How can you title something when writing about finding your way through the dark towards something you didn't know you were looking for?
Love, like art, is intense and messy and confusing and hard to explain, but when you see it: it is overpowering.
“Do all lovers feel they're inventing something”
-Héloïse, Portrait of a Lady on Fire
When I was younger one of the more memorable activities at the local “science center” was something called the Touch Tunnel. The way the tunnel worked was kids would go into a pitch black maze with the knowledge that if they followed the wall along their left hand no matter what they would make it to the end.
There never was any idea of what you would encounter in the tunnel, but as long as you followed the left side you would make it to the end. At one point you had to climb a ladder, but with your left hand guiding you there would be light at the end of the tunnel.
For most of my life I have been terribly afraid of the dark. I slept with a night light until I was in high school, and I would wrap myself tightly in sheets when I’d go to bed to cover up parts of my body that I was afraid would be subject to vampires in my closet. So, the Touch Tunnel was never my favorite nor my go to exhibition at the science center, yet I kept finding myself traversing through the dark to complete it. There is something thrilling doing something that is utterly terrifying and against everything you want to do, and coming out on the other side.
As I got older I got less scared of the Touch Tunnel, and more adventurous in it. One year the Boy Scout troop I was a part of did an overnight at the center where we got to go through the exhibitions with no one else there. (Writers Note: reflecting on these stories really just sheds light on how much systematic abuse BSA covered up and how they created situations for this abuse to fester. Thank goodness I was in a great troop with people who would never harm a fly, but yikes.) By this time I was old enough to want to push boundaries in a way that some friends and I decided we were going to do the tunnel, but follow our right hand and see where we ended up.
Well, we ended up getting yanked out of the tunnel by a staffer fed up with us messing around. You see, there were night vision cameras and hidden doors just in case a kid had a panic attack, or a bunch of snotty 12-year-olds decided to get lost on purpose.
The moments before we were yanked out of the Touch Tunnel though, I will never forget. I was in the dark, free, unsure where I was or where I was going, but knew there would be an end eventually or, at least, a wall to run into. The moments before hitting that wall or the exit were true freedom.
That notion of trying to describe feeling your way through the dark to a conclusion that only you know to be thrilling and worth the adventure pops up throughout the movie Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which I had the pleasure of seeing this week.
If you don’t know what the movie is about, it deals with a lady, Marianne, commissioned to paint a portrait of a lady, Héloïse, on an isolated island in France before she is to be married off to a wealthy gentleman. Héloïse, does not wish to be married, so she does not wish to be painted, so Marianne is hired to paint her on sight. The pair get close before Marianne discloses to Héloïse that she had been hired to paint her. At the last minute Marianne reveals her true intentions and destroys the painting. Héloïse, seeing this play out, decides to pose for a portrait on the condition it happens when her mother is off the island for five days.
Free from the systemic constraints hanging above them, the two women share a brief, passionate love learning about each other and themselves. As the pair get closer the film delves into the sorority of women, egalitarian romance, and how art is made and perceived. It is that last theme that resonated so much with me, as I am going through a transition where I cannot even see the end goals, but finally for the first time in my life I have the language to talk about it and learn to express myself as me.
Living in a convent Héloïse has no knowledge of the contemporary classical music that has inspired so much of Europe at this time, and it is left to Marianne to describe what music is like and how it can inspire. To me, the only true way to be overwhelmed by art is to experience it in front of you, otherwise it is like trying to feel your way the dark with only limited direction. You know where you are trying to go, but that uncertainty makes it impossible to fully describe without living the actions.
Watching Héloïse succumb to her first lesbian experience and embrace her desires in a setting that was judgement free and allowed pure exploration and bliss brought back memories of Marina for me.
When I was in college I did a semester in Freiburg im Breisgau, in the southwest corner of Germany. There, one of my flatmates was named Marina and one of the most beautiful persons I’ve ever met in my life.
Marina was shy and did not interact much with the flat that we both shared. There were four German students with three American students staying there. When she was around we managed to become fast friends and she introduced me to her friends at the University of Freiburg. We would see each other sparingly, but always had wonderful conversations and I made it a point to always be interested in her and what she was doing. She ended up leaving halfway through my semester to move to Hamburg, well before I had any courage to tell her how I felt about her.
Before she left, we became friends on Facebook, which offered me a small glimpse into her incredibly private life. Back then, it was very common for people to link their Spotify accounts (or Spoh-tee-fye as she pronounced it) so it would show on Facebook, for all to see, what we were listening to at any moment. After getting to know Marina she told me that she had studied in Gothenburg , Sweden, so I started listening to a lot of Swedish music to try and catch her attention digitally.
One day, she noticed that I had been listening to songs by “The Knife” a Swedish duo known for their song “Heartbeats”. Marina called me into her room, which she was in the process of packing up and asked me to add her on Facebook so we could stay in touch, but also because she wanted to show me a cover of the song “Heartbeats” by Jose Gonzalez to see if I had either heard it or liked it. I had not and was eager to listen to a new song with someone that I wish I could in that moment pour my heart out to.
I can’t say how many times I have listened to that cover since that moment. There I was standing near someone I wanted to pour my world out to and relishing in her noticing I existed and wanting to share some of her life with me.
Marina eventually left the flat, and I made sure to make plans when my semester ended to visit her where she lived in Hamburg. I actually rearranged my entire two week trip to make sure she was around when I finished the semester then let the rest of the trip fall into place.
We spent two magical days together exploring the city, meeting her friends, barbecuing, going to the harbour festival, and just spending time with each other. Our last day together we rode bikes around the city, went to a museum and finally just ended the day in her flat sitting near each other while reading and just sitting in each other’s company. One of my biggest regrets in my life was not professing my feelings for her in that moment and praying that she felt the same way. We spent a lot of time literally just sitting next to each other, not saying anything and just soaking in the moment. Perhaps it was just another day for her seeing a friend and she thought nothing of it. Perhaps we both were drowning in our feelings and had no idea how to say anything to each other. I will never know. I will live forever with that memory and the feelings stirred in my soul kept in that suspended animation.
The next day we rode the subway together as she went to work and I went to the train station to head off to my next adventure. Marina got off first and I remember standing there giving her a hug, watching her leave the train and finally seeing her turn around before the doors closed and the train moved on. I’m still haunted by this moment.
I bring this up because watching Portrait of the Lady on Fire made me realize that this was the first time I was viewing my romantic interest for someone else through the eyes of being a lady and not a man. My love that developed that year was problematic at times (at one time I drunkenly walked around a bar right by where we lived for 45 minutes hoping she would show up so I could talk to her), but the gaze in which I viewed it through was a much queerer and decidedly unmale-like gaze. I now realized that I longed to be in a much different relationship with Marina as a much different person I thought I was at the time.
Watching Marianne watch Héloïse overcome with emotion upon hearing a Vivaldi symphony, I realized I was in actuality watching myself realize the love that I once had and hope to have every day with my current partner Liz, whom I love dearer than the earth itself, even if I don’t always show up. In that moment as the film cut to black I longed more than anything to release the emotions swirling inside me through tears, but could not and could only muster a loud sigh.
Finishing the movie and my reaction to it brought out some embarrassing truths about myself and my place in the world.
There are times I cannot control my emotions, and largely I relegate situations through acting as if the lens of the world is on myself. This can be, rightfully I may add, annoying to my partner, but it is also something I can’t just do away with. I am happy to be the person who has the audible gasp at the end of a movie that stirs my soul so much that I am still pouring through every minute I can remember of it in my mind days after it ends. However, I also understand that as a trans woman the world both does and absolutely does not revolve around me.
I think one of the reasons the movie stirred me so much was because how much it made me realize how male my past relationships had been. I am learning to re-love my partner and every day brings something new and exciting as I explore my own femininity, but there always will be a part of our love that started off as me exercising that male gaze and desire. I wish every day that I could unlearn it completely, but we also have been in a relationship where the power dynamic has been skewed in my favor.
Watching love play out on a screen where those barriers were attempted to be deconstructed and showcased as freer was an enjoyment I did not know I could witness in film. It also showed a language I did not know I could speak, one of sorority between women, a dream I had had for my life but did not know I was looking for. The symphony had only been described by other trans women, and I had longed to hear it for myself. This film allowed me to hear the first notes on my own, even if it will be a long time before the performance is complete.
Understanding what you want from your future and how to achieve it, still does not erase the sins of the past.
Repairing a relationship can take a lifetime of work to undo toxic behavior, even as things get better in the present and future. I wish I was never so selfish in my relationship, but I know I wouldn’t be where I am right now if I hadn’t acted the way I had. I certainly wouldn’t have pursued the best person I could have ever found on earth. I’m grateful to be able to have the space to unlearn everything that caused that toxicity to build up, especially even with the best partner on earth (seriously, she has been beyond forgiving which I don’t deserve).
It is interesting that Liz and I had such different reactions to the movie. She noticed the manipulative aspects of Marianne watch Héloïse’s courtship, while I noticed the tension between the two trying to navigate an unknown situation full of desire, but not know desire for what. This duality of experience fits in with the movie as the theme of no two paintings even of the same subject could be the same, as art takes its own unique route to be made. The pivotal scene where Héloïse gets lit on fire (this is not a spoiler it is in the trailer for the movie) features an acapella song sung in Latin. The director (in an interview linked above) has a translation, which differed vastly from how Liz, who is fluent in Latin, interpreted the song. Even reading both translations after the fact produced two different gazes of the movie while reflecting on it.
For me, the brilliance in the movie lies in this. From the use of digital cameras to capture the scenes in low level light to showcase what could not be literally seen by older cameras to how the characters we come to know are shown differently in every scene, our gaze lies in our interpretation and is no longer the director's alone.
My partner and I view our relationship very differently, but we are both feeling our way through the dark to get to try and capture a feeling we are unsure when and where it will arrive. I am forever grateful I am not on that journey alone, even if it is hard to know how to take that journey with someone else.