i want to work on things other than just my face. i do have ideas about other things to do, but i can't seem to force what i'm able to put energy into. i like the way this one looks from quite a distance better than up close. i noticed this when i left the room and came back in while working on it, approaching from an approximately 45 degree angle on the left of the screen.
i think this one vaguely approaches a mood i'm interested in capturing in relation to sentimentality. gloomily sentimental. i am sentimental in some ways, and have been thinking about that recently. when i saw a movie a while ago called 'gloomy sunday', i had a bit of a weird reaction. it's not that it was a favourite film or anything like that. i even resented the superstitious idea that a song could 'cause' people to kill themselves. but something seemed to affect me. [note: i don't mean to say that the movie itself implied the song caused people to suicide. it was something else, a program about the song, but i don't feel i have the energy to explain.]
anyway, after the movie, gk and i searched mp3s of the title song. and when i finally started to listen, i wept. it's not that it's all that unusual for me to cry, really. i guess.. i liked the lyrics, i seem to be very lyrically driven, and maybe something that came through of the original composer's intent. we searched the original composer's lyrics as well, and i thought they were sort of interesting.. i began to think that i would like to choreograph something to a version of gloomy sunday, but none of the versions i've heard feel quite right to me, although i like different things about different ones. maybe i need another style altogether. some of the images i want to create relate to what i've felt about all of this. [this is just one thing i've had ideas regarding choreography for.. it would in part provide contrast to some of the other ideas i have. not that i'm sure i will ever do any of it.]
sam m lewis lyrics for gloomy sunday (not the original composer)
sunday is gloomy
my hours are slumberless
dearest the shadows
i live with are numberless
little white flowers
will never awaken you
not where the black coach
of sorrow has taken you
angels have no thoughts
of ever returning you
would they be angry
if i thought of joining you?
gloomy sunday
gloomy is sunday
with shadows i spend it all
my heart and i
have decided to end it all
soon there'll be candles
and prayers that are said i know
but let them not weep
ket them know that i'm glad to go
death is no dream
for in death i'm caressing you
with the last breath of my soul
i'll be blessing you
gloomy sunday
dreaming, i was only dreaming
i wake and i find you asleep
in the deep of my heart here
darling i hope
that my dream never haunted you
my heart is telling you
how much i wanted you
rezsô seress lyrics (original composer)
english translation: (i don't know if it's a good translation):
it is autumn and the leaves are falling
all love has died on earth
the wind is weeping with sorrowful tears
my heart will never hope for a new spring again
my tears and my sorrows are all in vain
people are heartless, greedy and wicked...
love has died
the world has come to its end, hope has ceased to have a meaning
cities are being wiped out, bombs are making music
meadows are coloured red with human blood
there are dead people on the streets everywhere
i will say another quiet prayer:
people are sinners, lord, they make mistakes...
the world has ended
i looked up the song 'gloomy sunday' and movie in ash archives a while back, and found that they seemed to have resonated with various ashlings, a somewhat popular choice. i would like to be more original, i suppose, but i have to admit it affected me too. although, most seemed to have a favourite version or two, but i still sort of feel that i'm looking for a different version.
speaking of sentimentality.. you know you're pathetic when you're watching buffy the vampire slayer and you cry when spike admits that the night he spent just holding buffy, watching her sleep, was the best night of his life, and that he actually felt close for the first time. i am hideously sentimental at times, i do sometimes have reactions like this, when i am alone. [note: in australia, we don't see tv shows and whatnot at the same time they are aired in north america, we're a fair bit behind, and i just saw the episode i'm talking about a few days ago.]
i suppose that i tend to try not to call too much attention to my sentimentality, or that i feel very self-conscious about it. thinking about that now, it seems a bit ridiculous. i probably do come across as fairly sentimental. but probably the extent of it might not exactly come through.
it's not that i think i have anything to say. it's just that here, it feels like it doesn't matter, it's like here i can accept how pathetic, and vapid i am, i feel slightly less self-conscious.
as for how i'm doing.. i'm heartbroken, desolate, pining.
08/01/05: and i continue to do things with my face and time keeps going on and just when will i ever have something different to show. from time to time i make attempts, but i'm pretty scared. it's not that i don't have face issues as well as body issues, it's just that it's easier to photograph my face in a spontaneous way, often by holding a camera at arm's length, and i think i often tend to look a lot more relaxed. the timer on my camera has to be manually reset each time, and there's a wait period of about 5 seconds, i think, which causes a lot of running back and forth, and waiting for the thing to go off, and it stresses me out, and i find it difficult to keep at it long.
when i'm either about to take photos or work on some i already have, it usually comes upon me when i don't expect it. i can't really force it. it's just like i start having the thought that maybe i might feel like taking photos, then i'll start getting ideas about what i want to try, and then i'll start doing makeup or arranging whatever i might need.
i feel pretty bad about my body. i don't feel very sexual about it. and that's a fairly big hindrance. (er, how the hell do i expect to dance on film?) i don't know. i guess i just wait. for things to change somehow. i feel pretty bad about the coarseness of my facial features, i always feel self-conscious. i don't know. it seems all i can do is wait until i'm ready. i have so many ideas for things to try, and it's frustrating not feeling like i can cope with it.
i don't know. maybe i'll eventually be ready.
there is one thing i wanted to mention about the buffy the vampire slayer thing above. at the time, i guess i was much too self- conscious to mention something even more pathetic, too embarrassed. i wasn't as embarrassed about the part i mentioned, it seemed more acceptable somehow, less likely to turn others off, maybe. but. when buffy and spike had sex for the first time... i cried then, too. for 5 hours. i know this because i'm always looking at a fucking clock, wherever i am. and my body was shaking convulsively.
and if i try to explain why i had that reaction. i think i reacted on a visceral level, and i saw a kind of extremeness that appealed to me. can't that kind of reaction be part of 'real' love? to me it seems like a natural part of it, that love shouldn't be all sweetness or all about the 'higher' human emotions, although i'd like it all to be combined.
i think my reaction represents part of what i think i'm missing. one of the extremes i'm missing. the feeling that someone could access parts of himself/herself that are that extreme, with me. or more extreme. there's this quote i think of when i think of my relationships, and the longing for something more, at least this one part of it...
...because of their youth, and their moving still outside of the center of their own desires blindly, what they danced together was not a dance in which either took possession of the other, but a kind of minuet, where the aim consisted in *not* appropriating, *not* grasping, *not* touching, but allowing the maximum space and distance to flow between the two figures. to move in accord without collisions, without merging. to encircle, to bow in worship, to laugh at the same absurdities, to mock their own movements, to throw upon the walls twin shadows which will never become one. to dance around this danger: the danger of becoming one! to dance keeping each to his own path. to allow parallelism, but no loss of the self into the other. ...step by step, to read the same book together, to dance a dance of elusiveness on the rim of desire, to remain within circles of heightened lighting without touching the core that would set the circle on fire...
-anaïs nin, children of the albatross
i know that to some people, the idea of allowing that flow, of allowing space and distance, to avoid collisions, all of that seems like a kind of ideal to aim for, or wish for, maybe. it's just not who i am. and if another person is made differently, oriented differently, i experience sadness and frustration, and inevitably let go.
of course, a person could be capable of experiencing something like what i'm talking about, just not with me. but if the potential for something like that with me isn't there, i will inevitably let go. there is just no way to make this part of myself go away. at times i try to focus on other aspects of relating and experience, and i think i am able to appreciate them, maybe even more than some, but i just can't get rid of this other thing.
it's not that i'm looking for a supernatural or expertly choreographed love scene. i don't want that kind of pressure. but even if things are clumsy, that something comes through, that i understand that the other person is coming from the same place, somehow.
it is easier to write here, i do feel less self-conscious than in my new diary. it does seem more likely to me that the more i say, the less likely anyone will relate to me. i feel this kind of revulsion about myself, it's like i can see how difficult i am, how scary i am, how i'm likely to just make everyone feel uncomfortable or nervous, or pressured. and i feel sorry, but i don't know what to do.