I could drink a case of you, and I'd still be on my feet.

Yesterday, I watched "Love Actually." I cried. I am getting older. The more time passes the easier it is for me to become emotional and invested in fictional characters' lives, their qualms and quandaries. I cry at everything. I like it. It marks a sense of age, the fact I care so much at all, I figure, it can't be that fucking bad can it?! As a film-obsessed teen, nothing bothered me (except poorly-executed denouements and watching Taxi Driver with an ex who didn't realise the genius of the cinematography...but I'm a snobby twat)and would drive me to a point wherein I had to turn off a film for I was upset at the sight of teens being stalked and killed, or sobbing relentlessly over the tragic situations lovers are faced with when they're unable to be together.

I have lived more of a life, and in that time traversed, love I have for humans and people has wound itself deeper. Like a scar in a tree trunk, or a tattoo on a pregnant belly. It remains, yet expands and lays more of a permanent purchase. I fit perfectly into a demographic, which sometimes still sits in that post-student state of daze not knowing what the hell to do with themselves, and then there's those who, ready with map in hand, know exactly what to do and have done it all or are on the road. I'm an adult dressed up in styles that make me look like you, and you like me, and with an inch of something golden squeezed from my experience of 27 years and its that tiny deposit, a jar of sap (thanks AIC) with a lot of room for the new, but JUST enough to make me weep like a baby when Emma Thompson discovers her husband has been unfaithful.

Thing about that scene is the point of reference it makes to music, and in particular, Joni Mitchell whose music plays a pivotal role in that specific story arc. Thing about that. Joni is my reminder of when my partner told me they had cheated. Does that make me a selfish audience? That I can only emote to a scene which has currency for my past, from which I can see correlation, where I spot a shadow. A shadow spot on this x-ray of an old relationship. That's how cinema functions and how we viewers empathise and are drawn to tears, it brings us to a position wherein we can see the character in us, and vice versa (I wrote several assignments for uni way back about tears, and melodrama. Now, reading the fucking essay has me in bastard tears!)

To be honest that scene is pretty potent, the cinematography is wonderful (actually reminds me of Taxi Driver -- you know, where Travis Bickle is on the phone and the camera slips to the right and for the entire call we see a deserted corridor -- emptiness achieved brilliantly.) Emma Thompson stands on the left side of her bedroom, the remainder of the shot empty except for the bed, a bedside table, a lamp. She breaks down quietly for fear of disturbing her husband and two children in the adjacent room.

I was not so composed. I screamed and shouted and spat out the most vicious things down the phone. I then broke down, in my room, listening to Blue

Where the fuck would we be without popular culture? (I'd be in the pub)