Modern Love is Rubbish

How do you count your days?  What’s your point of reference? What’s the good thing that keeps you going in your shitty life?  The highlight of your week? Month? Year?

For Oblina, it’s the possibility of being contacted by her former English teacher, Casper Steinkey. For me it’s the possibility of seeing my own modern love.  I think it’s a counting thing, but everyone I know has a look-forward point.  This goes totally against the living-in-the-moment ideal, but people do it anyway.  On a daily basis I look forward to lunch or dinner, when I eat with my friends.  On a weekly basis I look forward to my thesis meetings.  On a semester basis I look forward to my breaks.  Generally I look forward to writing my characters like this, as time-sensitive creatures who humiliate themselves and wait for opportunities to redeem themselves.  They make mistakes, make other characters uncomfortable, lose sight of their normal coping mechanisms, fake indifference, fry eggs, smoke cigarettes, cry themselves to sleep, sober up, laugh at themselves, and so on.  Ultimately people resort to their look-forward point, when things will be better, when So-and-So will forgive them, when they’ll leave their old life behind and rise above their terrible current status.

The album by Blur, Modern Life is Rubbish, is taken from graffiti on a parkbench in England.  My story, Modern Love is Rubbish, is more of a product of the Blur album, 13.  Behind Modern Love is Rubbish are the concepts of looking forward, a perpetual waiting, and a threat to the promise that hope springs eternal.  A warning, a reminder, that perfection is the enemy of good.  The better thing doesn’t always come, and the looking-forward point begins to fail you as you build up your interest in it.  I’m not advocating satisfaction with mediocrity, but I am encouraging people to appreciate the things they have, the moments they’re in, the good-enough people who love them.  Oblina becomes the good-enough character, the not-quite-perfect girl, and is abandoned by Steinkey after she accidentally stains his coat.  In order to win him back over, she retreats to her aggressive sister’s basement, where she draws Steinkey a new coat, and apologizes for having pursued him so forwardly.

Steinkey looks forward to something, and I think it might be Oblina’s visits, but I haven’t articulated all his desires yet, or his feelings towards his younger, louder, and sometimes more obtrusive counterpart.  This will affect how the story ends, and what Steinkey does or doesn’t do to avoid Oblina or recover her.

You want to know where miserable men hide from their pasts? The same place where teenage girls hide from their futures.

I’d love your input, on your specific look-forward points, and I will be finishing a new draft of Modern Love is Rubbish sometime within the next week and a half.

This song, off of 13, is responsible for the half-past sober, sleepy tone of the story, and the video itself inspired me to use so many sleeping rituals and scenes in the story.  Sleep has become one of the most important moments in my characters’, and my own, lives.

Alright, this video might not be working – but here’s the link.  And you can download the song here.

I’ll be putting more music on here as it becomes more related.

Table of Contents

In theory, I don’t really share my thesis too often because I don’t want to ruin the final product for those of you holding out.  But I figure most of you will appreciate the mandatory Table of Contents I had to turn-in to the Division of Literature & Languages secretary.  It plays like a parody of the Oprah-backed sob-story autobiography that’s become very popular in the past few years.

Everything That Never Happened To Me

First of All I Was Born a Half (dedication/prologue)(page 1)

My Sister Died (page 2)

Then My Mom Gave Me To A Cleaning Lady (page 25)

California Sucked (page 50)

My Long Lost German Brother Appeared (page 75)

Lived With My English Teacher (page 100)

Adored A Medical Experiment (page 125)

Forgets (essay) (page 210)

Died Alone in a Hole (epilogue) (page 230)

(portrait of Oblina, a character just as ugly as her name suggests.)

(family tree drawing for posterity on the next page, convoluted and spiraling.)

I might be looking for an illustrator in the near future, so if you think you know what Oblina should look like, stay in touch and watch for more posts.