Excerpt from Issue #4 - Hillary Weston on Paris, Texas:
"…The men can see her, but she cannot see them. So, when Travis walks in one afternoon and she begins her usual act—brilliantly vibrant yet still harboring a palpable sadness— it’s only their voices that interact, their bodies separated, both physically and literally, by a glass of tarnished memories. She’s placed in a sparse motel setting, a place both Shepard and Wenders know so well, harkening back to their mutual love for transient spaces and the effects they have on our ability to assume an identity. Jane tries to illicit a reaction from the man on the other side of the glass but Travis remains silent. “I know how hard it is to talk to strangers sometimes. Just relax,” she says. “I don’t mind listening, I do it all the time.” But it’s as if even the mere presence of her is too much to bear, and so he leaves.
The next day he returns, but this time he picks up the phone, turns his back to her, and begins to tell a story. He details their relationship, from beginning to end: ”I knew these people…They were in love with each other…He was kind of raggedy and wild. She was very beautiful, you know?” He expresses the adventure and excitement they found in being together and how they ached to be in each other’s presence to the point where he’d quit working just to be with her. But as his story progresses you see how that same tremendous passion unraveled them both, how quickly love can turn to resentment, even violence. The primal act of falling in love shakes the core of our foundation and forces most of us to submit to our emotions in a way we find frightening. What fractured Travis and Jane’s love came from the larger existential questions that linger between most men and women—an insular battle with self-destruction that caused a rift too large to patch. One of life’s most painful truths, although we refuse so often to admit it to ourselves, is that love is not enough. It may be the most profound and astonishing thing two human beings can share in this crumbling world, but it cannot fill all the gaps that rest between our bones or mend those wounds that will never heal. No matter how hard we try.”
