Movies, music and snow
Oct. 30th, 2006 09:27 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
missroseroseFunny how the longer one goes without updating one's journal, the more intimidating that blank "update" page becomes when you do pull it up. I think this is about the fifth time I've started an update in the past couple weeks. The last few have ended up unsaved for various reasons - too trivial-sounding, not interesting enough, or (and probably most truthfully) too personal and/or difficult to put down. But I'm determined to get something down now, trivial or personal or no.
To start, however, is something I promised everyone a while back (even though I doubt most of the folks who read this will actually care one way or the other, not having seen the movie in question) - my Final Theory (TM) on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. It's probably not going to be as thorough as I'd hoped, but I'm going to put down the basics. I might get into it in more depth in a year or so, when I get the urge to watch the film again.
For those who haven't seen the film, I'm going to put a cut here because what follows is both extremely spoilerific and would likely be extremely boring/confusing (which isn't to say that the film itself isn't extremely confusing, but you get my point). However, if you like movies that really make you think, and that inspire discussion and dissection later, I highly recommend this film.
I think this last viewing is probably the first time I've seen this movie as Lynch intended it - DVD quality, on a large screen, with excellent sound, in a darkened room - in other words, a much more immersive experience. (I was living in Barrow when it came out in theaters, and the first few times I saw it was while I was in college and therefore on computer screens and such). I was really amazed at what a difference it makes when you can properly see the visuals; there's a lot of information in the details that just isn't clear on a smaller screen. In addition, I'd noticed in the past that the music and sound effects contribute a lot to the overall atmosphere of the film (and the film itself is very much a mood piece). So the experience was enhanced amazingly by hearing it in 5.1 surround on a really great speaker system.
(Although, on the subject of the visuals, what was with Lynch editing out Laura Harring's frontal nudity in the first love scene? According to various online sources it was either at her request or because he didn't like the thought of nude pictures of her circulating the net. In the VHS version there's a blur over her crotch, which is okay, but the DVD pretty much has shadow-cover over the whole thing. I guess it's their right, since it's her body and his work, but man - I really missed seeing her magnificent breasts this time around. =D)
As to the film's story itself: The prevailing theory around various corners of the Internet seems to circulate around the idea that the first part of the movie is a (possibly drug-induced) fever dream-cum-hallucination that Diane Selwyn has while asleep shortly before committing suicide. This certainly explains much of the first part's tone. One of the most noticeable stylistic aspects is the way everything's just a little too too: Betty is just a little too chipper; L.A. is just a little too bright; Rita's hair/makeup/clothing is just a little too perfect (and by extension, her lipstick is just a little too red); the cars are just a little too shiny-new or a little too well-preserved-vintage, sound effects are just a little too Hollywood-foley-artist. Betty herself says it out loud: "And now I'm in this...dream place." The logical extension of this idea is that the second half shows Diane's actual life - her lackluster acting career, her bitter ex, her unrequited love/lust for (and her humiliation by) Camilla, and (perhaps most importantly) her actions towards Camilla following their breakup, which were so painful for her to face that it caused her to dissassociate from her life into her fantasy dreamworld.
This explanation works pretty well, but it's never sat quite right with me for a couple of reasons. The major one is that while the first part of the film certainly looks and feels like a "traditional" dream, there are some distinctly dreamlike aspects of the second half as well. For one thing, there's the way the entire story is told - through an extended sequence of flashbacks with no real divider in between one or the next other than visual cues to help you place them timeline-wise. For another, there are scenes with varying degrees of surrealism scattered throughout: the old people (who are rumored to be Diane's grandparents) coming out of the bag and under her door, for instance, or Diane's vision of Camilla while she's making coffee, shortly before the flashbacks start.
An additional reason the first-fantasy-then-reality explanation never worked for me actually happens during the first part of the film. When Betty and Rita investigate the dream-Diane's home, they find her there, dead and probably several days decomposed, in the same position into which the "real" Diane falls after shooting herself. If Diane doesn't shoot herself until after the dream is over, then why does she dream of herself as dead? Theoretically it could be symbolic of her suicidal feelings, of her wanting to be dead, but if that's the case then why does Rita (and to a great extent Betty) have such a strong emotional reaction to the find?
Now, my theory has a lot to do with my personal beliefs and such on "reality" and the afterlife, so here's a quick recap: I believe that one's reality is determined to a great extent by their own attitudes and actions. Here in this dimension we have something resembling an objective reality; however, I think of our core personalities (our souls, if you will) as beings of a much higher dimension. Therefore, when we die, we are freed from the restrictions of a three-dimensional form, but since we're so used to thinking in three dimensions at that point it takes a while both for us to adjust and to come to grips with the fact that we're dead. In the meantime, we create our own version of the afterlife, which depends very much on both what we think is coming and what our emotional state during life (and especially at the time of death). So if we truly feel like we deserve to go to Hell, we create that for ourselves - and I'm sure, in some people's case, they have the screeching demons in red tights with pitchforks just like you see in cornball movies. But because we as beings are not satisfied if we don't feel like we're getting the whole picture, most of us eventually come to terms with our death and our actions during life so that we can learn from it all. (In the movie, there's actually a line that makes direct reference to a similar mode of thought - when the Cowboy is talking to Adam Kesher (the movie director), he asks him if he believes that a man's attitude can determine to a large extent how that man's life will be. While this is definitely a hint, it's difficult to say what it might mean.)
So here's the keystone of my theory: At the beginning of the film, before the fantasy, and before the flashback "reality" sequence, Diane is dead. She's already shot herself.
The first part of the movie, therefore, is the "denial" stage (as it were) - she doesn't want to think of herself as dead, she doesn't want the entire last part of her life to have happened, she doesn't want to have been a failed actress who obsessively lusted after a beautiful woman who cared more for her own career than for her, she doesn't want to think of herself as being someone who would order the woman she lusts after killed because she felt humiliated. So she reimagines herself and her life. Everything in the first part is some aspect of herself:
--Betty is who she wanted to be, or perhaps how she saw herself prior to coming to Hollywood - the perky, hopeful ingenue with a bright film career ahead of her. "Betty" was the name of a waitress Diane saw at Winkie's, and probably seemed to her to be a name encapsulating the pragmatism, optimism and innocence that she had lost (think of Betty in the Archie comics, for instance).
--Rita is just as beautiful as her real-life counterpart Camilla, but has lost her memory and personality (the parts of her that Diane found hurtful). With a new name and no memory of her own, Diane can imagine Rita as she would've wanted Camilla to be - equally beautiful, but innocent, dependent and willing to be possessed (I find it telling that during their love scene Betty confesses her love for Rita but the camera pans away before we here if the sentiment is returned).
--While Diane is on one level dreaming this idealized life as Betty and Rita, she knows on a deeper level that it's wrong, that it's an illusion, and that none of it holds any truth. Her dream, therefore, holds the key to its own undoing - the mystery of Rita's memory and the blue box combined with Betty's Nancy Drew-like curiousity.
--In addition, her subconscious sends the dream off in any number of odd little directions, all with the intention of making it a more accurate representation of her psyche. Therefore, we have the scene with the paranoid man and his brother who see the "monster" behind Winkie's - it seems pretty obvious that the monster represents the parts of her life and herself that Diane doesn't want to face, and having him hidden behind Winkie's makes sense, given that it was the place where Diane ordered the hit on Camilla.
--According to Betty, Aunt Ruth is making a movie up in Canada; we find out later that she's actually dead. "Acting in Canada" is an old Hollywood euphemism for being dead.
--We also get the darkly funny scene with the inept hitman; in this case it's probably wish fulfillment of a sort, since if the hitman was that inept the hit on Camilla would likely have failed the way the hit on Rita failed at the beginning of the dream.
--And of course there are the series of scenes with the director Adam Kesher finding his wife cheating on him and his movie suddenly under the control of men in dark suits and (in one case) a wheelchair. We see in the second part of the film that Diane heard Adam's story of finding his wife sleeping with the pool man, and given how Adam and Camilla had humiliated her at that same dinner, it probably gave her immense satisfaction to imagine that scene and the childish behavior he might've exhibited. As for the men in dark suits, they certainly pose a convenient explanation as to why Diane might have been so unsuccessful in her career - if she didn't have the right ins with the people running it all behind the scenes, then of course it wouldn't have anything to do with her own mediocre talent. (Note how the first time we see Betty practicing her lines she's clumsy and conventional, but suddenly turns into a bombshell at the actual audition.)
--Where Diane's fantasy world really starts to unravel, though, is in the scene where they find Diane Selwyn. Note that just before Betty knocks on her door, Rita tries to stop her (calling her name and mouthing the word "no".) Rita is both the object and personification of Diane's dream, and Diane knows that if she sees her real self it'll all fall apart. Betty, however, is determined, and after finding the decomposed body, Rita runs out of the apartment, incredibly distraught. Betty comes after her, obviously affected, and the camera does a really interesting blurring/shaky cam effect, which indicates to me that the barriers Diane has put around her dream to protect it from her knowledge of reality are starting to crumble, and the lines between fantasy and reality are blurring.
--Next, Betty finds a short blonde wig for Rita, ostensibly as a disguise. However, given how similar it makes the two women look, I think it's actually the opposite - it's another clue from Diane's subconscious that they're both the same person - her. (Note that the sex scene that follows is entirely masturbatory in nature...)
--Diane having achieved the pinnacle of her fantasy - the seduction and possession of Rita - the dream winds down to its close, and self-realization starts to creep in around the edges. She and Rita go to the nightclub Silencio, where the demon-esque master of ceremonies gives them (and us) the premise for the entire film: "This is all...an illusion." There is no orchestra, there is no "reality" - it's all a series of images synched with a tape recording. (This resonates nicely with the film's theme of Hollywood falseness, since the movie itself is all an illusion of the very same nature.) Blue light flashes through the theatre (blue being the color of knowledge in this film - note the blue box, the blue key, the woman with the blue hair), and Betty has some kind of emotional seizure, but seems to come out of it relieved. She finds the blue box in her purse, the box that Rita's key was obviously meant to open - the box that holds the knowledge of herself and her life, all the things she doesn't want to face. After they retrieve the key for the box, Betty disappears - her part in the dream is complete, and all that's left is amnesiac Rita, who decides to open the box and face her identity.
--The rest of the scenes play out pretty much the way we imagine they did during the last days of Diane's life, but since they are all Diane's memories rather than objective events, they maintain odd qualities depending on her emotional state. Scenes are too dark or too bright, Camilla always looks perfect (because we're seeing her through Diane's jealous eyes), Diane herself always looks mousy (and when in stage makeup like Camilla only looks more washed out), particularly painful sequences like the dinner scenes go in and out of focus. We see the monster behind Winkies, who is now simply a homeless bum; he pulls the blue box out of a paper bag and tosses it on the ground. The knowledge is no longer hidden, and the box is useless. All that's left is Diane's conscience, or her dementia, personified in the old people who torment her into suicide.
--After shooting herself, the room fills with blue smoke (Diane has uncovered the knowledge she didn't want to face). Superimposed on the smoke we see a shot of the monster, a shot of Betty (or a happier Diane) with the old people who obviously dote on her; and a shot of Betty/Diane and Rita/Camilla looking out over a fading Hollywood skyline. Then it all fades to the nightclub stage, now empty but for the microphone and the flickering blue light, and the blue-haired woman still sitting in the balcony - "Silencio." What occurred to me most strongly when looking at the empty stage was the famous Shakespearean quote - "All the world's a stage." To me, this bit seems to indicate that now, having faced her actions and the fact and circumstances of her death, Diane is free to reimagine her world or her next life however she likes, possibly in somewhat better circumstances. The blue-haired woman seems to be the observer figure, the one who sees everything, the one whom we think judges us but on whom we in actuality project our judgments of ourselves - kind of the agnostic's version of God.
Hm. That went a heckuva lot longer and more in-depth than I figured, so it's probably a good thing that I added the cut. However, I may well post on it again in the future - that's kind of what happens with movies that require a ruminiant's digestive system to, y'know, digest.
Here in Juneau, we got our first snow this morning. It was pretty wussy - I'm pretty sure that by now it's almost all gone - but it did make everything very pretty this morning. And I'm finding that it's much easier to enjoy the snow when you've got a vehicle with state-of-the-art traction control and therefore aren't worried about plowing into a berm on the way home...
In other news, Brian and I have been having a bit of a problem with fruit flies. I'm not sure how they got in - apparently contaminated foods and ill-fitting/ripped window screens are prime candidates, and this is the time of year when they're most prevalent. While pesky, their presence has inspired some good changes on our part - cleaning the kitchen every night rather than twice a week, for instance, and wiping down the counters with bleach-water every night. We couldn't figure out for a while where they were coming from, but eventually I discovered a rotting potato crawling with the little buggers underneath a shelf - that was a fun mess to clean up, let me tell you. (Brian was conveniently in Sitka at the time.) Having removed all food sources and put up a couple of different traps, we've put a pretty significant dent in their numbers in the kitchen. Unfortunately, a lot of them seem to have moved into the bathroom. I really don't know what they could be eating in there, but if their numbers don't drop significantly in the next couple of days I'll have to clean out under the sink in there and see if there's anything organic that we've missed. Ah, well.
As for the more personal business...I'm trying to get going with my music again. Part of the problem is lack of direction; I wasn't really very interested in Tommy, which is the musical Perseverance is putting together this year, and it's not like there are a surfeit of bands looking for singers here in Juneau. However, I'm going to be investing in a decent microphone with the eventual goal of having a couple of songs recorded by the end of the month. Fortunately I have a friend who's willing to do some accompaniment, and Brian has a copy of Garage Band on his Mac, which is supposed to be a very easy program for recording and mixing tracks. So we'll see what comes of it all. I have an idea about what I want to do with the songs once they're recorded, but it's kind of a one-in-a-million lottery-esque thing, and what's important at this point is, I think, just getting something in a tangible format. It'll be a step in the right direction, anyway.
And that's really all the news from the last couple of weeks...
To start, however, is something I promised everyone a while back (even though I doubt most of the folks who read this will actually care one way or the other, not having seen the movie in question) - my Final Theory (TM) on David Lynch's Mulholland Drive. It's probably not going to be as thorough as I'd hoped, but I'm going to put down the basics. I might get into it in more depth in a year or so, when I get the urge to watch the film again.
For those who haven't seen the film, I'm going to put a cut here because what follows is both extremely spoilerific and would likely be extremely boring/confusing (which isn't to say that the film itself isn't extremely confusing, but you get my point). However, if you like movies that really make you think, and that inspire discussion and dissection later, I highly recommend this film.
I think this last viewing is probably the first time I've seen this movie as Lynch intended it - DVD quality, on a large screen, with excellent sound, in a darkened room - in other words, a much more immersive experience. (I was living in Barrow when it came out in theaters, and the first few times I saw it was while I was in college and therefore on computer screens and such). I was really amazed at what a difference it makes when you can properly see the visuals; there's a lot of information in the details that just isn't clear on a smaller screen. In addition, I'd noticed in the past that the music and sound effects contribute a lot to the overall atmosphere of the film (and the film itself is very much a mood piece). So the experience was enhanced amazingly by hearing it in 5.1 surround on a really great speaker system.
(Although, on the subject of the visuals, what was with Lynch editing out Laura Harring's frontal nudity in the first love scene? According to various online sources it was either at her request or because he didn't like the thought of nude pictures of her circulating the net. In the VHS version there's a blur over her crotch, which is okay, but the DVD pretty much has shadow-cover over the whole thing. I guess it's their right, since it's her body and his work, but man - I really missed seeing her magnificent breasts this time around. =D)
As to the film's story itself: The prevailing theory around various corners of the Internet seems to circulate around the idea that the first part of the movie is a (possibly drug-induced) fever dream-cum-hallucination that Diane Selwyn has while asleep shortly before committing suicide. This certainly explains much of the first part's tone. One of the most noticeable stylistic aspects is the way everything's just a little too too: Betty is just a little too chipper; L.A. is just a little too bright; Rita's hair/makeup/clothing is just a little too perfect (and by extension, her lipstick is just a little too red); the cars are just a little too shiny-new or a little too well-preserved-vintage, sound effects are just a little too Hollywood-foley-artist. Betty herself says it out loud: "And now I'm in this...dream place." The logical extension of this idea is that the second half shows Diane's actual life - her lackluster acting career, her bitter ex, her unrequited love/lust for (and her humiliation by) Camilla, and (perhaps most importantly) her actions towards Camilla following their breakup, which were so painful for her to face that it caused her to dissassociate from her life into her fantasy dreamworld.
This explanation works pretty well, but it's never sat quite right with me for a couple of reasons. The major one is that while the first part of the film certainly looks and feels like a "traditional" dream, there are some distinctly dreamlike aspects of the second half as well. For one thing, there's the way the entire story is told - through an extended sequence of flashbacks with no real divider in between one or the next other than visual cues to help you place them timeline-wise. For another, there are scenes with varying degrees of surrealism scattered throughout: the old people (who are rumored to be Diane's grandparents) coming out of the bag and under her door, for instance, or Diane's vision of Camilla while she's making coffee, shortly before the flashbacks start.
An additional reason the first-fantasy-then-reality explanation never worked for me actually happens during the first part of the film. When Betty and Rita investigate the dream-Diane's home, they find her there, dead and probably several days decomposed, in the same position into which the "real" Diane falls after shooting herself. If Diane doesn't shoot herself until after the dream is over, then why does she dream of herself as dead? Theoretically it could be symbolic of her suicidal feelings, of her wanting to be dead, but if that's the case then why does Rita (and to a great extent Betty) have such a strong emotional reaction to the find?
Now, my theory has a lot to do with my personal beliefs and such on "reality" and the afterlife, so here's a quick recap: I believe that one's reality is determined to a great extent by their own attitudes and actions. Here in this dimension we have something resembling an objective reality; however, I think of our core personalities (our souls, if you will) as beings of a much higher dimension. Therefore, when we die, we are freed from the restrictions of a three-dimensional form, but since we're so used to thinking in three dimensions at that point it takes a while both for us to adjust and to come to grips with the fact that we're dead. In the meantime, we create our own version of the afterlife, which depends very much on both what we think is coming and what our emotional state during life (and especially at the time of death). So if we truly feel like we deserve to go to Hell, we create that for ourselves - and I'm sure, in some people's case, they have the screeching demons in red tights with pitchforks just like you see in cornball movies. But because we as beings are not satisfied if we don't feel like we're getting the whole picture, most of us eventually come to terms with our death and our actions during life so that we can learn from it all. (In the movie, there's actually a line that makes direct reference to a similar mode of thought - when the Cowboy is talking to Adam Kesher (the movie director), he asks him if he believes that a man's attitude can determine to a large extent how that man's life will be. While this is definitely a hint, it's difficult to say what it might mean.)
So here's the keystone of my theory: At the beginning of the film, before the fantasy, and before the flashback "reality" sequence, Diane is dead. She's already shot herself.
The first part of the movie, therefore, is the "denial" stage (as it were) - she doesn't want to think of herself as dead, she doesn't want the entire last part of her life to have happened, she doesn't want to have been a failed actress who obsessively lusted after a beautiful woman who cared more for her own career than for her, she doesn't want to think of herself as being someone who would order the woman she lusts after killed because she felt humiliated. So she reimagines herself and her life. Everything in the first part is some aspect of herself:
--Betty is who she wanted to be, or perhaps how she saw herself prior to coming to Hollywood - the perky, hopeful ingenue with a bright film career ahead of her. "Betty" was the name of a waitress Diane saw at Winkie's, and probably seemed to her to be a name encapsulating the pragmatism, optimism and innocence that she had lost (think of Betty in the Archie comics, for instance).
--Rita is just as beautiful as her real-life counterpart Camilla, but has lost her memory and personality (the parts of her that Diane found hurtful). With a new name and no memory of her own, Diane can imagine Rita as she would've wanted Camilla to be - equally beautiful, but innocent, dependent and willing to be possessed (I find it telling that during their love scene Betty confesses her love for Rita but the camera pans away before we here if the sentiment is returned).
--While Diane is on one level dreaming this idealized life as Betty and Rita, she knows on a deeper level that it's wrong, that it's an illusion, and that none of it holds any truth. Her dream, therefore, holds the key to its own undoing - the mystery of Rita's memory and the blue box combined with Betty's Nancy Drew-like curiousity.
--In addition, her subconscious sends the dream off in any number of odd little directions, all with the intention of making it a more accurate representation of her psyche. Therefore, we have the scene with the paranoid man and his brother who see the "monster" behind Winkie's - it seems pretty obvious that the monster represents the parts of her life and herself that Diane doesn't want to face, and having him hidden behind Winkie's makes sense, given that it was the place where Diane ordered the hit on Camilla.
--According to Betty, Aunt Ruth is making a movie up in Canada; we find out later that she's actually dead. "Acting in Canada" is an old Hollywood euphemism for being dead.
--We also get the darkly funny scene with the inept hitman; in this case it's probably wish fulfillment of a sort, since if the hitman was that inept the hit on Camilla would likely have failed the way the hit on Rita failed at the beginning of the dream.
--And of course there are the series of scenes with the director Adam Kesher finding his wife cheating on him and his movie suddenly under the control of men in dark suits and (in one case) a wheelchair. We see in the second part of the film that Diane heard Adam's story of finding his wife sleeping with the pool man, and given how Adam and Camilla had humiliated her at that same dinner, it probably gave her immense satisfaction to imagine that scene and the childish behavior he might've exhibited. As for the men in dark suits, they certainly pose a convenient explanation as to why Diane might have been so unsuccessful in her career - if she didn't have the right ins with the people running it all behind the scenes, then of course it wouldn't have anything to do with her own mediocre talent. (Note how the first time we see Betty practicing her lines she's clumsy and conventional, but suddenly turns into a bombshell at the actual audition.)
--Where Diane's fantasy world really starts to unravel, though, is in the scene where they find Diane Selwyn. Note that just before Betty knocks on her door, Rita tries to stop her (calling her name and mouthing the word "no".) Rita is both the object and personification of Diane's dream, and Diane knows that if she sees her real self it'll all fall apart. Betty, however, is determined, and after finding the decomposed body, Rita runs out of the apartment, incredibly distraught. Betty comes after her, obviously affected, and the camera does a really interesting blurring/shaky cam effect, which indicates to me that the barriers Diane has put around her dream to protect it from her knowledge of reality are starting to crumble, and the lines between fantasy and reality are blurring.
--Next, Betty finds a short blonde wig for Rita, ostensibly as a disguise. However, given how similar it makes the two women look, I think it's actually the opposite - it's another clue from Diane's subconscious that they're both the same person - her. (Note that the sex scene that follows is entirely masturbatory in nature...)
--Diane having achieved the pinnacle of her fantasy - the seduction and possession of Rita - the dream winds down to its close, and self-realization starts to creep in around the edges. She and Rita go to the nightclub Silencio, where the demon-esque master of ceremonies gives them (and us) the premise for the entire film: "This is all...an illusion." There is no orchestra, there is no "reality" - it's all a series of images synched with a tape recording. (This resonates nicely with the film's theme of Hollywood falseness, since the movie itself is all an illusion of the very same nature.) Blue light flashes through the theatre (blue being the color of knowledge in this film - note the blue box, the blue key, the woman with the blue hair), and Betty has some kind of emotional seizure, but seems to come out of it relieved. She finds the blue box in her purse, the box that Rita's key was obviously meant to open - the box that holds the knowledge of herself and her life, all the things she doesn't want to face. After they retrieve the key for the box, Betty disappears - her part in the dream is complete, and all that's left is amnesiac Rita, who decides to open the box and face her identity.
--The rest of the scenes play out pretty much the way we imagine they did during the last days of Diane's life, but since they are all Diane's memories rather than objective events, they maintain odd qualities depending on her emotional state. Scenes are too dark or too bright, Camilla always looks perfect (because we're seeing her through Diane's jealous eyes), Diane herself always looks mousy (and when in stage makeup like Camilla only looks more washed out), particularly painful sequences like the dinner scenes go in and out of focus. We see the monster behind Winkies, who is now simply a homeless bum; he pulls the blue box out of a paper bag and tosses it on the ground. The knowledge is no longer hidden, and the box is useless. All that's left is Diane's conscience, or her dementia, personified in the old people who torment her into suicide.
--After shooting herself, the room fills with blue smoke (Diane has uncovered the knowledge she didn't want to face). Superimposed on the smoke we see a shot of the monster, a shot of Betty (or a happier Diane) with the old people who obviously dote on her; and a shot of Betty/Diane and Rita/Camilla looking out over a fading Hollywood skyline. Then it all fades to the nightclub stage, now empty but for the microphone and the flickering blue light, and the blue-haired woman still sitting in the balcony - "Silencio." What occurred to me most strongly when looking at the empty stage was the famous Shakespearean quote - "All the world's a stage." To me, this bit seems to indicate that now, having faced her actions and the fact and circumstances of her death, Diane is free to reimagine her world or her next life however she likes, possibly in somewhat better circumstances. The blue-haired woman seems to be the observer figure, the one who sees everything, the one whom we think judges us but on whom we in actuality project our judgments of ourselves - kind of the agnostic's version of God.
Hm. That went a heckuva lot longer and more in-depth than I figured, so it's probably a good thing that I added the cut. However, I may well post on it again in the future - that's kind of what happens with movies that require a ruminiant's digestive system to, y'know, digest.
Here in Juneau, we got our first snow this morning. It was pretty wussy - I'm pretty sure that by now it's almost all gone - but it did make everything very pretty this morning. And I'm finding that it's much easier to enjoy the snow when you've got a vehicle with state-of-the-art traction control and therefore aren't worried about plowing into a berm on the way home...
In other news, Brian and I have been having a bit of a problem with fruit flies. I'm not sure how they got in - apparently contaminated foods and ill-fitting/ripped window screens are prime candidates, and this is the time of year when they're most prevalent. While pesky, their presence has inspired some good changes on our part - cleaning the kitchen every night rather than twice a week, for instance, and wiping down the counters with bleach-water every night. We couldn't figure out for a while where they were coming from, but eventually I discovered a rotting potato crawling with the little buggers underneath a shelf - that was a fun mess to clean up, let me tell you. (Brian was conveniently in Sitka at the time.) Having removed all food sources and put up a couple of different traps, we've put a pretty significant dent in their numbers in the kitchen. Unfortunately, a lot of them seem to have moved into the bathroom. I really don't know what they could be eating in there, but if their numbers don't drop significantly in the next couple of days I'll have to clean out under the sink in there and see if there's anything organic that we've missed. Ah, well.
As for the more personal business...I'm trying to get going with my music again. Part of the problem is lack of direction; I wasn't really very interested in Tommy, which is the musical Perseverance is putting together this year, and it's not like there are a surfeit of bands looking for singers here in Juneau. However, I'm going to be investing in a decent microphone with the eventual goal of having a couple of songs recorded by the end of the month. Fortunately I have a friend who's willing to do some accompaniment, and Brian has a copy of Garage Band on his Mac, which is supposed to be a very easy program for recording and mixing tracks. So we'll see what comes of it all. I have an idea about what I want to do with the songs once they're recorded, but it's kind of a one-in-a-million lottery-esque thing, and what's important at this point is, I think, just getting something in a tangible format. It'll be a step in the right direction, anyway.
And that's really all the news from the last couple of weeks...
