Heaven Knows What.

A film essay by Sean Miguel Maher

 I can’t watch a movie right now, I’m a little busy

I stay in one place but only with

I have to move, I gotta be gone

I was watching the film

Now I am writing about the film. Heaven Knows What directed by Josh and Benny Safdie, starring Arielle Holmes based on an unpublished memoir of her life as a heroine addict in New York City. Arielle was still addicted to heroin while filming. 

My room is disheveled except my roommate’s side is fine. I am not addicted but heaven forbid someone see my mess

I can stay in one place. 

I can be still, so much so

That unless you see me blink

Grunt

Breathe

You might think I’m dead 

I leave for food. The world can seem so real when you’re walking through it. Glasses clean. I’m surprised by what I see. Words so damn sharply present. Snow on the ground. 

I need more than a bag or two. I need a rush. I want to be among the stars. 

I used to do that. It was weed though. When I suffered withdrawals I went insane. I sold a treasured arcade stick for money for edibles. But that wasn’t insane. I mean I wound up in a mental hospital twice.

The last time I had withdrawals it went bad. I had been trying to feed the beast. Gorilla glue hash. Smoking it at home while I was sick. I was doing nothing but laying in bed trying to get high.Then I ran out. I started to do all kinds of crazy shit. Fix my life, find a partner, make a case against tinder. I ended up at the mental wing in Bangor. I was schizophrenic.

I wanted my life to be more than it was. I imagined friends, I felt nothing and I wasted my time and ended up with my hands around someone’s throat in a mental wing. Someone I thought was cool. Now I can watch a movie. I’m alright.

Clair de lune plays in the movie. That song reminds me of loneliness and mental illness. It is a synth lead version of that song. Something about it feels like a nuke has gone off and not been noticed. But now we gotta live with consequences. A life has fallen apart and no can remember that there was a before because there is an ahead that we must take care of now. A few of my teeth have rotted out of my head. I have to get some more teeth filled in. These little pieces of rot in my jaw need to go unless I want to live with grotesque pain. Some of them I could have gotten ahead on but I feel so much like rotting sometimes that it’s hard to resist the attraction. Of sitting still, sitting still so much you’d need to look for me to breathe. Earlier I said I was schizophrenic. I am still schizophrenic but medication blocks the most acute of the symptoms. I don’t think it’s too far-fetched to think I might end up on the streets surviving if a few things go wrong. 

If I’m to be honest the romance part of Heaven Knows What doesn’t stand out to me. It’s the pure fidelity of a life spent spiraling, told so honestly and life-like it might seem mundane. This world makes victims of people like Ilya and me and everyone else.