Savage Theories and Willow Springs
Oh hello
Everyone is sitting, on the couch, on arm rests, on laps, on cushions, on the floor, frieze like, someone changes her weight from her left to her right, as if to stand, but then, noticing the change that brings to the room, the room that is poised sitting, planted, gasping at conversation that could be choked by an ending to the delicate contorted sitting in the room, moves her head to her partner’s knee. She keeps sitting, like the rest of us, our bodies forming together like musical notes on a score, climbing and falling. All we talk about are plans. Eddie is saying she wants to move to the sea to build her clam empire. She draws the logo on a piece of paper with a crayon. She says she misses her hands, forgets what they can do, and needs the sea and the act of gathering from it, to remind her of their grip. Tom is quitting, he has the email drafted, look, he says, Dear Joe, it begins, Tom has a Volvo he wants to drive to Normandy. From there, he says he has options because of his Volvo, endless options with a boot space like that. I tell them about my plans for a bar, plans they’ve heard before, and will hear again but grander, a lacquered blue floor, a copper raised bar, stools that are bolted to the floor, martinis where the shaker is left at the table for topping up, a curtain that drawers in the evening across the front door, and—I say this with my arm cramping and all feeling lost in my crossed legs—in that bar: infinite possibility.
We can do this forever, on the floor, speak of plans, tease each other for not doing them, cajole each other into leaping forward. There’s comfort in their possibility, their flexibility, in their life. Sam asks me if I’ve ever considered the present? He says dreams of a future are just internalised advertisements for BMW and Dyson and Athletics Greens. He says embracing the muddied carpet floor is much more radical. I tell him he needs to lighten up and quit his PhD. “Literally” he replies.
But I tell him I’m feeling claustrophobic in the city, that Iris has vanished again on further research, and Cordelia’s letters are becoming shorter, bringing with them, in their gaps, a feeling that something else is filling the space where she used to ask questions and tell me about smells and magic. Sam reminds me that there are no endings, only loops. But still I need a break, I want the open air mixed with rushing grass and creased paint. We make egg sandwiches the next day and take the train with six newspapers. Sam reads me Adrienne Rich:
“You want to ask, am I lonely?
Well, of course, lonely
as a woman driving across country
day after day, leaving behind
mile after mile
little towns she might have stopped
and lived and died in, lonely
…
If I’m lonely
it’s with the rowboat ice-fast on the shore
in the last red light of the year
that knows what it is, that knows it’s neither
ice nor mud nor winter light
but wood, with a gift for burning”
Literally, I reply. This week, I’m writing about Savage Theories by Pola Oloixarac and Willow Springs by Werner Schroeter.
Savage Theories (2008) by Pola Oloixarac
Rosa Ostreech fantasises about her professor while working to dismantle his Theory of Egoic Transmissions, a theory which is spoken about to the point of ridiculousness and confusion, a theory about victims and the transfer of power to victims. It is, like many theories, a theory, really, about the world and how we live in it but also about the terms of Rosa’s engagement with her professor. Pabst and Kamtchowsky are two nerds who start dating each other, drawn to their shared repulsion. They are into sex and video games. This is Buenos Aires in the 200s and these are the children of those who survived the Dirty War of the 70s in Argentina. Oloixarac, who is perhaps best known for Mona, creates an unstable, frenetic world that leeches between power struggles in the reader’s head, struggles between different theories explaining the world. The novel is about the clash of different models and the living out of those models in a horny university environment.
The story is unsettling, hard to hold onto, and swirls with glee around holes in narrative. But the impact, the image conjured, through the cacophonous academic writing and sexually charged setting, is of the mess and sprawl and uncoordinated action in the city.
The climax of the novel captures the story’s pulse. It involves a bug being placed onto the digital map of Buenos Aires, a bug that introduces to the map the gnawing layers of history onto each other: “the Mercado Central where Tita Merello wove her seductions and Borges worked as a rabbit inspector … the urban improv theater conducted by the military to make the bodies of the Disappeared reappear; the blueprints of the catacombs …” and on and on and on, information drowning out information, facts piled and smudged and lost. “This was the raw dough, the cyclical history of a country where events occurred and then revolved around one another, merely existing, unable to account for themselves.”
Willow Springs (1973) by Werner Schroeter
Where Savage Theories feels crowded, Willow Springs becomes eerie in its space. Three women live in an isolated house in the desert, killing the men that try and visit them. Magdalena, ensnares the two other women to work for her. There are operatic violins. An oil tanker that sits out at sea. A bar, in their home which has a scratchy radio and stairs that climb behind it. There’s the darkness of the home and the glaring brightness of outside. The sunset keeps repeating.
The women seem miserable but for the most part, accepting of their misery. “Life is a thing of tears and smiles” someone says in the movie. Willow Springs is a campy operatic film set in a forgotten town in America. It is paced beautifully, in held poses, and caked eye shadow. The women look with longing and disgust.
Love
Anne