The Bridge Revisited

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 vio-
lent, 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 un-
sentimental, and to honestly seek out the reasons, varied and con-
flicted, 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 we see sculpt-
ed 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, even
in a weird fucking way to love him. To wish we could have known 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 in-
authentic emotion for someone we never knew, nor will ever know?
When I was a boy we lived in the Bay Area, and one weekend after-
noon 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 restaur-
ant, 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.