Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through and Petite Maman
Oh hello
I’ve been listening to Daniel Lozakovich, who is 20 years old—an age for fame that seems both classical and very, very à la mode—play Tchaikovsky’s only violin concerto, that in D Major, which he composed out of love for Iosif Kotek, a violinist who Tchaikovsky had met at the Moscow Conservatory and visited him when he was staying by Lake Geneva in March 1878, but who, tragically, refused to play the piece and ultimately, six years after its making at the lakeside in 1878, died at the age of 29. Despite listening to it, frankly, all the time, still, it eludes me. For 18 minutes or so, the Concerto pulls away from and then repairs to its central melody (a melody that fits the Swiss air and love story of its origin). I think, e.g., that the orchestra is going to come in, but then it does not. I think, e.g., this is it, this is the crescendo, the musical denouement the piece has been building towards, but then it collapses.
As in the Russian composer’s concerto for violin, life is surprising! Still, as I get older and distracted by the efficacy of collagen and glycine, aspects of my life that I felt were going in one direction, go in another. Speaking, I know, at a level of abstraction that must be frustrating, I did something that I thought would be a beginning, an opening, but instead has resulted in that thing ending, at least for now. I’m always ravenous to be reminded, don’t worry, of the breathtaking unpredictability of life and who am I, how much of an Icarus do I think I am, to think I could know that something would be a start and not an end. But also, in my rare, oh so rare weaker moments, it is heartbreakingly destabilising to encounter an event which goes not just in a different direction but in the opposite direction: how, how, then, do you expect me to act with confidence? To take a step with élan? What things, dear reader, do I have which are fixed?
But, oh god, this is much too serious for the morning. I am looking out my window. Cows are walking by. I have found the right shade of purple nail polish, which is closer to pink. I can hear my niece reciting Latin declensions while hopping, out of breath, up the stairs. This is the email equivalent of hearing five things, looking at five things, smelling five things. Now, to art.
Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through (2019) by T Fleischmann
In Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through, a book length essay, Fleischmann writes about their body, about desire, about moving between urban and rural communities in America, and about the art of Felix Gonzales-Torres, a queer Cuban-born American visual artist, whose work includes: “Untitled” (Go-Go Dancing Platform), a block of wood bordered with lightbulbs on which a go-go dancer, listening to a walkman, performs; and “Untitled” (Perfect Lovers), which features two clocks whose batteries expire at different rates resulting in them falling out of sync.
Time is the Thing a Body Moves Through is full of beautiful encounters, flecked with Fleischmann’s careful observations. At a queer haven in rural Tennessee, they meet and grow quickly close to Jackson from Australia. At an orgy, they find each other “[a]ligning our bodies across bodies”, their union “a further splitting open of time, in the way erotic time is composed of infinite moments”. Later, but again, in Tennessee, they visit their friend Benjy, making art out of their combined HIV and HRT medications. Fleischmann thinks about when they started taking hormones and says that, “I didn’t know what I wanted until I had it, which was just to feel different. And when I swung a hammer, my inner forearm landing against a new, warm shape, I tired more quickly, and was happier for it.”
Throughout TTBMT, Fleischmann writes about ice. They connect with a lover, Simon, over ice: “We talked of the difference between desiring ice in the moment of its break, or desiring ice in the moment before the crack, or after.” The essay ends with Fleischmann’s attempt to describe ice. Since reading TTBMT, I’ve been trying, perhaps in vain like any over zealous reader, to fit the motif of ice into the story. I love ice because it seems fixed, solid, hard, while always remaining in a state of transformation (melting, freezing, breaking, reforming). When you look at a pond of ice, it looks just like that: frozen, permanent, forever. But, but, but it is so much more: It “[i]s not something that is cold but is something that is frozen and feels cold when your hand presses down upon it, then later seems warm to your hand. Is not quiet but is loud and is not a color but is several colors at once.” You get, I’m sure, the point I’m trying to make about ice and you and me. I won’t labour it.
Petite Maman (2021) by Céline Sciamma
Early in Petite Maman, Nelly, 8, is in a car, in the backseat, offering her mum, who is driving, chips, juice. Her mum allows herself to smile at the sweetness of the scene. They are driving to her mum’s childhood home, to empty it out because Nelly’s grandmother has just passed away. Abruptly, Nelly’s mum leaves the house and Nelly is left with her dad. She goes out to play in the autumnal forest and looks for a hut made of sticks that her mum had made as a child. She finds it and there meets another child. As the film progresses, we learn this is in fact her mum, as a child. The film focuses on mother and child playing together, as children.
The film asks: what could this relationship, the one between mother and child, look like, if unencumbered by their roles, their responsibilities, and the sheer passage of time that can weigh heavy on any relationship? What if we could do this again, but different? The imaginative enquiry of Petite Maman offers us two things. First, it is fun, it is so fun to dream and create relationships and worlds in which you feel comfortable; in which you find solace. In one scene, Nelly and her mother, as children, make crepes, playfully, messily without Nelly being scolded by her mum, or being nervous about doing it wrong. This act of dreaming remains joyful, I think, even knowing, like Nelly does, that these events are not real; that you are making it up. Second, it seems constructive, I think, in helping us form and change the relationships we are currently in. It allows us to see more clearly what we want to polish and what we want to scrape off.
For me, what is beautiful about Petite Maman is that the make believe isn’t depicted either as fantasy or heavy handedly explained. No one seems particularly confused by what is happening. It seems just like real life, but, perhaps, better. In one of my favourite scenes, Nelly’s dad tells Nelly that they are going to leave a day early. Nelly says she would like to stay because her friend (her mum) has invited her for a sleepover. Her dad says it will have to be another time. Nelly—anxious to not miss out on this fiction like you or I might be, after waking from a dream, and choosing to go back to sleep—Nelly pleads: “There won’t be another time.” Petite Maman is about imagining, eyes open, that there could be.
Love
Anne