andrew.pilsch.com

I watched the Catalan film, “El Habitante Incierto,” this evening and the movie is quite a creepy treatment of loneliness that, sadly, collapses under it’s aspirations to be a David Lynch film. The plot, as such, is the story of an architect named Felix who finds himself living alone in a mansion after his girlfriend unexpectedly moves out. The film uses unexplained knocks, shuffles, and creaks to convince the audience that Felix might not be as alone in the house as he thinks. Sadly, as a review in Variety pointed out, the film is twenty minutes longer than it should be and blows its wad trying to be “realistic” in its conclusion.

The thing about the film that struck me, though, has more to do with my living conditions at the moment than anything to do with the filmic quality of a movie that you probably won’t ever see but probably should. I was watching the movie in my bedroom on headphones and would occasionally, especially during the first half of the film, hear people knocking around in the rest of the house. Inevitably, I confused bumps on film for bumps in the house. What really bothered me, though, (because I’m so over the technological confusion of reality) was the fact that before watching the movie I had mentally noted the fact that living with my roommates is a lot like living with ghosts. Nice ghosts, of course, but ghosts nonetheless.

Earlier in the semester, I went 23 hours without speaking to one of my roommates, and it’s a rare occurrence where I spend more than ten minutes in the same room with either of them. Some days, I don’t actually see either of them. Consequently, the majority of my interactions with them (if we can even call it interacting) comes as bumps in the night, conversations just out of ear shot, and an overwhelming feeling of being watched. So, in a sense, my life is haunted by the presence of two other people, neither of whom I know very well. Like the spirits of the dead, I have two strangers haunting my house.

I was thinking, as well, that, essentially, I live alone this semester, but that’s not true. As with a haunting, things will vanish: the books they borrow without asking, toilet paper, etc. Similarly to my feelings on women at Georgia Tech (“there are just enough to remind you that they exist”), I feel as though, this semester, I live with people to just enough degree to remind me that this isn’t my house.

Now, I’m sure that the case could be made that I’ve not been doing my part to “build community” in the house, but that’s not the point. I’ve always worried about living alone, because I thought all the weird habits I thought were just floating below the surface would bubble up without other people to keep me in check. Over the summer, I lived alone and it was great. I didn’t end up doing anything I thought was “weird” (surprisingly, I wore pants in the house (even when other people weren’t around)), but, at the same time, I didn’t find myself having to ask the question “is this weird?” (which I ask myself constantly, now that I may be haunted at any moment and wouldn’t want to justify whatever it is I’m doing).

I don’t know where all this stuff on ghosts is really going, but this movie got me thinking about how uncomfortable (on a cognitive level) it can be to be haunted. I thought I wanted to live with people because it would keep from going crazy, then I found that living with people could be awesome (but only when the people are awesome), but now I just want to live by myself. I think, at some level, I’m getting too old (or something) to put up with other people and their habits. Or maybe I’m just going crazy. Either way, I need to find a way to work through this haunting.