Rock'n roll and pink feathers

There was a time when you could be a great rock guitarrist and be covered with pink feathers. You still were divinely awesome.

Questions

Questionaire for a Political Science class project:

Are you sexually active?
YES (ok)
NO (ok)
MAYBE (okish)
DON'T KNOW (not ok: having sex while you are sleepwalking can be mildly dangerous!)
N/A

I am as old as Lucy Harmon

I have been 19 for almost a week.
I got my pride back, had champagne and baked a cake. Went to see art galleries with friends through the rainy Vancouverite afternoon/night (hard to say when one ends and the other starts). I am drowning in essays. I will barely make, but I will.... Oh, sweet 19.



I rewatched "Stealing Beauty" by Bertolucci. Was it because I was upset about the never ending rain? Or was it Lucy Harmon. I am as old as Lucy Harmon.... what does that say about life? Irony? Pherhaps...

Lucy Harmon is my favourite 19 year old character. She comes to Italy, to spend some time on her dead mother's friends' place. The rest... just watch the movie... I find it a great performance by Liv Tyler.

And she is so complex, so bright and young and yet so dark in many ways. She is not innocent, but she is confused. Yet she knows clearly what she wants. And, the best part, she is searching exactly for what no one suspects she wants. That is pherhaps her most curious aspect. Everyone has their expectations of what her 19 year old American self should be like, and secretely she pursues such a different line of thought. It is that wonderful miracle that is called the private life of the mind... so, mysterious and fascinating.

Oh, being 19. The last teen. Not that that ever really mattered. But now I am as old as Lucy Harmon.

"More More More!" that 70's Post

It's the 7'0's,

They get me... somehow. I don't know what is happening! I watch "That 70's show", watch the dance scenes of "Saturday Night Fever" and suddenly I find myself making a 70's pop playlist! I swear, it's the aliens, they took over! I just saw one blinding light...

Less drama, now. I just wanted to make a small note about Andrea True and her "More More More!" hit.




It's sooooo 70's. Why?

- the simplistic lyrics : get the message ? Try harder, you might just make one up!
- the beat: finding it hard to keep control of your body and avoiding embarassing "I'm so cool" disco moves?
- the repetition: and they say today music is boring?
- the "mooooooore", epic-type of voice strech: so disco romantic...
- the fact that she does the same thing for 3 min: they didn't have that many ideas for videoclips back then...
- the image quality
- the setting: shinning with the lights of a thousand Christmas trees
- Andrea True: the name - uhm... 70's
- Andrea True: the fact that she was actually a famous porn star - very 70's, porn movies boom era (it disturbs me that the lyrics say "get the cameras rolling, get the action going"... )
- Andrea True: the blown-up hairdo and the sexy boots + hotpants WITH the leather top thingy.... 70's, all said.

Take that!

"The anatomic bomb" of Italian cinema... did not shave her armpits! Ahah! Take that, social norm!

I accidentally noticed this while watching "Too bad she's bad", great film with Sophia and Marcello Mastroianni, and Vittorio de Sica!


This is the ultimate proof that you can get all the sensual charm of a true mediterranean diva without beocoming a child-like porcelain doll.






Because that is what women look like these days: children. Tiny, fragile, hairless. Puberty is a tragedy for us all. Even the ample breasts and hips factor that made Brigite Bardot or Marilyn Monroe icons is restricted in appeal to the porn circuit (and even about that... I'm not so sure). The leaner, the smoother, the smaller the better.

The effect? We all become little young girls in the arms of everyone and anyone. We are so not powerful, so not sexy, so not women. We are just vulnerable, naughty, like 14 year olds wondering what being alone with that guy would be like.

Is this why out Western society is so fascinated and paranoid about pedophilia? Because, in a way, we all deep inside know this does not come out of the blue? Like 19th century Victorian painters, we share a mesmerised gaze at young children, at young girls. Women are no longer queens of the screen, no longer standards of beauty, no longer a focus of admiration, fear and attraction.

And what did Sophia say when they asked her what was her beauty secret?

"Everything you see, I owe to spaghetti."

On communal showering

(I realised I have completely neglected blogging, and that I had a few posts lying on my desktop, so here it goes)

When did we stop having three-way showers...?




Michael Pitt, Eva Green and Louis Garrel in Bertolucci's "The Dreamers"



Mick Jagger, Michele Breton and Anitta Pallenberg in Donald Cammell's "Performance"

I just realised some of the best scenes of the best movies I have seen are baths, communal style... Bathing in itself is something so significant, so magic, about cleansing your body and soul. Something mystical and religious. A shared bath has exactly that dimension, of common functioning, of sharing one's vulnerability and also one's uplifting moments . So, no wonder they make such awesome scenes. They are charged with symbolism and meaning, beauty. Great discussions too: who tells the truth, Clapton or Hendrix? Or just stick some wet paper money on Jagger! These two scenes are just so liberating, so apeasing, they make you want to lie on a carpet for hours staring at the celling...

#18 - This is the end, beautiful friend, the end

Saturday, the 30th May
Schipol Airport
Amsterdam, Holland
Dear Europe
4:10 PM 8local time)

Day 37
(...)
I slept 2 h on the plane and, in just some time, I'll meet my parents, my sister, speak my mother tongue and be in the country of my childhood. Finally.
But first a recap of events during this long final absence form these pages.

on the 22nd I got out of the hostel in Banff to see a sunny, sunny day in the Rockies. It was indeed a spectacular trip by bus, seeing B.C. in all its glory, with gorgeous weather. First stop was Lake Louise. Even though I like Banff better, the mountains there are breathtaking too. in between it was like paradise - the streams and the forests, and the mountains... (...) that morning I noticed the water in those rivers had a peculiar colour. It was very clear and blue, almost green. I had never seen water like that. (...) Golden was evry pretty. The mountains aligned there and my "neighbour" got on there. She was this lady in her 50's/60's lving in a ranch around Golden, but she was going to visit her fmaily in her hometown of Coquitlam. We spoke a bit. She admired my lace knitting and said I was very brave to travel on my own. She asked me what was the scraiets situation I had encountered. That was a good question. my answer was a clumbsy "none". The truth is, I didn't have any scary situations as the common "fear-myth" would make people think.

Roger's pass was amazing, in Glacier Park. That place rivals the Rockies. I wish I could have stopped there. The landscape soon started to change, as we went down the mounatins. Suddenly it all became hills of green grass, lakes and farms by the railway. The train was always next to the highway, the Trans-Canadian. i loved that region after Salmon Arm (...). We hit kamloops - which didn't seem a beuatiful place at all, confirming what other poeple had told me - and then I was too tired. And the mounatisn of Merritt were dull compared to their Eatern cousins. I noticed that they were heavily logged. A shame.

Then the Fraser Valley showed up and I couldn't wai to get back to Vancouver. Eventually there I was. Back to what now seemed more of a big colourful city to my hungry eyes.

What followed was a sort of limbo. By that time I was very homesick, more than now. I was tired. (...) I went to kitsilano , downtown and the Aquarium, all these things I wanted to enjoy without school in the way. And Vancouver felt different. I was alone strolling aroun (...). It felt like a place I was just passing through. It made me wonder if it is any more thna that at any rate. (...)

On Monday I went to my aunt's place (...). It was the real limbo - relaxing, but not home yet. (...)

What am I to conclude of this trip? In Vancouver - the limbo - I made so many reflections and evaluations (...) let's see if I can jot down some stufff.

1) I got to see some more of Canada - important and it makes me feel much better

2) made me loose fears. it was nto all nice but I managed alone . (...)

3) made me accept I need back up (...) I can do it but I can't deal with it all alone, and that's ok.

4) I did what I proposed myself to do. No vague dreaming no more. Life is too short, so you gotta do it. Bad or good.

5) New desires: get a driver's license, see Sasketchwan, move in with Kasia,...

6) Learned to be with myself. and I am quite entertaining.

7) Met characters and lived adventures - life is a story.

8) Laid the foundations for much more.

And it is in this way, jet-lagged but happy, that this trip comes to an end.

And the summer is only beggining...

Filipa


And while the plane took off, all I could hear was The Doors, listening to the most appropriate verses, each of them fully applying, fully touching the core of what I had seen, done and felt.

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

Of our elaborate plans, the end
Of everything that stands, the end
No safety or surprise, the end
I'll never look into your eyes...again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need...of some...stranger's hand
In a...desperate land

Lost in a Roman...wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain, yeah

The west is the best
The west is the best
Get here, and we'll do the rest

The blue bus is callin' us
The blue bus is callin' us
Driver, where you taken' us

C'mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
On a blue bus
Doin' a blue rock
C'mon, yeah

This is the end
Beautiful friend
This is the end
My only friend, the end

It hurts to set you free
But you'll never follow me
The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die