New Project

So it's not quite frosty yet, but I have a perpetually split lip that floods and crusts with blood and red wine in equal measure as this season's festivities start to kick in. And I'm clumsier than ever; crashing into things, tripping over the edges of rugs, falling over my own feet. Yes, my own feet. The greatest irony of my life is that my first name apparently means grace (though I think more in the religious sense), and I was born on a Tuesday so should really be full of grace. The stars must have skewed their alignment or something as I emerged into the world with my foot all twisted up and awkward. A sign of things to come.

However clumsy and cold it gets outside, we have a thing of humming pleasure in the house. A projector lives in the attic bedroom. The attic is deep red with one white-papered end; the whole wall a screen for whatever we fancy. We lie on the comfiest floor-mattress ever and look up. We are in the scenes of what we watch.

We watched Pina, a film by Wim Wenders about the choreographer and dancer Pina Bausch. Dance, dance, otherwise we are lost. Dance for love. Dance for love. She danced as though she had a hole in her tummy. What treasure lies within our bodies, to be able to express itself without words, and how many stories can be told without saying a single sentence. The music and the physicality of this film, with its dance sequences so varied, so wild and quiet and loud and mesmeric, is all-consuming when viewed real close and big in a bedroom. It wasn't in 3D, but we were right there, wide-eyed.

We watched Alien. I had never seen it before, a sacrilegious admission, and this had to be rectified. Ripley and her heroics are fierce, she is role-model material, constructed from steel and sense. The darkness and fire made for nail-biting viewing, and though we were lying against pillows, we were really in the spaceship being voyeuristic members of the Nostromo crew. The alien was a disappointment I must say. From some angles it is a cross between a house plant and a dolphin. I like the cat. It is a survivor.

We watched sections of The Endless Summer, a 1966 documentary about surfing (surfumentary?). Two wholesome sun-tanned young American men chase an endless summer around the globe on a quest for the best waves. The cheeky-chap narration is hilarious. A woman's green bikini top is referred to as a 'chest protector'. Watching scenes from this sunny, bluesky, bluesea, golden sand film will stave off winter blues for sure.

Another use of the projector is to be a LAD and play video games. Play them noisy and really, really big. I tried to be a LAD for a bit, but ended up reading Vogue instead. Which is something I never do. But it was given to me so I didn't have to pay the extortionate retail price, and it had Tilda Swinton and Miranda July tucked between the gazillion adverts. It reeks of mixed perfumes and is about as heavy as the textbook copy of Chaucer's works I used to lug around. Well, almost.

I'm told that porn is pretty intense on the projector too.