I am getting obsessed with Humphrey Bogart. The love is gone. The obsession <\/b>blossoms. I can feel it growing. Like some beautiful poisonous plant, expanding exponentially.<\/p>\n
This is a very familiar sensation to me, as I have had INTENSE celebrity crushes since the first achey twinges of puberty.<\/p>\n
And maybe because I have a little bit of a complex about being “too much” for whatever guy I’ve been involved with (and I’m not delusional, by the way – More than one man has said to me, point-blank, “You’re a bit much” … One actually said to me, in kind of a dry tone, “I guess I feel that dating you is too much for one man, and I feel like I need to call in some help”. My point is is that my complex does not exist in a vacuum) … maybe because of all of that, my celebrity crushes get ALL of my passion. I will never be “too much” for them<\/i>!<\/p>\n
\nMaybe this should be an embarrassing admission, but it’s not. At least I don’t feel embarrassed.<\/p>\n
Let me go to a deeper level for a moment:<\/p>\n
Like most of us, I have gone through some rough seasons. Seasons where all I could do <\/i>was try to believe my friends and family when they would say, “There is light at the end of the tunnel.” One such rough season was a couple of years ago, directly prior to starting up my blog in 2002. This “season” was different from others I have experienced, because it showed no sign of ending. A grey blanket lay over the world.<\/p>\n
Now, multiple things went into me climbing out of the black pit … one was starting the blog, randomly. <\/p>\n
But another thing was seeing “Moulin Rouge” and succumbing, whole-heartedly, to a “crush” on Ewan McGregor which – it’s hard to describe without feeling silly. Maybe people think because I wear leather jackets and have a tattoo that I’m a tough chick, and on many levels I am. You must not mess with me. I do not give too many second chances. But on another level I am really just a delicate soul and the tough facade is necessary because I’m all shattered-up inside. Like that great Bonnie Raitt line: “She’s fragile like a string of pearls. She’s nobody’s girl<\/i>.” There’s nobody tougher than someone who’s been messed about, and who has survived a couple of dark seasons.<\/p>\n
Okay, so I’m going to stop being embarrassed at what I want to write. Because who knows – maybe somebody out there will relate, maybe somebody out there will read what I write and think: “Wow, I know just what she means!!” – and that’s who I’m writing for right now.<\/p>\n
In 2002 I lay on my couch for 5 months. That was it. That was all I could do. The reasons why are multi-faceted, one thing folding into another, and I can’t really explain it without talking for 2 hours. It wasn’t that I was depressed. It was that I felt nothing. Everything went dead and dull and grey. The spinning top of life slowed down to a complete standstill. And so I rented movies. That was all I was able to do. All the energy I had.<\/p>\n
I don’t remember much of that year.<\/p>\n
Then I saw “Moulin Rouge” and it was as though I had been plunged from the sunlight into ice cold water. It was like being born again. That is how intense it was. I watched the film and here, exactly, is how I felt (and it won’t be all that articulate, but I’m sure you will get my meaning, coming, as I was, from my dark season of nothingness):<\/p>\n
oh my God … love exists … love exists … I can feel it in my heart again … it is real … it is real … maybe not for me … but it is out there … and maybe … maybe … I will feel that again … maybe … it’s not IMPOSSIBLE … it’s not IMPOSSIBLE …<\/p>\n
(The second you stop believing things are “impossible” is the second that the dark season ends.)<\/p>\n
I will always have a soft space in my heart for that film because of what it provided me. It helped bring me back to life.<\/p>\n
Ewan McGregor was the vehicle of that awakening.<\/p>\n
I think sometimes that there are certain performances which shift the tectonic plates a little bit, and make me get my eyes up above the muck of my own life. This is one of the beautiful and healing things about theatre\/art\/movies, what-ever.<\/p>\n
I can track certain eras of my life based on whichever “crush” I had going at that time.<\/p>\n
“Crush” is appropriate, only if you think of it in terms of what the word ‘crush’ actually MEANS. Being “crushed” is no picnic – it would hurt <\/b>to be crushed<\/b>, in actuality. My teenage celeb crushes (Ralph Macchio, Lance Kerwin – does anyone remember that name??? James Dean…) were barely fun. I could barely talk about these people. There was nothing casual about any of it. I NEEDED these people. I NEEDED to know that there was good in the world, and that maybe some of that good would come my way some day. To me, these young actors embodied that. James Dean’s performance in “East of Eden” – I can’t be too dramatic about this – it changed how I looked at life. It changed how I looked at acting, yes – but more than that: I got my eyes above the emotional-paucity of high school, of feeling alone, of feeling ugly, of feeling on the outside of things, of wanting desperately for love and approval and acceptance … and I felt: There. THERE. There is a PERFECT expression of EXACTLY what I am going through. He has DONE it. He has SAID it. What a comfort!<\/p>\n
Certain books can do this as well. It can usher you through a rough patch, it can let you know: “It’s okay, this is well-traveled ground…” Not in a heartless, “Buck up, kid, life sucks, and it sucks for everyone” way. But in a way that lets you know you are not alone. You have not invented heartbreak.<\/p>\n
And this, too, shall pass.<\/p>\n
With James Dean – with Ralph Macchio – with Han Solo (not Harrison Ford, really, but Han Solo) – there was no more scarcity. There was only abundance<\/i>. I already had a complex in high school that I would be “too much” – and the sterility of my high-school romantic life seemed proof of that. So whenever I had a crush on a “real” guy, 90% of my energy went to keeping myself in line, with holding back, with not letting him know how much I REALLY felt, for fear of scaring him off … whatever.<\/p>\n
Putting the reins on my own behavior – had the inverse effect of putting the reins on what was going on inside. I was always “in line”.<\/p>\n
There is no abundance. If I lose control, I do so very very privately.<\/p>\n
This is kind of who I am, I guess – and how I’ve lived my life. I’ve lost men I love because of this nonsense.<\/p>\n
Over the years, like the tide going in or going out, I succumb to random “crushes” on actors. (As will be obvious by now: one of the things I love about these crushes, is I can let myself go without any repercussions.) Usually the crush comes upon me suddenly, catching me unawares. Like: I randomly rented “Fisher King” one night some years back, and suddenly – as though I were riding a wave into shore – I became overWHELMED by Jeff Bridges. OVERWHELMED, and suddenly I needed to see every damn movie the man had ever made in his life.<\/p>\n
Usually, with these actors, I have already seen a lot of their films … but … for whatever reason … I was never “struck” by them. Obsession did not bloom.<\/p>\n
And suddenly, whaddya know, there I am renting films where Jeff Bridges has 2 lines.<\/p>\n
It’s like an assignment. I take it seriously.<\/p>\n
“Okay. So I’m into Jeff Bridges now. Fine. It is a fact. I must accept it, and not fight it. And now I must set myself a syllabus, in order to handle and focus this out-of-control obsessive energy – give it a POINT.”<\/p>\n
And then I’m off to the races.<\/p>\n
One couple of months it was Russell Crowe. I guess I’m the same as 85% of the other women on this planet … but there I was, renting the kids movie he made in New Zealand about the silver horse … and The Quick and the Dead … all because … dammit … seeing the man provided me with something.<\/p>\n
Seeing him in “The Sum of Me” (one of my favorite films that he did – before he became a star) got me through many a dark hour. His character in that film – I related to it so much, even though he plays a jocky gay kid from New Zealand, and I (to put it mildly) was none of those things. He’s tender, inside – he’s kind of shy – he’s looking for something – he’s got no self-confidence … It’s a beautiful performance. One night I watched “The Sum of Me” back to back with “LA Confidential” and that convinced me: “Okay. This guy is a GIANT talent. GIANT. I have absolutely NO idea who he is now.”<\/p>\n
Ewan McGregor’s almost operatic performance in Moulin Rouge convinced me that life would, indeed, go on … and not only would I actually “feel” stuff again … but that I would actually experience things in bright vibrant colors again. The color scheme of the movie.<\/p>\n
The movie validated my despair. It said to me, “Life is tremendously unfair sometimes, and love rarely feels good, and you will be changed FOREVER by loving someone fully …”<\/p>\n
The dark season came about because, basically, I no longer felt that I had the energy for such things. I could not put myself through it, ever again. And so the spinning top slowed down – and then stopped.<\/p>\n
There is one song in the film – one moment – when the two of them are at a rehearsal – and they are singing a duet, trying to pretend that they’re not in love, trying to hide what is going on, but they cannot …<\/p>\n
Now I’ve seen this movie hundreds of times, obviously – because the second I saw it, during the “dark season” I realized: “Health. This is health. What I feel now is healthy – because I FEEL it” – and so I just kept watching it. And I kept getting better, miraculously.<\/p>\n
Ewan McGregor’s face – during the scene I describe above – I mean, I’ve always thought he was a wonderful actor – inventive, funny, courageous, sexy … but in that scene, all I saw was his openness. This … vulnerability. But not in a wussy way. Just the openness in his heart. I think the openness in his heart shows so clearly in that scene because the character’s main action is to try to HIDE it.<\/p>\n
I watched that scene over and over and over, sometimes sitting on the floor in front of the television, trying to crawl into the screen.<\/p>\n
Can I be that open again?<\/p>\n
Will I ever feel anything that strongly again?<\/p>\n
Can I be that open again?<\/i><\/p>\n
I did not know the answers to those questions … but watching the movie gave me the hope that the answer might be “Yes” and so I kept watching it.<\/p>\n
When the dark season finally ended … around November of 2002 … I looked back on the Moulin Rouge orgy as though it were a particularly psychedelic dream. It didn’t seem quite real – almost immediately following. And I don’t think I’ve done a very good job in describing how bewitched I was by that film, and by Ewan McGregor in particular. Calling something like that a “celebrity crush” seems completely … inadequate.<\/p>\n
It was life-affirming. That was what it was.<\/p>\n
It told me I was going to be okay. I was going to be okay.<\/p>\n
And it’s all in a continuum for me … that was how I felt watching East of Eden, too. That was how I felt watching Han Solo, being snarky and smart-alecky, shooting across the universe, not giving a f***. These weren’t just crushes like: “oooh, they’re cute, I put my picture on the wall”.<\/p>\n
They helped me to go on.<\/p>\n
And so now Bogart.<\/p>\n
I just know that, throughout my life, when one of these obsessions sweep me away – it’s always for a reason. A reason I usually won’t understand until it’s all over. “Oh, so that’s<\/i> what was going on then!”<\/p>\n
The Moulin Rouge thing got me ready to join the land of the living again.<\/p>\n
I couldn’t just pick myself up by my boot straps – because, frankly, I have no boot straps and I don’t even know what boot straps are.<\/p>\n
I was immobile. I felt like my back had been broken, finally, by one too many disappointments. I gave up.<\/p>\n
Moulin Rouge eased me back into life. That was its purpose, it was a harbinger. A harbinger of health, love, and living a messy open life again. It prepared me, again, to get the top spinning, to get off the couch, to (in the immortal words of that great Smiths song, written “for” me): Throw your homework onto the fire … Come out and find the one that you love…<\/i><\/p>\n
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and sometimes a celebrity crush is just a celebrity crush.<\/p>\n
But sometimes it’s a signal (for me, anyway) that something else may, actually, be going on, something else needs to happen, perhaps it is time to move to the next level.<\/p>\n
Last night I watched “To Have and Have Not”.<\/p>\n
Tonight? “Casablanca” again.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I am getting obsessed with Humphrey Bogart. The love is gone. The obsession blossoms. I can feel it growing. Like some beautiful poisonous plant, expanding exponentially. This is a very familiar sensation to me, as I have had INTENSE celebrity … Continue reading