Blithe Spirit (1945)
I know it all too well. It’s not my favourite Noel Coward play, and Coward himself didn’t much like this movie. I’m not sure what went wrong — but the banter between the married couple is tired and not very witty — never was — the only thing that’s really marvelous about the movie is Margaret Rutherford (see blog #34). The idea behind this play is unbeatable — a man is tormented by the ghost of his first wife, who appears to him, only — and his present wife can’t see her. But that’s really all here that’s brilliant. Coward wrote much better plays —Private Lives, Hay Fever and Present Laughter are my three favourites. Present Laughter and Hay Fever are about imagined worlds that keep impinging on real ones, and this is also the appeal of Private Lives — though there it is the fantasy of one couple’s love that seems able to survive even the most harrowing real-life conflicts. But it’s when Coward lets his language get away with him that his work is truly unique and truly dangerous — for words do have a life of their own. I still have no idea what this blog will be about; this is my fourth night in Montreal and I’ve told myself I wouldn’t get drunk. It’s going to be a task to turn Montreal from a vacation place to a place where I might live now and then, because of course — in spite of Baudelaire, one can’t always be drunk, can one? That is a harrowing thought, and I am trusting this blog to take me away somewhere instead. I saw my favorite coat check boy at Starbucks today and I was unable to speak to him. He was with another lovely young man, and who knows — maybe they are a couple, or soon to be, and I just didn’t want to appear like a cloying nutty old man, but I do like him. I think he is very nice and would probably have welcomed a hello. I never talk to anyone here. The other day a fan spoke to me — for the second time — at Starbucks — he seems very nice and though he is not my type, I found him somewhat sexually attractive. (Maybe I shouldn’t have written that because he might be one of the few people to actually read these blogs!) But things that you write do have a way of becoming true. I thought of showing the coat check boy the blog I wrote about him; but I didn't do that either. The balcony of our Montreal apartment is very ‘Rear Window,’ there are three sets of windows clearly visible on each side, and three balconies also. There is often a dog on one of the balconies; he is my only companion when I write in the mornings. He is a very cute bulldog and seems to me, forlorn, but that is probably projection. A heterosexual couple lives one floor down on the left across the way; I can see everything they do and they never close their curtains. I’m no peeping Tom but I can’t help looking. He is lean and young and hardly ever wears a shirt (well, it’s hot) and she is a young woman who has no problem whatsoever stripping down to her thong in front of the window. (I’m not blaming her, just saying.) To the right the curtains are closed at night but a big screen TV can be dimly viewed playing constantly, I imagine it’s a young man who is shutting me out. Across from me and beyond the modest trees is a giant parking lock for some sort of huge nefarious business. I call it nefarious because it’s a giant ugly building that has to do with delivering things, and trucks keep pulling up and to me it just seems me semi-operational and shady. There are also shady people constantly walking across this parking lot; they are the perpetually unwashed— the street people, Montreal’s poor — there are sadly, so many — and there is usually a crisis that is being yelled about, girls in high heels and bedraggled looking boyfriends hauling giant bags or garbage, stopping only haggle. Why do I want to disappear into this blog? Why do I want to disappear, period? I think it would be easy enough to psychoanalyse me and blame it all on homophobia or my hard life but truth be told my life has bee comparatively easy. Can I suggest that it is a universal wish — that we all want to disappear inside something that’s not real — something that is not us —as long as we can safely come back? In Private Lives when Amanda is lying to her new husband about how she just happened to see — but didn’t speak to — her previous husband — Elyot — she pretends she viewed Elyot from a safe distance — on the beach: “Down there, in a white suit.” And Victor says, skeptically “White suit?” And Amanda says — “Why not? It’s summer isn’t it?” This whimsical wishing of fantasy into truth brings to mind the recent Broadway production of Present Laughter with Kevin Kline. He is lying to some young woman, speaking of how much he loves her and how difficult it will be to give her up, when he realises that the lie is not working — and Kline shoots her a look as if to say 'Oh, you’re not buying that are you? Then let’s try another one.’ Or in Hay Fever, when Judith is quite accidentally kissed by her daughter’s boyfriend — she suddenly flips into melodrama; she must tell her husband “ everything” -- terrifying the young man. I toured with a play a couple of years ago starring a beautiful actress who I love very much. But I got to know her in ways I hadn’t expected, and her personal life was so charmingly odd. That is, she became a kind of Judith from Hay Fever. She’s so gorgeous and very sexual and is always flirting with everyone including me, and always complaining that no one is interested. Well her lack of success with men didn’t make any sense to me, until I saw her in action. We met a young man at a Jazz Club — who was definitely giving her the eye — and she came on to him so strongly that fled, terrified, and it became clear to me that this whole narrative was a fantasy/reality of her own making; the only reason young men run from her is because she’s frightens the hell out of them. It’s a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy — but it’s a story she likes telling herself, about herself, and when she believes it enough it becomes real. I am persuading myself that this night will bring me to a pleasant mystery and maybe (am I asking too much?) a mild epiphany? And who’s to say it won’t? The point here is that if I can imagine it, it can happen, and if you think that’s just corny, old-fashioned positive thinking’ it might very well be what’s stopping you from living.
