Visions of Gideon

"I have loved you for the last time
Is it a video? Is it a video?"

-- Visions of Gideon by Sufjan Stevens

2018 is off to an auspicious start. Thanks to my Person's gift to me this past Christmas, I am now in possession of a Moviepass. Which means that for the rest of this year, I can watch one free movie per day in theaters. Which means my obsessive readership of film blogs can now blossom into full-blown cinephilia, without being stymied by my miserly penny-pinching tendencies. Already, I've watched The Last Jedi and The Shape of Water for the second time, in addition to The Greatest Showman, Phantom Thread, and most recently, Call Me By Your Name.

I have plenty of thoughts on the above movies and would looooove to discuss any of them. But for today, let's talk about the movie I watched last night, Call Me By Your Name. I've known about CMBYN for months. It's been raved about since Sundance. I had other movies on my radar though, like The Shape of Water, which I thought was more up my alley. What ended up becoming the swift kick in the rear to go watch CMBYN was Astrid's raving recommendation. Specifically her comment that she thought I might appreciate the melancholic longing and the ambiguity of mounting attraction.

Okay, sold. One ticket please.

I don't intend to go into detail about this movie, but I will say this: I CANNOT STOP THINKING ABOUT THIS MOVIE.

I have been playing "Visions of Gideon" throughout the day, and the melody immediately transports me back to that aching feeling of heartbreak when you watch Timothee Chalamet's face move through a carousel of emotions without break for four minutes during the ending credits.

It's this song that truly seemed to break something that had been muzzled and discarded deep within me. Rewarming a sliver of a memory that had grown cold over the years.

Do you still remember how intense it feels when you are sixteen? The way every thought of it consumes you like madness. The way you feel literally sick, diseased, as if the raging storm of emotions within you cannot be contained by this earthen body that you haven't yet grown comfortable with, contorted in this liminal space between childhood and adulthood.

I never want to feel that way again. I probably never will. But that pain helped me find my voice.

"In your place, if there is pain, nurse it, and if there is a flame, don’t snuff it out, don’t be brutal with it."