How to begin? I guess I should address the fact that I have been lax in writing you here in our public forum. And my laxness has clearly affected your laxness…and it just perpetuates this continuing cycle of laxness. That said, I can’t promise that I will be much better this year. Yet, there are circumstances that may improve my inspirational spurts thereby leading to more writing of entertaining anecdotes to you. Those circumstances namely being that I am more settled into a comfortable school routine and I am consciously making an effort to socialize…instead of my much easier state of hermitdom (which really is just so comfortable for me). Those explanations now out of the way, I will now proceed into this evening’s adventure in my continuing quest for culture in a cornfield. I hope you don’t mind the length of this tale…for it’s quite long and detailed…
As you know, while my little grey cells (as the inimitable Hercule Poirot would say) are being constantly stimulated thereby feeding my intellectual needs, the broader cultural needs have been somewhat starved here in Carbondale. I don’t have access to the museums, or theatres, or films, or so many other things that I love about New York. At least not readily accessible. Here in my ivory tower in the cornfield I have to actively seek them out. Tonight I encountered some – Midwest style.
As there is a major university here, there are cultural events that are sponsored through SIU and its various departments. One of my professors in the Cinema & Photography department has started a Film Fridays Series. The purpose of the series is to screen those types of films that don’t actually come to Carbondale or the surrounding area. Remember my little escapade last year, when I went to see ‘An Education’ on the last night of the one-week it was being shown here? That was the day the bus had run into the movie theatre and so…the film wasn’t being shown. Well, Film Fridays this fall is screening avant-garde films with recent films by women directors. Tonight was the first screening and it was Agnes Varda’s 2008 autobiographical film ‘The Beaches of Agnes.’ If you don’t know Agnes Varda, which most people who aren’t film geeks like me won’t, she is a French photography and ultimately filmmaker who began making films in the mid 1950s. She is considered part of the French New Wave filmmakers…and the only woman to be part of the estimable group. She was more aligned with Alain Resnais and Chris Marker (ask me about them when I next see you if you are interested) who were part of the Left Bank group. So there’s a little history and context. Here was an opportunity for me to experience on a big screen the kind of film that I wouldn’t normally get to see here. So I decided to go…
Now I need to go back because part of the experience of watching this film needs to be contextualized as well. You see, at the beginning of the school year my friend Liz told me about a benefit for the local Women’s Center which was being held tonight. She and I had made plans to go long before we knew about the Film Fridays Series. Not a big problem. The screening was at 4 p.m.; the benefit began at 6 p.m. Done. Well, the benefit was called The Little Black Dress Party. That means exactly what it sounds like. We were all meant to wear that fashion staple that Cosmo will tell you every girl needs in her closet – the little black dress. And little black dresses must be accessorized by cute little black shoes. Now if the benefit was being held in Carbondale, I could have gone to the screening, quickly run home and changed, and then headed off to the benefit. No luck for us tonight. The benefit was being held in Cobden, which is about a 20 – 30 minute drive south of Carbondale (there are lots of little towns around here like this. Cobden is actually the town that my friend Liz went to high school in!). All of this meant that in order to go to the screening, being held at the Varsity Center for the Arts, and get to the benefit not too long after it started, I had to attend the screening in my little black dress.
A little sidebar before I proceed. I have many little black dresses. I am a New Yorker after all. So I pulled out my slinkiest, curve revealing, cleavage showing black dress and my sexiest, strappiest black sandals. And I must say I looked hot! You know me. I very rarely say things like this about myself. But I looked good! Ironically, the people who I would most have liked to see me tonight…weren’t here to witness my Goddess-like transformation. I’ve decided, though, that looking good makes me feel better about myself, even if there’s no one else here to notice. So while it may be wasted on others, it won’t be wasted on me. Can I tell you again how hot I looked? :)
So here I am all gussied up and going to screening of an Agnes Varda film with a bunch of college kids in jeans. Now both Liz and Sue (my professor) were also dressed up in their little black dresses, so at least I didn’t feel out of place all by myself. Varda, like most of the French New Wave directors, does not create your typical classical Hollywood narrative film. She does narrative, documentary, all with an experimental twist (well, that’s the easiest way for me to describe it without devolving into intellectual babble that you might find a little too technical). There was something a bit surreal about being dressed the way I was and watching this particular film. Somehow, it added to the whole experience. I’m thinking that getting really dressed up to go the movies might be something I should continue to do in the future. It somehow made it more of an event and not just something to pass the time. I’m realizing more and more that how we perceive things can be changed by changing how we approach them. More about Varda later, as she will come into play as the rest of the evening proceeds.
After the screening, Sue, Liz and I left for the benefit together. I had offered to drive, as neither Liz nor Sue likes driving at night. And well, I love Garbo. And I love driving Garbo. I think it’s possible that in a former life I might have been a race car driver…or maybe it will be in a future life. Anyway, we were driving in my little black car (Garbo always wears a little black dress!). Out to Cobden, IL. In the drizzly, fog. Yes. The weather has been a little rainy over the past few days. Relatively cool, temperature-wise, but wet and humid. And then tonight fog, which as you know is also wet. Why am I telling you about the weather? It’s important. Read on.
The benefit was being held at The Great Boars of Fire Lodge on Kratzinger Hollow Road. Yes, I said a lodge. Yes, Kratzinger Hollow. Very quaint. Very, very rural. When we arrived, there were these lovely gentlemen in day-glow orange vests directing cars where to park. Which when we arrived, I’d say around 6:45 p.m. meant on the side of the road by a ditch. From there, we had to walk…up Kratzinger Hollow Road…in the wet fog, while wearing our little black dresses (from this point to be referred to as LBDs) and our little heeled shoes. Luckily the road was paved. At least until we arrived at the driveway that led up to the Great Boars of Fire Lodge. The driveway, gravel…and mud! And I thought walking on cobblestones in Rome was difficult! So we sidestepped muddy puddles and I desperately attempted to not twist my ankle on the loose gravel, finally arriving at the entrance to the benefit. Which was being held both inside the lodge and outside under tents. (I did mention the weather, didn’t I?!) We received gift bags, appropriate for a benefit. Among other things, the bags included LBD wine glasses and flip-flops. Now, the smallest size of flip-flops they had was a 7. Considering I wear a 5 ½…this was a problem. And seriously, are there no women in the area with smaller feet than a 7?!? That’s just disturbing. It gives a whole new meaning to the hearty farm girl.
The event was a sea of black. I’m really bad at estimating numbers, but we all decided that there had to be close to a thousand people there. Hence, the sea of black. It was actually quite remarkable. Women of all shapes and sizes. Women of all colors. Women of all ages. All dressed in a wide variety of LBDs ranging from the elegant to the matronly to the slutty to the real bad prom dress. And I couldn’t even begin to describe the range of shoes! I have to say I don’t think I’ve been around that many women at one time since I graduated from Smith! It was rather an odd feeling. All that estrogen on overload! Stepping back from it all, it was remarkable. My initial reaction being there though was much less positive. My own personal brand of cattiness began to emerge. While at first glance it might seem like New York elitist snobbishness toward the Midwestern mentality and fashion sense, it’s actually much more closely linked to those aspects of me that are still traumatized by growing up in the Midwest and Texas. So many women with expressions, hairstyles, and attitudes that were like all those mean girls in high school. It’s amazing to me that what happened to me over twenty years ago still has such an effect on me. The bottom line is…way too many females – whom I admit I lumped into a big giant generalized category – in one place for me. Of course the really good thing about all of this…the Women’s Center must have made a lot of money. Good cause…so I say, bring on the women!
Our little threesome proceeded through the throng to get to the bar and the food. At the bar, we had to pay for our drinks. Keep in mind that we had to buy tickets to the benefit. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a benefit where we had to pay for our drinks. Perhaps pay for anything we wanted beyond wine or beer…but never this. In addition to having to pay for the wine…they were serving it in plastic cups. Now let’s just review for a minute: LBD party (meaning nice dresses in shoes) at a lodge with lots of grass and gravel and mud and now they are serving wine in plastic cups. Now the NYC snob in me is definitely coming out. I admit it. But really, they need to get a better event planner. When you plan things like this, you need to think through to all the logical consequences. You don’t have women get all fancy, then make them walk through gravel, grass and mud, in the wet weather, ultimately to make them pay for their drinks in plastic cups! Especially when they’re there to give you money! Am I wrong, here?! I don’t think so. Luckily, I had a wine glass in my gift bag. So I paid for my wine, but thankfully didn’t have to drink it out of a plastic cup! Now that was clever thinking on their part. And yeah for me!
All three of us were starving. But remember our estimate for the number of women that were there… The line was impossibly long…plus impossibly difficult to get to through the sea of black. So we maneuvered our way out to a table under one of the tents, where we actually ran into a couple of other professors from our department/college. We got a little alcohol into our system and then decided to take the plunge into the food line. I would say it took us about an hour to get through it. It snaked around about 3 or 4 times through the tables set-up inside. And you know what they were serving? Do you know what the Great Boars of Fire Lodge is known for? BARBECUE! So, let’s recap again: LDBs and heels, muddy and gravelly location, wine in plastic cups and now barbecue. Their event planner needs to go back to event planning school. Now I love barbecue. Seriously, I grew up in Texas. I LOVE barbecue! It is not easy to eat barbecue while wearing an LBD, for the mere fact that I felt elegant and there is no way to eat barbecue elegantly. There’s just not. It’s like all the hicks got together and said, “Hey, let’s get dressed up but still be hicks!” (See what I’m talking about in regards to the cattiness. I really hate it when I get like this.)
Poor Liz. She’s so tolerant of me when my elitism comes out. And to her credit, she’s very good at pointing it out to me so that I see how wrong I am without resorting to my tactics. In addition, contrary to many people’s beliefs about my opinionated nature and its immutability, I do listen to valid logical arguments and look at the flaws in my own way of thinking. I chowed down, very inelegantly, on my barbecue. And after I ate, I went to smoke a cigarette. I walked over toward the stage, where they actually had a pretty decent blues band playing. I began to look around and as I did my veil of judgment started to lift. And then the lights on the stage went out, and the band – and I give them much credit for this – continued to play in the dark! I laughed. I laughed at the absurdity of it all. And then I began to see a sort of beauty in it. Why not get dressed up and eat barbecue and drink wine out of plastic cups? Who am I to say what is the right or wrong way to have an LBD benefit party? I looked good, I had good food, good music…and the rest was just garnish. And who really cares about the garnish anyway?!?! What I said earlier about changing our perceptions by changing how we approach things, well, here it was again. Lesson learned. Thus endeth the lesson.
Just a couple of more things. Here at this lodge with a sea of women in black, they had these young studlies dressed very similarly to Chippendales Dancers (well, the way they are dressed before they start to undress. How do I know this? Because I saw the Chippendale dancers at Pearl Street while I was at Smith. The full irony of that is just now hitting me!). Well these Chippendales-in-training were walking around with shot syringes filled with a green liquid. Literally injecting – into the women’s mouths – the alcohol! It was sort of like spring break in Orlando. And by this time, I was amused by everything. And no, I didn’t do a syringe shot, as I was the designated driver for the evening, even though one of these young studlies approached Liz and I and flirted quite sweetly in a very midwestern way.
One last flaw in the event planning. Parking. And believe it or not, Agnes Varda is going to come into play again. When we left, there were all these buses lining the Kratzinger Hollow, which I think I failed to mention was not a very wide street, especially when you take into consideration that one side of the road was now lined with parked cars. The buses were a shuttle service for the benefit. We got to my car and we were sort of blocked in. When I say sort of, I mean that there was a possible way to get out, as the last bus in the line’s tail end was at the front of my car. Behind it was a Cadillac, I think, and then a van and a few other cars. So basically, my car was almost home free. Liz and I got in the car and Sue, very smartly, talked to the drivers of the Caddy and the van. If I could maneuver the car a certain way, then the Caddy could pull into my space and I would have just enough space to squeeze by the other cars and head out in the opposite direction. So I began what ended up being about a 14-point turn in my little Garbo. All I could think about while I was attempting this feat of unparking was ‘The Beaches of Agnes.’ Why, you may ask? Because there was this one great scene where she was talking about her garage, which was in an alley, and how difficult it was to get the car into and out of that garage. She recreated what she used to do. Of course, her recreation was of her in a cut-out of a car - painted cardboard! – on little wheels. It took her about 13 or 14 times of going forward a little, and then backward a little, and then forward a little. Well, you get the idea. Perhaps I’ll show the scene at some point so you will really understand. Ultimate outcome: success! Boy, am I good!
So that’s it. An evening that started with Agnes, ended with Agnes. And somehow, despite my own brand of elitism, I managed to find a little culture in this cornfield. At least enough, to stave off a bit of my starvation until I get back to NYC…very soon.
Miss ya tons. Love ya more.
Xoxo,
Lynnela
P.S. As I got to the end of this retelling, the length was a bit astounding. Perhaps we can consider it as making up for the lack of writing last year! ;)
