New Wave

Sat, 06 Dec 2025 23:34:12 GMT

When Ichabod called, I had this strong impulse not to answer the phone.

Because if I stop answering the phone when Ichabod calls, then I can pretend that nothing that happened to me last week when Ichabod was around actually happened!

I can reinvent myself as someone to whom embarrassing, humiliating things do not happen simply by cutting off every single person in my life who was around when the Embarrassing, Humiliating Thing did happen.

Easy peasy!

A simple & elegant solution!

Alas, I am not quite that crazy.

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Honestly, I could not ask for a better son. I could not ask for two better sons. I should be on my knees thanking the Universe that my kids are so supportive and patient and protective.

But instead, I am filled with gall because the things that I like about myself are not the things my kids like about me, and thus, they will never know me as I want to be known. They will never see me as an artist. They will never see my life as a hero's adventure.

They will never see me.

So it goes.

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Before Ichabod called, I forced myself to write 500 words on the Work in Progress. I hated every fucking word I wrote—Well. Not altogether true. The indefinite articles were okay—but that's all right because first draft, first draft, first draft, and the important things are momentum and consistency.

After Ichabod called, I hied over to New Paltz and spent a happy hour or so wafting from unspeakably adorable boutiquey shop to unspeakably adorable boutiquey shop, gift harvesting. It was a sunny afternoon, and I have acclimatized sufficiently to the colder temperatures to find 37° quite balmy.

###

Last night, I watched Richard Linklater's Nouvelle Vague, a film about the making of Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless.

When I was 14, I lied my way into a job as a candy girl at the Thalia movie house, and it was here I got my basic education in foreign films. Truffaut, Godard, Bergman, Fellini, Antonioni, the Brit kitchen sink auteurs, Lindsay Anderson, Tony Richardson, John Schlesinger—I loved them all passionately.

I wouldn't say Nouvelle Vague is a particularly entertaining movie, but it did make me nostalgic. Once upon a time, people were more passionate about creating art than they were about enhancing their brand.

In the post-Warhol world, of course, there is no such thing as art—only marketing categories and money-laundering schemes. (When a Van Gogh painting sells for millions & millions of dollars, that's a form of money-laundering.)

I've seen Breathless at least a dozen times, but it's not my favorite Godard film by a long shot. My favorite is Bande à part for purely egoistical reasons: As an 18-year-old, I bore a striking resemblance to Anna Karena:

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