on grieving for heath.

I’ll sure be flakked for writing this. Growing up in an immediate environment where celebrity fanaticism (especially of local) is met with predominant disgust simply because its bakya, the former is a definite consequence of the latter. I am one with them in the idea that movies- with its essence and significance-are meant to be understood and digested. But I am also one with those who applaud for an in-depth performance.

It’s all because of that one cathartic movie.

Heath Ledger showed me that he understood the war of a gay man’s freedom and restraint. By the way he smiled wryly while celebrating a forbidden embrace; by the way his eyes catches the light of glistening snow and the witnessing sun, by the way he stood and swayed and by the way he is angered and quieted, he seemed to tell, there is a real, inner war in this man and this is how it looks like.


>>“Born to amuse, to inspire, to delight, here one day, gone one night.” - Gone Too Soon<<


I am not mourning for the loss of a seductive man-face who has the ability to extort oohs and aahhhs. I am mourning for the man who lent his male form likewise his courage to a persona that banners a universal truth -- love and its complexities. Brokeback Mountain is not about gayness. Beyond the physical and the rational borders, Brokeback Mountain stands to me as a persistent question. A question that will haunt all loving-capable men (regardless of sex and preference) in their own time, in their own space: what if love claims man in a suddenness that paralyzes his reason? What should man do when it seemed that the world closes in on just one path, on just one person, in just one instance of time and space and emotions? Where that very instance of love is both death-causing and life-giving: as it kills the half of you that is nurtured by reason and absolute propriety but nurtures the half made of feelings and unexplained simplicity of dreams and lightness; where that very state of abstinence of decision is like death, only, real death is more emancipating; where the immensity of the fact that you feel it--despite yourself—without escape of its monstrosity—and if indeed it should not be rightfully called love but a monster—what will you do? Do you feed it or do you let it feed on you?


To a fine performance, this is my salute and so shall be my last applause.