Close your eyes.

Sitting in the disillusionment

“I'm choosing this eclipse to just lean into the disillusionment with everything” is something I said to a friend recently, as if that made sense.

“Lean in” used to be a joke on the internet. It came from a serious book though, do you remember that? It was by Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook. I don't remember if it was supposed to be a guide or just personal recollections, but due to the nature of it it became quite the popular internet feminist joke. Netizens sarcastically said “lean in” to every mild inconvenience or expression of privilege.

Thanks to the internet, things stop being a joke sometimes or more likely the joke gets lost to time. “Lean in” is a valid phrase that does mean something. Many times when I say that out loud I am referencing that moment from going on 6 or 7 years ago, but the amount of people who would laugh at that dwindles every day. Sometimes I do word salad as a joke. That only helps if people are in on the joke. To be in on the joke, you have to know something or someone.

I went to see Close Your Eyes at my local art theater the other week. I was so excited to see it. I enjoy Victor Erice. The Spirit of the Beehive is a very important movie to me. I was excited to get out of the house and see this movie with other people who also surely enjoy Victor Erice and know The Spirit of the Beehive.

I got there early and saw a guy standing up and reading a book. Right away, somehow, I knew he was also there for the same movie I was. It was like an in-joke. What else would he be coming to see, standing around like that? I was eating a strawberry cookie and thought of my dad. He loved strawberry flavor more than anyone else I know. I wouldn't have gone to see this movie with him, but I would have eaten half the cookie then brought the other half home for him to try. While waiting on the film to start, I ate about 60% of the cookie. It used to be a running joke that I only ever ate half of a sweet treat, but almost no one is in on that joke now.

Of course me and the guy were there for the same film. When I got settled in the theater, I heard a different guy in front of me talking to two ladies. He said he overheard them talking in the parking lot about Ana Torrent. They were talking about how intrigued they were that she was in the movie, both in general as an actress but also her character. That conversation felt so warm and familiar to me because I know Ana Torrent and I knew what they meant. She was in The Spirit of the Beehive, and Crìa Cuervos, and The Nest. I knew by the way they were talking about her with curiosity and reverence that they probably have seen at least two of those films, in the same way that the guy at the front was talking to me excitedly about how beautiful the film was as I flashed my digital ticket. I could only be here if I've seen The Spirit of the Beehive and know Victor Erice.

The last thing I heard before we got drowned out by previews was the guy talking to the ladies explaining his relationship to this big genre we call art house. All art film people have a similar version of this lived experience and it becomes a big joke. Our films are very hard to find and we often have to go through funny means to even see them once. In the ‘60s and ‘70s, I'm sure they did some very funny things to have access. In the ‘80s, things seemed more sophisticated but more expensive. For my generation and maybe one up, it was all about torrenting. That's the experience that guy was sharing. I chuckled behind him and he couldn't hear me at all. From that brief ten minutes of pilfered conversation I learned a lot about someone.

You may be wondering what the movie itself is about. Well, that can be an in-joke too. It was a very director’s subject. It was a movie about memory and our relationship to film. You could say it was about our relationship to art and our consumption. You meet characters in the film who are dedicated to pursuit of something, preserving something, documenting and archiving and unearthing something. The main plot revolves around an actor that goes missing. We later learn that he has amnesia. We see everyone's reactions to not only finding this man who has been missing for over twenty years alive and well, but now totally memory-less. He has artifacts of his previous life but nothing to contextualize them.

It's a very complex thing. Some characters think he should be left alone. Some characters want closure. Some characters want an explanation. And naturally at least one character wants all of these things. What everyone really wants is to move on.

One unfortunate joke in my life is that I seem to be surrounded by people who would sooner forget my existence if I weren't in their face every day. That has been something tough to deal with. I can't imagine anyone likes the thought of being forgotten or neglected, that's what I think. That's what I thought, until I watched this movie and thought about it a lot. Some events of my life have made me wonder what does it truly feel like to be forgotten. What would it feel like to leave your old life behind and slowly lose your memory of that life to time or trauma.

Maybe that’s how you free yourself. Maybe that’s how it’s always meant to be. I was listening to a popular astrology podcast that I like sometimes, and it was talking about the lunar eclipse in Pisces that is behind us now. Again, I think about my 6th house and what that all means. It means I’m being brought a situation — his words were specifically “inherited”. In the days leading to my mom’s passing, I was drawing pentacle cards a lot. Pentacles in every deck I owned, even the digital ones. Even the ones that usually spit anything but pentacles at me. Ten of Pentacles, Nine of Pentacles, Queen of Pentacles. I was trying to think of anything but money. I was trying to think of anything but health. But when there was nothing left to think about if I was trying not to think about the essence of the pentacles suite, all I could think about was how lonely each pentacles card was. They were free and self sufficient, but alone. In a garden, in a field, on a throne. Even the Ten of Pentacles seems isolated as they look out to the city.

In Close Your Eyes, all the characters muse on the missing actor’s motivations for leaving. They say things like gambling debts, depression, stress. His closest friend offers something new: what if he just wanted to get away from his life as it was? And why can't he be allowed that? By the end of the movie, he finds his friend again and shows him the ending of their unfinished film. He wants to give the actor something to contextualize all his possessions. It didn't feel like the director was trying to make his actor come back. It felt like a friend remembering an old friend’s contributions to his life. It was a story. He never got to see the end of the movie and that's all that was left.

The end of the movie shows characters looking out at us, the audience, with unreadable expressions. Remorse, surprise? Understanding? Maybe it was up to us as the audience to decide how we feel about that. I wonder now if maybe, after all this time, between the director and his friend there was an unspoken agreement to lean into the disillusionment of it all.

When I say “lean in” unironically, I say it for the things that I think will drive me. Recently, I quietly exited all the organizational group chats that I've been part of all these years and ceased my participation in them for now. I said “for now”, but I told a close friend it may be on more of a “so mote it be/if Allah says so” type of timeline. I'm neither Muslim nor pagan so this was just a little in joke. Just a way to say it might be a long time. Just a way to say I don't know or I'm waiting for an omen. That itself is a joke too.

I’m thinking of different ways to lean into the disillusionment. I think I ought to be. Maybe it’s something that’s been happening the whole time, and I hadn’t noticed. Maybe it’s something that’s very common and just needed new wording. I bet you can grit your teeth and grind through it. In the movie, I think the director leans into the disillusionment in his own ways. We find out he only ever made one film, as the second movie went into development hell when his friend and lead actor disappeared. Instead of trying again, the director becomes an author. His books are popular. He supports himself with translation work. He approaches his medium in a different way. He lives by the sea and never quite goes back to film. He has an acceptance and contentment that only his missing friend has. Maybe that’s what happens when you stop resisting. It’s not a terribly nihilistic thought that maybe one can be happy with being disillusioned. I think that’s what I was trying to lean into. I am not simply coping with defeat, I am admitting to a real feeling. Dissatisfaction, disillusionment, hoping that naming all these stars in the sky will reveal a constellation. Something to point to, an action.

It’s not always that way. I can’t really tell you why. Sometimes the chariot is stuck. Sometimes that just isn’t your motivation anymore. When I took my leave from these groups, I didn't say much. I just thought to myself, well this is quite the betrayal. I’m glad people are understanding, but I’m just thinking of what now. I’ve dropped all these swords and wands. I guess I will go back to writing. My long neglected newsletter and fanfiction are right there waiting for me. Those things will make me happy and I’ll feel more productive, if only I could get to them. But I thought perhaps I would be driven to something else. I’ve been driven to waiting. I’m living a stagnant life on the coast, mentally, doing things that amuse me in the short term but I intentionally cut my purpose away. I didn’t expect that leaning into the disillusionment would do that.

Like Julio Arenas, I suppose I have a lot of reasons. Those reasons will turn into myth. And then I will forget. They won't matter and I’ll simply forget. I’ll forget the logic, the discourse, we may even forget what comes next. I’ve been in many situations where I know I did something with my whole chest very steadfast, and two months or two years later I couldn’t tell you at all what I was standing for. What I don't think I'll ever forget is leaning into the disillusionment. I don't think I'll ever forget the times I decided to pack it up and go home. I’ll forget fanfiction plots and old sketches but never the way the art made me feel at the time. I was happy. I think to myself so often, I could never be happy in retreat. And then I retreat and it’s like a pressure valve released. I will forget and be forgotten. Why can’t I just have that for myself?