The Write Thing

There are stories that come to us without warning. One moment we think we have everything under control, and the next we are hopelessly itching with desire for that same thing we were formerly indifferent to. These days, images of an old movie I saw long ago have been playing constantly on my mind: David Lean’s Brief Encounter.

The story is a typical case of untimely love, in those days when some people at least questioned themselves before being unfaithful to their spouses. As the protagonists Alec and Laura gradually realize that their innocent meetings are leading into something far deeper than a mere acquaintance, they decide to put an end to the affair — actually, to its potential. The film is based on a play by Noel Coward called, more accurately, Still Life.

I saw the film at least over ten years ago, so relying on my memory completely might prove risky. However, I have the vivid impression that it is Alec who voices the palpable passion that dwells in both of the never-to-be lovers. In a memorable scene — or a fictitious invention, my memory will tell — he looks at her and says…”you know what’s happening, don’t you…”

I know what’s happening. Here, there are no husband or wives to cheat. There is only a distance, which in the modern world planes travel more frequently than I help myself to meals. Further favoring dramatic momentum is the fact that obstacles make excellent dramatic opportunities, facing protagonists with their tests of love and courage as the story they tell us unfolds.

Jeanette Winterson would probably start this account with a phrase such as “I would like to tell a story”. I am afraid I am already telling one, even if not as deftly as Ms Winterson. Better yet, we are telling a story, as we have told each other so many during the wonderful days we have just spent together. I must admit that it is simply very easy to flow when in company of a writer, something I had not yet experienced.

When I get to editing my own story, the one I am yet to tell, perhaps I should also mull my first line very carefully — after all, incipits are key. A good story must be subtle and yet solid enough to carry its own weight without wearing the reader down. Preferably, the protagonists should reveal their motives gradually, or let the reader find them around the corner of a gesture, or in the minimal expression of a misleading word. Stories can be written alone, in pairs or even in teams. Regardless of the number of hands assigned to the task, action and pace must flow as if only one single pen had written it.

I do not know if my story will flow as smoothly as I would like it to. Maybe not, because uncertainty is part of life, and as such it deserves a place in my account. I do not even know how the story started because, as all good things in my life, it began without warning and, when I least expected it, there it was.

In 1968, the world of entertainment became mesmerized with a skinny young girl with a prominent nose who sang her way through the bittersweet life of theater and film actress Fanny Brice in the box office hit (both in theater and film) Funny Girl.

My admiration for Ms. Streisand goes back in time numerous years, to those darker moments of my youth when English was becoming a language of fate and a permanent shelter, without my knowing it. In the movie, there is a climactic scene where she rushes to catch a tugboat at the New York harbor, shortly after finding love in the arms of bon vivant Nicky Arnstein (played by Omar Sharif). Much as I would like to linger in my praise of Barbra as a consummate actress and singer, injecting pathos and passion in a character that to some extent ended up reflecting her quite a lot at some stages in her life, I will refrain from doing so.

The tugboat scene unfolds with the backdrop of a hurried Miss Brice trying to convince her entourage that her decision to live life beyond her success as a comedienne with the Ziegfeld Follies is final. She does this with a song, while everybody begs her to reconsider. However, she is adamant and will follow Nick to write the first act of a love whose epilogue will be a dark naked stage where La Streisand will render perhaps the best version of My Man ever recorded. But right now, if you can hold your breath enough to accompany the singer through the end of a belted note that grows above a mid-size orchestra, there is still a world to hope for.

The tugboat slides on a foamy sea, leaving a trail leading back to the harbor of departure. From a distance, it seems as if she could choose to go back and put such a preposterous idea of love well behind her. Curiously, the novelty here is that in the wildest act of love in the movie, the heroine does not sing of love, but of possibility….and perhaps that is what love is all about.

I’m gonna live and live NOW!
Get what I want, I know how!
One roll for the whole shebang!
One throw that bell will go clang,
Eye on the target and wham,
One shot, one gun shot and bam!
Hey, Mr. Arnstein, here I am …

I’ll march my band out, I will beat my drum,
And if I’m fanned out, your turn at bat, sir,
At least I didn’t fake it, hat, sir,
I guess I didn’t make it
Get ready for me love, ’cause I’m a “comer”
I simply gotta march, my heart’s a drummer
Nobody, no, nobody, is gonna rain on my parade!

That was the campaign launched in 1930 to publicize Garbo’s first talkie. It is of public knowledge that the advent of sound in movies could either boost a career or destroy it. Sunset Boulevard, starring Gloria Swanson and William Holden, is a fictional example of the latter. However, in Garbo’s case, her glory was even enhanced by the dark, husky and deep manly voice that filled the theaters worldwide…including the one in Buenos Aires where a young Borges nervously awaited until the first magical words “Give me a viskey” were pronounced. He sighed with relief. The diva he admired the most had made it.

When I learned this anecdote, retold in a documentary I recently translated, I could not help but thinking that, had I lived in those days, I would have shared Borges’s stress over Garbo’s voice. I would have been seduced by the glacial woman as I have been since I first saw her. The difference would have been in our timing. It would have taken place as her career progressed, not after it no longer existed. For me, today, to think of another voice but the one I have always heard is impossible. Borges, on the contrary, was able to imagine what she would sound like. A possibility for him was just a belated impossibility for me.

If we think that an actor’s voice could mean the end of a career back in Garbo’s time, today the situation is totally different. Jennifer (or is it Meg) Tilly’s high-pitched nasal tone would have been received thumbs down — Woody Allen did some justice in that sense with one of the sisters in Bullets over Broadway, but still voices do not matter as much today. The world changes, it is true. However, some magical creatures remain as enchanting, vibrant, and avant-garde as they have always been. Garbo is an example of this. She defies time and conventions — and would have Mercedes De Acosta pay for it. Her (wo)manly essence made both men and women fall under her feet, and set the foundations for Mylène Farmer’s career (another member of the family? I wonder). Today, the magic lives on.
Djupa andetag…Garbo talks!