Relationships Archives - Pure Film Creative

August 6, 2014

SCARLETT’S LETTERS: Phoenix Rising

Dear James —

I’m sharing a comment someone made about my last piece, in which I was being a little hazy about my love life. Mopey Reader wrote:

Firstly, thank you for thinking of me. I do have some questions. Sometimes, if people use a number of metaphors and/or similes, or if they confuse the two the same way many mistakeningly [sic] use the term ironic in place of coincidental, I get confused and miss the main point. Is there a new lover or is this a metaphor for the art fairs? At first I thought the article was about a new person that you met but then it turned out to be about other things so I don’t know if that person is real or not.”

By Scarlett Rouge

July 8, 2014

KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Relationships: We Are Slaves to the Empire of Instinct

I have been romantically involved on and off for almost five years with a guy I’ll call Chris because that’s his real name. It has been the most challenging of my life; he has a schizoid-avoidant personality, which has almost nothing to do with schizophrenia, and I am blessedly cursed with hypersensitivity and far less than a saint’s all-accepting disposition. He says he also has some form of OCD — a crack in the street will stall him for an hour when he only has to walk two blocks to Whole Foods. As attracted as we are to each other, as intellectually and artistically compatible, we are a fatally incompatible combo. Just as well that he lives in New York, I in Los Angeles.

I can have no expectations of Chris. I can rely on him for nothing.

By James Killough

May 20, 2014

KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Relationships: Love Means Never Being Afraid of Ending Up Alone

Trust Mad Men’s pneumatic, aging bombshell Joan Holloway to nail seven seasons worth of subtext in one sentence. In Sunday’s episode, which is rightly being lauded as the most emotional of the season, closeted Bob Benson, now fearing for his future as a senior executive in the hyper-masculine auto industry, desperately proposes to Joan, his fag hag. He believes this will be a mutually beneficial arrangement: her child will have a father, a male role model who literally looks and behaves like a model;

By James Killough

May 5, 2014

KILLOUGH CHRONICLES

Relationships: That Oh, So Toxic Deception

I’m on a relationship bender these days for a few reasons. The main one is readers overwhelmingly respond to these posts, more so than my articles about the creative process, my remembrances or my film reviews. Forget the erotic stuff from a few weeks ago; that was a dud (but I’m glad I did it). The secondary reason is there is a lot of dramatic relationship activity going on close to me, and for once it isn’t just my own.

As I’ve written before, creative types tend to have more atypical relationships than ‘normal’ people. That stands to reason. While we might aspire to some degree of normalcy in the false hope it will bring us stability and a measure of acceptance and validation, it’s not in our makeup to conform to a preset mold, which means normalcy will not contribute to our happiness.

By James Killough