Inside Llewyn Davis

"If I had wings like Noah's dove,

I'd fly up the river to the one I love

Oh fare thee well, my honey, fare thee well"

Fare Thee Well - Song

He is good, but not great. That is the tragedy of Llewyn Davis's life. It is this interesting twist on the classic journeying protagonist that defines the Coen Brothers' "Inside Llewyn Davis." The audience struggles to root for Llewyn's success as a folk singer in 1960's New York. Partly this is due to the fact that Llewyn is essentially an anti-hero, a self-aggrandizing musical purist, very much at fault for the trouble in which he finds himself. He calls Jean "careerist" and "sad" for being inauthentic in order to achieve notoriety. Llewyn, rather, sings simply for the music itself. But something within us knows that Llewyn is not incredible. He is not a genius. We love an underdog, but only one that we know is talented but just can't catch a break. And so part of us just can't find it in ourselves to root for him.

"I don't see a lot of money here."When Bud Grossman's words echo in the empty auditorium, we see what we suspected all along, but we realize that we still do not understand why this is the way it has to be. We feel the culmination of Lleywn's several bad days, weeks, and probably years. Bud Grossman suggests that he find a partner and Llewyn tells him that he had one. Grossman's advice is to get back together with him. But Llewyn's partner is dead. This, like his inability to be a "front man," is just another thing that haunts Llewyn, deepening the divide between who he is and who he wishes to become. We know, and perhaps he does too, that he will never reach that goal. We know irrevocably that he will never win.

The parts of the movie that indulge in full length songs sung by the very talented Oscar Isaac, who plays Llewyn, are enrapturing. "Fare Thee Well" is perhaps the most hauntingly beautiful, and is the song that Llewyn used to sing with his now dead partner. The Coen Brothers do a lovely job of lingering on the melancholy desire that drips from these songs, holding chillingly on Isaac's face, a face that portrays something both distant and emotionally raw. It, the songs, Isaac--are the metaphorical equivalent of longing for a past that no longer exists even as you live it, of longing for something that you know you will die never having obtained. 

Nothing is obvious. Even the sadness that envelops the entire film is subtle and layered, cut with biting humor spewed both by Llewyn and at him. It is this sarcasm, shown both visually and in dialogue, that makes the melancholy of this movie trickle into your system as though from an IV, leaving you, without warning, feeling as defeated as Llewyn at the end of the film. It is Llewyn's sarcasm that helps to make his emotions so distant, and we are allowed only a glimpse of that emotion when he sings. His face is passive and unrevealing as he squeezes through narrow hallways and hitchhikes on highways, as Jean calls him an asshole, tells him she wants to have his child aborted even though there is a chance it is her husband's child, and tells him that everything he touches is shit, "like King Midas's idiot brother." He has paid for the abortion of more than one sexual escapade, and pays for Jean's too. All without seemingly any emotion. He finds out that a girl in Akron decided not to go through with the abortion, and he's a father. But when he sees the sign for Akron on the highway, he drives past it. Because Lleywn does not wallow in the despair of his defeat, we do not either, and that is why the sadness is so subtle. And it is why Llewyn is difficult to sympathize with. 

This sarcastic stalemate is contrasted by the ultra sincerity of those around Llewyn, like wholesome singer Troy Nelson, about whom Llewyn asks, "does he have higher function?" and a quartet of white cable-knit sweater clad crooners at the bar where Llewyn often performs (Llewyn says, "I like the sweaters.") The irony of Llyewn's life is that these people will become successful. Bud Grossman liked Troy Nelson and sees a future in him. And so the audience is confronted with the fickle nature of the entertainment industry, and of life. How do we respond when we are simply not good enough? When we cannot become the ideas we have clung to? It is of the greatest tragedies, learning that your weaknesses cannot be fixed. It is a refreshing subject that the Coen Brothers chose to explore, one that needs a place in Hollywood cinema, where we all have redeeming qualities and we all eventually win. This movie confronts the truth that all too often, we just don't win. And no amount of spirited effort will change our defeat. 

"Just as sure as the birds flying up above,

Life ain't worth living without the one you love"

It is a complicated question to answer when we try to figure out what is next for Llewyn Davis. He has no love interest to guide the remainder of the plot. The closest he comes to "the one he loves" is Ulysses, the cat of his deceased partner's parents. During a conversation with his sister Llewyn says that his father just "exists" and she says, "is that what we do outside of the entertainment industry, just exist?" There is nothing on the horizon, even the Merchant Marines, when his sister gives away the box that contained his license. But I suppose again the Coens mirror life when they leave us with very little information alluding to Llewyn's future. Life is not nearly so neat. 

It is a movie that is wholly unsatisfying and could be interpreted a thousand different ways. I have not in a very long time seen anything as beautiful and poignant.

When we say we want to be happy...

We are saying that we want to make choices that will get us there. Right?

We are saying: when that thing comes around that will make me happy,

I'll know it.

I'll take it.

And I'll be happy.

It’s probably true that we are aware that we have absolutely no idea what will make us happy. Yet we have this uncompromising faith that we'll know it when we see it.

But here's the problem: a small part of us likes to stay in that sadness. It's like a cozy little house with which we are all too familiar. We know how many steps it takes to get up the stairs and to the bathroom. The teapot is always in the same place and the blankets are soft. Inside the house is a warm fireplace, the walls beside it lined with all of our best and favorite memories. Laughter bounces off of the walls, and we are wistful. The shelf with the box labeled “Things We Can't Have.” The jar of “Missed Opportunities.” We are safe in the house, surrounded by hopes and memories. We are comforted by the familiarity of wanting all of the things we have always wanted, of knowing ourselves perfectly.

Once in awhile we look outside and we see someone who makes us keep looking. They make us want not to look away. But we know our house well, and we let ourselves stay there because it's cold outside. There are no coats in our house. Being vulnerable means stepping outside into the wind and exposing our skin. And so even though we never want to look away, we do.

But it's not as cold outside as we think. It seems that way because frost streaks the windows and the wind is loud, and everyone who has ever been outside tells us that you'll just end up back inside the house, with hypothermia. We know this is true because every time we have ever been outside, it has ended in frostbite. At least that's how we remember it.

But then we look around and we think, maybe a little hypothermia isn't so bad. The house is feeling smaller than it used to.

and I don't want to have to look at you through my window anymore.

Suppose

A short story I've been working on for my creative writing class.

Suppose

It was facedown in a pile of spaghetti that he died.

The wingtip leather on Theo’s foot was rigid, new creases forming as he pressed his toe into the linoleum. His uncle sat hunched over the kitchen table. Aunt Charlie stared straight ahead, silent tears streaming down her cheeks—someone who finally knows how the trick was done and cannot go back. Maya turned her head to look at Theo and kept looking. He knew she was trying to decipher his reaction, and she was surely gaining ground from his twitching lip. Their feet were planted equal distances apart, a perfect row of six, and Theo watched, expecting somebody to laugh and grab a camera. His uncle was about to sit up and wipe the chunks of marinara from his face, he was sure. But he didn’t. Theo returned Maya’s stare and they looked at each other so that he would not have to look at the body.

********

It was sudden. He had been admiring the violent shade of green of the trimmed grass, wondering if everyone was saying “eggplant” over and over again, pretending conversation for his benefit. Prickliness was already plaguing the skin on his jaw from his early-morning shave. His bowtie was perhaps not appropriate.

“Hi.” Maya said.

“Hello.”

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“Mmhmm.” He danced his eyes curiously across her face and black dress.

“I’m Maya.”

“Theo.”

“How did you…?”

“Uncle.”

“Ah. Nice bowtie.”

“Thank you. It’s too festive.”

“You do actually look a little bit ridiculous.”

“Thanks. Um. Who are you?” Theo asked.

“Friend of a friend.”

“Well you have gorgeous eyes.”

“You’re not hitting on me at your uncle’s funeral, are you?”

“What? No.” He wasn’t sure why he had said that. He excused himself and started to walk away.

It was when he turned back and met her eyes that he suddenly thought he had lost it. His head was abruptly filled with a lifetime of memories. He and Maya. She was beautiful and they had fallen in love sprinting through shopping malls and tripping over each other, holding hands and dancing at parties and games of ping pong that she never let him win. The two of them discovering his uncle, dead in a plate of spaghetti.

But he didn’t know her. They had never met before, he was absolutely sure. Yet here was a full and total lifetime where he knew nothing but loving her.

********

The soft clicks of keyboard keys filled the patio, where students sat at round white tables with scuffed plastic surfaces. Theo imagined licking the crusted yellow smear left from a previous lunch, flinching as his mouth curled upwards. He shook his head. He looked at Maya.

“Have you ever thought about our lives, how they could take a million different paths, each second? You see someone at a café or on the street and you have no idea who they are, but you can’t help but think to yourself—what would happen if you did? Your directions happen to intersect for a moment, but you will probably never see them again. We meet people and have no idea if they’ll mean something to us until they do. Or don’t. So there are these infinite possibilities that spring up into existence when we see someone across a room. Every decision we make is a turning point in some way that makes a portion of those possibilities impossible. Most of the realities are impossible anyway, but with every decision, even the tiniest, most insignificant ones, then your life takes a direction from which it just can’t go back.

“And just for a second, when we see that person across a room full of people, we can imagine that our lives will be completely different, we can see the uncharted course for the beautiful and unknown that our lives were about to take. It is so entirely possible that this strange person is going to have a significant impact on your life in a way you could have never expected. For just a moment, we can really and truly see those possibilities, the ones that are vast and limitless. And we believe in them like we have never believed in anything else.”

********

Theo was back on the springy grass. He was standing next to Maya. The pastor was mumbling at the front near the coffin.

He had to ask her. “Have I met you before?” 
Maya’s brow crumpled in confusion at his question. She shifted her gaze to look at Renee who had stepped in beside Theo, intertwining her fingers in his. Renee smiled and turned her head towards Theo. He leaned in to kiss his wife.

********

“I can’t believe it. It’s stupid, right? Of all the ways a person can die.” Theo said. He stared vacantly to the left, sitting on the couch in the living room.

Maya sat on the other side, an empty seat between them. “Death by tomato.” She paused and immediately cringed, wanting to take it back.

“Lasagna strikes back.” Theo said, looking at the ground, smiling.

“He would have loved that.”  

“He would have, actually. It’s true.” Maya’s arm stretched across the empty space of the sofa and her fingers tumbled between Theo’s, arranging themselves and clasping securely. Maya tied him to the ground, her wavy hair was the rope he would hang on to while falling. 
Her frizzy waves were untamable—she smoothed them down with her hands as she noticed him looking. Theo grinned, he loved the awkwardness of seeing someone notice an insecurity of yours, after which you fidget while trying not to show that you noticed them noticing, and they notice you pretending not to notice that you noticed them noticing. He looked upwards, picturing his own brown hair, mostly straight and pushed to the right.

Theo turned to see Aunt Charlie saying goodbye to her 30-year-old husband who sat slumped over the kitchen table. Not in words, because there were none. She said goodbye in uncontainable, gasping sobs, as though the air would always be this thin.

********

Maya’s eyes were absorbed in the bowl in front of her. Her spoon dipped into the Frosted Flakes, dunking methodically. Each piece had to be pushed under the milk before she could start eating.

“Cereal is a religious experience.” Theo watched her miss her mouth as she looked up to nod. She tried to cover her face as milk dribbled down her chin. Theo snorted. Maya grabbed a handful of napkins, fifteen too many, pressing all of them to her face at once.

********

Renee smiled, her blonde strands smoothed into a bun, her eyes crinkling as she looked up at Theo. She started to walk forward, pulling his hand through the crowd. Theo squeezed her fingers. They were the same fingers that he’d squeezed at his uncle’s funeral. The same hands that gave him her extra pencils in every college class they had shared.

We were wrong about the infinite possibilities, he thought. Our lives are not nearly so changeable and infinite—those ideas about what might happen become impossible almost as immediately as we can think of them. But we make those possibilities a little bit real simply by believing they could be.

 That, he supposed, was enough.

Epitaphs

I can hear the leaves crunch neatly under my feet

The air is sharp and inhales

On my eyeballs and cheeks and the tops of my hands

At 4 P.M. I walk. Looking

at the mounds who

Were people in another October.

Families together in plots

My eyes search for quotes

That are pretty words.

I feel the heaviness of dead.

We are looking for meaning.

She is hard to live without,

Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done

Reads one.

Not yet thirty, mother of three.

He had a good run,

Reads this one. I smile,

It is nice because he was ninety.

The rest are surprising

They only have names.

They are Wife of,

Husband of

No graceful list of accomplishments

Majestic verbiage,

Worldly meanings,

Just two names.

They were defined by the people they chose to love.

They were the wife of, husband of, somebody

When we are so dead

For so long, that nobody knows

That is how they will know who we were.

I like that.

Remembered in the context forever

Of the people we chose and choose.

I was so worried about a good enough quote

But “quote,” means it belongs to someone else.

My own words are not even mine.

(This is all plagiarized anyway)

but not a name.

That, that can be totally and completely mine

A person and I belong to them.

In a hundred years

When some girl in a college class goes to my cemetery

I want her to know that I chose, and somebody in my life was

worthy of sharing my headstone.

That a person, all mine, was my epitaph.

SALAD

Boooo salad.

I'm not a rabbit. Leaves are not a meal. I don't care how many croutons and slices of grilled chicken are on it, or how drenched it is in salad dressing. All salad dressing is either too salty, too bitter, or too vinegary, and I don't need the judgy look when I pass up the salad bar.

I know what this makes me sound like. I live in Boulder. It's so taboo in such a health-crazed society to say that you don't like salad, like saying you like drinking liquified fat and popping sugar cubes. Stop making me feel like I can't hate salad! That's what drives me crazy. If you enjoy salad, please, go wild. But don't assume that just because you're eating a salad, that you're being healthy, or that hating salad means I'm not.

When did salad become a main dish, an entrée? The French, to whom this word belongs, eat their small salads after dinner. Besides, in order to make a salad a substantial meal, we pile them with croutons and ranch dressing--fatty carbohydrates which make your salad about as healthy as a slice of pizza.

It only shows what's so wrong with the American perspective on health, where so many people think that as long as a few sprigs of green are showing underneath a mound of toppings, it's healthy. Or even worse, like me, we pretend to like things because everyone has decided that if you don't like salad, you're a fat slob.

I have a theory that secretly, everybody actually hates salad. We eat it just to keep up appearances. Let's be honest, you look so nice and healthy with that salad on your plate. Go, you!

I will admit that every once in awhile, a salad with a few avocados and some balsamic can be a nice side dish. But there are also other ways to have a healthy, balanced meal that tastes good. No more guilt.

But by all means. Feel free to eat your lettuce and be sad.

The Cemetery

As a part of one of my classes last week, we walked to a cemetery on the Hill, and were given half an hour to walk in silence and think. Peter told us, "Reflect upon the epitaphs, and take some time to think about what you would want yours to say. Think about the way you want to be remembered, the impact you want to have on the world." It was a beautiful day, clear and sharp, but not too cold. Crunchy leaves gently suffocated the ground of the cemetery in a blanket of gold and red, and the thick old trees made the space within the black iron gates feel contained and separate from the rest of the city.

I was expecting to see headstones engraved with elegant, meaningful quotes, hoping to write them down and get some ideas for what I would have liked mine to say. There were two that I loved:

"He had a good run."

"It is hard to live without her. Nevertheless, not my will but thine be done." A 30-year-old mother of three.

But I was surprised, because the majority of the headstones I saw had nothing like this. There were no quotes or thoughtful summations of life accomplishments. Instead, I noticed  that most commonly, epitaphs consisted of the names. Most headstones had the name of the deceased person and the name of their spouse. They were the "husband of:" or "wife of:" somebody. In the end their lives were defined, not by words or quotes, but by the people they chose to love. After we have been dead for so long that nobody will ever know who we were, we will be known only for the person, and people, we decided to spend our lives with. I liked that.

It turns out that the only thing that really matters is people. The most important choice you get in life is a choice in who the people will be who define your life and shape the person you become.

I won't spend time trying to think of a poem or beautiful quote for my epitaph, rather, I'm going to try to fill my life with people whose names I would gladly have engraved forever next to mine. In a hundred years, when some young girl in a college class is walking through my cemetery, who do I want her to know I belonged to?

Remembering

I saw it all begin and end, thrown together in non-negotiable circumstances that forced them to be friends. Cautious and anxious until it wasn't, those friends,
who drove too fast at the Garden of the Gods, contemplating their angst at night in quiet,
who spent days on couches in cesspools, imagining impossible lives,
who studied for tests to tell them how much they were worth for the low price of $35,
who took too many pictures of nothing they will never forget, in sepia tones of self-assurance and hope,
who woke up at dawn to hold hands before the sun,
who learned secrets at a hungry 2 a.m., Free Pie Day in crusty booths,
who were forever and infinite in dark bright windowless car rides with music that burst in their chests and screams,
who said goodbye on street curbs,
who needed change but refused to want it,
who said they would never stop,
who cannot live it all again.