Le Vent

How many times can a girl watch Gone with the Wind?

I just downloaded Tara's Theme (The Main Title), and it has definitely been on repeat for the past two hours faithfully getting me through AP US History notecards. Steiner's score takes me far back to my younger years (lately I've been feeling positively senile even though I'm not even an adult yet) to the days when my mother and I used to watch the Civil War epic religiously almost every weekend. Four hours of time well spent in my opinion.

When I was a little girl, everything was so black and white. Scarlett and Rhett were meant for each other and SPOILER it was ridiculous that they didn't end up together. Ashley was inconsequential. Scandals didn't really register. Romance and wealth and futures were supposed to be simple; things that rendered life less complicated. Gone with the Wind was one of the first color motion pictures. How wonderful must it have been to see the bright and full rainbow large in front of you for the first time? I appreciate the technicolor now. I know how hard it is to give up on a dream, how deceptive love and trust can look, how safe and warm home is after a long time away during which obstacles creep up on you and only heighten on the return trip. Life isn't stark contrasts of black and white or sun and moon or heaven and hell. Life isn't gray either. Life is bright and dull colors, swirls of grace and stumbling, hunger and sumptuous dishes, cascades of silk gloves marred by aching fingers. There aren't any white knights and dark villians, no whores, no saints.

The title card says something different. It reads "There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South... Here, in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow... Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave... Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered. A Civilization gone with the wind... " Of course, the antebellum South was neither this pretty nor this kind. There was only an illusion of gallantry. But, I suppose it's helpful to remember things through a veil of nostalgia and to see things from someone else's perspective. As Rhett Butler says "I want peace. I want to see if somewhere there isn't something left in life of charm and grace." There is all too little of that left today and perhaps there was always a dearth. In any event, Gone with the Wind, despite not always being beautiful, is enduring in its humanity for it portrays the basic desire to want something or someplace that evokes safety. A wonderful film and an equally wonderful book.

La Romantisme

I was delighted to see whimsical romantic colors and silhouettes on the Paris runways for Fall instead of the traditional dark, severe garments. The John Galliano for Dior fall collection plays up pastels and equestrian femininity to create an atmosphere indicative of the Regency-era French upper class while Marc Jacobs for Louis Vuitton showcases the elegance and sensuality of fifties Rome. The two are very different collections but both are easily my favorites of the season for their decadence and irreverence. In an era where shock is the primary modus operandi, Galliano and Jacobs are able to bring a modern touch to classic styles and, in the process, create something truly beautiful. Check out the full collections on style.com.

L’horloge

While at Barnard College, I had the privilege of sitting in on a First Year English class of which the students and teacher were very welcoming and inviting. The class was discussing T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land and had a plethora of wonderful ideas about the poem, which, of course, caused us all to go off topic into a conversation about time.

The Waste Land is a commentary on the futility and hopelessness of a Post-World War I era. Time is cyclical here. The month of April is the transition from winter to spring when ice begins to melt and plants begin to grow. Eliot describes the difficulty to grow something beautiful and worthwhile out of barren soil in the first days of spring. The people play a game of chess amidst this phenomenon with a proprietor telling them to “HURRY PLEASE IT’S TIME” like a clock in his precision.

Humans use time as a crutch because otherwise we would be lost. We would wake during the day and sleep during the night with no knowledge of how far we are from birth and how close we are to death. Furthermore, time fosters efficiency. The more we advance and compartmentalize our lives, the more we need to organize our time. Losing time is scary. There is a mental clock reminding us that we have 5 minutes to finish a project and fifty years until we die and slowly, slowly, quickly, quickly time falls away and we creep closer to the end. As the professor teaching the class said, “We don’t want to waste time, but we don’t want to become a slave to it either.”

As a student brought up, when Edison invented the light bulb, he thought he would be eradicating sleep from society, therefore optimizing efficiency. We were taught that “time and tide wait for no man” and to waste time doing anything that doesn’t return on its investment is failure. We were taught that success is to, in the words of Mad Men’s Pete Campbell, “own a house, a car, a television, the American Dream!” A postcard perfect life in a neatly organized suburb is success. We don’t spend time relaxing or processing. That would be wasting time when we could be buying more, earning more, proving ourselves more worthy to others. Even our entertainments are optimized for efficiency from the television to the iPod to the iPhone, which I suppose is all in one.

Would Eliot see us as a cultural wasteland? Would it be because, as he portrayed in The Hollow Men, we don’t stop and think and feel? Is it worth it to ration our time “wisely”? Is there a purpose to time when it becomes repetitive and monotonous? Perhaps The Waste Land applies to us now more than ever as we try to make sense of a new society. Has time become a prison for which there is no key? I think our most human and pervasive fear is the feeling that we don’t have enough time, and I suppose the reason we don’t have enough time is because we don’t want to waste time. Eliot “show[ed] you fear in a handful of dust” so look it in the eyes and see if you recognize it.

Vous Nous Manquez

A belated post honoring Alexander McQueen and his breathtaking final collection. You were an inspirational and talented designer and your presence will be greatly missed both on and off the runway.

Les Sans-Abri

A personal essay assignment inspired some reflection this past spring break as I decided my role as a traveler would make for an interesting narrative and expression. Understandably, on my way to the East Coast to visit colleges, I packed my copy of Jack Kerouac’s On the Road to read on the airplane. It is an intriguing autobiographical treatise on the Beat Generation and an account of the epiphanies brought on by travel. However, despite Kerouac’s exuberance about America’s unique landscapes while crossing from the East to the West, there is a sense of coming of age and learning hard lessons. Sal Paradise’s hero, Dean Moriarty, becomes nothing more than a directionless, though somewhat endearing wanderer and, for a while, Paradise becomes disenchanted with the myth and legend of America as a promised land. Yet at the end, after reflection on life and humanity, Paradise admits that Moriarty is his figurehead of American life.

I, personally, love Kerouac’s works, all memoirs and documentations of his life and travel, but On the Road is by far my favorite. More than its spawning of a culture of coffee shop poetry and flannel button-downs, the novel raises questions about home and frontiers. Are they truly a cold people who move from place to place looking neither forward nor backward, or are they simply enviably free? Kerouac does not seem to answer this question through Dean Moriarty. Similarly, Truman Capote, who famously quipped “That’s not writing; that’s typing” about Kerouac’s novel, creates a flighty heroine who is a citizen of everywhere and nowhere in Breakfast at Tiffany’s. Holly Golightly is the epitome of the lively yet sorrowful girl who has no sense of belonging yet yearns for a place that feels like home.

This sense of rootlessness pervades our society today. A myth has been created about the beautiful wanderer, the enigmatic, restless youth who never seems to stay too long in one place. We see these delightfully lost souls in 500 Days of Summer and Looking for Alaska and Up in the Air. We move quickly because it’s so much easier to leave and create something new someplace else than to get attached to something that’s sort of beautiful and have to mourn for it when it all falls apart. Elsewhere holds the promise of something better and, in that way, is always attractive. Who wants to spend forever in one place? I want to move, I want to live, I want to learn. Home isn’t a place, it’s a feeling, and you won’t find it sitting in one place for the rest of your life. So go, take yourself where life leads you. You probably won’t be disappointed.

À bientôt