This is an extract from Emma Forrest: “Your Voice in My Head”. Now I know a lot of people have mixed opinions regarding Ms Forrest (myself included). Therefore, it’s fair to say some of you will not appreciate or be in agreement with my decision to post an extract from her book here on the blog. However, as the book clearly refers to Colin Farrell, albeit not directly by name, I do believe it is a worthy piece of information to transmit.
If you want to read my own personal opinion please go to the 'POST PAGE'.
http://gemini-postpage.blogspot.com/2011/01/re-your-voice-in-my-head.html
http://gemini-postpage.blogspot.com/2011/01/re-your-voice-in-my-head.html
EXTRACT: YOUR VOICE IN MY HEAD
It has been five years since I've self-harmed when, at a dinner in LA, I am introduced to a man with long, flowing hair who is wearing a keffiyeh. He looks like the world's campest terrorist, but he's actually a movie star with a storied reputation. In the candle-lit garden, we sit next to each other and talk, and he admits later that every single thing he tells me is intended to translate as, "I'm not like you've heard I am." It works.
"I've been seeing someone you would probably consider inappropriate," I tell my sister.
"A neo-Nazi?"
"No."
Her voice becomes dark. "Not Russell Brand? Tell me it's not Russell Brand."
Since he is neither a neo-Nazi nor Russell Brand, the family doesn't worry about my new boyfriend.
He worries a lot. He doesn't like it that my front gate doesn't close properly, so, though he is on a film set thousands of miles away, he sends builders to fix it and make me a bolt lock for my front door. He doesn't like the way I can't open my windows at night because I don't have screens to stop the cats getting out. He sends the builders to make screens.
Whenever he comes home from making a movie, he brings me back strange things. He FedExes, from Spain to LA, a single Werther's toffee. My LA girlfriends, the ones who have been here too long, snipe, "No diamonds?" and I explain I wouldn't wear diamonds, never have. "Yes, but he doesn't need to know that."
"He knows that," I say, and understand, myself, the answer to the question all the gossips are asking: "Why is he with her?"
An hour into a late-night phone call, he broaches a new topic. "When I get back from this film, let's have a miniature human, that grows."
I freeze, look around my bedroom for witnesses.
"A baby?"
"Yeah, one of them."
"You're coughing," I tell Dr R at the start of our midweek phone session. "Do you have a cold?"
"I'm fine."
I wonder if I knew this would be the last time we'd ever speak, after nearly a decade of conversation, and that's why I filled the time with flighty inanities, so he'd know I was fine.
I'm ashamed to say I wrap up my session with Dr R before our 50 minutes are up. I say he sounds sick. "I'll call you if I need you," I say, though I've a feeling it won't be for a while. I am doing so well, and have been for the past year. And then we hang up.
The next time I call, Dr R's machine picks up but with a new greeting: "Due to a medical issue, this office is closed. This machine will not take messages."
I open an email that has been sent to an account I rarely check. It has been there some time. Dr R has died, aged 53, leaving behind his wife and two boys.
Around the time I find out about Dr R, the newspapers find out about my relationship. We read obsessively the nasty comments. I am fat and ugly. He is unwashed. We are pregnant.
Yet I am happy. We are happy, and we've been this way for six months now. It's the longest I can remember. It's not mania. We don't need each other. We just really, really enjoy each other. And we're good people together. I love him and, for the first time in a relationship, I also like me.
We agree to a road trip across America when he gets back. He asks me to book out Christmas and my birthday for a trip to Istanbul. He's decided that we should definitely start trying for a baby in January. I want everything he wants.
"The only thing I know for certain," he writes, "is that I want us to be family."
He texts me from the plane to say he'll be in my arms in a few hours and our life together will begin in earnest.
Then he turns off his phone and the plane takes off.
When he arrives at my door, he is trembling. "I think I need space," he says.
It takes me a while to understand this is him leaving our relationship. A thought occurs. "Did you think that if we had a baby, you wouldn't be able to leave? Is that why you wanted me to get pregnant?"
"Maybe. That might be true." He can't look at me because he is crying so hard.
I lock myself in the bathroom. I call from under the door: "You can go now."
"Em. Please let me in! Em!"
"I'm fine. Please leave now."
"Have you cut yourself?"
"No."
"Are you going to?"
"I don't think so."
"Promise me!"
"I can't."
But I don't cut. I don't do that any more.
I need Dr R more than I ever have, but instead I have to get through this break-up myself, like normal people do. Only I'm not normal and this is not a normal situation. Because they don't know that it's over, his online fan community continue to say that I'm fat and ugly. I look at the comments about us compulsively and, though I understand that reading them is a version of self-mutilation, I can't figure out how to stop.
It is in an internet cafe, six months after our break-up, that I open an email a kindly journalist has sent me, with a photo of my ex hand in hand with his new girlfriend, wearing a dress that reveals her to be in her second trimester of their pregnancy. I'm not quite sure what I'm supposed to do. I know I'm supposed to cut myself.
Or there's that bottle of pills I've had in my handbag these last miserable months.
I walk the hour home. Eventually, the impulse fades.
Suicide has always haunted me, but I'm not going to kill myself. I am never going to kill myself. I am going to accept the darkness, and I'm going to make something from it. The bottle of pills goes back in the cupboard, for use, as needed, with headaches.
At the end of the week, Mum sends me a letter from London:
"It will get better now. You can allow the whole thing to recede. You've had your movie star. He's had his smart, funny, sensitive girl from something like the real world. You'll find someone more grounded. He'll find someone tougher. Done." It might have been written by Dr R.
SOURCE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/jan/08/emma-forrest-your-voice-my-head-extract
I know some of this is BS already. Emma lives in a world of her own! I know the timing of all the events better than Emma!
ReplyDelete@4:03--Your arrogance astounds me. You are the one living in a world of your own.
ReplyDeleteThanks for posting this Gem. Interesting read. The fact that he was so furiously adamant that he never cheated on her with ABC means to me that he either cared about her a great deal or was feeling guilty as hell about it all or both. Curious, didn't ABC's camp say that he also told her that he wanted to start a family? Sounds like he's still that lonely, mixed up guy trying to find his own identity as so many do that come out of rehab and have to re-invent themselves. He's also mentioned that the reason he became famous in the first place was for love and acceptance. Seems to me that what he really needs is to learn how to love himself. It's too bad that he doesn't realize how good of a man he is. Enough of my armchair psychology, I wish them both well.
Honestly, I found myself extremely uncomfortable reading this excerpt from EF book. I feel sorry for Colin that his most personal conversations with his then-girlfriend are revealed now (Although it may be fiction as well. One God knows). :-/
ReplyDeleteAnna, I had the same feeling reading the excerpt. Everyone knows it is Colin she's writing about and his most private conversations with her should've stayed private. I think it probably did happen pretty much the way she says (maybe not as dramatically as "let's have a baby" getting on the plane to we're through getting off. I just hope this bit is all she wrote about him, but I have a feeling there's more. :(
ReplyDeleteIz
As a writer myself, I see talent here.
ReplyDeleteBut as a person who's been through the therapy ad infinitum, I'm sorry....this just is not good fiction, and frankly, she sounds too self-absorbed to be in a healthy relationship with anyone, movie star or otherwise.
Interesting read Gemini, thanks for posting it. While I think EF is a pretty messed up chick, I have no doubt that Colin screwed her over. I find it really curious that Colin talks about having babies with just about every woman he's with. (assuming that what she writes is true, of course)No guy in their 30's that I know does that. It does suggest that Emma is not the only messed up one. I do think it's tacky that she's writing about their relationship, but he know's she's a writer, so maybe he should have been more careful? Still not sure about that one.
ReplyDeleteYes Virgo, it is a little disconcerting that Colin appears to want the 'kids' but doesn't necessarily want to stick with the mother :-/
ReplyDeleteMaybe because he's no longer into the drugs and alcohol he feels the need to occupy his spare time bringing up children... I wonder if he'll start up his own nursery: The Colin Farrell Day Care Centre! ;))
I've read Emma's book. It goes into really graphic detail about Colin. One gets the sense that she was basically stalking him at the end of their relationship. She'd bombard him with text messages and emails and he'd not even reply. Also, nothing I've seen or read suggests that Colin took the relationship as seriously as Emma did. It would be interesting to hear Colin's version of events.
ReplyDeleteOh God, it seems that book is worse that I thought. :-O
ReplyDeleteIf it's true I'm not surprised that he decided to quit this relationship. :-/
@2:29
ReplyDeleteDoes she actually say in the book that she bombarded him and he didn't respond? It kind of makes sense. He's aware of her mental problems and he probably just wanted out, while doing as little damage to her psyche as possible. Although another reason could be he was already boinking ABC. He seems to fall hard in the begining and then lose interest.
She goes off the deep end when Colin dumps her. Here is a quote from the book "I reach out to [Colin], tell him things are not good and I would like to speak face to face. He does not reply. For two days I roil in shock, knowing that he will. But he doesn't. Finally an email, cool, saying he's "glad I'm doing well," no mention of what I've said."
ReplyDeleteShe writes pages and pages about her obsession with him and repeatedly says she is on his video card at the video store. She refers to him as her husband.
She does say that Colin wanted children with her and wanted to be with her forever. But how do we know he really said any of that?
On her blog, Emma herself admits "I know I delve into some difficult subject matter"... and well yes she does; self-harm, and depression are 'serious' issues. So if from what I'm picking up on my blog is true, and Emma has dedicated pages of print in order to go into 'graphic' details regarding a certain 'relationship', I can only assume she has been a tad conceited in the promotion of her book.
ReplyDeleteA lot of readers may feel somewhat used and maybe even cheated that they have been perhaps fooled into buying a book they believed to be about someone's personal life experiences, mental health issues and the lessons learned - only to discover that it's actually a masquerade for something entirely different! :-o
Thanks! She is mentally ill if she puts in print how she stalked him, lol! Sorry, that was probably in bad taste, but seriously? I mean her mental problems took hold long before her relationship with him. It's total exploitation IMO. She needs to just forget it and move on like ev eryone else does whan a relationship ends.
ReplyDeleteIt is interesting to note that in the guardian extract Emma says she is with someone new. The only reason a new boyfriend would endure see his girl talk about how much in love she was with her famous ex is because profit and selling more books is the only reason behind it.
ReplyDeleteYikes! 4:32, I had a feeling there was going to be too much of their relationship in the book. I couldn't help wonder how big a seller a book about her mental health issues would be. Add "movie star" tragic romance and it's a different book with a whole different audience. It's interesting some of the excerpt seems to be exactly the same as parts of the script she wrote. Still don't think it's terribly brave to write private details about an ended relationship but people do it. :/
ReplyDeleteI hope the f*&ing thing tanks. But that's just me.
Iz
There's a big interview with her in the Sunday Times today too where Colin's real name is used. She says that he is not going to read the book.
ReplyDeleteMy brother saw the Guardian article and said what a beautiful woman Emma is judging from the photograph. I don't even really agree (miaow miaow)
I can only assume her 'new' boyfriend is not yet book worthy... but hey give it time! =))
ReplyDeleteSorry maybe that was a bit below the belt :p
LMAO @Gemini! No it wasn't. I have to assume she's had alot of dating relationships. Don't think it's a coincidence that CF is the only one worth writing a book about. Sad to say, but I bet all her relationships were similiar to that. Acting that way is a character flaw that usually has little to do with the other person.
ReplyDeleteWilliam Congreve,, - The Mourning Bride:
ReplyDelete"Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned
Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned."
EF decided to explain why she wrote and published the memoirs. And the reason is not money!!!! She thinks we are stupid or what?
ReplyDeletehttp://emmaforrest.blogspot.com/
I read that too. Now she says she's linked to several men in the book through the internet. Google only noticed Colin. :( Wonder why she's all of a sudden wanting to convince people some of what she wrote isn't about him. In her video interview, she clearly says the other man in the book (besides the doctor) was a bereavement and he can't hear her but she wanted to try. Maybe she regrets writing some of the more personal things realizing now they'll be assumend to be about Colin.
ReplyDeleteAny of you who read the book - are there several other relationships mentioned?
Iz
Iz
ReplyDeleteI think she was dating Chloe Sevingny's brother Paul,a while ago.
While his sister was picking up heat in Hollywood, Mr. Sevigny was doing Wall Street: runner, clerk, trader at "a small boutique." Last year he began dating Emma Forrest, a 23-year-old British journalist who wrote a novel called Namedropper . "I don't really speak to him anymore," Ms. Forrest said. "There's no animosity, but I keep hearing about him and reading about him being this super-hip cool guy. And what I liked so much about him was, we were just complete dorks. He was the only person I ever met who was a bigger dork than I. We would just sit around and talk in baby voices and pretend to be Furbies, the child toy, the little furry ball that talks. We'd pretend to be Pikachu from Pokémon. And he was really great to me. I met him like a week after I moved to New York from England, and he was really my mom for a year."
But there were problems. "I'm not a very stable person and neither is he, and two crazy people don't make a sane one," Ms. Forrest said, laughing. "He'd be saying what an incredible human being George Bush Sr. was, and I'd just burst into tears. And I'd be in floods of tears as he'd go on to say that George W. should be President by virtue of being George Bush's son."
Another recurring issue was apparently Bret Easton Ellis' 1991 novel American Psycho, whose protagonist, Patrick Bateman, is a well-dressed serial killer. "It's his favorite book," Ms. Forrest said. "He would say, 'I am Patrick Bateman.' I would say, 'You mean you want to torture and murder women?' and he would say, 'No, I don't mean that.' I would say, 'Which part of Patrick Bateman do you relate to?' He never managed to explain that one. I remember I said, 'You know it's a satire,' and he snorted and said, 'You just don't understand it.' He just worships that book."
(Coincidentally, sister Chloë played Bateman's secretary and near-victim in this year's movie version of the book.)
Things didn't work out with Ms. Forrest. But then Mr. Sevigny landed his dream job-with the luckless Mr. Giachetto.
Thanks. So from this, it looks like she wrote something about him that's on the internet? Or in a book? I hardly think being the sister of an actress is news worthy. If I could roll my eyes here I would. Still not getting the several men she's linked to on the internet that she made anonymous in the book...
ReplyDeleteIz
Chloe's brother was a pretty well-known DJ in NY and owned the celeb-packed Beatrice Inn. While he's not a movie star, he isn't a "nobody". He was definitely part of the circuit in NYC. I know that doesn't make him famous to most people, but he is very well-known in the downtown hipster circles of NYC.
ReplyDeleteNow why doesn't that surprise me I wonder?! ;))
ReplyDelete