A few weeks ago I watched a documentary called The Bridge. And of course it made me think of my mother, and her own bizarre, and violent, suicide. Here in this film we see a series of sad souls seeking some desperate and morbid last poetic impulse in their lives– who come to this scenic site (indeed most beautifully captured in its shrouds of fog and brilliant sun-lit hues) as final tourists on our mortal plane. Maybe they chose this place not only for its beauty but also for its popularity. Finally these lost, dejected souls can join a club that will never renounce their membership. Here they will forever belong.
This is reality television at its finest. Our hearts are churned up with emotion while at the same time our voyeuristic needs are thoroughly satisfied. This is definitely high brow oprah winfreyesque intrusional fair, only far more understated, better crafted, and dare I say, more sincere. There is in its choppy editting a conscious effort to be unsentimental, and to honestly seek out the reasons, varied and conflicted, why people choose self-annililation. Of course mental illness nearly always is the focal point, the dark heart of the act. These are folks that just can’t handle anymore the demands of cold reality.These are folks who continually lay their own roadblocks to recovery. Their world becomes an unnavigable maze. It’s time to jump ship.
My mother’s suicide could not have been more different than for instance Gene Sprague’s. He’s the black maned Maldoror-type we see sculpted by the wind, pacing back and forth on Golden Gate and certainly, to be fair to the filmmakers, is not an obvious threat for imminent suicide. Of all the people filmed taking the glorious plunge, his is the most elaborate fall, the most self-consciously staged. This man had art in his blood. Somehow he failed to find his medium. Truthfully, and what turns out to be the biggest failure of this movie, we never learn a damn thing about this man. He had plenty of friends. But still felt isolated.We never see his face, no we don’t know if he was burdened with a ugly or attractive face (these things can be vital to a person’s sanity). We are drawn into his mystery and forced to feel deep pity for him.But do we really know him? Maybe he did something so horrible he couldn’t live with himself. Have we been conned into feeling an inauthentic emotion for someone we never knew, nor will ever know?
When I was a boy we lived in the Bay Area, and one weekend afternoon our family went on one of our daylong driving trips to some scenic place or other in northern California. All those beautiful colors come back to me sometimes, haunt me. Split pea soup in a roadside restaurant, bare hills so yellow and lakes so intensely blue you think you were in a disney animation movie.
But this trip Im recalling now was to go across the Golden Gate Bridge. No one wanted to do it, but me. I begged till my mother and step-father relented. As we drew closer my mother begin to show her nervousness. She wanted to turn around. She had a deep phobia of crossing bridges. But usually we crossed them anyway. But this bridge, with its red imposing massiveness, was too much for her. We had to turn around. She wouldn’t let us cross it.
I’ve never crossed the Golden Gate Bridge. It lives like a fairy tale still in my mind.
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