As I mentioned in a previous post, I was Patricia Franchini for Halloween last year. That instance of costuming was an anomaly for me; I point to the gentleman I was dating at the time for providing me with the motivation/will/wtf to do what I just about never do: give a shit about Halloween. Don't get me wrong -- I am fascinated, and sometimes enthralled, by everyone else's joie de vivre and imagination and general can-do spirit when it comes to coming up with crazy outfits. Take, for instance, RL, pictured below at the party he and his girlfriend JG threw last night in Brooklyn:
He was wandering around the party with a spray bottle, spritzing himself and anyone around him. JG (not pictured), walked around in a gorilla outfit. Together, they were quite the spectacle. Get it? Yeah: gorilla(s) in the mist. Apparently Dian Fossey was also in the house. It's that sort of thing that amuses me to no end. (Standing behind RL is The Dude, who shuffled around in slippers and who brought his own portable bar with which to make Caucasians. It was hilarious.)
I get that Halloween, in its present incarnation, is this state-sanctioned excuse for vaguely bacchanalian debauchery -- and that part of the fun is being able to go completely nuts while ostensibly playing a character, someone/something other than yourself: RL didn't get drunk -- "Mist" did. (It's also an ongoing runway for creativity, which is maybe why I find the whole thing a little unpleasant: me, not so creative.) It's the one day out of the year when we don't blink twice at the coexistence of bumblebees, flappers, and Colombian drug lords. It's a zany night. I get it. I just choose to not partake in all of it. I blame the semblance of love for last year's aberration. Never again!
I much prefer Halloween for its slightly supernatural under/overtones -- all the fun zombie movies to catch up on, the investigative ghost-hunting documentaries on the Discovery Channel, those sorts of things. Halloween is all about the undead for me -- that, or perhaps some sort of ephemeral resurrection, of spirits returning for a fleeting moment, flickering into the light (or, er.. the dark?) and then, come winter, retreating back into winter chill, back into impossibility. Halloween's spectral flittings -- now there's a party..
The following isn't a Halloween song by any stretch of the imagination -- but it's been coming up a lot lately on my iPod, wanting in. It's haunting in its own way: maybe everything that dies someday comes back. And heck, it's sort of amusing to think of The Boss as a plaintive, melodic member of the undead; there's something about the secondary/backup vocal track that is especially spectral and faraway.
Happy fall, everyone.
Bruce Springsteen, Atlantic City
[Thanks to no radio records for lending us the track.]
I'd just like to say how thoroughly enjoyable it is to read your writing.
Happy autumn to you too, HT.
Posted by: Carson | October 29, 2007 at 12:05 PM