At the Bottom of the World

Jason Mraz is just totally funny - he cracked me up with all his jokes.  

And boy is he talented!  That dude can sing!

I love live music.

They've built a playground in the formerly vacant lot next to my house.

I hate children.

Um, hello.

I'm currently having a problem with existence.  As in, I'm here but I'm not really here and it's so fucking cliched and I should really get over it and I'm in a building full of people and still I feel like I'm invisible but I know I'm not - I fucking KNOW - but here I am questioning it anyway.

So, if by chance you're reading this, could you just leave a note (nothing too crude, unless you're just crude by nature)  to say you were here?  So at least I'd know that I'm not dreaming my life in some white-curtained ward somewhere in a world I still haven woken up in.

Thanks in Advance,
Adrienne

Within the space of 2 weeks, two of my favourite actors have passed away and there's no other elegant way to put it - man, it sucks.  The circumstances of how they died are irrelevant to me, the fact that they died is hard enough to deal with.

I once told a good friend of mine that Heath Ledger's smile lit up the screen.  It was a wide, unassuming, genuine smile and when he graced the world with it (which wasn't often - to the public at least), we could pretty much forgive him anything.  I never thought he was terribly attractive; his face was too wide, his jaw too square, his eyes too small, there was a lot of 'too' followed by adjectives in his description, but I knew a fine actor when I saw one and Heath Ledger was an actor.  Not a celebrity, not a star, but an actor.  Early in his acting life he chose roles that probably made us all yawn and go, oh well, another young teeny-boppy on his way to Hollywood, but even then there was something about him, a charisma that can't be gained.  Something innate, and good.

And then he made Brokeback Mountain and the world stopped breathing long enough to realise just how good an actor Heath Ledger was.  He charmed us all in his portrayal of mumbling, macho, vulnerable Ennis.  It was the performance of a lifetime and it should have gotten even more recognition than it did.  But it got Heath Ledger enough attention - and in the end, it was attention he never wanted.

I'm not going to go on about his life and his daughter or Michelle Williams; personally, I'll just miss looking out for his new movies, being excited about what new project he was involved in, knowing that when I went to watch a Heath Ledger movie, it would be something special.  There was so much to look forward to, so much potential and now, so much to miss.

Sleep Well, Heath. 

I first saw Brad Renfro in The Client way back in 1994.  I was thirteen and he was twelve and I thought 'Holy Crap, he's going to be great.'  He was street-wise and too-old and positively bursting with potential.  I loved him in The Cure and teared up when he gave his 'Shoe Speech' and practically burst out crying at the end when he placed his best friend's shoe in the river and let it float away.  I watched him in Sleepers and Apt Pupil and Ghost World.  I said 'Hurray!' when I saw he was doing well.  I sighed when he wasn't.  

And then yesterday I found out he'd died.  Apparently he was out with friends on Tuesday night and then Wednesday morning he was gone.  It's still too early to determine if it's a drug-related death (Renfro battled a drug habit from a very young age) or if it was suicide or murder or any number of random ways a person can die.  I know it's silly to feel so sad about it because I didn't know him (and I'm not one of those psychotic people who actually believe that actors who play movie characters are in actuality their characters) and I would never have met him even if he wasn't dead, but he was something from my childhood, and childhood things should live forever.  It's a Universal Law, isn't it?  

Brad Renfro was the person I grew up imagining when I'd read a book and the main character was 'a young boy of twelve'.  He was Jack in The Talisman and Joe in The Enchanted Wood.  In the novel I'm writing now, he was the person I saw as my protaganist and it feels strange to picture him now, to move his limbs and give him thoughts when I know he's no longer in the world.

But then again, maybe it isn't a bad thing to keep imagining him in books and stories and movies.  He's still alive like that.  He's still fearless and street-wise and too-old.  He's still Jack and still Joe.

Thanks for the memories, Brad.  I hope you find the peace you never seemed to find here.  

Let's light out for the Territories, together, shall we?

My word, I've been trying to add friends to that frightening 'friends list' - which so far consists of 3 authors of Supernatural fanfiction (because Supernatural rocks) - and LJ has *helpfully* pointed out that I have ONLY 3 friends.

This is not conducive to one's self esteem.

I'm trying, LJ, for God's sake.
 

Hello World!  Okay, so basically no one's out there yet, but test runs should always be friendly.  You never know who might be watching.  Or in this case, reading.

Care to join me in a spot of vacuous nonsense?