On secret fun, abandoned buildings, and the passage of time
Slices of life (and grief) through the decades
I went to see Zone of Interest a few days ago, and haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. The soundscape of that film may never leave my bloodstream! Glazer is really one of those filmmakers who makes you keenly aware of the difference between filmmaking as art, and filmmaking as commercial entertainment. The “terrifyingly normal” Hoss family (to quote Hannah Arendt, since people have been throwing around her “banality of evil” quote re: this film) chilled me to the bone. There is an uncrossable chasm between the shallow ordinariness of these people, and the genocide taking place literally on the other side of their garden wall. A timely, relevant film to be meditating on.
To counterbalance, I also did a fun, small-s-secret thing that reminded me of the time in my life when everything was a fun, big-S-secret thing. A few days ago, I sang backup (from the balcony, not the stage) for Leslie Feist with Choir!Choir!Choir!, an unheralded little collab that most people in the audience at her Massey Hall shows weren’t aware of even while it was happening. The people immediately in front of the Choir section turned around when they heard us join her on a quiet chorus, but everyone else probably thought we were a pre-recorded element, or a spontaneous audience response, or maybe nothing at all in the overall cacophony. Somehow, this made it more fun.
The evening was unexpectedly moving. I’m not hugely familiar with Feist’s music, but I was pulled in by her easy manner and ability to tell stories and connect to the audience in a way that felt intimate. She cried more than once, as she talked about becoming a mom during the pandemic, and about death and loss (she lost her dad recently, though she didn’t specifically name her grief during the show).
My friend Rose and I often talk about how bad our culture is at dealing with grief, and how important it is to talk about death more openly than we do. I thought about this, as I watched Leslie Feist cry and implore the audience to hold a person that they’ve lost in their heart while she searched for tissues. It’s uncomfortable to watch someone experience private emotions in a public way, but it shouldn’t be. I was reminded me of the discombobulating experience of going to the Evergreen Brickworks to see the Space for Grief exhibit, which I wrote about here. I found myself sobbing in the middle of a room filled with sculptures and video projections, while a total stranger handed me tissue after tissue, and rubbed my back. Somehow, I did feel comforted.
The first time I visited the Brickworks was before it was renovated and reopened as the beautiful community hub it is now. In the fall of 2005, it was just an abandoned, mostly-ruined place full of mystery, danger, and brick dust. I went there for an Extermination Music Night, one of the best Secret things that I did with regularity 20 years ago.
In a way, I was grieving then too, though I didn’t know what to call the feelings yet. I was in a disappointing relationship with a man who was lying and gaslighting me, and I knew that we would have to break up at some point, because if we didn’t, I would be desperately unhappy for the rest of my life. I was grieving the fantasy of that relationship, which didn’t fully disintegrate for another year and a half.
For a while during the Brickworks show, he disappeared, and I felt relieved to be on my own among friends and likeminded strangers who wanted to experience transcendent music and art and weirdness, and weren’t bothered by the fact that we were all breathing in likely-toxic particles that would make our snot black for the next five days. I felt unburdened by his absence and guilty for not wanting him to come back, but he did, and told me he’d lost my backpack during his trek through the nearby wilderness. I was annoyed for weeks, because my discman was in the bag. I was a broke waitress who couldn’t afford an iPod.
While he was gone, I wandered through the noise and debris, watching people, dancing, eyeing a man who I was interested in but trying hard not to come on to, and chugging a heart-punishing mix of energy drinks and alcohol that made me feel powerful, sexy, and utterly insane (my signature vibe at the time).
I think that artist Matt Brown was roasting a whole lamb inside one of the building’s many narrow tunnels, unless I’m conflating this event with another much like it. I burned my fingers pulling flesh off the skeleton in the early hours of the morning.
Matt’s brother Jubal was a then-notorious art rebel who curated the Wasteland parties, which were similarly Secret, and which I also attended and loved. I used to see Jubal at events all the time, though he assiduously avoided acknowledging that we’d met dozens of times. Then, life changed and I didn’t see him for over a decade, until 2023, when we found ourselves at an art opening for a mutual friend. He nodded hello, and I responded in kind, and then my child photo-bombed all of his pictures. Middle age is funny in unexpected ways.
At one point at that 2005 Brickworks show, I climbed up an old piece of machinery and stared down at the crowd from a height of about fifteen feet. It felt like astral projection, like I had left my body and floated up to get this zoomed-out view of the mayhem. I thought about how badly I might get hurt if I fell off the precarious metal walkway, so I climbed back to safety and reentered the fray.
As I strolled through the Brickworks in November 2023, just days before the anniversary of my mom’s death, and watched my kid run, laughing, through the halls and tunnels, I flashed back to 2005, when I was the one running and laughing through the same spaces, flanked by the pack of wild animals I called my best friends, our treacherous path illuminated only by our flashlights.
Time is a flat circle, eh?