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Wed, Sep 14, 2022
11:46 PM – Bedroom
Jean-Luc Godard died yesterday morning.

The most important director of the last century died on this day one year ago. In very French fashion, he was relieved by assisted suicide around the same time that I ended up going to sleep early that morning. The day after was a Wednesday, meaning I had to wake up earlier than usual for my directed study meeting with Todd. He usually kicked me out ten minutes before the hour, so he could gather his notes before History of Video Art at 11 (which I was also in). I’m waiting on a bench in the middle of the hallway before class starts in room 356. Todd comes out of his office around the corner and tells me Godard had just died. It really is difficult—just as a mental exercise—to conceive of such a monumental figure no longer living: a man who was still making films as an octogenarian. But, I didn’t cry; I didn’t know him. It’s odd to think about it. The most important mentor in my academic and artistic life was now informing me that the greatest influence on my passion for cinema had just died. Godard was next to his wife, Anne-Marie Miéville, ​the woman who collaborated with him for decades, and partly responsible for him adopting a more matured, experimental, and feminist edge that is not as pronounced in his New Wave canon. I don’t think you can ask for a greater death. He was tired and had nothing left to say, so he left: no funeral, no body but the unrivaled body of work he left.

Last September was a good time for me. I had just started working my first real job, I was watching great movies, and the 26th is probably still the best day of my life. A year ago, I felt on top of the world. I was confident, committed to not taking shit, and ruthlessly dedicated to my studies in a final semester with an absolutely stacked course lineup. Right now, I’m not doing so awesome, but I’m still good. I believe I may have developed a sort of litmus test to see how I’m faring mentally at any given time, but it can’t be employed too often or it won’t have an effect. It’s an old poem I wrote. It was selected to be included in a book of other students’ poetry, so every time I find this book and remember I have it, I open it to page 158 and read it a few times. (I’m able to remember the number because Cartoon Network was channel 58 on Bright House.) And so, two years before last year, I was in my old bedroom, I took A Celebration of Poets off the shelf, opened it, and I broke down. “How have I gotten to this point?” This gay little poem from the mind of a nine-year old made me cry.

I used to be ashamed when I was younger that a stupid poem I had written about rainbows in a fourth grade writing workshop was the one that my teachers thought was worthy of publication. I would’ve told you I had better. But now, how could I be ashamed of myself at all? I was a little kid. I wrote only what came to mind. I am proud of it. (Although, reading the one below mine kinda puts my poem to shame a little bit, haha.) I couldn’t believe how much it impacted me. It’s one of the finest things I’ve ever written or read; I wasn’t trying at all, and after 11 years, I remembered how honest I could be. But at that point, what did any of us know about love or loneliness or metaphor? Absolutely nothing.

So, every once in a while, when I take the time to read it, it means something completely different to me. When I read it now, I smile to myself and remember all the rainbows that have came and went. Sometimes I weigh the options to myself about the best thing I’ve ever written and I think the running joke I’ve always made turned out to be true. Maybe I did peak in elementary school.

See for yourself.