loving miranda july or the sticky heart

MIRANDA JULY:  ME AND YOU AND EVERYBODY WE KNOW & LEARNING TO LOVE YOU MORE

"I am totally captivated by other people and their lives"  MJ

READ THIS FIRST:

MOM IS HERE


Assignment # 52 (from LEARNINGTOLOVEYOUMORE.COM)
Write the phone call you wish you could have

report:
Chris Kerr
San Francisco, California

Me: Mom! How . .

Mom: I know that you loved me.

Me: Thank you.  I did and do and will. . .  How is this happening

Mom: I don't know how, but it is happening because you need it. .  I do now know why you were angry and sad so often.  And I love you for that too.

Me: You realize I'm standing right where I got the call that you died? At the same terminal at      Oakland Airport.

Mom: Yes.

Me: Thank you for that message months ago.

Mom: Which was that?

Me: You mean there have been lots?

Mom:  Oh, yes.

Me: I'm talking about the last time I was at this terminal and I got the text message that said, "Mom is here"

Mom: Yes, you were right to believe in that.  To believe even though it was written by a stranger for someone else.  It still found it's way to you for a reason.  That is a good way to live.  Keep it up.

Me:  You didn't catch it in the air and redirect it to me?

Mom: No, I didn't

Me: I don't understand.  You're saying to me to believe there was a reason even if there wasn't anything supernatural.  Which is what I did. But you also said there have been other messages  -- which I missed! And you're talking to me now!

Mom: I'm saying I don't have to send something to be in it.  I'm saying don't worry about what is real.  That world is not the reality you need to remain loyal to.  Make it into what you believe, what you want to live in.  To any degree.  On any scale.

Me:  Okay, I'll try . . So how are you?  I've been dying to know.

Mom:  Happier, but I miss you and your sister.  Your dad, not as often.  The world, not one bit.  You remember how I totld you I believed the world was hell . . .?  Well  . . . I guess I shouldn't get into that . . Did you know I'm proud of you, that I think you're as amazing as humanly possible?

Me:  Even this year?

Mom: Certainly.

Me: But why'd I have to go through this year?  I almost suffocated staying strong.  I worked too hard. I kept distant.  I have stress fractures in my teeth.  Why are you calling me now, not then?  I mean I'd rather lost all my limbs than do a year like that.  I needed more calls.  And my heart still beats like a threat . .

Mom:  You went through it so you can be even more angry and more sad and more loving.  And you should know this: you've hardly even begun.  I have to go; I love you.  Take care of your heart.

Me:  Wait! Why wouldn't you ever go to a doctor? We begged you to.  Grandpa had tons of heart attacks.  Why didn't you try not to have one – the one?  Why didn't you take care of you! Don't you think you had too much faith?

Mom: (gone)

Me: (still here)


CONGESTIVE HEART DISEASE


This isn't even you, Miranda -- you didn't even write this, but I give up the fight now, anyway.  You (and your collaborator Harrell Fletcher) left a tiny crack open in the world for this missive from Chris Kerr in San Francisco to come through and this is what broke my sticky heart open 3 more millimeters, just a tiny bit more but that little rip, like a ventricle episiotomy, a space that has birthed the rest of my life and I am eternally grateful.

I thought I might like you when I first heard of you, even though the stickiness started almost immediately.  Like congestive heart disease, my arteries are clogged with a lack of forgiveness (to myself mostly but I expose it by hating you and everybody else). This is supremely unfortunate because I am sure you know by now about the Love Artist thing, or at least in my fantasy world where I dream of being rescued and lifted up, you have heard of me.  I wouldn't be writing to you if I didn't really believe in the deepest cave of my congested heart, that we really know each other.  That somehow by making art about love, that by making art about the meaning of life, that by the sheer willpower of our integrity, we are related.

We have to be related, you have to know me and recognize me. Then I can put down the fight, lower my fists, for if you truly recognize me and see the true vulnerable me without any myth or pretense then you are who you say you are and you can become softness and goodness and then we can become everything and everybody (me and you and everybody we know) and then there is no one on the other side, no one humiliating, or making fun, or using, or being jaded, or hating secretly, or trying to pull something over, or trying to distract so they can win . . . if we're out here LEARNING TO LOVE YOU (ME) MORE then I am safe and I can be a total infant in the arms of your premise and I can let down my guard. 

Because I want to, god I really really do, the yearning that comes up in me when I even consider that you, Miranda July, can be trusted and believed, that the cuteness in your film and on your website and in your sound pieces and videos, that they are for real, their earnestness --  I say I want truth, I say I know I have integrity but still, still, I am so fucking ridiculously competitive EVEN ABOUT THE TRUTH, that I when I see someone being tender and soft and true and boldly loving, I WANT TO ANNIHILATE THEM, god it's so true.


UNREASONABLE CUTENESS


When I first saw the film last summer, I hated it and you, I am admitting it here and my truth is that I was uncomfortable with the film just like I was uncomfortable the first time I encountered the Learning to Love You More website.  My 13 year old daughter turned me onto it, and she is the coolest of the cool.  She read about it in something like Teen People or Teen Vogue and she said, Mom there is a website about love in here, it sounds awesome, and it was, Miranda, it was and I was immediately uncomfortable, my heart sinking as if there was no more room in the world for anything else that was fun and warm and loving, no more room for my own quirkiness, no room for my obvious specialness, because that is the thing I don't get about specialness, how can we all be special? 

Like after your film, you were so unreasonably quirky, I couldn't tell if I liked you at all, I couldn't see any room for me in the face of your cuteness, your individuality, your loveliness.  And then your lovely stars, the children, all so interminably special, but so true.  I thought you were fake, I thought the film was fake and now that I have come to you, with full intent to pray and project my metta, my loving kindness, I needed to be responsible and really show up for you. 

I have watched the film again and again and I see, now I see, that you and your art, you are not about fake at all, you are about reaching through the veil of what is not real to what is real, you are about the real.  The beauty of you, though, is that you do not judge the unreal, you accept the lure and the tendency to get sucked in and how it is wrapped up in the gorgeousness of hope.  You do not judge the fight inside, you accept that this fight with the self and the yearning for both the real and unreal simultaneously is a growing process and you make lots and lots of room for us both (and everybody else) to be fragile and strengthening, and right and wrong.

FANTASTICALLY HOPEFUL


hi baby girl, you are a precious creature

Forgive me for judging you harshly, for competing with you rather than opening my heart, for reading your 10 page resume with hatred and brutal (to myself) comparison.

I felt so tired in front of your hopeful breadth of vision, your lack of unreasonable limitation.  You are so young and so wildly succesful. But then I don't know you at all, I'm sure you get scared sometimes, I'm sure you get frustrated and feel alone, like when you wrote FUCK on the inside of the windshield in the movie, but then that wasn't really you or was it?  It's so confusing.  It is the only you I have right now and I am trying so hard to keep my heart open those last three millimeters, I am trying so hard to be free, I am trying so hard to believe I can do anything and I want to hold your hand and soften my heart so it can open even a little bit more, so that I can keep making art and staying on my side of the computer screen and so I can learn to love myself a little bit more.

FEARLESS DELVING

I could tell you were good because you give back.  I was blown away by the generosity of the LEARNING TO LOVE YOU MORE grants:

"Everyday, all over the world, people are delving into projects that they have no idea how they will finance.  If you listen carefully you can hear the sound of all that fearless delving. . . hopefully (the LEARNING TO LOVE YOU MORE grants) will express our admiration for your reports."

Like Joanie4Jackie, your other web project where you try to support girls who make movies to the best of your capability, you and your collaborators are giving back and I want to believe that this gesture is pure.  I love that the LEARNING TO LOVE YOU MORE grants are without application, that by merely contributing to the site you are a contender for the small amounts of (I am sure) much appreciated cash that arrives, virtually out of nowhere.

This utter and complete generosity, like the opening of the sky, like the childhood magic of being seen suddenly for who you are, being lifted up is gorgeous and inspiring:

"The movie was inspired by the longing I carried around as a child, longing for the future, for someone to find me, for magic to descend upon my life and transform everything.  It was also informed by how this longing progressed as I became an adult, slightly more fearful, more contorted, but no less fantastically hopeful . . "   MJ

OK, I get it, I give up,  you can be good and wildly successful and I can be too.

I am laying my thick and heavy head in your lap.

Thank you.

NEXT LOVE:  BEC STUPAK -- RADICAL EARTH MAGIC FLOWER @ DEITCH PROJECTS January 12, 2006 — February 25, 2006

Comments

[Hilarie]

ah yes, this is beautiful.

[carole luby]

my heart opens a little more. reading your blog made me want to open more and more and more. it feels so much better than all that hating and envy and jealousy and guardedness.
Whoever you are i love you,
Carole

[the love artist]

thank you carole . . it is so strange to receive this when my blog has been dormant for so long . . i am glad now of course that it lives on in perpetuity . .the strangest thing is that the morning i received your comment, i spontaneously read one of miranda's stories out loud to my boyfriend & i had NEVER read one of her short stories before, the book just arrived at my house unannounced . . what are the chances of that . . the title of the story was
SOMETHING THAT NEEDS NOTHING . . .