Rabbit Rabbit #2: Remember This?

11/8/22

SURPRISE! I know I said once a month, hence ‘Rabbit Rabbit,’ but I missed my loyal readers too much. I’ve definitely built a new community from the grassroots level and we need to convene frequently.

I’ve been doing a lot of remembering lately. Vague, but it’s true. It’s fall after all, that season of change that practically begs you to reflect on all the previous falls that fell before it. The pattern is so striking– leaves changing, air crisping, ultra-blue sky, weren’t we just here? Where was I on November 19, 2015? And the one before that? Aw, I miss that. Thus the cycle replays.

One time my friend William said, “you’re a very nostalgic person in general,” probably because I had just spent half an hour spamming him with various photos of us in the past, with accouterments like, “omg remember this?” I do this a lot with friends– sending an old photo, just because, and then maniacally checking that they also “remember” it. They almost always do.

I am well aware that this is a bothersome habit. It bothers ME…why can’t I just live in the moment? Jokes on you, because I literally can. The problem is, there have been so many great moments with different people that I tend to white-knuckle them for fear of losing their clarity. There is deep intimacy in shared memories. It makes us feel special, wanted, and loved. “Think of the good times!” they say when anyone dies. To look back on good times is healing of course, but it can also make you go a little crazy.

I have an extremely sharp memory. Not like, I could be on 60 Minutes, but sharp enough that it is a locally famous quality of mine. It’s more under the umbrella of: I texted my cousins on May 18th every year for ten years to remind them it was their family dog’s birthday. I can recall conversations like they are scripted dialogue. What time it was, if it was raining. Sometimes it just feels like I will remember everything, forever. What can I do with all this noise and information but hurl it back to the people who helped create it?

My friend Katherine and I have a joke where we say, “if they let me, I would go back” about memories we share from elementary school. We imagine reliving days of our youth where everything remains the same, but the two of us know we are repeating it. Everyone else is earnestly a kindergartener. We would learn so much about who we were. Sadly (thankfully?) we cannot experience co-consciousness or time travel. We must make peace with what’s already happened.

It’s a big responsibility to be the only one in charge of categorizing your past. The Dewey Decimal System doesn’t work (I’ve tried.) How do we make sense of the people, places, and events that shaped who we are today, especially if they are no longer around?

I couldn’t help but reflect on this question when I saw Aftersun last week. It is the debut feature film of Scottish director Charlotte Wells, starring Paul Mescal (of Normal People fame) and newcomer Frankie Corio.

I had a loose sense of what this film was about before I descended into the basement of the Angelika Film Center, like that it followed a young father and his school-aged daughter over the course of a trip they take to Turkey. The film opens with the mechanical whirring of a home video camcorder in total blackness, and then cuts to footage of Sophie, the eleven-year-old daughter, interviewing her father Calum, who stands on their hotel room balcony. “When you were eleven, what did you think you’d be doing now?” she asks.

In the ninety hypnotic minutes that follow, we learn that an Adult Sophie, perhaps now Calum’s age in the film, is looking back on the vacation and her relationship with her father. Because of this, the whole movie radiates nostalgia. Not solely because of Gregory Oke’s slow pans across the duo’s sunburnt faces or lingering shots of recognizable mid-tier resort characters, but also because of its surprising mundaneness.

The literal content of the film features nothing more than Sophie and Calum going about their trip. Their days consist of eating meals at the poolside restaurant, watching parasailers, and rubbing after-sun on one another’s backs. Like all movies that cast a profound emotional spell, the beauty is in the details.

The most striking image in the film for me lasts only a few seconds. One night in the hotel room, Calum carries Sophie to bed, and stops in front of the sliding glass door, swaying side-to-side. We see Sophie staring at her reflection in the dark. It is a pivotal moment in her childhood– she is almost too big to be carried, but still protected by her father, safe and adored.

I kept waiting for something horrible to happen. It’s not a spoiler to say it never does. Calum says goodbye to Sophie at the airport after a pretty turbulent final night together, but each comes out alive and well. Aftersun resists any anticipation because it isn’t actually unfolding in real time; everything we see is a memory…Sophie’s version of what she remembers. It is subtle, ambiguous, and heartbreaking. It is clear that Calum is no longer in her life. Whether or not he has died and how remains unclear too, but this is beside the point.

Not that I know what the point is. I will say this: it’s comforting to watch a movie about looking back on one’s childhood that does not offer a conclusion, single meaning, or even a sense of finality. Because Calum and Sophie’s vacation will never truly end. It starts from the beginning with every rewind of the home videotape.

It’s like scrolling through my camera roll mindlessly, tapping on old memories and zooming in on the old faces. We build little worlds with the people around us and then they break down because time and life get in the way. But maybe, those worlds can be reignited, if just at the first turn of a leaf each year. Because of this, I think the solace I find in replaying the tapes, so to speak, comes from a place of sincerity; I will remind you of everything as an act of love.

P.S. I’m going to start sharing recommendations! Don’t worry, I only share things I truly think are worthwhile. I read this article by Lila Lee-Morrison for Art Forum about her experience making the movie Kids in the summer of 1994. If you haven’t seen Kids, you absolutely should. But tread lightly: it’s not for the faint of heart. It’s a film with an active and harrowing afterlife that has proved extremely divisive among its cast, crew, & viewers. You don’t have to know it to read this piece.