I'm watching Black Swan at work.
That may have been a poor choice.

BECAUSE IT'S MENTAL.

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Not long ago I happened upon a site that offered a side-by-side comparison of Bert Stern’s famous photos of Marilyn Monroe at the Bel Air Hotel in 1962 and his 2008 “recreation” of that shoot with Lindsay Lohan for New York Magazine. The audience was encouraged to give their opinions on both photo sets and decide which they preferred. Almost every comment left at the end of the post was some variation of “Lindsay Lohan is no Marilyn Monroe.” But I think everyone missed the point - because once you stop comparing the two, the most interesting contrasts emerge.

I was in my 20s when I first saw the original images; I found a handful in a magazine the year Stern’s book, Marilyn Monroe: The Complete Last Sitting came out in 1992. The thing that surprised me about the photos was how joyful they were. Monroe never struck me as a particularly joyful human. She always seemed so on, living up to the image she’d built (or had thrust upon her). Her Monroe-ness kept me at arm’s length; the energy necessary to maintain it was vicariously exhausting. But in Stern’s photos she seemed unaffected, playful and relaxed. She looked like she was having fun and it made me grin. 

When I look at Lohan’s photos, they make me uncomfortable. She poses herself so carefully, contriving the “sexy” expression you see on little girls playing at Movie Star. She is struggling to put on Marilyn; one actress assuming the persona of another actress who had constructed a persona. It’s all very Victor Victoria and her anxious eyes belie the confidence of all that skin. And Stern captures it all, making his photos as remarkable as ever.

Of course Lohan is no Monroe. Seriously? Neither am I, neither is Dita Von Teese. How is that even worthy of remark? What Stern has done is juxtaposed two women: one an adult, one barely out of her teens; one captured in an organic moment of confidence, the other in a painfully self-conscious act of mimicry. Each has lived a life weird enough to give them layers with or without clothes. Commenter’s seemed outraged that Lohan would presume to invite the comparison - but no one asked why. Why was the only question I had.

What was it that motivated her to put on shoes she had to have known she couldn't fill?

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Is it just me, or is it starting to feel like the end of the world? I don't remember things being so rife with biblical doom when I was a kid. And I feel like it has to be more than just the Aquanet I used in high school.

I waver between beliefs (or rather, belief and none). It's doctrine by desire. That makes me spectacularly ordinary, I guess. I wonder at what point I began to realize I have no original thoughts? The idea isn't self-deprecating - just true. Whatever I can come up with - whatever I think - it has been thought before. Probably a million times. A trillion. Some days that's enormously comforting; it's a connection. But some days it's exhausting, defeating. (Though without flavour or texture, my mediocrity is curiously hard to swallow.)

Today it just is.

An earthquake, a tsunami, disaster, death; I have the luxury of considering it at arm's length.

For now.
g.

illustration by julie verhoeven

I was watching a documentary about Harry Nilsson. They were talking about the song "One (is the lonliest number)." The persistent, instantly recognizable staccato notes that open the piece were meant to approximate the sound of a busy signal. The story goes that Nilsson had been trying to place a call and, in a moment of inspiration, wrote the whole song with the telephone receiver pressed to his ear, listening to the repeating tone.

When I was a kid, our phone was a rotary dial. We had a party line (we shared our phone line with another house, and our calls differentiated by unique rings); it was cheaper than a dedicated one. Only businesses with multiple lines could put people on hold and no one had ever heard of call waiting.  No one I knew had an answering machine. Our isolated house in the country was considered "long distance" from most of my friends and it was rare for me to be allowed to place a call. It seemed like such a grown up thing. I remember standing in front of the telephone, slowing dialing each number to be sure I didn't make a mistake. My heart would hammer with anticipation.

Later, as I got older, started high school, the family who shared our line got their own. And they changed the telephone area demarcation lines, so we weren't long distance from everyone anymore. If my homework was done and I didn't stay on the line too long, my parents eased off on the rules. (Although I should mention that I always had to tell them who I was calling and, sometimes, why.) But now there were boys. And parties. There were reasons to call people - ones that felt necessary and exciting and fraught with danger. A call not placed - not received - could be the difference between abject happiness and total social tragedy.

With all that expectation attached, getting a busy signal was some terrible purgatory - an inexorable, senseless denial without recourse or reason. There was no way of knowing how many times you'd have to dial to hear the intermittent purring of an open line.

My first thought upon hearing the story was, "That's genius."

My second was that although the song might last, the busy signal is already almost extinct. How will people recognize that perfectly imagined sound of helpless urgency?  

g.

Doesn't that sound ominous? But today is the first day where this apartment is my only apartment. I have officially dropped off my keys. My old and much loved apartment is gone - in the hands of some man I can almost guarantee will not love it as much as I did. Mostly I feel okay about it. I'm learning to live with it (or without it, as the case may be) but oh, I have such pangs.

Rachel is the only one who knows this, but I used to come home every day and pat the same spot on the living room door frame and say "hello" to the place as if it was a person. When I was sad and thought things would never feel better, I would keep telling myself, "But I still have this apartment." And it gave me enormous comfort to know I had a place I loved waiting for me at the end of the day. I know it's stupid, but I always had the feeling the place loved me back.

There wasn't an inch of it I didn't know - the messed up paint in the cabinet under the sink, the loose bit of baseboard that hadn't been right since the firemen kicked in the door to get to the broken pipes. Certain boards on the deck always came loose in winter had to be hammered back in every spring. I rigged up the closet shelf with twine to keep it from collapsing in the middle and kept a dime in the bathroom to tighten the medicine cabinet screws. They were completely stripped and loosened every third time I opened the door. Sometimes it would happen just as I was leaving the room. It would suddenly come away - just at the top - leaving it hanging at a broken-necked angle from the bottom hinges. The thunking sound it made scared the crap out of me every time. 

I had just moved in when I had to let go of my little dog. It's the apartment I lived in with my ex - and without him - and the place I came back to after mom's funeral. I recovered there after my hernia operation, and lived unemployed for a whole amazing, horrible year. I got my very first cat there and, a year and a half later, gave him a name.

But it was also freezing. The towels wouldn't dry in the unheated bathroom and once I even saw my breath. And the landlord was crazy and his disregard for his tenants had been making me sad every day for a couple of years. And I fell in love and got engaged and it was just too small for both of us. And I just. Couldn't. Stay.

I know this and I keep telling myself.
But it was the very first home I ever had that felt like it was all mine - so I will have to cry for it and that's just how it is.

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