Independence: Notes from a Party

“Smoking Malboro Lights and drinking Diet Coke; not really having any kind of experience, not willing to commit, not really doing anything.”

-You know what’s big this year? The indoor BBQ.
-Hey Ben, we’re having an indoor BBQ.
-You see, the trick is not acceding to his more original ideas
-Followed by the indoor fireworks.
-I seem you remember Arthur dodging for cover that last time you tried that.
-Yes, but we’re still friends aren’t we?

“I am so (lonely? horny? confused? bored?) I start hitting the copy of ELLE that is in the kitchen garbage can: Hey, sure I’d love to take your survey. You know Penelope Cruz? No way!”
“It’s a concept album. Only the concept is really sleazy.”
“What is it your fear? The dirt of other people? Of human sexuality?”
“That’s what our fucking President is going to say next State of the Union Address: There’s no pollution, there’s no evolution. Tom Cruise loves Katie Holmes. My wife’s cunt tastes great.”

1:21:33 AM

“Fourth of Fucking July”
“Fourth of Fucking Ju-Fucking- Ly”
“Fucking Forth of Fucking Ju-Fucking Ly”
“Wasn’t America better than any “homeland”; who lives in a “homeland”? A “homeland” is something that needs security. “America”: the country where we used to live.”
“Men and women live in different parts of the world. Which makes them tourists, travelers or homebodies.”
“How is sleeping with me different than any other of the dependent relationships you’ve snuck through your whole life long?”
“Because I got here on my good looks and possibly my cooking.”

“My deepest intuition is: you’re starting to write a story, you’re starting to live, which means, you’re starting to die, to really die, right on your feet like everyone else. Then it started happening and it made me a little worried, that when I had made a decision I would be filled with a kind of ecstasy. I felt free. I felt like I couldn’t lose, no matter what the outcome. When you watch the planes fly over LA through the old glass, they seem to swim like fish”

“Love stalks the hills. Beware. Cars snake by. The planes flying over LA swim through the bumps of the glass of these old windows. I had been sleeping outdoors lately. Don’t ask why. I’d been on the trail of something, something you might find useful. Or not. A cure, an antidote. I left camp early because the only kind of serum was truth serum and, in the contemporary world, truth has nearly been eradicated, so it’s not really a problem. I’m sorry I left this message. I shouldn’t have called.”

“I dreamed they gave your voice to a player piano. They knew you as an artist and a performer and they chose your voice. “
“An astronaut dying in his spacesuit takes ecstatic pictures of the sunset on the world he has crashed into. The trained scientist inside him knows that his brain is dying, and the smiles, tears and laughter he feels at each exposure are the product of toxins that cannot be removed, the stress of the crash, perhaps the knowledge of his certain death and of discovery. [Will they understand? ] he wonders. The shot of the sunset, yes, but his foot, his precious foot? This rock that reminds him of a cartoon. His heart is filled with love. The camera falls out of his hands. It is months later when the signals reach Earth; each image scrolls by slowly. Most weep because they already know the feed from his suit: they feel they are watching a man die. But his wife weeps because they are pretty pictures of things he liked.”

“I got fat over the Fourth of July weekend. It’s a really stressful holiday. There are all these loud noises. Stress makes you gain weight. There were burgers and beer n’ shit. DON’T STOP LOVING ME! DON’T STOP LOVING ME! DON’T STOP LOVING ME!”

“So you call this person on the phone because you’re sad and you don’t like being sad: you want sympathy and so you talk for awhile and then you feel better because this person really understands you they even love you and not for all the cool reasons you’d like to be loved (your cool hat, the clever things you say, the fact you’ve been working out) but for yourself. And they ask you to call them back later and you forget, of course and later, you’re not feeling bad and you’re surrounded by fun and friends, the very friends you don’t call when you are feeling bad because you don’t want to alienate them. Later on, the person that you forgot to call, calls you and they’re upset because you forgot to call them and they mention how you only seem to call them when you’re feeling bad, or lonely or drunk and you find yourself holding a phone. They say how wrong this is, that it’s even a little (or completely) exploitive. And you agree, of course, but you think to yourself: what is this, some sort of relationship? “