City Love II

 

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Venice is one of these cities - even if you have never been there, you probably have an image of the city in your head. It is one of its kind, there truly is no second city like it (although it has inspired some recreations, but more on that later...). Because of its unique character, it is often used as a backdrop for adversting, fotoshoots and films, and that is one of the main reasons it is so well known worldwide. A lot of people see it as a tourist trap, a city you visit once and then you can cross it off your list. I have been to Venice many, many times, and I still don't get tired of it. It's not a mega-city like London, Paris or New York. It's a place full of history, almost like a live-in museum, that still operates as a functioning, modern-day city. Most of all it is a beautiful place, where you want to stop and admire your surroundings every other minute. Once you've done the tourist thing you can start exploring the sideways, back alleys and empty squares, and that is where the charm of Venice is at its strongest.

Do you know this feeling?

Whenever I get back from traveling, I always feel kind of weird for the first couple of days. Do you know what I mean? Transportation today has made it easier than ever to cover long distances in a very short amount of time, so sometimes I think the mind is trying to catch up with your body. Having breakfast in one place and dinner on a different continent seems just a bit much. So the three-day post-travel daze is more than understandable, it actually is necessary. People aren't machines. We need to adapt to changes in our environment, and if those changes are happening too fast, we get disorientated. It is a rather difficult state to describe - there is the cliché of being neither here nor there, and there definitely is some truth to that. When we leave our home, we often expect the place to have changed while we were away. But that hardly ever happens, as Alain de Botton laments in his book The Art of Travel: 'I returned to London from Barbados to find that the city had stubbornly refused to change. I had seen azure skies and giant sea anemones [...]. But the home town was unimpressed.' (243) This expresses beautifully how we desperately try to uncover a physical manifestation of a mental change, however small it may be. De Botton goes on saying the following:  'When we are in a good mood and it is sunny, it is tempting to impute a connection between what happens inside and outside of us, but the appearance of London on my return was a reminder of the indifference of the world to any of the events unfolding in the lives of its inhabitants.' (243) And if our home didn't change, we hope we ourselves did.

 

As soon as I got back to Vienna, I immediately felt truly at home. I was grateful to be back, to see my friends and family and to walk around in the beautiful city of Vienna. But that doesn't mean I didn't feel different. Everything felt familiar, but still new and fresh. I don't have the eyes of a tourist, but it is still not the same as it was before. Is this a desirable goal? People often want to be changed by their travels. It seems that a time abroad, however short it may be, is deemed a success if it comes with some personal changes. Why is that? And more importantly, what comes after that?

I already mentioned the short-term effects of traveling, as I experience them. That strange feeling for a few days, of being somewhere familiar yet new, a kind of limbo state, we usually snap out of and return to our daily lives as we lived them before. And this is even true for the shortest weekend trip. So what would it mean for a 10 month period spent abroad? Is the effect multiplied? And it what way -duration or intensity of the experience, or maybe even both? Odysseus didn't recognized his hometown after sailing the seas for ten years, trying to find his way back after a terrible war. Now, I'm not comparing myself to Odysseus in any way, but I believe that people can relate to this unfamiliarity of the familiar. It actually connects to Freud's notion of the Uncanny ('das Unheimliche'). A state in which the familiar suddenly seems foreign or alien, which leads to an unsettling feeling of discomfort. In a horror film, for example, this would be the scene where the protagonist visits a playground in the middle of the day, and everything seems as it always is, until suddenly the swings start moving, or the see-saw screeches. Freud defined it as a 'class of the terrifying which leads back to something long known to us, once familiar'. (Freud, p. 1). He also made it clear that it differs from the feeling of fear.

I wouldn't say that me being back home has been uncanny as such, but it illustrates my feelings rather well. You can be afraid and terrified in a completely new and unfamiliar situation, but you can only experience the uncanny as long as something in that situation is well-known to you. It goes back to the childhood fear that everyone in your family is a monster and wearing a mask - it's a shift from somewhere you feel safest in the world, to a place where you suddenly don't. And this can only happen if you feel safe to begin with. How does that connect to me right now? I'm trying to express that I do feel like I am right where I belong at the moment, but that it still feels different - and I can't quite put my finger on it yet. Then again, I'm not just returning from a two-week vacation in Spain, but from almost a year in London. Maybe I just haven't adjusted to the speed of traveling yet, and my mind is about to catch up with my body any second now.

Resources:
Alain de Botton, The Art of Travel (London: Penguin Group, 2014)
Sigmund Freud, The “Uncanny”. (First Published in Imago, Bd. V., 1919; reprinted in Sammlung, Fünfte Folge)

The Normal Heart

This is going to be a slightly different post for me, so please bear with me. A couple of days ago I watched the film The Normal Heart by Ryan Murphy based on the play by Larry Kramer. Now, first off, I just have to say that I usually don't enjoy tragic or sad films, even if they are supposed to be amazing in every other way. If I read about a film or series that focuses on people being sick or abused, battling cancer or taking care of a sick loved one, I often refuse to watch such productions. I believe that there is a lot of suffering in this world, and sometimes seeing it on a big screen just gets too much. Haneke's Amour is an example - I put off watching it because I don't need to be reminded how elderly people die, and just how horrible it is. When I eventually did see it, I was moved because it is an incredible film, but also very sad. I just wanted to hug my mum.
But when I stumbled across an interview with the (amazing!) cast of this film on YouTube (I mean, who doesn't love Matt Bomer?), I was immediately drawn in and knew I had to watch it. What's it about?

It starts in 1981 in NYC, and we meet our protagonist, Ned Weeks, played by Mark Ruffalo. It shows how the first cases of AIDS were discovered, how it was called 'gay cancer' then, and how no one knew what was happening, why it was happening and how to stop it. And how reluctant the government or the Mayor were in speaking about the situation, much less doing something against it. Ned befriends Dr. Emma Bruckner (Julia Roberts), who takes care of a large number of these first cases and who is looking for someone to assist her in the fight against the disease, someone within the gay community. That's how Ned meets Felix Turner, played by Matt Bomer, who is a reporter at the New York Times, and who Ned tries to convince to write about this epidemic. They soon fall in love, and it is such a pure and innocent love that we wish for the film to just end there, because we can all guess what's to come. Felix falls ill. And Ned, already fighting aggressively before, has even more reasons to make some noise and to get the whole population and the government to listen. He never stops, crosses several lines and accuses the government of conspiracy.

It is a powerful film - and it is hard to watch. Because you know it really happened, and because it was not that long ago. The love story at the centre of the story is beautiful, which makes it all the more heartbreaking. I can only imagine what this film will do to someone who lived during that time, or who knew someone then or now affected by this disease. A couple of years ago I saw a play in London, called Holding the Man. When buying the tickets, we had no idea what the play was about. In a nutshell, it's a love story between two men, who are then both diagnosed with HIV in the mid-eighties. Towards the end of the play, one of them dies, which is shown in detail on stage. It was not only tragic to watch, the reaction by the audience brought it to another level. There were a lot of same-sex couples in the audience, and you couldn't help but notice how the performance on stage affected them. I imagine that some of them maybe remembered what it was like back then, maybe even lost someone they loved, or knew someone who was battling the disease. (Just to avoid any misinterpretation, I know that AIDS is a disease that everyone can get and that is has nothing to do with being gay.) Seeing how that audience reacted, how moved they where by it, showed just how real a story like that is. It created a connection between fiction and reality.

But back to A Normal Heart. The film reminds us that at the beginning nobody knew what to do, but also how people were afraid to actually do something. AIDS was unknown and the fact that it only appeared in gay men at that time made for a very political situation. It should remind us that everybody deserves to be treated the same in every way. And what kind of power fear itself is.
It also displays the connection and communication within the gay community. It seems unimaginable that the group of activist had someone they knew dying every other week. What kind of life is that? Not knowing how or why? And with no end in sight? Tommy, one of these activists (Jim Parsons) talks about that at yet another funeral: 'This is our social life now'. It seems very realistic that they start to turn against each other. They were so angry with the whole situation, and so unsure of what to do, feeling alone and defenseless, isolated from the rest of the world. There is this one scene, which illustrates that point. They are starting to set up the office of the GMHC (Gay Men's Health Crisis) when suddenly there is a woman at the door. She talks to Tommy about how she lost her best friend to AIDS the night before, and how she wants to help, even though all her lesbian friends said 'what have you guys ever done for us'. This reaching out by one woman marks, I believe, a turning point in the story, and it is also a truly moving moment.

As Felix becomes sicker, Ned takes care of him in an extremely loving way, at the same time wanting him to fight more than he can. The film doesn't try to be crass or shock the viewers with horrific images more than necessary. It is as much about the political story as it is about the personal one. It also demonstrates beautifully and tragically how in the end all we have is each other. In an actual crisis, it is people that we need to get us through, first and foremost. People to care, to hug, to cry with, to listen, to understand. And it is those people who will then communicate with other human beings to get attention, get help from outside, and fight with and for us.

Also, apart from this being an important story to tell, the setting, acting and directing is spectacular. It's one of those movies where you tell yourself you'll just watch the beginning and then find it impossible to stop. Ruffalo and Bomer are immediately believable as a couple. Both their acting, Ruffalo becoming angrier and louder throughout the film and Bomer getting weaker, thinner, quieter, is truly amazing. They become their characters. Taylor Kitsch is hardly recognizable and gives a wonderful performance, Jim Parsons shows that he is more than Sheldon from The Bing Bang Theory, and Julia Roberts reminds us of her performance in Erin Brockovich, fighting for what's right. The rest of the cast is just as amazing. It seems that everyone gave their all to make this film possible (which, incidentally, would be a story of its own). It really is a piece of art.

It is not a depressing or sad film. It is joyous, moving, powerful and it makes you want to fight for something. For justice, for peace, for the rights of people.

Now, if I haven't scared you away, you can watch the trailer here.