The Wes Letters

Calle

January 25, 2012

2:00pm

Dear Wes Anderson,

I heard you took the train from Chicago to southern California. I thought it was kind of cute to hear you don’t like airplanes. They scare me too, somewhat, but not enough so that I can’t ride them. The other night, Brett told us the story. He’d been gone for Christmas to Columbus, Ohio. He didn’t mention the train story until after a couple beers at the kitchen table. I showed him I Love Dick by Chris Kraus—a series of billet-doux glitter bombs from a married couple to a man named Dick.

Chris falls into this weird obsession with Dick. Her husband Sylvère encourages her to write letters to his colleague Dick. There’s this really amazing four days when all Chris and Sylvère do is talk about Dick in their apartment in Crestline, California. One night they get stuck at Dick’s place in Antelope Valley because of a pending snow storm in San Bernardino. The following morning at IHOP Chris tells Sylvère she’s convinced that what she experienced with Dick was a conceptual fuck. Why am I telling you this? It just feels like a place to begin, in this letter, because I wouldn’t bring up Dick as a way of talking to you if it were me on the train.

So let me start over. When do you think those high-speed rail trains are going to happen in California? I’m looking at the website and can’t tell if it’s a myth Christians believe like the second coming of Christ. I understand now why Jews are so cynical. My boyfriend is Jewish but he’s the most optimistic person I know.

It’s very sad, Wes, high-speed railways, legalizing pot, and lowering public university tuition might make California what it really is—a Golden State.

Anyways, I should probably get the day moving. My rabbit is out of hay and water. Ben is out being a graduate student. I don’t have to start tutoring 8th graders for another few hours and I should try to feel happy and productive without spending any money.

If I close my eyes and imagine what you’re doing now all I see is darkness. I can’t imagine you, just that image of you and Brett on the train eating dinner and him sincerely not recognizing you at all. So when he told us the story it felt like we were there too.

Sincerely, 

Feliz

January 25, 2012

6:15pm

Dear Wes,

I know I already wrote you a letter today but I’m in the mood for another one. I’m sitting at a stranger’s kitchen table waiting for an 8th-grader to finish taking a preliminary English exam. It’s a tiny one-bedroom guesthouse in a rotten neighborhood in south San Diego. When I walked through the front door the mom was trying to figure out how to put up a curtain over the barbed window in the living room. I almost went up to help her but remembered that I came to administer her daughter a test, not help with interior design. She looked at the curtains, window, floor, and me for some kind of affirmation that what she was doing was fine. I just smiled. Then she folded up the curtains, put them on a wooden stool, and walked away feeling a little embarrassed. But Wes, everything is interior design, even the sun and beach and balmy Southern California weather. I think you understand. It’s obvious that you care a lot about costume and set design. I don’t think we can escape the costume of socioeconomic realities—let’s face it. The mom is now in her bedroom rummaging through dresser drawers, occasionally clipping fingernails, and listening to the silence of her daughter’s pencil circling A B C or D. There’s an Asia Buffet calendar tacked on the wall next to the front door and the mom apologizes when she has to walk ten feet to the living room where her clunky cell-phone vibrates the whole house in a knock-off Enrique Iglesias ringtone. Wes, there’s no such thing as partitions, sound proof walls, or designated rooms where you go to do one specific task in a world like ours. Every room is for eating, sleeping, watching TV, and maybe even shitting.

I emailed Brett the letter I wrote you and he said he liked it a lot. And because we have three different versions of his experience meeting you on the train, we think it might be good if Ben also wrote to you. I don’t know if he’d be into it, but I’ll ask.

What do you think of us writing to you? When I close my eyes and try to imagine your response, I can hear you say sure whatever.

Sincerely, 

Feliz

Dear Wes,

I’m not much at beginning letters but don’t worry, I tend to pick up steam once I catch the rhythm. I’ll start at an arbitrary yet important intersection. Later, I’ll loosen up and start making some interesting turns:

so… who (am i/are we) and why (am i/ are we) writing to ‘you’

We met briefly on the Southwest Chief in the dining car gliding through New Mexico. I’m Brett, a young grad student who chatted with you and your partner about writing, Haruki Murakami, geographic media etc.

I explained that my partner, K. is an artist as well and she’ll soon be visiting New York. You suggested Chinatown and Greenpoint. In case you were concerned, things are still going well. In fact, as it stands right now, she will be here for the summer.

I hope these details jog your memory. The devil’s in the details they say– the weird ones stick out, kind of like smells. (I think we talked about the lack of good smells in ‘classic’ literature) I smell whiskey right now (scotch) ((hot toddy)), definitely a smell I’m fond of, but like most interesting things, it can be overused in bad taste.

Details aside, memory’s a dodgy thing and if you don’t remember me, well, I don’t blame you. I imagine you meet billions of people every year and they’re all impeccably dressed. One of my mottos– not that I am a motto kind of a guy– is to be memorable. At least, that’s one of the secret performances I have in the works. I want to be ridiculously present, crystal clear without daydreams. So present I infect people’s minds and all of the sudden everyone is performing outside-Brett. In this way, I can slip off and assume other identities, tricksterlike…

You know, I’m not one for psychoanalysis, I think it’s just expensive toilet paper. But I have a death drive/eternal life association with celebrity.

WAIT!!!

ah! recognition…    alright there’s that rhythm…

I’ve told the story lots of times now, because I’m a storyteller, and each time this story tends to grow and acquire new limbs, fresh memories. 

My favorite part of the story is explaining why I didn’t start gawking and blushing and saying oh my god you’re Wes Anderson, I watched your movies in high school with everyone... being awkward. 

Well, at first, since I didn’t know what you looked like, I was just sitting there with a doomsday spider bite festering on my left hand that was swelling and making me feel a bit dodgy. It was kind of embarrassing and disconcerting… So, I was drinking wine to cheer myself when you guys sat down in front of me. I was like, who the hell are these assholes? in a very Andersonian move. Then after some awkwardness I asked where you were going, what you did for a living etc… Something Something Hyundai—Something Something—shooting a commercial in LA. Then I spoke with your partner for a while about writing, which was very nice, and we all spoke at length about trains, art, and we were generally having a pleasant time (unless that was just a heartbreaking display of polite society)… anyway, in the middle of us trying to figure out how we could floodlight the midnight desert…. you said, I did a movie on a train once, we had a similar problem, and at once, you shot up to investigate the surreal christmas-lit houses flying by the window.

Then it hit me—Darjeeling Limited and North By Northwest are the only movies I’ve ever seen that were actually filmed on trains….

 …. HOLY SHIT, is that WES ANDERSON?

Now here’s my favorite part of the story:

In about three quick sips of red wine/purple lips, I went through the various stages of celebrity shock… At first, I wanted simply to be recognized by you, so that I would have a validation of being alive. As if celebrities were the only ones with access to being real-real in a world that is, at best, real-fake, at worst, fake-fake. Then I went through the phase of wanting to ask for a job, playing out all my fantasies of being the next young famous actor-writer, because obviously I’m a broke grad student in a country that pretty much hates avant garde literature. I resisted the impulse to puke my movie ideas all over you. Calming down, I just smiled and enjoyed the conversation, forgetting all about your position in the hierarchy of creativity and the morbid circuit of cultural capital. I just sat back and enjoyed the wine, listening to your suggestions for films to watch… you didn’t even touch your dinner.

So, our intersection itself has become a catalyst for a storytelling machine, maybe even a character development. I am specifically writing these letters to forget, or to replace memory with stories, shifting sand and perhaps some magic. I hate writing from the dreaded ‘I’, probably because of an ashamed bullshit white male positionality, or even just the boredom of being in one narrative body. But this is proving to be an interesting practice… to dump out my subjectivity into an accumulation of narrative extravagance, horror, jubilation, failure.

In fact, my dear friends Feliz and Ben have been writing letters to you as well.  We are compiling the whole project into book form…

We hope you enjoy these, at whatever stage you receive them in, if ever, and wherever you are… either way, expect more notes from us… of infinitely small wonders. Notes of love and luck… you can think of these letters as a train slipping