I'm Not There...and neither are you... (Kind of a Movie Review #2)

I’m not there, I’m gone.
Bob Dylan

Just got the DVD of I’m Not There—a movie that makes little sense to normal people—and, somehow, my explanations don't seem to help much: “that part represents Blood on the Tracks...and that part’s kind of a mix of the Basement Tapes, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, and a couple other things...and that part’s kind of a parody of parts of Don’t Look Back, and Eat the Document, as well as an homage to Fellini and Godard, and the conversation the Dylan character's having with Michelle Williams’ character, who’s based on Edie Sedgwick, who Dylan wrote ‘Just Like a Woman’ about, and Lou Reed wrote ‘Femme Fatale’ about, is mostly lyrics from an obscure song called ‘She’s Your Lover Now,' and the Dylan character's played by a woman because...um....’” Nonetheless, every time I see it—and, truth be told, I've been watching it over and over—I become more convinced that it's the best thing to make its way to a movie theatre so far in this young century...capturing the masks and mythologies around Bob Dylan in a dizzying mosaic...from Cate Blanchett’s brilliant androgynous rock star to a surreal funeral in an absurd circus-like village that Pat Garrett’s about to put a highway through...though it's also more than that, since, even if most of us haven’t gone to quite so much effort to construct and project various personas as Dylan...or Bowie...or Madonna...that doesn’t mean they’re not there....

Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself.
I am large. I contain multitudes.
Walt Whitman

People talk a lot about the real me, as if any one me is any more or less real than any other me...and, more often than not, the real label tends to get pinned to our worst selves...be nice to somebody for years, but the one day you're not so nice, suddenly it’s now I’m finally seeing the real you...though, fortunately, mothers and any others we’re lucky enough to have love us unconditionally tend to see only that sweet child underneath all the thorny scar tissue...and certainly deserve to be loved unconditionally right back for that...even if it's no more the whole story than the other....

The heart of the confusion is that man has a sense of self which seems to him to be continuous and solid.
Chogyam Trungpa

Here in America we’re really into re-invention—as you’re no doubt aware, even if that awareness is mixed with resentment toward the English teacher who made you read The Great Gatsby—hell, be who you wanna be is kinda like an outtake from the Bill of Rights...or at least it would’ve been if Amendments I-X had been written as series of Positive Affirmations....

I’m too much with myself, I wanna be someone else.
The Lemonheads

Of course, the web has created endless new possibilities for being who you wanna be (though I, in case you’re wondering, am every bit as brilliant and studly in real life as I seem here)—as I said to a friend's fourteen year old daughter: “most boys your age on the web are actually men my age...and you don't wanna meet them”...that would probably count as little more than a virtual truth itself, but this is the internet we’re talking about....I actually downloaded the Second Life thing...curious about what possible appeal there could be for middle aged suburbanites to enter a virtual community to role-play as middle aged suburbanites, like I’d read about in the New York Times. In between laptop crashes, I somehow stumbled into the...well...raunchier neighborhoods...where children—virtual or otherwise—were the only thing not allowed...while toilets...Great Danes...horses...never mind. The one thing that surprised me, at first, was how predominantly female the crowd was...probably four or five beautiful, lingerie-clad female avatars for every male...and the vast majority of them lesbians, where I’d expected mostly nerdy guys. It didn’t take me too long to figure that one out....