honky cracker: Harper/Bizzare I'm not a huge Interpol fan, but for some reason I've had that song "Obstacle 1" stuck in my head for three weeks now. Especially the part that goes "Well it's different now that I'm poor and aging...I'll never see this place again..." I'm not sure exactly why, but it's always in the back of my head
At first I figured I was thinking about the old days. You know the old days. Back when I would stay out at Mod Night til 2:00 AM on a Wednesday dancing my ass off, getting three hours sleep, and feeling fine for the workday in the morning. Or those days when I would stay late at the Academy and then just disappear off to that little playground in the woods. Or maybe when I was back in College, New York City. I guess it doesn't matter how old you are. Sometimes you just feel that your best days are behind you.
I'm sure I'll get some flak for this, being the youngest of the Happyrobots (I think) and all. But I don't care how old you are. Some days you just feel old. Especially when it's the Monday after the Sunday after staying up and out way too late and you just don't bounce back the way you used to.
Either way, that line just sticks with me.
I watched the first part of that Angels in America thing that HBO did last night. Whenever I watch a film or a TV show that's filmed in New York, I get all nostalgic and want to go back. Which is odd, because when I left there, I had my fill of it. Tired. Burned out. Angry. I associated all the feelings that the last mad rush of college gave me with the city, as if it were the city itself was what drained the life out of me. Giant towers. Skyscrapers. Traffic. They robbed me of all that youthful exuberance energy I had in abundance when I first arrived there.
Still, though. They day I left, I always thought I'd be back.
Back to Angels in America, though. How 'bout that Mary Louise Parker, eh? How did I miss the boat on that one? When I first heard that Marcia Gay Harden wasn't playing Harper, I admit, I was a little disappointed. After all, Marcia Gay Harden IS Harper in my mind. But Mary Louise Parker... Well, she just made me melt. Like a Tuna Melt. (Mmm... tuna melt.) I dunno... you ever get that stupid squishy sorta thing goin' on when you see someone and they just make you gush and you just turn to "duhhhh.. You're awesome" even though you don't really know the person at all but all at once, you kinda feel like you do. Yeah. That's Mary Louise Parker in this thing.
I think a lot of that probably has to do with the character she's playing. Harper. Oh yeah. If I had known Harper Pitt at some point in her life, we definitely would have gone out. Valium addicted, delusional, emotionally problematic Mormon yearning to break free. That fits my type to a T. I've always had a soft spot for the doomed and the damned. (The valiance lies in the effort.) How does Obstacle 1 open again? Oh, yeah. "I wish I could lick the salt off of your lost faded lips...We can cap the old times, make playing only logical harm..."
Well she can read, she can read, she can read, she can read she's bad.
Another thing about Angels in America: Granted, the thing is six hours long in its entirety, but still I'm amazed how much depth and insight Kushner gives us into each character given how (relatively) little stage time and dialogue each individual has. I dunno, maybe that's just me. Whenever I try to write something, I feel as though at some point I have to get into each and everyone's whole life story. It doesn't need to be that way. If I wrote Angels in America, it would probably be twelve hours long. And suck.
And New York. It still makes me long for New York City. Perhaps now, five years after, New York is different now that I'm poor and aging. And maybe I'll never see that old place again. Maybe the ghosts are gone, and New York can be for me again what it was when I first got there. New. Alive. Passionate. Exciting. And still possible.
Ah, New York.
It's in the way that she poses It's in the things that she puts in my hair Her stories are boring and stuff She's always calling my bluff She puts the weight into my little heart...
