There you are
“Wherever you go, there you are.” This meditation on the human condition has been expressed in so many ways throughout so many years, my personal favorite being this line from PNW indie rock band The Revolutionary Hydra: “You can’t drive faster than your memories.”
Also, this:
The last time I wrote to you, I was gearing up for my trip to Charleston, SC. Despite my loftiest dreams, I did not tap into a latent Southern Goth voice, my inner-Flannery O’Connor was nowhere to be found. I overheard a conversation in a tourist-leaning King Street bar about some of the cities most intriguing cemeteries and when I considered attempting to find them on my own days later with nothing but time stretched before me, but then I thought: “nah.” I went to a cat cafe instead. Essentially, I paid 17 American dollars to do what I do for free on most of my Saturdays in LA.
The rest of the trip was similarly defined. Once my dad and stepmom left one Wednesday morning, my brother and I stopped at The Citadel to wander briefly on our way back to his apartment and my hotel. He needed to study and work on his resume so the idea was that we’d do our own things for the rest of Wednesday afternoon/evening through Thursday morning, then convene at his place Thursday afternoon for my very first viewing (his fifth) of The Godfather. There was to be a road trip to Augusta on Friday where we could have deep conversations and trade songs for infinity hours. And we were going to hit up his favorite sandwich spot on Saturday, then wander the city some more, then let our inner theater kids thrive at the downtown murder mystery joint for a production of Help! I Think My Characters are Trying to Kill Me!.
When I was dropped off on Wednesday, I walked around the waterfront for awhile, stopped by a cute little biergarten for an Athletic non-alcoholic IPA which I sipped while catching up on Vulture’s coverage of Scream 7. I then hit the grocery store for some girl dinner staples (cheese and crackers + boiled peanuts from a can in this Southern scenario). I was in for the night by 6:30. I drew a bath and finished reading Elena Ferrante’s The Story of a New Name. I ate my snacks in bed and watched an E! Network exposé on America’s Next Top Model. The next day went off more or less without a hitch though David (my brother) and I both kept pushing our meeting time. He was still catching up on his law school reading and I was wearing out the hotel gym’s treadmill while mentally drafting a 33 1/3 book pitch (more on that soon 👀). We gathered, we cooked, we watched The Godfather and I did indeed find it to be a cinematic masterwork: Those shots, those iconic lines, that score, the exquisite plotting, the performances! All indeed worthy of the celebration they’ve engendered over the years. I, however, might still be dwelling a bit too much on the real world implications that extend from this intricate examination of life under such amplified patriarchal rule. Especially given all of the brief (yet numerous) allusions the characters make to who they have in their pockets: politicians, journalists, police officers, film studio heads (ahem), etc. It made me existentially sad in a way that only excellent art can and I will absolutely be watching Part Two (and maybe even Part Three) because I’m a completist and I have a sneaking suspicion that I’ll fall into the cohort that prefers Part Two. But I can’t imagine ever turning to these films as comfort watches the way that so many others (my brother included) do. The Godfather doesn’t land for me as “a Mexican Coke on a sunny day,”** as described by Sean Fennessey on a recent episode of The Big Picture. And that’s ok, right? Art and especially our responses to it are subjective, right?? I’m actively nervous about publishing this paragraph because there’s probably nothing that could turn me into A Woman On The Internet™️ faster than expressing my slightly complicated feelings about The Godfather.
It’s also entirely possible that my slightly complicated feelings about The Godfather caused David to come down with the stomach bug that knocked him out of commission for the duration of my visit. Suddenly, our buddy road trip became me nervously driving his very nice car unsupervised. The three hours each way occupied not by a sonic bonding ritual, but by all of the final Oscar prediction podcasts in my feed. The family catch up in Augusta was lovely with my cousin Beth, who I’d not seen since I was a teenager, but mostly overwhelmed by her dad and his loud opining on my mom, her remarkable badness with money, and her moth to the flame attraction to get rich quick schemes. In a word, exhausting. Good, especially the part where Beth and I were finally able to connect as adults, but still utterly exhausting at a bone deep level.
So when Saturday came around and it was clear that David was down for the count, I got a late start to a beautifully lonely day, so little of which felt Charleston specific (though it was all there on the margins). Coffee and croissant at a little French grocery/cafe in the French Quarter, another stroll along the water’s edge, the cat cafe, takeout from the same biergarten I’d stopped into earlier in the week, and the murder mystery theater alone which morphed from dorky bonding experience with the only other theater nerd in my family, to research for a sitcom pilot I’m working on that already features a dinner theater subplot and is set in a mid-size Southern city (always be multitasking).
“Wherever you go, there you are.” Traveling, especially traveling alone, has the capacity to not only reveal what’s going on with you in general, but to amplify it. Like, science lab-grade magnifying glass levels of amplification. It's useful data, but will I ever put it to use?
**I loved this line about a film hitting like “a Mexican Coke on a sunny day” so much. I tried to come up with my own list but none of mine really hit that way. Everything I've ever watched on repeat is more like a third cup of coffee on a rainy Sunday. I will not be listing examples, because then you might think that I'm comparing certain personal favorites to The Godfather, which I would never.