An American politician makes a grandstanding, provocative and irresponsible visit to the exact same contested East Asian state that is currently processing my entry visa. I reflect on international Americanisms, thinking of the Vietnam War as Coppola had it - a bid for freedom overturned into a gruesome Heart of Darkness follow-up, of Graham Greeneās naive CIA agent, of being called a limey on the world stage, the same corrupted Regency fantasy where I ruin War and Peace by telling Napoleon to just fuck off. I imagine my flight being shot out of the sky or of being rounded up and evacuated from an equally imaginary country that is half Edward Yang and half a directory of tropical birds.Ā
My great-uncle tells me that it is not a good idea to move to an entirely new country for ten months, that he couldnāt stick Israel for six despite an excellent pension plan. He doesnāt know that for the past few weeks I have been plagued by the same anxiety, a recurring āI donāt want to go I never wanted to goā (I have wanted to live in said country since age sixteen and cannot imagine a more appropriate or cinematic junction to encounter at this stage of my life, a true but also metaphorical liminal space). The anxiety lifts when I read and research. I also remind myself that I am a better person in Mandarin than I am in English: sociable, resilient, curious, high in self-esteem.Ā
In Mandarin I can talk in great detail about my romantic past without ever having to come out as a lesbian. I have decided it is not in keeping with my belief system to come out in any language and thatās why I am withholding the information from most people. Madonna, like me, was in unrequited and stalkerish love with a woman for two years (in the nineties) and nobody ever made her come out or proclaimed her anything. Must cultivate personal mystery but also be very close and open to everyone at all times.
I have left every website -Ā Tumblr, Reddit, the ones where people make fun of celebrities. My breaking point came and went and now every day looks different and I am alone, terrifyingly, with my own thoughts. There is a count-up app on my phone and I fill in a makeshift star chart with emojis (grape, firework, hippopotamus) whenever I reach a milestone. I hope for a thousand-day detox where every internet word and image leaves me, where I never use an internet speech pattern again. Are a thousand days enough to forget?Ā
I think of a girl in my secondary school library group who knew nothing of online culture, who talked excitedly to her parents, who read difficult books with a level of concentration the rest of us could not imagine but had to ask me once for the definition of the word masochist, who had a subscription to the BBC history magazine and only sometimes used the computer to look up restaurants. That was 2015, the internet era of derivative alt-pop and pastel sex and Instagram meme pages and the āI am trashā affectation, all rife amongst bookish girls. She escaped unscathed from something creeping and terrible and will never ever know how lucky she was. I wonder what itās like to grow from a girl into a woman without being groomed online, all the worse since itās kind of by your own volition, into a terrifying and overreaching pseudo-Japanese sex fantasy.
Coming to terms with the fact that I didnāt want the sex I had. Not sure why I confessed this during a game of Truth or Dare to drunken friends at the holiday home we rented, split one-between-seven. The downside of the terrifying and overreaching pseudo-Japanese sex fantasy is that the minute you encounter it, everyone assumes you are always having terrifying and overreaching pseudo-Japanese sex. Itās like a virus that way. I want to be an early-10s autofiction girl and not an early-20s orgasmer. Still have not been paid back for petrol.Ā
Iām physically a zoomer but culturally a millennial - the Girls cadence, the DIY ethos, the dreams of being a writer in New York. The millennials are now zoomers - grating short videos, Animal Crossing in your thirties. Iāll be fifty talking about blogging like it was my Summer of Love, Woodstock etc.
āThatās sooo Blond Ambitionā said mentally with Paris-and-Nicole-esque intonation. It used to mean a materialisation of the disturbing clash between Christianity and chthonic Pagan pop/sex culture, modelled perfectly in the throes of Madonnaās Like a Virgin/Like a Prayer performance about a third of the way through the eponymous concert tour, or in the faith healing scene and final human stampede of Schlesingerās Day of the Locust. Then it meant āevoking the old, but not self-consciously evoking the old, more like evoking the old with feminine eeriness and trauma intact, like a semi-accidental way of summoning the old godsā but now I just use it to describe everything I like. Blond Ambition is kind of like the closing ceremony in Pagliaās great Christian-Pagan war of the West - performed, magically, the exact year Sexual Personae hit the shelves - and I keep trying to write a very detailed essay about this but always stumble at its enormity.Ā Ā Ā
Something mythological too about the Turkish singer Bergen, who always posed with one eye obscured after an acid attack from her ex-husband left her disfigured. Veronica Lake, Oedipus, Santa Lucia. There was a film in production but she deserves a glittery and tragic opera a bit like Lucia di Lammermoor (woven into Flaubertās Madame Bovary)
I believe in the Paglian Hollywood-paganism thesis because of times like that, when the narratives of celebrity culture are no different from the most intricate and ominous poem youāve ever read, with echoings and acrostics and alliterations and slimy, inescapable portents. Soon Instagram will collapse and the mystery will build up again and itāll all be back. I canāt wait.
This Turkish song is soooo Blond Ambition:
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