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MARCH
- University of Minnesota Press
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MARCH Monday 1 Bart's by eight. My dressings were changed, a new needle put into my arm; dripped with Gancyclovir, I escaped to my permanent haze. At eleven to the sound dub for Blue at De Lane Lea. My face is aflame and my stomach went in the night so I was up endlessly. I bought a walking stick to menace the wandering pedestrians on the Charing Cross Road. A telephone message to say that Mark McCormick had committed suicide. Mark gathered stories like lichen. Born into the aristocracy ofwealth - his great-uncle Silas had invented the combined harvester and his family's companies made all the agricultural machinery for the Midwest. His mother lived in a copy of Versailles surrounded by imperial Easter eggs. She was so horrified when he left his wife for a young man - described as the most handsome in the US - that she ordered him never to cross the threshold again and held a society funeral for him where she buried an empty coffin complete with headstone. The arguments of inheritance of a billion dollars ended when Mark said Tuck you', walked over to Wall Street and became a commodity broker. He made so many millions that he retired when he was thirty-two. Mark was tall, thin, nervous and incredibly intelligent, he was also generous. His impetuosity never left him, he offered to buy Caravaggio outright for $1 million and threw us a lavish opening night party at the Saint; on our last meeting he offered to fund OutRage! but I realised that would be forgotten as soon as we said farewell. Mark's huge apartment on East 62nd Street had charming doormen, but the sun never fell inside; the curtains were always drawn and dim electric lights burnt perpetually. It was a mad jumble, hardly offset by the only empty room, the bathroom - painted to look like the inside of a marquee on a St Tropez beach. Mark collected a strange mishmash of unrelated and unnecessary objects - the cupboards were filled to bursting with designer clothes, the shelves displayed thousands of porcelain and plastic pigs. His West Highland Terrier dogs, Hope, Pain and Anguish, growled at each other 319 SMILING IN SLOW MOTION as Mark flicked between the ninety television channels. On top of the television a photographic memorial to Jimmy, the beautiful boy - he had gassed himself in his car in the garage of Mark's country home. Mark repeated his messianic truisms constantly, they flashed up like TV adverts and took wing in the middle of the most mundane conversation. Mark would dance each Friday night away and in the morning he would climb into his car and drive into the country. The eighties were a time for opting out, none of us danced much then. I no longer had the stamina for a hangover, so Mark went alone. And now he is dead, the same way as Jimmy, in the same car, in the same garage, in the same house. Tuesday 2 We sit in the Blue. In Waco, Jesus is in a stand-off with the Feds, he's shot four of them and is badly wounded in the crossfire. Intricate landscape of pain, all at sea, leaving one's senses. We finished Blue just before midnight. The concentration was absolute. Simon Watney came to the studio just as we started. Simon Turner got charmingly and completely drunk. I think the film is magnificent - it's the first time I've been able to look one of my films in the eye. Cinema catches up with the twentieth century, this is the first feature to embrace the intellectual imperative of abstraction, it's moody, funny and distressing; it takes film to the boundary of the known world, the River Oxus. The film is dedicated to HB and all true lovers. Thursday 4 This morning I woke late, curled up in the warmth with HB I forgot the time. We were at the hospital by 10.30. It's been a strange few days, physically and psychologically closed in. I walked through myself and emerged the other side with my spirits revived. I'm back in the waiting room, eyes dripped and fuzzed. The repetition - here I am in the waiting room again. Hell on earth is a waiting room, but today, after days of despair, my spirit has returned. I weaved my way back home with my new walking stick. HB says the red film should be called...