Vortex (Gaspar Noe, 2021)
I don't throw away my past.
Years ago my Grandfather worked in Malaysia. On one of his brief stopovers back here, he brought me a huge pot of peppercorns from Sarawak. For some reason I developed an irrational fear that something terrible would happen to him if I were to ever finish the peppercorns. So I eked out their existence. And then one day I did finish them, and nothing happened to him, and I felt stupid.
It's some years later and my Grandfather is now 90 years old. I've spent the entirety of my life looking to him as the prime example of how to be an adult male in the world. And the last few years have been very difficult for him, which has in turn been difficult for me. I have learned that I am not good at this, not good at looking at the ageing process full on, with my face turned towards it. It is much easier for me to turn away and look at things indirectly.
My Grandmother does not have that same privilege. She has to look at this with both eyes, to face it head on, and to deal with it in real time. I say I understand what she's going through, but do I really?
Of course, I go round to help when I can, and I call him and her as often as I can - usually just to ask how their day is going, sometimes with news if I have any news. But this is not a 'real time' level of involvement. What I mean by 'real time' is the time scale you enter when you are doing something difficult, unpleasant, and you cannot deviate or distract yourself with anything. You have to go through it. All the way to the end. Feeling every passing second.
What I am doing is more like dipping in and out of their existence.
There is the genuine sharp pain of being cut with a blade in the difference between who my Grandfather was when I was growing up compared to who he is now. When people meet him for the first time now I genuinely feel that blade cut me deep at the thought that they will never know the person I knew. He used to be so sharp. So authoritative. So knowledgeable. And now he's frequently confused, disconnected, silent. I do my best, I stay connected to him, and there are good days and bad days. On the bad days there is a tension in my chest, tears spring easily behind my eyes, and sometimes I just can't get off the phone quickly enough.
I often feel cowardly for being like this. I regularly find myself feeling abhorrence for the idea of having to spend so much of my time working, forcing myself out of the real time spheres that those I love live in. Whose idea was this?
Years ago a friend of mine fell into alcoholism. It coincided with a time that I had been made redundant at work. I felt that this was not a coincidence. I was being given the time to spend with him to get him back on his feet. And so I fell into a real time existence with him. I would help him get dressed, cleaned, and ready for appointments. I would call his social worker, medical clinics, and anyone else I needed to. When things got bad I would clean his house, take out all the garbage, get things scrubbed and sparkling, hoping that he would look at this level of involvement and think to himself:
"Ah, I am a person who matters, with people who care about me. Perhaps I should stop drinking and take care of myself so I can be here for them."
But that's not how it went at all.
Instead it went to some of the darkest places I've ever been.
It went on for months, and eventually I did have to start a new job, and I fell out of real time involvement and into the usual realm: evenings, weekends, phone calls. You know how it is.
We carried on that way for years, and then it reached a point where I just could not continue. I had to stop seeing and talking to my friend. Or rather, I should say that I had the privilege of being able to stop seeing and talking to my friend. That was in 2018 - we haven't seen each other or spoken since then.
A few weeks ago I received a telephone call from a mutual friend - the voice on the other end of the phone was crying - I knew instantly why he was calling.
Sometimes I used to accuse my alcoholic friend of not understanding that I also had a life that he could not see. That when I was not in sight I hadn't simply 'powered down,' awaiting a call from him to reactivate - like an NPC in a computer game, standing and staring into space, my head swaying side to side.
But truthfully, it's just as difficult for me to understand that he also had a life. That he had to endure difficulty, pain, and embarrassment while I was at work, or spending time with my children, or my partner. What would it have been like if we could have independently seen each other at those moments? Our two lives held side by side, concurrent events in different spaces?
Well, that's not possible any more.
Instead, there are the remaining people I care about. And the experience that my Grandparents are now going through, and my inability to deal with it either as much as I would like to, or as well as I would like to is, unsurprisingly, leaving me reflecting on my relationship with my partner. What's going to happen to us?
Recently, my partner lost her Father - and her Mother now lives alone for the first time in decades. We found out after the fact that their last year together had been becoming increasingly difficult as his health deteriorated. At the time we had no idea, they were both too proud to tell us. I understand this. You are there to help your children, there is something unnatural in the idea that they should help you. Intellectually I know this should not be the case, but emotionally I understand the truth in it.
Would it be better if my partner's future bore similarity to that, or would it be better if our years together continued for longer, but became more and more difficult for her as time went on and my health and mental state declined? Is it better to suffer a comparatively short sharp painful loss, and to find yourself alone, or to watch someone you love deteriorate for years and years, but to still have them in your life? She and I talk about this a lot. With no real conclusion to be reached. Eventually, time and circumstance will make one of these options real - and then we will know.
She and I live the closest real time existence possible. It's Saturday, May 14th. The two of us have been to the cinema together. We both cried. Now we are home. We have guests coming round later. She is in the kitchen, cooking, I am in the living room, cleaning. I keep looking at the room, realising there are more cleaning implements I need. These are all kept in the kitchen. I walk past her several times, fetching cloths and sprays and sponges, kissing the nape of her neck every time I pass. I can't tell you what her experience of these moments is like, because I only see her from the outside, I don't know how she's seeing things, or what she's thinking about. But I do know what I, the central character in my own narrative, is thinking.
Back in the living room I move items around, re-house them, clean where they once stood, put several items in the bin: tickets to a rep screening of Suspiria, updates on my pension plan, letters from people I will never reply to. How did I ever think these items were important enough to keep? So often I find myself doing this: holding on to irrelevant things, then realising how little I ever needed them, gleefully throwing them away. What terrible fate did I think I was keeping at bay by holding on to these things?
I imagine that this pattern of mine will continue. Until eventually it stops.
Years ago my Grandfather worked in Malaysia. On one of his brief stopovers back here, he brought me a huge pot of peppercorns from Sarawak. For some reason I developed an irrational fear that something terrible would happen to him if I were to ever finish the peppercorns. So I eked out their existence. And then one day I did finish them, and nothing happened to him, and I felt stupid.
It's some years later and my Grandfather is now 90 years old. I've spent the entirety of my life looking to him as the prime example of how to be an adult male in the world. And the last few years have been very difficult for him, which has in turn been difficult for me. I have learned that I am not good at this, not good at looking at the ageing process full on, with my face turned towards it. It is much easier for me to turn away and look at things indirectly.
My Grandmother does not have that same privilege. She has to look at this with both eyes, to face it head on, and to deal with it in real time. I say I understand what she's going through, but do I really?
Of course, I go round to help when I can, and I call him and her as often as I can - usually just to ask how their day is going, sometimes with news if I have any news. But this is not a 'real time' level of involvement. What I mean by 'real time' is the time scale you enter when you are doing something difficult, unpleasant, and you cannot deviate or distract yourself with anything. You have to go through it. All the way to the end. Feeling every passing second.
What I am doing is more like dipping in and out of their existence.
There is the genuine sharp pain of being cut with a blade in the difference between who my Grandfather was when I was growing up compared to who he is now. When people meet him for the first time now I genuinely feel that blade cut me deep at the thought that they will never know the person I knew. He used to be so sharp. So authoritative. So knowledgeable. And now he's frequently confused, disconnected, silent. I do my best, I stay connected to him, and there are good days and bad days. On the bad days there is a tension in my chest, tears spring easily behind my eyes, and sometimes I just can't get off the phone quickly enough.
I often feel cowardly for being like this. I regularly find myself feeling abhorrence for the idea of having to spend so much of my time working, forcing myself out of the real time spheres that those I love live in. Whose idea was this?
Years ago a friend of mine fell into alcoholism. It coincided with a time that I had been made redundant at work. I felt that this was not a coincidence. I was being given the time to spend with him to get him back on his feet. And so I fell into a real time existence with him. I would help him get dressed, cleaned, and ready for appointments. I would call his social worker, medical clinics, and anyone else I needed to. When things got bad I would clean his house, take out all the garbage, get things scrubbed and sparkling, hoping that he would look at this level of involvement and think to himself:
"Ah, I am a person who matters, with people who care about me. Perhaps I should stop drinking and take care of myself so I can be here for them."
But that's not how it went at all.
Instead it went to some of the darkest places I've ever been.
It went on for months, and eventually I did have to start a new job, and I fell out of real time involvement and into the usual realm: evenings, weekends, phone calls. You know how it is.
We carried on that way for years, and then it reached a point where I just could not continue. I had to stop seeing and talking to my friend. Or rather, I should say that I had the privilege of being able to stop seeing and talking to my friend. That was in 2018 - we haven't seen each other or spoken since then.
A few weeks ago I received a telephone call from a mutual friend - the voice on the other end of the phone was crying - I knew instantly why he was calling.
Sometimes I used to accuse my alcoholic friend of not understanding that I also had a life that he could not see. That when I was not in sight I hadn't simply 'powered down,' awaiting a call from him to reactivate - like an NPC in a computer game, standing and staring into space, my head swaying side to side.
But truthfully, it's just as difficult for me to understand that he also had a life. That he had to endure difficulty, pain, and embarrassment while I was at work, or spending time with my children, or my partner. What would it have been like if we could have independently seen each other at those moments? Our two lives held side by side, concurrent events in different spaces?
Well, that's not possible any more.
Instead, there are the remaining people I care about. And the experience that my Grandparents are now going through, and my inability to deal with it either as much as I would like to, or as well as I would like to is, unsurprisingly, leaving me reflecting on my relationship with my partner. What's going to happen to us?
Recently, my partner lost her Father - and her Mother now lives alone for the first time in decades. We found out after the fact that their last year together had been becoming increasingly difficult as his health deteriorated. At the time we had no idea, they were both too proud to tell us. I understand this. You are there to help your children, there is something unnatural in the idea that they should help you. Intellectually I know this should not be the case, but emotionally I understand the truth in it.
Would it be better if my partner's future bore similarity to that, or would it be better if our years together continued for longer, but became more and more difficult for her as time went on and my health and mental state declined? Is it better to suffer a comparatively short sharp painful loss, and to find yourself alone, or to watch someone you love deteriorate for years and years, but to still have them in your life? She and I talk about this a lot. With no real conclusion to be reached. Eventually, time and circumstance will make one of these options real - and then we will know.
She and I live the closest real time existence possible. It's Saturday, May 14th. The two of us have been to the cinema together. We both cried. Now we are home. We have guests coming round later. She is in the kitchen, cooking, I am in the living room, cleaning. I keep looking at the room, realising there are more cleaning implements I need. These are all kept in the kitchen. I walk past her several times, fetching cloths and sprays and sponges, kissing the nape of her neck every time I pass. I can't tell you what her experience of these moments is like, because I only see her from the outside, I don't know how she's seeing things, or what she's thinking about. But I do know what I, the central character in my own narrative, is thinking.
Back in the living room I move items around, re-house them, clean where they once stood, put several items in the bin: tickets to a rep screening of Suspiria, updates on my pension plan, letters from people I will never reply to. How did I ever think these items were important enough to keep? So often I find myself doing this: holding on to irrelevant things, then realising how little I ever needed them, gleefully throwing them away. What terrible fate did I think I was keeping at bay by holding on to these things?
I imagine that this pattern of mine will continue. Until eventually it stops.