2/28/11

Someone on my tumblr  asked me to provide for them some movie suggestions. I love movies. I think part of the reason why I even still enable any sort of "ask" function is because I secretly hope that more people will ask me for advice or opinions on movies. It's not that I consider myself to be any sort of authority, but I just really really legitimately love film. Celluloid courses through my veins! I just love sharing movies that maybe someone has not seen yet, because I hope that whatever that film may be, it might make that person feel as happy as I did to discover it. There is hardly a better feeling than finding a new movie and falling utterly in love with it. It's like witch craft, you fall under the enchantment of a film and you are suspended in another world for a few hours. Some movies are especially potent in their magic, and they insist of haunting you even after the last credit has trailed by. I am on a never-ending mission to find that perfect film, the one that not only captivates me, but temporarily borrows my brain, takes it away, and plays baseball with it on Mars. I want a movie to really move me. 

I never cared much for drugs; while my friends were busy dabbling in hallucinogenics, so was I, only I was getting high on movies, movies, movies, every night sleep deprivation and the most cerebral terrifying movies. I think it all started when I was a little kid. I remember having Dumbo on VHS. I remember being so scared of the hallucination sequence, because it looked and felt and sounded like a nightmare. Sure enough however, I would fast-forward through the movie just to get to these frightening scenes and watch them over and over again until I felt like Pink Elephants were going to come marching right out of my TV. My mom meditates to get to an altered state of consciousness. I apparently just watch movies. 

Anywho, reeling this tangent back in, I think I would like to do a movie post right about now. Borrowing somewhat from my previous post, I would like to dedicate the following post to movies about Life and Death. And by all means, if this inspires any of you as well, leave me a comment to suggest a movie I may have neglected or not seen! I always have an eye out for new movies to watch. 

But, without further Adieu, I present to you LIFE AND DEATH

My first movie pertaining to Death is more or less a no-brainer. When I think of Death, this movies' iconic reaper is what immediately comes to mind. I am talking about Bergman's 1957 masterpiece The Seventh Seal. In short, The Seventh Seal is about a Knight in Plague-ravaged Europe, who challenges Death to a game of Chess. The title is borrowed from The Book of Revelations, and the movie is a crisp, beautifully shot meditation on life, death, faith, and the Silence of God.

"Faith is a torment – did you know that? It is like loving someone who is out there in the darkness but never appears, no matter how loudly you call." 

The next film also borrows from the Bible, in this case it is the story of Genesis. It plays out like Death, feels like Death, and might make you prefer Death, but it is about the entire incestuous cycle of life and death. The movie is Begotten (Merhige), and it begins with a shocking (albeit grainy) disembowelment scene. From the gore, springs a child and the remainder of the film is spent following this child (Earth) through life, as she learns how painful and bleak existence apparently is. There is no dialogue, no color, and the footage is so painstakingly tweaked that it is sometimes impossible to fully decipher what it is that you are seeing. 

The next film is a more recent production and deals with the life that one might potentially experience after Death. Enter the Void, directed by the notorious Gapsar Noe, is an entirely new type of cinematic experience. Whether you like it or not, I think it has to be admitted that this is an ambitious and certainly interesting feat. The film follows two siblings living in Tokyo. The brother, a drug dealer, is about to die.  By killing off one of the seminal characters in your movie, you'd expect there to be little left to explore. You'd be wrong because there are several hours of film left! The majority of the movie is shot from the dead boy's astral perspective. The camera hovers above the city swooping through walls and over buildings, observing the lives that were left behind. It's a surreal world filled with technicolor landscapes and lots of fairly explicit sexual shenanigans. Grab your DMT and enjoy!

This next film is another interesting, visually arresting/repulsing film that traverses life and death. Pálfi's Taxidermia is a Hungarian film that follows three generations of men. Not just any men, but three men whose quirks blend into the realm of not just the bizarre, but the grotesque. There is the peeping tom who literally shoots fire from his penis. Then there is the morbidly obese speed-eating champion. Lastly there is the lonely taxidermist who ends the cycle of life in one of the most amazing/horrific/amazing suicides you'll ever witness. Trust me. This movie is visceral, which makes it both beautiful and absolutely repugnant. Watch it, just please not at dinner time. 

What happens when we die? What if we could be given a second chance at life? This next film is one of my favorites, and I would recommend it to nearly anyone. It is Wim Wender's Romantic musing on life, death, love, and Berlin: Wings of Desire. In this movie, Angels hover around the city, guiding unsuspecting mortals. They listen to people's thoughts, their desires, their prayers, and they watch over them tirelessly. One day, an Angel (Bruno Ganz) tires of his job when he falls in love with a beautiful trapeze artist at a traveling circus show in Berlin, and he pines to be human just like her. This movie is beautiful, absolutely beautiful. Not to mention, if the music, script, and cinematography were not enough to woo you, there is a club scene where Blixa-era Nick Cave perform. It is flawless.

It's great to live by the spirit, to testify day by day for eternity, only what's spiritual in people's minds. But sometimes I'm fed up with my spiritual existence. Instead of forever hovering above I'd like to feel a weight grow in me to end the infinity and to tie me to earth. 

2/27/11

Today a few friends and i paid a visit to the creepy Southern California Destination, The Museum of Death. I had been meaning to pay a visit since they relocated to Holly Wood. To be honest, the excitement I had at the thought of the museum, waned once I actually arrived there. I was apprehensive. Death is one of those complicated subjects I am emotionally and ideologically divided on. I think death is a natural progression in the cycle of life, and that death itself is neither inherently negative or positive; I think that the aversion to death that exists in much of the Western World is  backward, counter-productive, and borne out of a societally constructed/inflicted taboo rather than human nature. Never the less, I wear that fear. That aversion to death. I flinch at carnage because it is unpleasant to look and see myself in it, to realize how fragile life is. We suffer from this arrogant belief that we human beings are infallible; we rest at the top of the food chain impervious to even our own mortality because if we can ignore death long enough, we can cheat it. The truth is, we are meat as easy to sever and as easy to exterminate, as any live stock. Morbid, perhaps, but necessary I think. Our denial of the fact that people die, rot, and disappear is the only thing that should really be seen as bizarre, not death itself. At most funerals however, your dearly beloved has been pumped with chemicals, caked with makeup, and painted to look not necessarily alive, but familiar. Where Memento Mori attempted to serve as a way to create closure with the family and in portraits allow the deceased to appear as if they were "sleeping", what goes on in today's funeral homes seems like nothing more than a way to censor death. It is a way to shield people from the nasty decay that we will all eventually become part of. I represent one of that frightened population. Part of what has always disturbed me about looking at the dead, is realizing that that will be me one day and remembering that I am here temporarily. I want to face Death so I can appreciate life, and actually live it. That, however, is simultaneously exhilarating and terrifying. I alternated between the two emotions in quick succession.

Walking up to the heavy metal gates, the museum is a rather foreboding looking structure. It is in the middle of a run-down stretch of Holly Wood separated from the glitzy veneer a few blocks down. The dirt is still caked on in this part of town, perhaps even thicker. The sun was gone, and everything was lost in this sick peachy glow of smog and light pollution. A giant painted skull adorns the entrance to the museum, a stylish reminder of what lies inside: Death. Sparse and dry as bone itself.

You open the gates and the place feels almost deserted. For some reason I was a little surprised by how scarce staff were or how intimate the actual building was; I suppose Death is after all, an acquired taste. When we walked up to the building, the first room we were greeted with was the gift shop. Tee shirts and posters and magnets lined the walls, and a desk occupied the center of the room. It was big and demanding, like a podium. Perched atop that desk was a very kind woman, who kept her tickets in a miniature coffin-shaped box. My friends and I stumbled in high as kites and, not knowing what else to do, made meandering small talk with the woman for what must have been an hour. I was half expecting her to ask for the secret handshake or password or knock before we could cross the velvet curtains and enter the museum. It was as if we had stumbled into the front lobby of some underground society and we were all struggling to remain "cool" and divert attention from the fact that we were novices.

Somehow, the small talk managed to charm the woman, rather than come off us patronizing and desperate. We got into a long conversation (I really forget how) about her evening at the Los Angeles County Coroner's. Her eyes lit up. I don't think I had ever seen a person muster up so much excitement to explain a situation that to most people, would have been beyond dismal. "I had to leave the room several times just to vomit" she exclaimed, "the mask they gave us is sitting outside; it still reeks of putrid flesh". She was like a kid in a candy store, if the candy were dead people. You could tell she was legitimately passionate about her line of work; she approached death the way I approached digging for worms as a kid. The shimmer in her eyes as she graphically described the process of decomposition, was equal parts morbid fascination and humbled awe of the complexity of nature. For as much as she was repulsed by the stench of it and excited by the nastiness of it, she was also just really humbled by Death. She respected it. Well, in the same sort of way most school boys respect bugs and dirt and volatile chemicals. "Did you know that they drag the bodies around with ropes, and that they are too broke to afford individual body bags, so instead the cadavers are left to soak in plastic pools. You could grow cauliflower on one of those things." She even showed off to us the putrid surgical mask, her trophy, that she had left outside to air.

Before she took our money and gave us our tickets, she directed our eyes to a little picture that was taped to the front of the desk of a gentleman in a motorcycle accident whose body looked more like poultry than person. "This is the longest man in the world and if you can't stomach this, then you may want to reconsider the rest of this exhibit. We have had several people faint today, so be smart and if at any point you need to sit down or turn around, please do!", she said with controlled enthusiasm. You could tell there was urgency in her voice. Letting us into her museum of mortification was bestowing a lot of faith and confidence on to us. I suppose we proved our merit by sticking our noses so close into the image that whatever ink they used wafted into our  nostrils. We asked questions and spouted off jokes. She entertained them. I became very intimately acquainted with the fresco of brains a la asphalt on that photograph. It was like Christmas all over again as she guided us through those initial double curtains and left us on our own.

At first, I was really apprehensive, I can't reiterate that enough. I consider myself to be rather open-minded but also incredibly sheltered and sensitive to gore. I didn't know how harmonious those traits would prove to be. In the first room, I felt my anxiety rise, my temples throb, and my senses all unanimously perk up.

The museum began with their collection of serial killer illustrations and writings. There were absolutely ingenious illustrations, letters, first person accounts, and even a collection of hand-made pop-up cards. I think serial killers are a common fascination, or at least, I seem to run into all of the nut jobs who share the fascination. It was a good room to start off with, and probably the most entertaining. Apparently crazed homicidal maniacs have a pretty entertaining sense of humor. The subsequent rooms became more and more intense and provided significantly fewer opportunities to joke (we found them anyway). I had a silly fan-girl moment when I noticed the Rozz Williams tribute to the museum, complete with the very cabinet door on which he hanged himself. There were also electric chairs, coffins, infant death portraits, car accidents, and rooms dedicated to the Heaven's Gate, Manson, Dahlia, and a movie reel of gruesome execution and death footage. The worst of said footage was re-capped in slow motion.

The place often felt more like a maniacal fan's shrine than a museum installation. The arrangements felt painstaking and intimate, rather than sterile. There were no sophisticated alarm systems. No glass. No barriers. I walked in feeling a little wary of what I was embarking on, but I left really thankful for the place. This might officially make me a pervert, but I even enjoyed it. I would go back if given the opportunity (ahem with a camera because I need my picture with Rozz)! The enjoyment didn't sink in until much later, though. The shock had to work its way around in my head for a few hours before I could decide how to feel about any of it. I'm still not sleeping well after this, but I'm thankful for going, a little giddy even.

There is a deep sense of awe and reverence I have toward Death now. While sitting in a darkened room next to a taxidermied hog and a casket, my own corporeal problems went away. I couldn't think about my depression, my body image, my financial woes...it ll becomes so trivial when you're watching a man get his arms yanked clean off. I never had to stare at so much carnage before, and somehow there was a sense of peace in it. It was look getting out of bed and opening the closet door to confront the monsters, and realizing it was nothing but a shadow. It scares the pants off of you, but you get to work through that fear. I worked through that fear last night, and come out (still squeamish around gore) capable of being...God forbid....fascinated. Death isn't that scary, it's rather amazing actually. Decay, that horrible thing we don't want to ever have to face, isn't that bad. It's ugly, but its also a rather miraculous and efficient method of recycling. It's the final step in the cycle of life, and in dying you can become a part of the soil and the vast ecosystem that surrounds you, and will eventually incubate new life. In Middle School I read a poem proclaiming how in death we become food for worms. We cease to be human, and sink to the lowest realm of the food chain. That terrified me as a kid. We are worm food. We are worm food; but a garden could grow above your grave.

"Have a nice life!" The owners cheered as we left.

2/24/11

Why is adulthood so hallowed? Why do we squander our youths anticipating when we can row up? I do not want to grow up. I have been tossed into an adult world so young, that now when I am supposed to  be growing, I am obsessed with regressing. I am obsessed with shrinking my body, my power, my obligations, and my scope of the world to simulate that of a child's, the child I wasn't able to be for long enough. Adulthood is an elaborate death. Adulthood is cold and sterile. I do not want the adult world. I want to be that child again, unafraid, unashamed, chasing fairies and digging for worms just because she can. I hope for nothing more than one day figuring out how to balance the two worlds. Until then though, it seems like an impossible feat, perfecting balance seems like alchemy.

2/23/11

I've led an involuntarily nomadic life, calling everywhere home from Ohio to California, mom's house, to dad's house, to friend of a friends' house. I've laid my weary little head to rest on so many pillows that the word "home" has begun to age poorly. It's lost its meaning. I haven't felt truly connected to a "home" since 1999. In a way, this lack of attachment has liberated me; by belonging nowhere, I am free to belong everywhere.

I've always thought introductions were useful, even if the audience is already familiar with the orator, or there is no audience at all. If anything, it's a good distraction for those too egomaniacal to think of anyone else or for those too lonely to have anyone else.

My name is Ayla: I-L-A. I currently reside in a Los Angeles port-side town whose most notorious import is it's Gangsta Rap. I live in the significantly more gentrified area of town where Snoop Dogg has been exchanged for frat boys and high-end Mediterranean Restaurants. My studio apartment is walking distance from what feels like Every Obnoxious Sports Bar In The World. This place, with it's four walls, one door, and seven windows, is where the Heart is (for now).

I am a slacker and a deeply imperfect young specimen; my Achilles heel is my whole damned mind, body, and soul. Thoroughly damaged goods, with all existential warranties voided. The phrase "Wasted Potential" has haunted me since Grade School. I've sat here, wasted, wasting, a waste of space and resources and time.

I seem to get dressed up by people like a Paper Doll. My first boyfriend and I only started dating because he was, "intrigued by me" and, "wanted to figure me out".  In a lot of ways, that is the biggest insult. A person is bound to only ever fall in love with the idea of you. Yet I feel like I owe some fantastic and engaging explanation for who I am, and how I acquired this wealth of fictitious attributes; I wish I could tell everyone that there is a secret Hogwarts for Nerds where losers like myself migrate to annually and learn all there is to know about music and literature and being pompous. There is no such thing, of course and by association, there is no such thing as whoever it is you think I am. The truth of the matter is that I am just your run of the mill nerd and that the internet, like the imagination, tends to portray its subjects at the most flattering angle. I'm kind of stupid, to be honest. I am not the brightest crayon in the box. I barely passed High School and I have a Fifth Grade Mathematics Proficiency level. I am just a loner, and good at loner things that are effective at parading around as pseudo-intellectualism. Really, honest, I'm just a loser. The books I read and the hours I spent staring into space philosophizing about the meaning of life were done out of necessity not out of a need to fill my giant brain. I had little else out there for me. I still don't. The reality is much less alluring, isn't it?

I was always a bit of an odd child. Few friends. Limited interpersonal skills. A learning Disability. Faint traces of neurosis fortifying its roots even at a young age. I thought I saw fairies as a kid. When it wasn't fairies, I thought I saw ghosts roaming the halls of our turn of the century era home. Teachers abhorred me because even though I was reasonably intelligent for my age, I was a bad student. I my have been reading high school level literature in Grade School, but I was doing so when I should have been doing my times tables or memorizing the 50 States. Most of my peers abhorred me too, by the same token. As of the Forth Grade, I was a social untouchable. No one wants to befriend the wirey-haired Tolkien fanatic. I internalized the rejection and was diagnosed with Major Depression at the Ripe Ole Age of nine years-old. With no friends and a prodigious case of adolescent angst, I had lots of time to become introspective and to develop a knack for loner hobbies. These include but are not limited to: Reading, writing, drawing, and obscure music snobbery.

My parents, being the hippies they were, nurtured my progressive insanity by shrugging it off and proclaiming, "Oh, she is just a true Indigo Child!".

As you my have deduced, I live alone. No, no, scratch that, more taboo than alone, I live alone with a cat. Her name is Two Face, but I have nicknamed her Dinah because she is my dependable familiar waiting for me to wake up from my mysterious journey down the rabbit hole. Sure enough, there she is every morning at the foot of my bed curled up like a spool of white thread. She is the wide-eyed little cherub that I can always depend on at the end of the day, and who for as long as I remember to feed her, will shower me with equal parts unconditional love, affection, and wet noses.