Anonymous

strangeremembrances:

Awww thanks so much! You’re lovely!

First off, FIRST OF MANY AWARDS!!!!!!! 🎈🎈🎈🎈
Secondly, I completely agree with him. It’s weirdly one of the things I love most about the book/movie. I have this THING for stories or art about how people can change you and how moments or experiences or that one person can alter your world view or provide you with hope or love etc

I am a bit of a cynic. In fact, a huge cynic. I struggle to believe in “true love” or any of that stuff but what I do believe in is people and how even if someone comes into your life for a brief time, there is a capacity for them to change you entirely or fundamentally. Ive had it happen to me. It wasn’t a “love” thing but a couple of people have entered my life, bowled me over and changed how I feel or made a difference and then left. It’s part of why I LOVE the San Clemente Syndrome idea so much. Life is forever changing and there are so many layers to it. Things don’t last forever and some things shouldn’t last forever but it doesn’t mean they weren’t incredibly important or special and perfect for even a brief time. How long it lasts isn’t a measure on how valuable or important a moment is.

There are a few other stories that I love because of this and @oliverelio and I both share a crazy love for Once the Musical. It owns my heart, frankly. It’s also about that idea, that someone can come into your life, alter it and then leave and you cherish that forever. It doesn’t necessarily mean it has to be FOREVER.

What I LOVE about CMBYN is that is champions that too. Yeah, it’s in a different way but it’s the same idea. It doesn’t sugar coat stuff or make things cliche. It’s matter of fact and sometimes PAINFULLY so, to say “look, this was life changing but it doesn’t mean it will be forever and I’m ok with that because life is full of those experiences”. It shows how fundamental Oliver was to Elio in opening his heart, showing him kindness, appreciating his intelligence and voice, making him laugh and experience joy, showing him what love is capable of… it’s really really REALLY lovely and the fact the novel suggests it is only confined to that Summer doesn’t take anything away from that for me even if they love each other for a life time. The same can be said of Elio’s effect on Oliver. (And a cynical as I am, you bet if there’s a movie sequel, I’m on that like nobody’s business, but the book will forever remain that ideal of a brief but life altering moment in time)

So I agree with Luca completely. What Mr Perlman says at the end of the movie and novel, when he tells Elio to almost enjoy the pain, to put it alongside his joy and revel in it because it’s what life is all about. That’s what I adore about this story and these characters, that it is a celebration of emotion even if that emotion is confusing or painful or difficult to process. It makes us human and that’s pretty wonderful 😊

Anonymous

servem:

This question is extremely intimidating so I’ve decided to be a coward and just quote André Aciman. 

“I love the idea of endurance despite every attempt to eradicate it. And that is because the very thought of extinction is anathema. To know that people will one day forget that you have ever been alive is more dreadful than death itself.

I remember when I was an early adolescent I was reading a lot about the discovery of Troy, and how in digging for Homer’s city, Heinrich Schliemann basically uncovered a city, but then found that there was another city underneath it, and yet another beneath that one, so that he dug out seven cities, and in the process accidentally bypassed the Troy he’d been looking for. I love that story, because it’s so true of everything we do, everything we think about, everything we write: there are always so many, many tiers and layers, especially when we believe we’ve hit rock bottom only to discover we’ve barely scratched the surface.

All this came up when I was writing Call Me by Your Name, and it came up in many things I’ve written before and since, what I’ve called the “San Clemente syndrome,” referring to the basilica in Rome that has at least four layers of history underneath it, some pagan, some early Christian, some later Christian, and so on. Which also leads me to say that human sexuality is built in this exact same way: we’re not one thing, as Elio says in Call Me by Your Name, “We’re not made to be played on one instrument alone.” As I say in another tale, we’re made of as many selves as there are lampposts on a campus quadrangle.”

I think this idea was so complex and difficult for me to understand because it was this metaphor about layers that itself carried layers. I understood Aciman’s explanation to mean that the San Clemente syndrome had to do with Elio’s fear of being a forgotten memory in Italy to Oliver. The idea also had to do with human sexuality. It also applies to some themes in Enigma Variations about the layers that make up our identity. It also complemented the idea of parallel lives and how one person can have many lives in a lifetime. Like the poet in the book describes, it was: 

“… like an undefined, nebulous feeling, part arousal, part homesickness, part metaphor.” … “Like the subconscious, like love, like memory, like time itself, like every single one of us, the church is built on the ruins of subsequent restorations, there is no rock bottom, there is no first anything, no last anything, just layers and secret passageways and interlocking chambers, like the Christian Catacombs, and right along these even a Jewish Catacomb”. 

There is so much to the meaning of the San Clemente syndrome that it’s difficult to briefly summarize, but as it pertains to the story, it has to do with our layers we built through our experiences and connections and how they creates the full picture of our being. Elio remarked to the poet that this was his favorite poem in the poet’s book. I think Elio identified with this idea of a stratified person because he was just closing up his formative years and this idea made a lot of sense in the confusion of his young adulthood. I think I’ll spend the rest of my life coming up with a better answer to this question and that’s precisely why I think this is what the movie sequel should be about.