Some more untimely news! An odd bit of gossip a friend shared about Tilda Swinton carrying on through life the past few years with two lovers, one, it seemed, for each of her different roles and aspects, for some reason arose in the old thought chamber recently and I remembered to look it up myself.
I know her best as Orlando, the title character in a film that was one of the first to blow my baby young mind. I've elaborated on an idea of hers that I find relevant about capitalism, and the response to loneliness with that of rampant consumption, used to embody, however artificially, relationships that are psychologically and phisiologically vital to our growth as healthy humans. This cycle of felt loss and reactionary consumption seems of course to help form dependencies on inanimate objects, obsessive, yet uninspired affinities to things or people hundreds of miles away, working to make us fat and repressed, dissociated and addicted, egomaniacal and stagnant. Here are "all [her] thoughts on love," (from a trash-box UK gossip column no less,) yes, I read it till the end:
"I live a soldier's life when I'm working. That's how it feels to me, except I've got a slightly greater chance of survival."
She also, now, has Sandro to keep her company while she is away. One associate said that his role was almost that of 'her personal assistant'.
Certainly, he would be unwise to expect a happy-ever-after scenario from this relationship, as Swinton does not believe in it.
"Loneliness is the deal," she said in a recent interview.
"Loneliness is the last great taboo.
"If we don't accept loneliness, then capitalism wins hands down. Because capitalism is all about trying to convince people that you can distract yourself, that you can make it better. And it ain't true."
Maybe she can say this because Byrne is always there for her when she returns. She relishes the split.
"The split is important," she says.
"I could call it a double life but actually it's really quite integrated," she says.
"It's just a working life - I go away and then I come back. John is always at home."
Byrne, it seems, does not try too hard to make sense of what is going on, but just holds on to the idea that they have always been "the best of chums" and will continue to be."
Maybe I'm idealizing their situation, but obviously the author of the article is portraying the interconnected relationships to be sapped of meaning or satisfaction for anyone besides Tilda Swinton. Personally (yech who cares blog narrative ahh creeping public diary therapy) I think polygamy (as opposed to bigamy) would give most women a social support for creative projects or family rearing (if that's their thing) and give them time to freely explore the whole of their life's work and relieve the pressure to fit the progressive version of their higher self strictly within an evolved aspect of femininity. This could potentially form (as amorphously as possible) a small, helpful, creative and not excessively emotional community, not exhibiting romanticism of human relationships of the Disney brand (those 'magic' moments are spontaneous yet surely hard worked-for, not necessarily for the other person's presumed satisfaction, but rather in doing the 'right work' (sorry to lay so much Gurdjieff-smoked in the slightly vague Eastern Philo-flavor, but its the word) on each individual's self. When these moments of spontaneous actualization occur (deals on spirituality/philosophy shopping at its best) , sure, that's pretty romantic. Go ahead and kiss under the mistletoe of NOT-MISSED-CONNECTIONS. But certainly an anxiety riddled existence (for most females I'm sure) of small, narrowly lived self-consciousness lays ahead of anyone expecting that flame to burn all the time. Love for all things can inform your everyday actions (but for ONE person?) yikes. Expand. Expand. And Simplify. The trick for this situation to be new and creep-free is to not have the shared goal for those involved in partnerships for mutual happiness be religiously cultish, or exclusively orbit around sexual congress with one 'shared' person.
The case of Swinton, where the woman has more than one lover, seems to be a living philosophy, an embodied experiment in civility, honesty, transparency but also discretion, respect, and adaptation to REALITY. If infidelities occur in most relationships, breaking them up, causing guilt, insecurity, needless self-esteem destruction and more- it just seems insane to continue teaching the youth that they should expect lives, rules and experienced relationships that will only lead to this sort of paradigm-blasting unhappiness. Commitment does seem key for living a life efficiently with long term goals in mind. It is also, of course, a unique situation to meet someone you can level with, whom you are attracted to, who has similar values and shared knowledge base (for some people, this of course isn't the issue, perhaps mine...) but not all needs can most likely be met with one other person. But why be rampantly promiscuous, for that matter? Certainly this way is not fulfilling or healthy, and seems time consuming (that is if you have labors of love, of the non-human variety to work on.) Having a few partners that bring out different essential qualities of your ideal self, etc. might in fact help humanity evolve to self love and loving others in a honest way, not exclusively teddy bear gift love, your thighs are cosmically exquisite love, or a burn-out Romeo and Juliet love, but the sort that makes us all move gracefully. With children involved the matter just seems to require upfront, open discussion about the needs and goals of each party, the time they wish to spend with the other person, and how they would like it to be spent. Its a partnership for life, or whatever amount of time/era you decide to spend together (not ruling out spontaneous durations- if thats part of each persons mutual goal) and not a thing to to have simply to sustain itself. This discourages lazy, plan-B coupling, obsessive, unreflecting hookups, and compulsive squashing or manipulating of something you love or respect for your own self esteem (aka short-term, artificial self actualization.) People used to go away to battles, markets on long stretches of time, to sea and the like. I'm not sure human couples were meant to spend every day together.
Monogamy seems to be about women in the confounding position of ego 'balance' in this world, playing a role that while often will be desired by many men, will still be physio-emotionally bound to a man that desires many women.
A relationship is not to have only in order to sustain the relationship, but to advance the freedom, consciousness, and health of each individual relating within it's agreements.
And like sitting on a tube while trying to blow it up, ruled by the excitement of the immanent ride, by smothering something you would like to grow, you could end up red faced on a popped piece of plastic.
"Marriage: 'An Experience everyone should go through and then live his own life' or 'living one's own life-an experience everyone should go through and then marry'?" Palinurus
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment