| | "There may be some people who kill themselves in order to achieve a calm and control they never find in life." -The Savage God
...
Sarah Kane committed suicide February 20th, 1999. I was in 2nd grade, I had no affiliation with her or even a vague notion of who she was, much less what she was writing about or the turbulence that must have been going on inside her.
Today, blindly exploring the interwebs, I came upon a video clip advertised as "...NSFW, but it is a really great short film. Her only film for TV, it originally aired on the BBC and was reviewed as “One of the most violent and racially offensive programmes ever to be made for television in this country.” Despite this, director Vincent O’Connell was nominated for a Golden Bear award for the film at the 1996 Berlin International Film Festival."
Naturally, I was curious. The second I pressed -play,- I still had no knowledge of who Sarah Kane was or why she was important in any way.
11 minutes and 10 seconds later, the facial expression I'm wearing is really fucking bizarre, but no where near as bizarre as what I just watched. I can't even name it. It's fascination, disgust, terror, curiosity, nausea, and discovery wrapped up in one weird eyebrow-furrowing package.
I'm so fucking confused. And uncomfortable. But... not in a bad way. I'm not even sure if the English language can help me out on this one, I don't even know what to say.
It's called "Skin." It's from 1995. I feel like I'm missing something. Was that really it? Is it really just 11 minutes and 10 seconds? I... I feel the plunge into universal truths and eye-opening metaphors, but... no way. What?
I watched this... cinematic heart attack... before I knew anything about the context, though I doubt that would have helped much. Knowing that Sarah Kane committed suicide brings a different element into her work; it changes the lens through which one views the product of her mind and her soul. Like... what if she knew at the time she was writing this... that she was going to bring about her own abrupt end? What does this fragment of HER, essentially, say about who she was as a whole and what she was going to become just 4 years later...?
Writers who commit suicide I feel are very different from musicians who commit suicide.
I mean... I can't read Richard Brautigan without getting an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my stomach. I can't think about Sylvia Plath as just... someone. I just can't even fathom the internal conflict that must have been taking place... I think it becomes much more eery and heart-wrenching when that internal conflict is manifested into a work of fiction rather than a song.
Chuck Klosterman is the author of one of my favorite books: Killing Yourself to Live. It brought a new light to how people in general view the dead; that strange respect and admiration a person earns when they suddenly stop living. James Dean wasn't a phenomenal actor by any means, he just had a pretty face. I mean, he was alright, but nothing completely extraordinary. And then he dies suddenly at the peak of his career, and now he's immortalized as an extremely handsome Adonis-type figure. Buddy Holly's music would be real crap if he put it out today, but people still listen to his odd sort of 1950's crooning because he died so young... and so his music lives on without him. Whatever.
It's not the same way with writers. I don't know why, I can't put my finger on it. The taste in one's just becomes much more bitter.
..........
There was thunder and lightning this morning. It was nice. |
| | Posted 4/3/2009 5:44 PM - 1 View - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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