The winter holidays are a special time to be celebrated with special music. I'm trying to figure out how to upload or link to these special wintery divine tracks. But until then:
Bobby McFerrin - Kalimba Suite (Beyond Words) Curtis Mayfield - Little Child Runnin' Wild (Superfly) Beach House - Holy Dances (Devotion) Brian Eno - Put a Straw Under Baby (Taking Tiger Mountain [By Strategy]) Ben Harper - Picture of Jesus (There Will Be A Light) Chip Taylor and Carrie Rodriguez - Son of Man (Red Dog Tracks) Bert Jansch - Bells (After the Dance) The Beach Boys - God Only Knows (Pet Sounds) Joanna Newsom - The Fray (Walnut Whales EP) Bon Iver - Flume (For Emma Forever Ago) Iron and Wine - Swans & The Swimming (Our Endless Numbered Days) Emiliana Torrini - Dead Things (?) Chris Issac - Wicked Game John Prine - Jesus The Missing Years (The Missing Years) The Be Good Tanyas - In My Time Of Dying (Chinatown) John Fahey - Jesus Is A Dying Bedmaker (America) Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama - There Will Be a Light Talking Heads - Heaven (Fear of Music)
I just returned from watching Let the Right One In, a recent Swedish film that not only vies for the status of "most well-crafted piece of cinema I've seen this year," but also qualifies as a movie with which I very much personally identify.
The film tenderly, horrifically, and somewhat comically portrays the tragic friendship between a lonely, 12 year old boy who is bullied by his schoolmates, and an adolescent (looking) vampire girl who is wise and burdened beyond her years. This premise might, at first, sound hokey - and also have you questioning what compels me to relate so deeply - but hear me out.
For starters, the combination of wintery Swedish aesthetics, poignantly human characters, dark physical comedy, and blood-sucking gore offers plenty to reel me in and gain my fondness (and probably yours, too). Some of the murder scenes literally had me laughing, while others had me shielding my eyes. But far from being a kitschy vampire flick, as the premise might suggest, Let the Right One In also builds upon the undead-ness of its leading female to explore the loneliness that stems from social marginalization. (Imagine how society would perceive you if your genetic makeup mandated a strict diet of human blood and total daytime seclusion.)
At the theater tonight, as the theme of marginalization developed throughout the film, so did my personal empathy with the main female character. In the vampire's secret, sorrowfully-innocent life of murder, I saw my own clandestine experiences with (yes, I'm going there!) alopecia. At the risk of sounding overly dramatic, I felt like the vampire embodied an extreme expression of my own immutable physical secret - complete, irreversible baldness - which I often fear will cast me as a freak or social outcast if "discovered" by others unexpectedly. "Hiding" from and dealing with being bald colors each day of my life in a way that few people - not even my close friends - can relate to.
(I should note that some of my closest friends have taken rather bold steps to try to relate, and for that I am honored, blessed and extraordinarily grateful. Maybe I will blog about it sometime! :)
Like the movie's young vampire, my approach to my physical condition might be summarized as part pride, part shameful resignation, bolstered by a practical yet heady survival instinct, with a basic desire to be understood. And like her, I even hide in my sleep: we fear unwanted exposure.
Luckily, un-like her, dealing with my "secret" only involves avoiding public immersion in wind and water, and covering up my head - rather than avoiding all contact with sunlight, and murdering people for food. And unlike her, any negative consequences I face as a result of the condition are largely psychological and emotional - although this doesn't necessarily make them less real or less intimidating.
The film's most gripping moment, for me, happens when the vampire implores her friend for sympathy. "Be like me for a while," she urges him (after she has just grossly bled through her skin). At that moment, I recognized how vampirism completely inhibits her from living the normal, female, human life she craves - and once had. It floored me to realize that I can almost directly identify with her struggle (of course, being on neither a vegan nor a vampire diet, I do have less trouble finding snacks).
Loneliness as a result of difference is an experience to which I'm sure all you readers can identify - not necessarily in the particular way I do, but through some long-standing secret or painful experience of your own.
So, yes. I urge you to see this film, if you haven't yet. I'm convinced that most movie-going friends of mine will love it, whether or not you relate to it in the same way I do. And if you think of it, after sympathizing with its wonderful little vampire, then in your mind be awkwardly bald like me for a little while. Post a comment to tell me how you like the film. And in return, I'll also try to be you.
** Note: I realize this post is steeped in a combination of matter-of-factness about alopecia that may be new to some of my readers, and also, potentially, in self-pity. However, I figured that since I don't have very many (any?) readers, this blog would be a good testing-ground for me to more openly describe some of my feelings and experiences with alopecia in a semi-public sphere. This blog is pretty nascent, but if/as it progresses, I anticipate a continued mixture of personal anecdote and cultural observation. If anyone IS reading it out there, your feedback not only on the content but on the tone would be more than welcome :)
