While I’m freewriting reviews about A Complete Unknown, I also saw Queer and it was transportive and mesmerizing and nostalgic.
Another time period I studied and am obsessed with – I presented at the European Beat Studies Conference in Vienna and have gone to two others, as well as studying at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics where Burroughs visited and Ginsberg & Anne Waldman founded.
It was funny – right before we were at the Alcove Cafe off Tujunga and I was sharing how excited I was for the film.
This film bro interjects from behind, “Oh, hated that film!”
I could see why! The sex scenes in this film were fucking sexy and super gay and showed all and they were hot and steamy with those beautiful muscles and dicks in your face.
I felt taken to Mexico City to the 1960s. I was there and I was traveling South America. Oh Joan, Joan – haunted by an accident, a silly party trick gone wrong and she was dead at 28, dead at 28. Burroughs didn’t publish a single book until he was 39, 39 and she was dead at 28!
What would Joan have done if she had lived 11 more years? What will I have done by the time I am 39? 30 now – and with all these unpublished writings finally knowing enough to love, to truly love.
In order to know love, to truly value it and appreciate it, I had to know hate, jealousy, betrayal, disappointment, disgust. People who wanted to love me seemed infinite, but people who know how to love me – I needed to learn how to love myself and then I needed to teach them.
Love so different for each one of us, so necessary for each one of us like breathing, like eating, like sleeping, (reminding me of “I Offer You This Poem” by Jimmy Santiago Baca)
and yet we are never taught – no cooking school. It is supposed to be natural, but in our society – we don’t value love, we don’t leave the space it needs, create environments where love can thrive. No, no, no.
In a society like ours – we need classes. Love is a weapon in a war for power.
Oh great film definitely watch! Walk in someone else’s shoes for a few hours. I dare ya!
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