river's edge

I have seen hundreds of films, and loved many. But very few have affected me as powerfully as seeing River’s Edge in 1987 did. An excellent article published Saturday in Salon has me thinking about the film again, but in truth it is never very far away, even though the last time I saw it was probably in 1991 or so. Certain works of art burn so deeply into one that they are always a part of you.

For those unfamiliar, a brief plot synopsis: based loosely on a true story, high school burnout John murders his girlfriend Jamie. He tells his friends, seemingly unconcerned about what he's done, even perhaps a bit proud. Leader of burnouts Layne (Crispin Glover in possibly the most powerful performance of the decade) attempts to rally the group of friends (which includes Matt, played a by pre-fame Keanu Reeves) to keep the murder a secret and protect John. Matt contemplates going to the police. Eventually Fenk (played by Dennis Hopper), the local weed dealer in love with his blow-up doll and a one-time murderer himself, gets involved. The teens, outside of Layne, are mostly unconcerned about the whole thing. It is a movie about emptiness.

I do not use the term burnout in derogatory fashion; these are people I know and that’s why this movie hit me so powerfully--I was just coming into high school when I first saw it. Burnout is the label given to those adult society would just as soon forget exist. In the context of the Reagan 80’s, being a burnout was an acknowledgment of the emptiness and felt like the only honest reaction to a society that was corrupt, hypocritical and interested primarily in the attainment of material wealth, which kids like me knew would never be within our reach.

River’s Edge is a cinematic work of art without peer. I have argued in the past that the two visual images that best capture what growing up in the 80s felt like are 1) Layne, exhausted beyond life, falling asleep at the wheel at an empty intersection while Slayer blares through the crappy stereo, not even the violence of the music enough to bridge across the exhaustion, and 2) the recurring motif of the changing traffic light in Twin Peaks (which, admittedly, was not made until 1990 but feels very much a product of the 1980s.) I often watched River’s Edge back-to-back or close to Blue Velvet, the only other movie that could challenge River’s Edge as far as capturing the small-town emptiness of decade. But whereas Blue Velvet is an abstract tone poem, poetic even as it is disturbing (and shot through with a misogyny I find deeply uncomfortable as an adult, even though I very much admire David Lynch), River’s Edge is stark, bleak, nihilistic. Like Requiem for a Dream (the book or the movie), you leave River’s Edge profoundly disturbed. You want to have a reaction, but you are too shell-shocked.

It may not be possible for River’s Edge to have that kind of impact on a viewer today. One reason is that Keanu Reeves is now quite famous, and I think it would be hard to forget you were watching him—that’s the problem with being an actor with a celebrity persona. It’s why Jack Nicholson and Robert DeNiro can only play the same notes in a movie—you never believe you are watching anyone but them. The character they play is irrelevant. (Hell for me is having to watch Jack Nicholson in any movie.) Keanu Reeves is forever seared in our brains as dopey Ted, the guy from Speed, the guy from The Matrix. The butt of thousand jokes about his (lack of) acting ability. Yet in this film, he is perfect for the character, who it might said has the closest thing to a conscience in the film. But should I revisit the film, something I’m thinking of doing now that it’s (finally!) out on DVD, I suspect I will struggle with forgetting the entirety of his career and seeing him simply as Matt.

River’s Edge is a movie about the void, and how confronting that void and finding your soul empty can drive you to desperate acts in an attempt to feel something, anything. This is, I think, some of the most fertile territory the horror field can explore when it gets away from its standard good vs. evil framework—but River’s Edge is not a horror movie, though I’d argue it’s far more terrifying than one. Because, suggests the film, even the act of murder is not enough to break through the emptiness. The void doesn’t react. The universe is not concerned with you or your actions, and nothing you do matters: one definition of nihilism. Yet in the final survey, I don’t think River’s Edge is a nihilistic movie, bleak as it is. Layne, no matter how wrong his motivations, is trying to shatter that boredom, push away the emptiness, and shows a measure of loyalty to a friend where most would recoil. Matt struggles with his conscience; he knows this is all wrong, somehow, even if he has trouble pushing himself to do anything about it. Feck really did love his ex that he murdered. The movie itself ends on a note that, if not hopeful, at least has a small measure of dignity. When your life has been broken beyond repair before it has actually begun, a small measure of dignity is the greatest of achievements.

Does it sound strange to say I feel close the characters of this movie, all of whom are unsympathetic to varying degrees? It hits close to home, as the saying goes. “There but for the grace of God…” But there is no grace, no God in this world. Just the void. I am fortunate to not have scraped this close to the emptiness; arguably the biggest issue in my life has been that I feel too much, not too little. But the exhaustion in Layne’s speeding eyes? I know that exhaustion. It’s an exhaustion beyond fear, out there where there aren’t any stars and you are completely alone. I can understand the actions (or lack thereof) of the characters in River’s Edge without condoning them. One of the biggest issues with virtually every “teen” movie ever made is that it reduces the complexities of life to a series of trite either/ors for both adults and teens. River’s Edge does not. Strip away the more salacious elements of the story (chiefly, the murder) and you find that these were the kids of the 80s, the kids America left behind. Alone, with no tools, no family in any tangible sense, not even sure how to reach out to each other. Ritual is but an empty gesture when there is no hope.

I am drawn to art that pushes me into uncomfortable places, that provides no easy answers. River’s Edge was one of my earliest and best teachers. On the screen, it reflected a world that I knew, and by doing so suggested that telling the story can itself be a dignified, life-affirming act. There may be no easy answers in this film, but for an hour and a half, it gives a voice to those who lost theirs in the void. And it never once insults my intelligence or takes a condescending, moralizing tone towards these lost souls. Of such difficult and unpleasant complexities powerful art can be forged, and in the process offer a note of growth, of hope. And that is no small thing.

This post was written while listening exclusively to Slayer.

eos

Eos is the goddess of the dawn. She is also the subject of one of my favorite songs in the world:

This song entrances and haunts me. When I listen to it before sleep, my dreams take me on the farthest of journeys. This is how art can move a person. This is why I consider working creatively to be the holiest of tasks. There is always a chance you might make something that moves someone on the deepest level.

I don't have much to say, really. I thought about trying to describe how the song moves me but like all meaningful art, its effects are beyond language. (If you like this song, though, you should listen to all of Ulver's Shadows of the Sun album. It is an incredible work by any measure.)

Yesterday I found myself reading about Hekate. Today I'm thinking about Eos. Perhaps this will be my year of goddesses? That would be interesting for my heathen, atheistic self. Heatheistic? Heh. I don't know. Labels are silly. All I know is I've been thinking of ritual a lot lately. How it informs the act of creation. For me, writing has always been a sacred calling, no matter what my belief system is or isn't. Of course, I also read about the ultimate heat death of the universe yesterday and the Planck epoch. Balance. Plus, these things are connected. An inquiry into meaning and knowledge has many forms, right?

Things are stirring in me that have primarily lay dormant for the last fifteen years or so, maybe even longer. It began when we moved to this house, which has proven to be a very good place. It feels so wonderful to have these parts of me awaken a bit, even if they are very bleary-eyed and not sure if they are just going to go back to sleep. Stay awake, I tell them, we'll have such fun. You've had your time to rest, now come out and play. The goddess of the dawn is calling.

fires

Fires burning in ancestral night. I see the flames reaching for the stars. Embers break apart and form a trail of light that mirrors the trail of stars overhead. I have been here...I have never been here.

There are random images that your brain throws out just because it is your brain and it keeps itself occupied. There are certain things that you carry with you. The above is one of mine. These images--I want to say visions, but I hate the associations with that word--are real even though you can't possibly have experienced them in your conscious state. I'm not talking about dreams, which are something else altogether (though it is possible to dream these images, dreams merely being a different extension of mind.) No, it's that knowledge--not a feeling, knowledge--that you have witnessed this scene before. The knowledge that it took place hundred, thousands of years ago and you were there.

Your body as you know it was not there, but some part of it was. A molecule. Some tiny fraction. Enough to retain the sure knowledge of what you saw. You watched the fires burning in the ancestral night. You felt the heat. You studied the stars. Some of those stars, the light that was shining then is the light you are seeing now.

Is it not the most beautiful thing?

pillars of creation

The Pillars of Creation don’t exist. This astonishing, beautiful birthplace of stars is no more.

We know this, of course. It takes light a hell of a long time to reach us from some 7,000 light years away. The pillars as we see them now haven’t existed for probably a thousand years. It is thought that they were likely destroyed by a supernova shockwave, though some argue for a more gradual erosion. Regardless, they are gone.

It is greatly humbling, this realization.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. We understand that this is the cycle, no matter what mythology we drape around it. You are now, soon you won’t be, at least in any kind of form you understand. On a cosmic timescale, even the longest life barely happens. This humbles me, but it also fills me with awe. That we even exist fills me with awe. That there might be infinite universes, or none.

I do not spend a great deal of conscious time dwelling on this. Being neither religious nor a practitioner of any type of meditation, my time examining such matters is…haphazard, I suppose you’d say. Yet a cosmic perspective informs everything I do, especially creatively.

I recently finished a story I’m proud of. This is unusual, in that I’m very aware of my limitations as a writer and I mostly see my stories for what they aren’t. For how they didn’t quite get across what I was really trying to say. This new one gets pretty close, though, and that makes me excited. Alive. It really is the greatest feeling. And it is a gift.

I don’t pray, but I do talk to the universe every night before sleep overtakes me. And one of the things I always say is: “I am a storyteller. Nothing more, nothing less and humble in front of the gift of the Muse.” It’s kind of an awkward way of reminding myself every day, regardless of what happened, what the core of my being is, as well as a way of saying thanks. You don’t need deities to say thank you to. You can just thank the stars.

The Pillars of Creation are gone, but they are not. They are inside us, if we dare to look. It is beautiful there, and violent. Creation is a wild act and cannot be tamed. It is dangerous. Birth is dangerous. Stars don’t easily come into being, but when they do, they are beautiful to witness. And for each star that dies, another is born. There is not one Pillar of Creation, but many.

And that fills me with awe and humility.

an effective ritual offers no safe catharsis

What color is magic?

Magic has no color, son.

I wrote those words years ago. I was wrong. Magic has all the colors. Or maybe I’m wrong still: magic is beyond colors. There are colors we can’t even perceive, after all. Do they exist? Might as well ask if you exist. (You don’t.)

A couple of nights ago there was a windstorm. I lay in bed listening. I imagined the wind tearing the roof off my house. It could reach in and grab me and pull me wherever it wished. There would be nothing I could do to stop it. It could throw me across the street onto the neighbor’s wet deck. It could carry me to Antarctica and drop me on the frozen ground. It could raise me three inches off my bed and gently set me down again. Or it could howl outside but leave the roof alone, leaving me falsely thinking I was safe beneath the covers. (You are never safe.)

Every night before I fall asleep I imagine myself as the planet Neptune. I think of how cold it is, a cold we can’t fathom, yet I try very hard to imagine what that feels like. I then picture a trail of stars in the sky and how sometimes when death scares me I imagine that after death I can walk a trail of stars and go anywhere in the universe I want. This thought comforts me; I recognize it as my mind’s best attempt to visualize the molecules gathered in me breaking apart and being free to roam. You can’t expect the conscious mind to imagine its non-existence. (You are never awake.)

This is the question that obsesses me the most: what will be the last book I read, and will I know it is the last when I read it? There are days I cannot get this question out of my head. I will probably not be able to answer it until after the fact. And that makes me sad; I’d like to ritualize the reading of the last book of my life. Put great effort into choosing it. Parse the pages out carefully and savor every word. Sip my favorite Scotch or my favorite coffee while reading. Read it out loud: sing the words! Feel the way they roll of my tongue. Think about their meanings. And, as I finish each page, say thank you. Thank you for that page and for a lifetime of reading. (You do not say thank you enough.)