A sense of community is the true appeal of the bookstore setting. Bookstores in mysteries promise warmth and calm. They offer companionship. When all seems dark and dreary, they are there, “spilling light onto the sidewalk.”
What such length provides is more—more of whatever a filmmaker has to offer, more self-revelation, for better or worse. Ordinary filmmakers make long movies mere slogs: those whose ambition exceeds their artistry reveal their public-facing strivings and pleadings for recognition; but, for the greats, such as Scorsese, it’s a canvas as big as the world.
Long before it entered the urban playgrounds of the 20th century, the swing was a ritual instrument of healing, punishment and transformation. Through repetitive, vertigo-inducing movements, the swing was used to celebrate gods and legendary beings, to ward off evil, alleviate suicidal impulses, heal mental illness, express sexual dominance or torment those accused of occult practices. But its deeper use has always been one of transformation: as it holds us in its oscillating spell, the swing calls into question the world we know, with its established hierarchies and rhythms. To swing is not only to play, but to open disorienting passages into transgressive spaces.
Sixty. It sounded so substantial, so respectably old, a milestone, and I wanted to mark the place. Get a tattoo popped into my head out of nowhere. Perfect. I would get my first tattoo. It would be a salamander, because I love the way they look, and how they feel like a little puddle of mercury in the palm of your hand, and plus they are magic.
CM Lucca is writing a biography or memoir of her wife, in order to address what she sees as egregious errors in a bestselling biography of the eponymous “X”. The book is a wonderful series of rabbit holes. “X” is a myriad; a novelist, artist, musician, provocateur, strip-club dancer film-maker, and X has also been Dorothy, Bee, Luella, Marley, Joan and Angel before she settles on X. X is the term in algebra from an unknown quantity, and she is determined to be unknowable; hence her wife’s objection to the expedient biography shortly after her death. But X is also an unknown unknown: it means very different things if I put an x on a birthday card or an x after an incorrect piece of arithmetic. It is also the sign used for hybridisation in botany, and collaborations in aesthetics. It also marks the spot, and the impeccable X will not be pinned down for good reasons.
Alie Benge’s first book, Ithaca, is one of those non-fiction books that shifts between several forms. It is sometimes memoir, sometimes personal essay, sometimes criticism, sometimes analysis, sometimes even outright comedy. The one constant throughout is Benge’s voice – sharp, witty, precise. Whenever I’ve read her writing on this very site, I’ve always imagined her chatting directly to me, perhaps mid-cigarette, the coolest person in the room.
I want to laugh at the autumn rains.
When I laugh, it’s July again.