|
SubscriptionsSites I Read
|
|
|
|
| "you have to fight every day to stop censoring yourself. and you never have anyone else to blame when you do. what happens to artists is that it's not that somebody's standing in their way, it's that their own selves are standing in their way. the compromise really isn't how or what you do, the techniques you use, or even the content, but really the compromise is beginning to feel a lack of confidence in your innermost thoughts. and if you don't put these innermost thoughts on the screen then you are looking down on not only your audience but the people you work with, and that's what makes so many people working out there unhappy. these innermost thoughts become less and less a part of you and once you lose them then you don't have anything else. so many people have so much to say and there are so many really worthwhile things to say that it seems impossible that we could cut ourselves off from this whole avenue of enormous excitement."
from cassavetes on cassavetes
edited by raymond carney | | |
| food.Desiree brings back a plate piled high with slices of cheese pizza when I'm working on my second serving of prime rib. "I cleaned them out," she says, a thin metal hoop bisecting her lower lip, blue eyes bright like the packaging of laundry detergent moistened by mischief and pride. She glances over at my plate as she sits back down and once again fails to deliver the lecture about vegetarianism that I've been expecting. In fact, she has never spoken out about it, which makes me feel even more guilty as I swallow down precisely cut cubes of beef too red for my taste.
I stop forced feeding myself long enough to see her lay out paper napkins on the table and bring her purse to her lap. There is something endearing in her complete lack of shame and embarassment in her actions; the sheer giddiness she embodies as she takes the time to carefully crease and then fold her napkins over the rubbery heat-lamped cheese, like a mother sending a care package to a far away summer camp. Lake Whatchamacallit. She stacks up her slices, her individually wrapped pizza envelopes, and in one swift motion, discreetly places them in her purse, a large vinyl rectangle, purchased for the sheer novelty of owning something covered with cartoon drawings of cats nestled inside of hamburger buns.
"In Japan, cat say 'nyah' instead of 'meow'", was the first thing she said when I picked her up at the airport in Vegas. It was her idea to meet here after her long semester abroad, an odd place to continue a relationship renowned for its prolonged periods of transcontinental separation. Las Vegas, with all of its excess, had no room for romance. A gondola ride here, a pyramid there, and all of those buffets in between. It's hard to believe that anything that happens here is real; that it won't all disappear in a much too public demolition to make room for something bigger and better, and perhaps just a little less genuine. | | |
|
|
Think Globally. Act Locally.
|
|
|
|
