54monkeys studioAll over the map.

Miranda July is like that woman you saw on the street corner with the skin condition* that you can’t stop thinking about. You are uncomfortable staring because one should never stare, but you are fascinated. What is that? No, don’t look. OK, but look sideways. Why is her skin like that? Quit staring! You leave the scene, awkward, concerned, vowing never to stare at another skin condition-afflicted woman on the street corner again. This is how I felt after watching what I could of “Me, You and Everyone We Know”.

I think this is because Miranda July is a person and not an actor and the movie exposed that difference in a thousand sublte ways that made up her awkwardness in front of a camera. She wasn’t pretending to be someone else. Figuring out the distance between herself and the other persons, and not just in the film. Maybe trying to shorten that distance a little without getting too much of the stickiness of other person’s personness on her. Finding the sadness in fantasy and the complexity in reality. Someone, probably someone with a talk show or a self-help book or a free newsletter on personal productivity tips, would say that she was “authentic“.

She has a website. Miranda July has several websites. A movie blog. A MySpace. A personal site (done in WordPress, natch). One for her new book. I am not sure what to make of this. I expected her to be like Viggo Mortensen and eschew modern technology. Except, she has a website, and quite obviously a digital camera. I liked her book website and that she was actively involved, not delegating it to some 23 year-old with a Ramones t-shirt and an attitude. She is a multimedia artist and why shouldn’t she have a website or 12. Like there’s a test to getting one and only the cool kids pass? Have I decided that there must be an authenticity test for having a website? An eccentricity test? I’d fail on all counts and I have several websites. So, let my preconceived notions about Miranda July being Internet-disabled be erased. Go. Enjoy. The password is triumphant.
*We were driving to work and I saw a black woman on the street corner with vitiligo. It is hard not to stare at someone with a chronic skin condition that likely gives that someone a lot of emotional trauma, what with all the staring from freckled white girls in passing cars.