“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” When I think of my past, I immediately get an erection. The only thing I care to remember is my series of sexual conquests. Everything else is not essential. I used to know the names of my conquests, but now, all I can remember are their bodies, face, and intelligence. I was never a big fan of names because I have a hard time connecting something verbally to a face. It’s uncommon for a writer to admit this, but the visual image is far more important to me than the vocabulary. I think back to countless women I have touched, both in the literal and spiritual sense, and every one of them offered me great pleasure, that can’t be recorded by words on a page.
When I close my eyes, it is like being in H. G. Wells’ Time Machine, where I set the dials to a specific time and place, and go there. I can visit ancient civilization or the pre-war Paris years, by just imagining what it would be just like. I don’t need to be there, but just knowing a few names, for instance, Boris Vian, Juliette Gréco and of that sort, I already have a place and time in mind. So my time machine is me closing my eyes and transporting myself to that world. My sexual time-travelling sort of works the same. Some are real memories of actual fuck sessions, and others are “imagined” get-togethers where I focus on a beauty of my choice.
There is a secret club, only for men of a certain age, that I belong to called “Gas, Grass, & Ass,” where we discuss our sexual conquests among ourselves. It’s rude to discuss these things in an open forum or even in public, but within this club, we can freely discuss in detail our sexual adventures. The one rule is the fact that we never mention the name of the woman, or give any personal background on her, except what she is like in bed, and after all, we are gentlemen of a certain age and time.
One of the things we like to talk about is if we were in, or had the use of a Time Machine, who would we revisit for sexual pleasure. The irony is that this club only focuses on the past. So in a sense, I’m in a room full of men who live in or for the past. Some say one cannot live in the past, but I think we all know that is not exactly true. The present only exists because there is a past. How we perceive that “past” is how we see our present. The future we never know.
“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.” The one thing we all agree with is that each woman has her particular scent. I commented that I had a fantasy of sitting in a room blindfolded and the women that I share intimacy with comes in. I identify each one by their natural sexual scent. To be wrong, would be fatal! Nevertheless, it is interesting that all of us men at the club have a highly sense of smell, and that it’s a big part of our sexuality or desire. When I get home from our weekly meetings, I feel exhausted — drained even. The only thing that makes any sense to me is that “the pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already a memory.”
When I think of the name “Anna Karina” it brings up images of her former husband Jean-Luc Godard, but when I see a picture of her, I only think of her. I’m crazy about her. “At the moment everything was being destroyed she had created that which was most difficult: she had not drawn something out of nothing (a meaningless act), but given to nothing, in its form of nothing, the form of something.” I never fully understand the meaning of a beautiful woman as it is defined in words. Do they mean she’s pretty? I’m struck by her character, or maybe the words she says through various writers and directors. I never think of Godard as being beautiful, but when I see Karina in his films, I think she’s “beautiful. ”
“I could not work with a girl who did not have a spiritual quality.” Throughout my life I tried to find my own Anna Karina, but my lack of spirituality held me back to find the happiness that is owed me. The very image of love, I couldn’t really define in words, so it became a sense of nothingness. I needed a name attached to it, to give me some meaning. “Anna Karina” represents a sea of mixed passions that as a fisherman, I have to throw a line out there, and see what bites. I watched her watching Renée Jeanne Falconetti on a movie screen that for me, reflects on attaching an identity to another. To be so vulnerable, and to pick up on another person’s pain, is the precise definition of my unhappiness.
“We can’t do anything with an object that has no name.” But once we attach a name to it, or her, it becomes something painful. I have a faint memory of seeing a film that was 10 hours long called “Greed.” I sat through the whole film at the Cinémathèque Française and I couldn’t move from my fold-up chair as I watched it on the Steenbeck. The images flickered in front of me as I cringed in knowing what will happen to the leading characters. Only 12 people have seen the long version of this film, and if we were on a trial, we would find the film’s director, Erich von Stroheim, not guilty, for destroying his film. If for nothing else, the time melts in front of you, but ironically enough, most people comment how long the film is, without giving merit or praise (deservedly so) to the work on hand. It is now destroyed.
It has been re-constructed into a version that is almost like the 10-hour film, but alas, it is only a mirror image of the work. The exquisite face of ZaSu Pitts still exists, in scenes and stills, but like my memory, it’s fading fast. Anna Karina stays with me, because I presume I know her through the films. Specifically the ones she did with Godard. But again, it is mainly reflected through the eyes of her ex-husband, and therefore is that a ‘realistic’ knowledge of Karina? As a publisher, I want to make a book that is nothing but close-up images of Anna Karina. No text, and not even a title or copyright page. Words fail the image. Just a mass-market designed book that holds the image of the greatest treasure on earth - Anna Karina.
“To exist is to change, to change is to mature, to mature is to go on creating oneself endlessly.” When I think of my past, I immediately get an erection. The only thing I care to remember is my series of sexual conquests. Everything else is not important. I used to know the names of my conquests, but now, all I can remember are their bodies, face, and intelligence. I was never a big fan of names, because I have a hard time connecting something verbally to a face. It’s uncommon for a writer to admit this, but the visual image is far more important to me than the vocabulary. I think back to countless women I have touched, both in the literal and spiritual sense, and every one of them offered me great pleasure, that can’t be really recorded by words on a page.
When I close my eyes it is like being in H. G. Wells’ Time Machine, where I set the dials to a specific time and place, and go there. I can visit ancient civilization or the pre-war Paris years, by just imagining what it would be just like. I don’t need to be actually there, but just knowing a few names, for instance Boris Vian, Juliette Gréco and of that sort, I already have a place and time in mind. So my time machine is really me closing my eyes and transporting myself to that world. My sexual time-traveling sort of works the same. Some are real memories of actual fuck sessions, and others are “imagined” get-togethers where I focus on a beauty of my choice.
There is a secret club, only for men of a certain age, that I belong to called “Gas, Grass, & Ass, ” where we discuss our sexual conquests among ourselves. It’s rude to discuss these things in an open forum or even in public, but within this club we can freely discuss in detail our sexual adventures. The one rule is the fact that we never mention the name of the woman, or give any personal background on her, except what she is like in bed, and after all, we are gentlemen of a certain age and time.
One of the things we really like to talk about is if we were in, or had the use of a Time Machine, who would we revisit again for carnal pleasure. The irony is that this club only focuses on the past, so in a sense I’m in a room full of men who live in or for the past. Some say one cannot live in the past, but I think we all know that is not exactly true. The present only exists, because there is a past, and how we perceive that “past” is how we see our present. The future we never knows.
“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.” The one thing we all agree with is that each woman has her own particular scent. I commented that I had a fantasy of sitting in a room blindfolded and the women that I share intimacy with comes in. I identify each one by their natural sexual scent. To be wrong, would be fatal! Nevertheless, it is interesting that all of us men at the club have a highly sense of smell, and that it’s a big part of our sexuality or desire. When I get home from our weekly meetings, I feel exhausted. Drained even. The only thing that makes any sense to me is that “the pure present is an ungraspable advance of the past devouring the future. In truth, all sensation is already memory.”
Happy Birthday Elliott Gould
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Happy Birthday to one of the all-time greats and one of the coolest of the
cool Elliott Gould. From my 2019 New Beverly interview with Elliott Gould
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