Restoration Hardware for My Creative Soul
I Am Love (2009) directed by Luca Guadagnino
During the heart of the winter season is when the mind is fogged up, in need of shoveling out the noise from the travesties of the day and nonsensical nonsense from an onscreen life. Since the majority of the days and nights are spent indoors, I have to force upon myself mental activities from olden times, so to speak. To pretend that Instagram, TikTok and not even Pinterest exists. As creatives we suffer from momentary loss of ideas and come into road blocks where nothing connects. If you’ve spent more than 4 hours scrolling on your phone, it impacts your life and the way you think and feel without you even realizing. The only recognizable symptom is the creative block. It’s not because you’re not living or experiencing enough, it’s because you’ve interacted too much. You’ve liked too many posts of kittens. For these moments I have to falter back to things I can actually touch or watch with sentimental viewing pleasure, where I have to put my phone down. Things that I call hardware to reconnect my brain to emotional health and hopefully my soul once again. It’s good to know what yours are so that it alleviates the time stuck in a creative rut.
the films to ground me
My very first experience of watching a film alone was Together (2000) a Swedish film directed by Lukas Moodysson. I remember the day vividly, it was a brisk, cold Saturday and the mood struck me that morning to go off on my own and watch a movie by myself. I was a young person who so wanted to be a full-fledged adult and wow look at her being so independent was not what I wanted to hear from anyone. Standing in front of the box office at The Angelika, I chose it because of the film poster, something about it was friendly. The film is about a family that joins a commune in Stockholm during the 1970’s, a specific time when politics and the world around them was changing. I loved it and I even returned the following weekend, again by myself to rewatch it. It was not only my first solo film experience, but the moment I fell in love with foreign films. The magic that happens when you watch foreign films (especially with subtitles) is it not only teaches you, but it encourages you to aspire for so much more. I watch Together if I ever need to feel nostalgic about the girl who wanted to know what it would feel like to go to a movie theater all by herself and not answer to anyone. Because it was that girl who wanted more, but didn’t know what it was yet. I am forever grateful to have listened to my gut that one Saturday morning and chosen that film specifically. From then on I had hoped to one day write something as creative and personally profound as that film’s story and also to travel to faraway places and meet different people.
