My Life with Frank Cole

I delivered this tribute at the Book Launch “Life Beyond Death: The Cinema of Frank Cole” & Film Retrospective sponsored by the Canadian Film Institute at the National Library, Ottawa Oct 3rd, 2009. Frank Cole was a Canadian Documentary Filmmaker who was killed in 2000 by bandits near Mali while crossing the Sahara Desert. Rick Taylor is a Professor at Carleton University, Author and Frank’s best friend.

Dear Rick,

I just finished Life Without Death. I read it in one sitting and was sucked down the rabbit hole. It’s a beautiful book and I especially wanted you to know how much I loved your memoir, Saltwater Road to the Sahara. Your lovingly recreated details brought everything back so vividly It was poignant and bittersweet

And thank you for portraying me with such kindness and especially saying that I loved him whole heartedly because I did, though in truth, I don’t often revisit those memories now, weighed down as they are, with the silent echo of words never spoken, with youth’s uncertainty and unbending pride.

I enjoyed the book immensely but I was sorry that no one had written about Frank from a woman’s perspective because that dynamic informed both his art and life. I don’t think a man, even you Rick, could fully comprehend what it was like to be Frank’s Eve, to be the snake, the seductive field of sleeping poppies. To inherit the complicated push pull of his relationship with his mother. To stand innocent against the charge that intimacy leads to complacency, loss of purpose, and ultimately loss of self.

And so I hope you’ll indulge me while I revisit the piece of Frank’s story that was also mine, through the lens of my sensibilities.

I met Frank in the late 70’s in response to a laundromat ad for a roommate. To say that Frank was different is, of course, an understatement. While it’s true that he seemed remarkably serious and mature for his age, there was something more. His clipped words were punctured with unnerving silences and delivered with an enigmatic assuredness that seemed to announced that he had not only cornered Truth but had it up against the wall by the throat.

The disarming combination of animal magnetism, a rejection of society’s conventions, and a driving intensity body-slammed those he met through their comfort zone. People either loved or hated Frank, they were never indifferent.

In those days he was the enfant terrible in the Algonquin Film program and our apartment became the meeting place of a never-ending parade of Ottawa’s counter culture, drawn by Frank’s aura. It was palpable – Life seemed to be to be more meaningful, more vibrant, and more exciting in his presence. I was captivated and determined. I set out to impress Frank Cole.

Though Frank was not traditionally handsome, there were plenty of women vying for his attention. With his love of the outrageous and the absurd, I sensed that he would be won over by nothing less than a grand gesture.

So one night I placed a small table outside his bedroom and covered it with linen cloth and formal place setting for one. Wearing only a fedora and boots, I perched on the plate and knocked. I can still hear him roar with appreciative laughter as he opened the door… In the morning he took photographs and wrote a terse and clinical account of the night.

That was my introduction to Frank as the outsider. At 24 he had already adopted the practice of precisely and unflinchingly documenting his life with his uncanny ability to be both the observer and the observed,

It isn’t easy to pinpoint the various trajectories that coalesced into Frank’s view of the world. No doubt accompanying his parents to war torn countries, long separations at boarding school, his beloved brother Peter‘s open heart surgery at 8, and later the death of his grandparents, all contributed to his lifelong fear of becoming dependent on anyone or any thing including his own basic needs.

Being in relationship with Frank meant that I too, was expected to engage in this struggle. Work always came first and often our dates started around midnight after Frank had completed a long day of disciplined writing. (Canada Council really got its money’s worth)

He refused to play the role of boyfriend – he wouldn’t meet my parents or socialize with my friends. When we went on trips, he kept a notebook where he meticulously divided expenses down to the last cent. He allowed me to move in with him several times only to kick me out when, as he put in, things got a little too cozy. It was a joke among his friends that when I got sick he would move back home to his mother, and leave me to fend for myself

But just when I’d think that I had his nihilistic angst-ridden, intellectual little ass pigeon-holed, a new aspect of his personality would emerge. Like when he took me to visit the Mountenays. .

The whole family would surround the car whooping “Mamma, it’s Frankie, Mamma, come on out and see Frankie” and he’d smile warmly, laughing wholeheartedly at their childlike jokes and shyly acquiescing to their boisterous wranglings to get him to join this or that team for baseball or cards.

There was nothing patronizing, or condescending in either his personal dealings with them or his affectionate tribute “The Mountenays”. He loved being sucked into the vortex of their exuberance and vitality. And perhaps he also envied their complete lack of self consciousness, and their ability to dissolve into the collective, two things that were totally foreign to his nature.

He was both drawn and repulsed by the rawness of life, the primal power of sex and fascinated by those who clashed with it full on, unencumbered by society and Hallmark sentiments.

After the Mountenays, he considered making a film about the sex trade and we spent endless nights in New York City strip clubs and on Rue St Laurent in Montreal peering into shadowy doorways, and talking to prostitutes.

In light of what was to happen, I still feel a twinge of remorse for telling him that he could never inhabit the desperate world of these people because he had a safety net. Unlike them, he could go home.

Frank wrote his life like a well scripted film. All the action was subservient to the main theme. He told me that he couldn’t marry me or make a home with me and he didn’t want our child to be born.

But in unguarded moments, the dispossessed part of him that yearned for intimacy seeped around the corner of his resolve. One time after being ill with a high fever, he told me that in his delirium he had imagined his body was divided into tiny squares, all of which I had lovingly cared for in turn. “It was great” he admitted wistfully.

Night after night, under the blanket of darkness, I witnessed his agonizing and repeated struggle to conquer his need for connection, and love. No matter that he failed more often than he succeeded.

He told me that I would commit suicide in his film. Sacrifice myself to set him free to force him to be independent, strong and alone. Catching the mirrored reflection of his eyes , I realized he wished it were true.

In the end, the very things that attracted me to Frank made life with him hell. Once, in a heated argument, hurled the most vitriolic insult in his arsenal, predicting with disdain that I would end up a housewife”

keeper of the home, keeper of the heart….

In his world of no compromise, my only option was to disown myself as a woman, to devalue the gifts of the feminine. It broke my heart to choose …me. I ended the relationship.

In October 1988, I received a call from Frank asking to see me. Over the years our paths had crossed mostly at his parents’ home. After dinner we would retreat to the basement, where, drawing up battle lines, we would spar with feigned indifference over such topics as cryogenics and the locus of the self, (Frank insisting on the head, while I argued for the heart), the campaigns of Alexander the Great, the merits of Juan Butler and always his safety in the desert.

But this night was different. His usual bravado was absent- he was drawn and pale. After some time he answered the question I could not ask. He was going to the Sahara in the morning . “Annie “, he said quietly,” don’t leave me alone tonight, don’t go. I’m afraid ”.

That night I held faith on Frank’s behalf, folding him into my body like a child, words spilling like beads of blood, dropping into the confessional of night. In the morning he was gone and when he returned months later, the wall was back . We never spoke of it again.

And now I sit with Frank’s account of that trip open on my knee. I notice the date, Oct 28, 1988, a week since his arrival, a week since the last night we had spent together. He writes that he despairs over how he will ever manage to cross the Sahara. Then he adds “ I rode behind Sid Ahmed toward a bed of sand. He chose it because of it’s softness and because it had a bush that provided shelter from the wind. He checked it for scorpions and snakes and then covered any fallen thorns with sand. He laid down a groundsheet for my sleeping bag… like a father putting a child to bed. This was how,. This….was how. ..with these people’s hearts…, nothing would be impossible.

I read that paragraph again and again, – grief and gratitude flooding me in equal measure.

Frank Cole lived his life with courage. He called it the strength to be free. As for me, I like to remember that in October 1988, in the Sahara Desert, he came to recognize the true meaning of the word. Courage – Avec Coeur- with heart. Because Frank Cole lived his life with heart.

And that is a life well lived
With much affection

Annie

Other Links

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Cole

http://www.tribute.ca/movies/Life+Without+Death/2285

http://www.k-films.fr/distribution/films/lifewithoutdeath.html

http://www.ridm.qc.ca/archives/ridm4.e/hommages.cole.html

http://filmfestivaltoday.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=161:northern-lights-new-canadian-cinema&catid=37:world-cinema&Itemid=76

Hot Docs

Life without Frank

http://www.canadacouncil.ca/prizes/ggavma/2006/un127864880782820735.htm

http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/Frank-Cole