Oh my goodness. All the things, right?
2020 has, thus far, been full of a lot of feelings. Now, I do tend to care about people that I have never actually met to an absurd degree (and, importantly, I never hope to meet them in real life-that episode of Growing Pains where Ben is horribly disappointed by the rock star that he has idolized convinced me long ago that I don’t really want to meet anyone famous, but I do care deeply and to my core about a lot of people that I do not actually know).
2020 feels a little like the world has cracked open to me.
Things I’m Loving Lately:
Why Megxit Matters
This episode of the Daily is a wonderful blend of the royal family’s recent drama, the British public’s reaction to it, and why any of it matters.
When I was in high school, I was lucky enough to go to Europe and the tour guide that we had for the trip was British. I always sat at the front of the tour bus (I’m a geek like that) and she would talk to those of us toward the front, and one day we asked her about the opinions of the British people toward Diana. This would have been 1996, so Diana was alive but divorced from Charles. She told us that the British people were more in favor of Charles and found Diana to be somewhat lacking in decorum. As someone who was a huge fan of Diana, I realized right then that Americans were profoundly different than the British in how we view celebrity and royalty and such.
I still think all of that is true.
For me, though, I used to pray hard for William and Harry every night. I cried when Matt Lauer talked about how lucky they were to have each other as they walked into William’s wedding. I adore Queen Elizabeth and have read far too many books about her. I have far too many feelings about Harry and Megan, but I know that my American prism of looking at this is totally different from the British outlook, and that Brexit is days away, and the world is upside down for lots of reasons.
You Must Remember This: Six Degrees of Song of the South
I have never seen Song of the South, though I do have a cassette tape and a book, one of those read-along books from when I was a kid in the 1980s, that is about a piece of the Brer Rabbit story. This is a behind the scenes look at Song of the South and it is engrossing-it walks through all of the bits from the minstrel elements of the story, the career of Hattie McDaniel, and the creation of Splash Mountain. I binged most of this on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day and it was a most illuminating way to spend that holiday.
Before Sunrise: The Making of an Indie Classic
This oral history of the making of Before Sunrise is fascinating. Before Sunrise is one of my most favorite movies ever and I’ve watched it so many times I can recite a lot of the dialogue. Before Sunset and Before Midnight I’ve only seen one time each-I did not care for Before Sunset but loved Before Midnight and that was likely due to circumstances in my own life at the time, so they would need a rewatch to make a definitive statement. But I loved this look at the way that this film came into being, and how they had to film things that, of course, seem natural and brilliant and exactly what my seventeen-year-old self thought that traveling in Europe would be like.
The girls and I have spent a large part of January talking about Australia and watching My So-Called Life and learning about impeachment and the democratic process (they super love that). We have been blessed with a lot of time together and a last minute cousin weekend and all the fun things. It's been blissful (being with the girls, I mean, not the wildfires).
And yes, I'm a bit obsessed with Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt and the grasping of the hand. And yes, I know that it may be publicity and that it says something about this man who rather callously left his wife and who seems to be, while a fine actor, a bit of a mess of a person. But of all the people that I looked to when I lived though my divorce, through the hardest days of not being able to function, the person that I looked to was Jennifer Aniston, as crazy as I know that sounds. Her words at the time, "I love Brad; I really love him. I will love him for the rest of my life. I don't regret any of it, and I'm not going to beat myself up about it." Those words hid themselves inside of my heart, and even though I knew that maybe she didn't even mean it anymore, she said it out loud once, and so it was okay-it was okay to be divorcing someone and still love them and feel confused and crazy.
And I have moved far away from that person that I was then, and I know that she has too. But I'm happy for her if there remains something of that love, even if it's only a moment at an awards show that the world got to glimpse.
"Isn't everything we do in life a way to be loved a little more?"
-Celine, Before Sunrise
