Have you heard the latest criticism on Alexander McQueen’s 2010 Spring Show unveiled in Paris? Well, it is all about the shoes, what they do to the body, hurting, desire and the ability to walk. Something I have to hear constantly about my own collection of stilettos. Why, why, why is the eternal question. Incidentally, Rodolfo, my ballet teacher, has pointed out that high heels help with posture if we follow his basic exercises of core control.

The New York Times debates this question with care and a fair approach, in comparison to the Daily Mail. Have they never heard of fetishism, or of exhibitionism? Apparently not. Well, let them have crocs and uggs and look stupid.

I began writing seriously when I was about thirteen. Out streamed poetry, stories and novels, the latter of which were always aborted early, usually half way through the second chapter. It took my friend Douglas Adams to encourage me to go further and he did this by pointing out that the reason I had never managed to finish a novel was that I had never properly understood how difficult, how ragingly and absurdly difficult, it is to do. “It is almost impossibly hard,” he told me. It is supposed to be. But once you truly understand how difficult it is,” he added, with signature paradoxicality, “it all becomes a lot easier.” It was many years later that Clive James quoted to me Thomas Mann’s superb crystallisation of this “A writer,” said Mann, “is a person for whom writing is more difficult than for other people.” How liberating that definition is.

In the middle of chapter 4, I am suffering.

I was walking in a street in the centre of Bilbao (although it could have been Madrid) when I noticed, inside a shop, that my analyst was giggling. The shop was a kind of psychology enterprise but looked suspiciously like a clothes repair shop, with a counter up front and people working behind it. In the dream, I am shocked at the discovery and can’t believe my eyes. I walk back and front in front of the shop, trying for the analyst not to see me but wanting to know more about the scene. He does not see me. Meanwhile, in the street, there is a fight going on outside a car. It is a very violent fight, involving a man and a woman. By far, the woman is the most aggressive.

Indautxu, Bilbao

I liked participating in something that is beyond my PhD, something that the degree will hopefully enable me to do more of, and more often. I like writing. I like writing books, even. I will go as far as to say that I like the publishing process despite editors, going over words time and time again and working with writing done over two years ago. Publishing is not for the faint hearted, or the impatient. Neither is writing, I am finding out. I am going to contradict myself: I hate writing, but I like to have written and seeing the cover of the book, with the title of my chapter and my name next to it (its accent in the right place) brought me that proud feeling, that well-being.

All the more because, as I mention in my chapter, I am coming into this as an outsider. I am a fine artist, writing about a design piece for a book on management. Of course I wasn’t sure about it but I followed my friend Glyn’s advice: when you are starting, never say no. To anything. I was lucky that the team that edited the book have been very supportive and have done an excellent job. They were very kind to strangers. And from that position, one I know very well (because I constantly seek it), I have been able to produce something I am quite happy with, as it gives an outlet to a bit of research that, sadly, did not have any place in the 40,000 words of my PhD. Still, readers will find my usual obsessive self in my words; there is also seduction, psychoanalysis and admiration of a creative piece of design that I am very happy to own.

With thanks to Charlotte who bought Juicy Salif for me when I left my last job and told me about her shopping experience, which partly inspired the chapter.

When I saw the work at the Serpentine, I could not tear my eyes off it. The clocks were completely synchronous, to the very second, and anything like that –synchronised swimming, for example– captures my attention, puts me in a trance. When I thought about saving the work from natural disaster, the idea of reproducing it in my kitchen came about. I scoured the internet, found reasonable enough clocks, bought them, displayed them. I did not think much of it until they started telling the time apart. I thought it was due to the cheap make but GoMA’s installation made me realise that eternal synchronicity, in art, life and specially love, is impossible. The clocks were a few seconds apart. No doubt, they will join hands again in the future but each is an entity. The perfection lies, partly, in the imperfection. Phew.

The explanation for what happened at the Serpentine can be found in Felix González-Torres’ other works. It is well known that viewers can eat his candy installations, and that these have an ideal weight (usually his and his lover’s put together). The sweets are replenished over night and I suspect the clocks are synched too. Perfection in love is an illusion, a spell cast over viewers. I felt much closer to Glasgow’s Perfect Lovers and I will rescue my kitchen clocks from their unfair exile and let them tell me the time they want.

It was sad to read in the post I linked to above, how John Hughes thought Hollywood killed John Candy (who reminds me of my funny uncle a lot, and I like them both). It is probably true and I applaud Hughes’ decision to abandon his film career in the name of principles, for the future of his kids. There should be more people around who take these difficult decisions because life, as he now knows, is only one, and it goes away pretty quickly. There should also be more people around who write letters and maintain a private correspondence, people who read, listen, consider and reply, like John Berger did to Belen. Off to find my Basildon Bond. I know it is still procrastination from that damned chapter 3, but at least it is more worthwhile than playing Solitaire. Anyone up for bringing letter writing back into fashion?

I am not sure I really wanted to watch Antichrist. I like Lars von Trier a lot so the kernel of my desire was more wanting to engage in a conversation with him, to see what he had to say after a few years away from us (a few years of illness). I did not dislike the premise of the film, but the fact that I was so certainly going to suffer in my comfortable theatre seat filled me with dread.

And suffer I did, because it is all too painfully close to the human bone, but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed it, at the same time. In the post film chat I had with my marvelous company, we ascertained that this was a film that, if you wanted to survive, you had to put into play a defense mechanism: it could range from an overwhelming focus on the beauty of the images, the repeat telling that this is a film, vexed rejection (like many critics at Cannes, with their Misogynistic nightmares, seem to have done), the repeated exclamations of the words ‘oh Christ!’ (like the 70 odd man next to me demonstrated) or noisy crisp packets, to name but a few… Mine was, of course, psychoanalysis. Lars von Trier handed it to be in an easy to grasp silver tray.

Apparently his therapist hated the film. No wonder. Dafoe’s character, the therapist, seems to break all the rules of therapy in his desperate descent into chaos (and chaos reigns) following the death of his son. I rooted for him but I understood the self destruction of both he and she. It had an unstoppable force and I believe that, were I in the same situation, I would act a little like both: irrational (read psychotic), like Charlotte Gainsbourg; detached (read psychotic) like Willem Dafoe. The depths they have reached have no space for logic or caring. It was a matter of seeing who would survive. No possible pact of death would have been credible because this is human nature at war, in conflict with itself, with what it is (narrowed down in the film to evil and not-evil, I did not see much good). The conflict is, of course, resolved, in what I considered an elegant way, although it had a whiff of Lars vonTrier’s own defense mechanism. I am pretty sure than even he needed one to get through it and the Calvin Klein advert-like stylization of the prologue and epilogue could not mean anything else.

I want to leave something very clear, here: this is in no way a misogynistic film. Any reference to gender is purely circumstantial, natural, if you want, and represented in the body. It is the way it is, and there is no comment or ideological stance. When there is sexual relation, it is only to show the Lacanian maxim that ‘there is no sexual relation’. And yes, there is genital mutilation and some violence, but all placed where they need to be, as the freakish outcome of the situation the characters have put themselves in. If grief stricken, a (not very close) couple retire to Eden (Tarkovski’s Zone?), miles away from any civilising process that may help them get out of themselves, and, the house is situated underneath an oak tree filled with acorns which, constantly falling, must creep and deprive of sleep and in the attic of the house there are the vestiges of She’s thesis on the persecution of witches (and PhDs can be very obsessive), what would you expect?

There is also what the film calls evil, and which I would question as such (but that may need more thinking and reading, and re-watching on my part, if I ever find myself re-watching Antichrist). Above all, there’s plenty of what is at Lars von Trier’s film making core, as shown in ‘The Idiots’, ‘The 5 obstructions’ and ‘Dogville’ amongst others: a fascination of a human being for other human beings and their desire.

For fuller critiques, including clever breakdowns of the film and analyses of Lars vonTrier from the perspective of a film maker, you should read:

Towards the front, please
Infinite Thøught
Nacho Vigalondo (in Spanish)

Here are Neil Bartlett’s accurate words (from an article written for the Guardian in 2005):

‘No theatre was as brutally or as elegantly in the present tense as Bausch’s, no women are more powerful than hers, no men more tender, no steps, slaps, looks or touches were ever as real’

Pina Bausch, a life in pictures.