This is why I hate movies.
No, I hate going to the movies.
Because I came out with a streaky tear
face blinking into the dingy reality
of the sticky patterned carpet and carrying the cold
near-empty popcorn box with kernels and stale
pieces rattling — came from his almost comic
anti-chivalrous beauty and from the burnished depths
of his living in another being, so much that after
a thought or two about the useful Jewish nose,
made bold by the tall hair and unseen makeup
(I can say this, I have a Jewish nose),
I forgot he was Timothée.
And the striking of the guitar percussively,
heartbeat of the bygone pounding and slapping
like it was the only thing on earth
he cared about, and made me care.
The scenes flowering through
songs, given as new though they’re old
to me, old like the grass of the field,
I was born in 1965, that burning electric year.
We go there with them, he made me go,
to be cast out when the hours expire, slammed
with fresh-peeled grief onto the narrow sill
of our own lives, my family clustered
in the particulate darkness, like love breaking apart
into a million pieces, and I’m not sure which piece is me.
And my kids, his contemporaries in this cursed country
we gave them after all our Peter Paul and Mary, demanding
“Tell us why you’re crying so we’ll understand!”
The post On Seeing Timothée Chalamet as Bob Dylan at the AMC Clifton Commons appeared first on New York Times.
