Take your broken heart, make it into art (Part III)

 

And gods, has it been broken

many times

so many that sometimes

I feel like all that's left is scar tissue

and wouldn’t it be lovely if that only made it 

hard to pierce again

because have you tried getting through that shit

with a blade or needle?

That shit is strong

I’m not though

I just feel sore

and I can feel it aching with every move

it is still trying to make

and by god, does that make it hard to feel.

Not because I would be incapable,

I am way too capable for all the big emotions

but they hurt so much more

especially when they are supposed to not hurt at all.

In a way,
I am glad all this

has not hardened me

bittered me

made me cold to the world

but there are times where I wish

it was rather that

than endless aching

because gods, 

thats so exhausting

for me and everyone who loves me ever.

And yet

I am stubborn

as stubborn as I’ve always used to be

and I will gnaw and gnash my way through this

and just hope that someday

this will become easier

less painful

or only easier to bear.

My endless optimism

is just my stubbornness in disguise.

I refuse to have this be my forever.

I refuse to not fight for my chance

to be happy after all.

And so, 

once more,

I take my broken heart,

make it into art, 

like mother Carrie taught me to, 

like Frida said, 

like all these glorious women before me

who refused to be beaten by a hard life,

make it into art 

to show the world,

lay my vulnerabilities wide open

and have them be my armor

as contradictory as this may sound. 

Take my broken heart,

make it into art, 

trust the process

so that what evolves

may be whole again

or maybe

even just beautiful enough

to kill the pain

for good.

Take your broken heart, make it into art (Part II)

See, you understood that saying

You understood my connection to that quote

just as you understood me to my very core.

I remember

how scared I was of you

before we first met and I remember

this feeling of trust that I had within moments

as if I had never done anything else in my life

than trust strange men my own mums age.

It never mattered if we talked for hours on end

or if we spent our time in silence

and silence never felt as easy as with you

because I knew we still somehow shared a mind

beyond ages, beyond languages, beyond anything -

you, mate, you truly got me.

It never mattered how long the silence had lasted

picking up from where we left off

was effortless

as easy as breathing

and everything feels fake

now that this most natural thing

has left my life.

„Take your broken heart, make it into art“

You never had a broken heart though

I have never met anyone as happy and content

in his own existence as you were

And yet you understood mine

How truly special can a person be?

The love I have for you might be unmatched forever

the connection we shared was special and

the shoes you leave behind for anyone to step in

are gigantic.

Good night, my soulmate

Good night, brother that I never had

You are gone,

and everything is worse now.

Free fall

 You know

how all my life, I’ve been afraid of falling

stunned by the image

of my shattered body on the ground

so afraid that I refused to jump

if not absolutely inevitable

and when you asked me to jump

you promised I could trust you

promised you would break my fall

would catch me

would make sure I would not get hurt

convinced me that it wasn’t even that deep

and then

when I finally believed you

believed I would certainly survive

finally gathered all my courage 

closed my eyes and leaped

you were scared of the weight that came with it

the weight of me

despite me giving you the numbers

and you stepped aside in the last moment

and when I saw the ground coming closer and closer

I realized once more 

why I never jumped before

"The Long Forgotten" by David Whitehouse - Review

 

David Whitehouses „Mobile Library“ was probably the first review copy I ever got, back in 2015 when I just started my book seller apprenticeship. It was also the first review I wrote for my bookshops website. And I was lucky, because I had come across a rare gem back then, so the memory of this first venture into my profession happened to be a very good one. I am still holding “Mobile Library” very dear, partially for nostalgic reasons but also because it was a brilliant book.

Now when you have read and loved someones debut novel, a second book being published is equally exciting and scary – your expectations are high, so there is plenty of room for disappointment. But like with most things in life, there is just as much room for things to go well.

I will admit it, it took me shamefully long to pick up “The Long Forgotten”. Not only because reading isn’t part of my job anymore and therefore, I find very little time in my day to day life to do so, or because my pile of shame is so much higher than I’d like to admit (but I will: Currently 55 books). I also was scared to be disappointed.

I was wrong, and I have never been this happy about being wrong in my entire life.

On the first glance, in “The Long Forgotten”, David Whitehouse tells not one story but three and at first it seems odd since these people do not seem to be connected in the slightest: Dove, an odd-ish young man from London with anger issues and memories that are not his own. Peter Manyweathers, a cleaner from New York in the 1980s who is swept away by a sudden obsession with botany. Professor Cole, a grumpy scientist who stumbled across the black box flight recorder of the lost flight PS570 in an incident that almost cost him his life.

These stories seem to be only connected by them being unlikely enough to be of interest but just likely enough to actually happen. For the sake of a spoiler-free review I will only say: They are connected, and it is astonishing how. Please do read the details yourself.

David Whitehouse has a talent to make the reader fall in love, with his language, with his characters and especially with whatever subject he decides to write about. I have never been this passionate about rare flowers and botany before. I have never related this much to an orphan curious to find his parents. And I certainly have never felt that much interest in cleaning in my entire life and hope to get some great accomplishments from this newly found and most likely shortlived obsession.

Whitehouses habit to find and portray the magical in the most mundane, to tell stories of such wonder in an every day life setting that you inevitably start to view your own life through completely new eyes, is remarkable. Personally, I hope to read much more from him.

Where are my struggles!? - Hollywood on Netflix - Review

I think one of the most important things I have learned in my Literature classes in school was one simple but effective rule: If you want your story to be interesting it needs conflict. There needs to be something your characters are going through that the audience wants to hear about.
The new Netflix show Hollywood had the perfect material for this rule to come into effect, a gay black writer writing a script to be directed by a half Filipino director, produced by a studio lead by a Jewish woman and a gay producer and a black actress and a gay actor competing for roles in 1940s Hollywood, with the topic of prostitution thrown into the mix - and then it dropped all that potential. Everything goes perfectly smooth, somehow everything is magically made possible, the black actress gets the main role, the writer, director, producer, studio boss, everyone just gets to do their job, and while I get the sentiment that it's amazing to see marginalized folks succeed - it does not make a great plot. In fact, it makes this story not only feel boring and overly polished, it also makes it feel unrealistic. A bunch of white studio executives just agreeing that of course the very talented black girl is the perfect cast for this major motion picture? I honest to god doubt that this would be realistic in 2020 Hollywood, let alone the 1940s. Now it is mentioned a lot that all these controversial choices the studio makes would cause trouble - characters discuss protests, murder threats, the KKK, people not getting any more work after coming out as gay, but nothing actually happens. Not only is this not a struggle or conflict, it also breaks the other very basic rule of writing, especially scriptwriting, "show, don't tell", and more importantly: It makes those very real problems that are imminent even now, 80 years later, seem like something marginalized people make up, they are shown as something people are afraid of but that are not actually real. That's what I'd call wasted potential because if all those issues were fleshed out more, this would have been an amazing and important story to tell. Additionally, because of the missing struggles, all of the characters become incredibly two-dimensional, which in itself is a waste of a very talented cast. What could have been a masterpiece has instead been a utopia, lovely to see, but hard to believe and harder to keep in mind. Personally I will easily forget this whole story in just a couple of days now, and I think that is sad.
Dear Netflix, you had gold in your hands here - I would love to see this rewritten as more than a beautiful but forgettable dream. Give me the harsh reality of 1940s Hollywood. Give me the harsh reality of a world where racism was even more imminent than nowadays, where homophobia was up another level, where sexism was a more profound issue than figuring out the details - don't give me a feelgood story that I couldn't ever believe no matter what decade it was set in. Give it a rewrite. Because the base material does deserve it. This can be done so much better.

Time and again

Time and again

breaks for silence

who would have thought that quiet can be so loud

who would have thought that seconds can be so painful

even more so when they accumulate

you say you like me

don‘t believe it

a bit because I can so rarely even really stand myself

a bit because you say it but I can only vaguely see your doing

this soft glow is hard to make out in the dark

and seems like nothing

when I am ablaze next to you

tell me

are you burning just as bright as me?

Are you burning up from the heat inside of you?

Or is it more, like

a bit of warmth

just what is needed

when all else is cold

Do you desire me?

I always desire you

constantly, really

every second I can‘t touch you

feels like a waste of time

how will it be when we meet?

Will you finally burn

for me

as much as I do for you?

You slow me down

and smother me time and again

but this is magnesium, baby

you can not smother me

only make it harder

to endure the burning

are you burning just as bright as me?

Can I only not see your fire because we are both ablaze?

Stay healthy

So this is life now.

All the fires that have been burning inside me just weeks ago, no, days only, have gone out. Silence around me and inside me. More calmness than I had in years. Peace, not to be confused with happiness. It's remarkable how quick and easy it was to accept this new normalcy.

We write history, stay home, it was never that easy to (hopefully) save the world. Okay, maybe we leave some behind, maybe once again we can see the arbitrariness that was given to the executive just like that, too easy to say now that they know what they‘re doing, oh they know what they‘re doing, alright, the signature on the free ticket hasn‘t even dried yet. A bit of control over the situation for the small price of a few lives, a few homeless here, a few refugees there, what's the world cost, I'll take two.

Only a few lives for the safety of the rest, the dregs are rejects, and just above that float the really important ones – applause! Standing ovations for the relevant! Appreciation for your daily bread, which you might not actually be able to buy because the shelves are empty when you, oh relevant one, finally get to do your shopping too, but that's no problem because you sure have our APPRECIATION, be proud of yourself! Because we‘ll only be in writing, we admire you, enduring the stress and let yourself be treated like shit by those who you are keeping alive, keeping everything running, it is so easy to forget who treats you like shit as long as we just clap loud enough. Maybe play the ode to joy in the evenings. Ignoring that your job has been hard for ages, not rarely unbearable. NOW you are important, congratulations, here is your participation trophy, and then we can hopefully forget soon why you were important and be important again ourselves.

The realization that we are not actually important when things get rough tastes bittersweet. Never has our work seemed less meaningful, never has it felt so empty to just keep going on but at least it gives us a bit of purpose, a bit of security while the world around us breaks apart. We don‘t have anything else, after all, we can‘t drown our depressions in booze and meaningless sex, not even a hug between friends to let us forget our pain for a moment. When things get rough it‘s clear who stays alone with their thoughts. How many will the virus kill, how many the economy, how many the solitude? What will we tell our grandchildren if we survived all of this? What will we say in a couple of decades?

So this is life now. We write this story. Let‘s hope that it's going to be a good one. One that we can tell without being ashamed. Be kind to each other. We have nothing else left.

Stay healthy.