as if we were old friends, another Crazy Summer, another hoops game with patronizing advice. When I moved to your town, you did your best, but I no longer fit the suit, it was much too large for me in my older, more angular form. There was only so much forced conversation I could take.

Do you remember me? I was the one who understood before your sentence was finished. I was there when the dreams were being constructed from the basement up. The clich holds that women are the mercurial ones, mystical beasts that can be catty, possessive, mean-spirited, and emotionally uncontrollable, but guess what? They don't have a thing on you.

10/9/03 I'd like to say

10/9/03

I'd like to say a few words about my friend Ann Humphreys. If you pardon the terrible mix of metaphors and puns, it's easy to get Pollyanna about Annie, because she the kind of woman that inspires so much love in the people around her that one is reduced to inane blatherings about "how important she is to me" and blaggedy-blah-blah. I will say this, however: my life without her in it would be definitely the lesser.

I met her briefly in 1989, during the anorexic summer that followed her father's quick passing due to brain cancer, and like everyone else, had a hopeless crush. By the time she came to Chapel Hill for good in 1993, she had finished her stint at Barnard College in NYC and was trolling the waters around her home state for something to do. Fortunately, she, her brother (the illustrious Greg Humphreys of Hobex and Dillon Fence fame) and I found a semi-abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of Carrboro and lived there for a year.

Life on that farm was, like any hazing ritual, the best time we ever hated. Our rent was $117 each, no lie - Annie actually paid her rent one month by discovering a box full of pennies. I made about $400 that year, and lost 25 pounds by subsisting on cans of Slim-Fast and parsimonious bowls of pasta. Sean and I started a failed cover band, Greg's relationship with Dillon Fence became terminal, Ann began a tortuous affair with one of my best friends - and the only salve we had was a floor-to-ceiling forced-air heater that purported to warm the entire house. Of course, it only warmed the three feet in front of it, so Ann would stretch out there for days at a time, like a cat following the patch of sunlight on the carpet.

Greg would go on tour for months in a stretch, so Ann and I spent entire epochs together in front of that heater. I was writing a semi-digestible novel, and she was honing her craft as a budding poet, thinking about grad school at Warren Wilson. I was truly at my depressive, gadfly, cynical worst, and Annie, while always bristling at her surroundings, never took me seriously enough to warrant an argument. In fact, I have been blessed by many roommates in close quarters without quarrelling (Bud, Salem, Scott, etc.) but I think I could be locked in a steamer trunk with Ann on a cross-Siberian voyage and we'd still get along.

For me, there are two lasting effects from that farm: one, my undying desire to have Ann as a permanent confidante; and two, a complete immunity to most diseases thanks to drinking well water infected with E. Coli.

We've been near enough each other for the last few years (she was in San Fran when I was in LA), but I've always wanted her in New York, even when I wasn't living here. For some reason, I thought only New York, with its unrelenting dialogue and emphasis on excellence, could deserve her. But she loves her house in North Carolina, and if there's one thing the last two years have taught me, it's to leave people alone about where they live, because what the fuck do I know? Being in NYC during 9/11 drove me to anti-anxiety drugs. Nothing is ever that simple. Nothing worth doing comes without ambivalence.

I would say this, however: a change of scenery, however arbitrary, can be a godsend. My sister Michelle is in the rather insane position of having to choose between Napa Valley and Niger, but I think the choice alone will be worth more than the destination. Human beings tend towards repetition to calm fear, but a life without some stomach-churning trepidation would be the life unexamined.

10/8/03 There is an unsettling

10/8/03

There is an unsettling paradox that erupts when you meet other sensitive, like-minded couples in New York who loathe the current U.S. government - you're insanely pleased to be around a few people that feel the same way you do, but the conversations always devolve into sad, what-do-we-do-now treatises without conclusion. In a country that is apparently so rabidly gullible, it's awesome to meet a group of people that share your horror, because it makes you feel less abandoned when you read the Gallup polls. However, without the soothing balm of someone who isn't worried about the state of the country, certain dinner parties can be emotionally exhausting.

We had supper at Gail Segal's house tonight, and it was a great crowd of world travelers and funny folks in the media business. After an hour of mutual kvetching, I asked everybody how they felt about living in a country where you never agree with the average guy anymore, and nobody had easy answers.

I am truly the leftist Ann Coulter writes about, the liberal that hates his fellow Americans. I admit it freely. Part of what makes this country great is my ability to discuss, in a public forum, how much I detest the unshaven, tacitly-racist, un-rigorous AM Talk Radio-listening fuckwads that currently make up 51% of the American electorate. I wish I could be as calm as Al Franken (whose book we are listening to right now), but no, I actually want all registered Republicans to get a career-ending injury on Election Day so that this country can get straightened out by people with brains.

But if Bush is re-elected, all hope for a decent country is almost gone. And you can pretty much guarantee yourselves another huge terrorist attack if that monkey is put back in office; it will be a sign to all Islamicist insurgents that we agree with the way he has hamfistedly manhandled the world. Arab youth who currently can't stomach the killing of innocent Americans will be swayed by the fact that we all got together and agreed to keep this lying, bloodlusting buffoon in office.

Either way, we won't be here to see it happen; at least we don't plan on it. But that raises the other Big Question: where do we go? Are we really signing up for a few years in Canada or France? What will it truly mean to be an expatriate in a place where we haven't got all our friends, or even our language? I have a fair amount of emotional investiture in America; I just spent 2 years refinishing the floors at the farm, fer chrissake. My great-grandfather rowed here from England. Can I truly just say, "well, the 70s and 80s and 90s were a good run, but it's time to move on"?

It all sounds scary. I feel stuck. And sometimes talking with like-minded people only makes it worse.

10/7/03 I had about a

10/7/03

I had about a half-hour to kill before going into the city tonight (for a Carolina Morehead Scholar function - ah, the benefits of marrying someone with good grades) so I turned to the blogosphere for a little catching-up with the family and friends, and I suddenly realized: where the hell are all of you?

Okay, Bud has a fabulous blog. Most of my family has one (at least Kent and Sean and Michelle and my nephew Sean Patrick). As for the rest of you, what the hell are you doing not telling me every detail of your life? Don't tell me you're too busy - Mac Rogers has one, and he is a loan officer by day and a busy playwright by night. Don't say you fear commitment - Todd Walker and David Ball take long breaks between entries. And don't tell me your life isn't interesting enough. If that were true, we wouldn't be friends.

Salem, you run a restaurant in the mountains of Georgia. Where's your blog? Tod, you have been involved in the making of some of the best movies of the last decade. Where's your blog? Nell, your life is crazy and awesome. Annie, you're too far away for us not to have your nightly bon mots. Jiffer, don't make me pull over and stop this car. Where are all of your blogs?!?

It's really easy - just go to blogspot or blogger or Salon or livejournal and pound away. Worried about what to write? Shit, that part's easy. When in doubt, just say what you did that day, and try to work it into a frothy rant about society's ills.

For instance:

10/7/03

Woke up, had terrible stomach problems. I blame George W. Bush, the blithering, moronic, self-righteous bible-thumping wanker.

It's JUST that easy!

So the next time I come back to this Internet thing, I expect all of you to have your own blog. Anyone caught not having one had better give me a cohesive essay about why "normal human interaction" is better than "reading about your damaged psyche on the web." Because I'm still skeptical.

10/7/03 We were asked to

10/7/03

We were asked to go on a boat cruise around Manhattan on September 9, 2001, but we had just finished production on the film and felt too under-the-weather to go. Tessa showed remorse that day by wondering aloud, "what if something about the city changes, and we didn't get to see it?" A particularly strange comment, given what happened two days later.

Tonight we were very much present and accounted for on another little boat trip around the underside of Manhattan - it was Alex Draper's birthday party, and we were the bearers of many cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery. It was a great night for a boat ride, with the small pinch of autumn cold on the black water. It's incredible how few people, boats and any other signs of civilization there are, once you get past the Battery and head into the waters surrounding the Statue of Liberty. More human beings have churned through these waters than anywhere else on earth, yet it's not hard to imagine the cold lap of the Hudson against your fishing vessel circa 1645.

Tessa, Virginia, Nell, David and me in front of Lady Liberty

Of course, I was up to my usual clandestine starfucking, but truly, my favorite pair of married artists were on the boat, and by the end of the night, T and I had sidled up to Joel Coen and Frances McDormand. I told them that their healthy relationship (20 years together) gave us inspiration as a couple trying to gain a foothold in the business ourselves, and they were very cool about it. Joel was amazingly soft-spoken, and he and Tessa began geek-speaking about editing systems right away, while Frances took me aside and asked what I was doing during the editing process.

"Usually being the gadfly, vox populi pain-in-the-ass, talking about how mainstream America won't get a particular scene," I said, and that seemed to satisfy her. I told her that Raising Arizona was my favorite movie in existence, and she said that her child's school planned a showing of the movie. It had been a while since either she or Joel had seen it, and there was plenty in it that could have only been filmed in the '80s, before the era of rampant child protection. "Nathan Arizona puts his gun in the crib with the babies!" she said, adding that the school didn't quite get the movie. That, I thought, was truly, unbelievably sad.

yes, I'm taking all these pictures, which is why I look the same in all of them

In all, a great time. And it's fascinating to pass underneath these bridges we traverse twice a day by car. You don't fully appreciate their magnitude until you slosh around the supports and try to imagine jumping off the top. There is a way to do it, apparently, by pointing your toes and holding your crotch, but when you're down near the water, it looks like a pretty terrible idea.

but let's not think about that, shall we?

10/5/03 We saw The Lucretia

10/5/03

We saw The Lucretia Jones Mysteries last night, and if you were in the New York area and didn't go, I'm not sure how much easier they could have made it for you. It was truly an artistic success, with stunning performances from Mac, Sean and Jordana, but it was also a triumph in smart producing. The play was a comedy, 57 minutes long, only on the weekends at 6pm, so you could do what you were going to do that night anyway. Anyway, it's done for now, until someone with a bit of cash and a penchant for rat-a-tat-tat dialogue moves it to a bigger venue.

Tessa, Jordana, me and Mac after the show

Later that night we transferred our "Pink House" DV cam PAL tape to NTSC yet again and dropped it off at our sound lab (even at 11pm on a Saturday night, the indie film business is still rockin'). Then we trucked down to Namaskar, a bar in Soho with refreshingly little pretension. It was Eva Lindemann's birthday, and the fact that she was turning 30 gave me a bit of an unexpected lilt - it's going to be great to watch all of my 2nd and 3rd-generation Carolina friends go into their 30s in the coming years (you know, since Bud and Chip and Jon and Kendall and Salem and I have all been there for years).

I finally got to meet Jiffer's longtime long-distance boyfriend Ingo, which was totally cool. The elusive, sweet, Buddha known as N'Gai Wright also showed up at the behest of Jiffer, and it was awesome to see him again. N'Gai was a longtime resident of the Pink House and served as direct inspiration for the character N'Wal in the movie. In the film, N'Wal is more outrageous, young-seeming and profane than N'Gai ever was. Ingo is also in the movie, as part of a running gag.

It raises an interesting question - at least six people will attend next Monday's special "friends 'n' family" screening of The Pink House and see themselves portrayed on-screen. In many cases, the "character" that borrowed their names, their best lines, and their spirit won't match reality, and they might feel a little betrayed. The original draft of the screenplay was very true to the people I knew in real life, but after 5 or 6 drafts, their doppelgangers melded into outright caricatures. The Pink House "Scott" is actually a combination of Scott Bullock and Chip Chapman, but neither of them would behave the way "Scott" does in the movie.

I suppose I'll be hearing from Chip's team of lawyers. Damn him!

N'Gai, Jiffer, me last night