The beach transforms itself. Spring is inching its way toward us.
Michigan has all our ice. Yes. The wind came from the north and blew east, across Wisconsin towards Michigan. Now all the ice that’s left on Lake Michigan is on the Michigan side. As if Illinois just shoved it all over.
I have this deep-seated perception that I’m not truly a mid-westerner. That I’m here on sabbatical. Just visiting for… oh, say… ten years. Then I’ll go back where I belong. And where is that? New York City, Los Angeles (most strongly) or Seattle, or Spokane. All of those places feel like home. But just now, writing this, I feel like this is where I belong. I loved this winter, even with its harsh severity. Now that we’re leaning into spring, I feel emergent pride and a sense of place. With roots! Roots digging down into the ground, spurting out of my feet. Weird. Wild.
Belong. What does that mean? The sense of being in a place that’s essentially yours? That’s such a tactile sensation for me - the I am here and this is where I belong feeling. But the truth is, I only feel that way when I’m returning someplace. I didn’t feel that way about Spokane until I moved to Seattle, and I didn’t feel that way about Seattle until I moved to Los Angeles, and I definitely didn’t feel that way about Los Angeles until I moved here.
I remind myself that a true “belonging” to a place is an illusion. Places change while you aren’t there, and you change too - and where you are is your home. Wherever You Go, There You Are. (That was a great book, btw - by Jon Kabat-Zinn.) Okay, now I’m just free associating.
One more thought, though. Maybe living in a place where the seasons are so vibrant and definitive (quintessential you might even say) you have the sense of renewal all the time - unlike in Los Angeles where it always seems like summer, or in Seattle where it always seems like a cold, cloudy spring. Here in the midwest, each season is experienced like you’ve moved back to some familiar long, lost place. Oh yes, spring. There it is, under the snow. It was there all along even though it feels as if it’s arrived by train.
Let’s talk about movies.
Movies I watched in March, 2014
1. The Decologue, Episodes 6,7,8,9,10, 1989, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
2. Three Colors: Blue, 1993, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
3. Three Colors: White, 1993, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
4. Three Colors: Red, 1994, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
5. A Year of the Quiet Sun, 1984, directed by Krzysztof Zanussi
6. The Naked Spur, 1953, directed by Anthony Mann
7. Marie Antoinette, 2006, directed by Sofia Coppola
8. The Double Life of Veronique, 1991, directed by Krzysztof Kieslowski
9. Groundhog Day, 1993, directed by Harold Ramis
10. The Mortal Storm, 1940, directed by Frank Borzage
11. Sixteen Candles, 1984, directed by John Hughes
12. The Breakfast Club, 1985, directed by John Hughes
13. The Secret Garden, 1993, directed by Agnieszka Holland
O! I love writing this blog entry because I’m required to remember everything I watched. I had such a fun, moving, serendipitous movie-watching month. I went Krzysztof Kieslowski crazy. The Decolog is absolutely on my list of the top films ever made. Many people consider the entire ten-hour episodic extravaganza as one movie. I want to watch it all again. The music is great too - I got the soundtrack by Zbigniew Preisner. In fact, I got all the music I could. The soundtracks to Blue, White, and Red - for which Preisner also did the music, is not available to download. But I got actual CDs (it’s been a long time since I bought CDs!) used through Amazon. Sometimes I think that the used stuff is the best thing about Amazon (which in general I’m ambivalent toward.) In any case, it was great fun to see the rest of The Decologue. Then I watched his masterpieces - Blue, White and Red. All deeply moving, funny, and dark. I liked Blue best. But maybe I should see Red again. Ack, they’re all great. Then I watched my favorite of all the Kieslowski films again, which is The Double Life of Veronique. The whole ending with the puppeteer and Irene Jacob, oh, oh, oh! This is my favorite thing to do these days - immerse myself in some artist who I’ve missed. These past few months it’s been Krzysztof Kieslowski. You will see, most of my reading was about him too.
In fact, I had a very Polish film month. Not only was I on my Kieslowski odyssey, I watched A Year of the Quiet Sun by Zannussi, and The Secret Garden by Agnieszka Holland. It was my second time to see both of those films. What is it with the Poles? I love Roman Polanski too. Was there something in the water at the National Film School in Lodz, where they all studied? It’s definitely an example of synergy happening, and some of the most creative, influential, and deeply moving works of art bursting out of one place - seemingly fueled by the connections those students were making with each other.
What else? I watched Groundhog Day after Harold Ramis died. I was so very, very sad about his death. He directed me in Stuart Saves His Family, which starred Al Franken. Dear God did we laugh on that set.
…
I re-watched Marie Antoinette. That movie was even better this time around. I think it’s a deeply feminist view of Marie Antoinette. Only Sofia Coppola could have pulled this movie off. I showed it to my niece and nephew who came to town for their college’s spring break. They liked it a lot too.
We also watched The Naked Spur together. That may be my favorite western.
When Jill Sobule was here with Dave Carpenter, after our last show, we watched The Mortal Storm. It stars Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart - together again after The Shop Around the Corner (my favorite movie of all time.) And it was even made in the same year. Wow. It’s about a family in the German Alps in the early 1930s who are separated because the father is Jewish and taken to a concentration camp. Stewart plays a family friend who is in love with Sullavan and tries to get her out of Germany. They ski away through the Alps! (BTW, they never use the word “Jewish” in the film, they say “non-Aryan.” That was surprising.)
We ended the month with Mulan starting her spring break from school. We didn’t travel anywhere, just stayed home. We decided to watch all the John Hughes movies about high school students which were filmed in this area. I’d never seen any of them. During the month of March, we watched Sixteen Candles (delightful, sweet) and The Breakfast Club. I was really stunned, I liked those movies so much. I think I was too much of a snob when they came out. I was probably headed to the foreign film art house and couldn’t be bothered with John Hughes. Now I can see why he did so well. The movies are sweet and goofy and dumb and smart and transcend themselves. They add up to more than their parts. Both Mulan and I liked them a lot.
Books read in March 2014
1. Kieslowski on Kieslowski, written by Krzysztof Kieslowski and Danusia Stok
2. Double Lives, Second Chances: The Cinema of Krzysztof Kieslowski, written by Annette Insdorf
And now I must tell you that I lost my list of what I read in March. There was more, I wrote it down on a random notebook sheet when I finished what I read, and now it’s lost.
I’m done with my performing. I’m just at home writing and I could not be happier about this long-awaited time. I’m knocking around watching movies, reading (currently I’m engrossed in the never-before-read-by-me Middlemarch) and I’m even working on a puzzle on the dining room table from time to time.
I hope I live to be 110.
Until next month, my friends…
April 12, 2014 at 9:47 pm, Gordon Bishop said:
Glad to hear that you’re doing well. Can’t wait to read your next book!
April 17, 2014 at 4:31 am, Karen Kilbane said:
Love the recommendations. My husband and I can’t wait to have free time on a Saturday night for a movie. When that free Saturday night finally comes along, we put our daughter to bed, well I put her to bed, we get all situated in the living room with snacks, and then we look at each other blankly. We are NEVER, EVER, EVER able to figure out anything out to watch that could remotely interest both of us. I will now use your blog as a reference list for movies. I am an Irish Catholic raised up girl to a woman who went from the midwest (Cleveland area of Ohio) to Seattle. I did the reverse of you geographically but had a similar background with the whole Irish catholic with lots of siblings thing. Several years ago I got into a huge audio- tape phase and listened to everything by you I could find. I forget which play of yours I listened to first, but during the first one I couldn’t stop listening once I started. I was in bed with my head phones until 3am that night and woke my husband 5 times because I was intermittently convulsing with laughter so violently right next to his sleeping head. You made me laugh with my whole body. I felt quite inconsiderate of him but could not stop listening or laugh-heaving. I LOVED your ability to find the humor in the things your mother said to you. It helped me take my own mother’s lovingly and freely given incessant stream of verbal advice and turn it into a humor reel. I too gave up God after years of trying with everything in me to find faith enough to be a believer. I was very devout until 4th grade and still have a vivid memory from that age. I was waiting for communion when a thought came through my head as I was kneeling, “I’m going to have real trouble buying all this stuff soon”. I knew I could go along with it for the time being but had some major questioning in store for the future. True enough, as I got older and learned more about how the world worked, the contradictions of Christianity kept getting more and more preposterous. I am now neither a believer or a non believer because I find the point moot, or as my mother would say, mute.