Diana Anastasia
Gravity (Extended Prose), November 2022-2025
Digital Film

Self-shot, self-produced, edited. Prose piece over a tango.

Gravity draws in Renaissance aesthetics, Gods, the feminine in nature, esotericism, religious iconography and sexuality, and invites them all in, in a sort of ridiculously excessive way, like Groucho Marx with the Crowded Cabin scene. Exaggeration, paranoia in both storyline and format, but also very sincere love and Jouissance come together in another surrealist prose.

Strongly represents the concept of Jouissance.
Jouissance goes far beyond everyday pleasure. It represents a surplus of enjoyment so overwhelming that it defies the "pleasure principle" (the psychological drive to seek comfort and avoid pain).

• Pleasure vs. Jouissance: Ordinary pleasure acts as a buffer that keeps the subject calm and regulated. Jouissance is the shattering of that limit, bringing an intense, ecstatic, and sometimes traumatic or overwhelming experience

• The "Death Drive": It is closely linked to the unconscious drive to push past rules and prohibitions, even if doing so results in suffering or self-sabotage

The storyline at face-value is obsession, entitlement, disillusionment but I wanted to keep it off-balance.
In my performance and in my film edit I wanted to play with speed: Convulsive movements add to the awkwardness. Time dissolves and frames blur into one another because the protagonist becomes disoriented.

The vocals are strongly affected with a reverberating bass “monster” effect, that brings in a darker subsoil.
Hope is a recurring theme.

The footage was shot between the UK and Catania, South of Italy.

TRANSCRIPT

Dear heaven
I give you all my prayers
all my love
and all my sex
is for you

It’s been almost a year
And it’s been made clear to me
that I must forget him
that he must forget me
if I am to go to heaven
if I am
to be saved

So I pray
I pray…to forget him
I pray…he forgets me

He- the one with the flashing eyes
and lips like cupid
He cannot summon me
anymore

It’s judgement day
and I am imploring you
to be lenient
And I am begging him
to stop distracting me
because he is like gravity
and he keeps pulling me down 

I don’t want this to be interpreted like
there is some sort of
chance
There is no chance
Our eyes don’t touch
Our hands are occupied
in more virtuous
tasks

Oh Virgin Mary
I’ve worked so hard for this
I’m so perfect for this
No other candidate is as good as me
I’ll be your cool headed, white marble martyr
Never thought I’d be martyr but here we are

I can serve you

In truth- he might just be a mirage
I’ve only seen him alone
He’s not grounded on Earth and I don’t know what Earth he’s grounded on

It’s really the unknown

I don’t want that?

I don’t need to explore. I am past that
I know where I come from and where I belong
and it’s this place
of no tomorrow
no past and no mistakes
who’s colour fears no future
because I am the future
An urn of light and pleasure
And it’s this place…that I don’t need him in

Just promise me 
that I will get to sip from the lips
of ecstasy and
receive the nectar that I was allocated
I am ready now

Though when he speaks to me
the one with the silver hair, brown but celestial
I hear music
He makes me doubt I ever had the authority to dismiss me

This need to be with this child-like angelic being
has never happened
This is new
An opportunity

If only I can be fast
and take it
with the speed of invisibility

It is always better in your imagination
Yes
But my God, you are so believable
It is so sublime
It can be half as good
and worth it

My prayers continue
I’m on the floor
I would drag myself across the seven continents
Or he could drive

I always knew you were the one
The way you came into being,
like an immediate response to my specifications
This whole literature we share
It’s inconclusive

How can I know, for sure?
I must continue to pursue this until I know
And then I can be certain
Only through the experiential one can be sure
Nothing is to be left unchecked, unattended,
unexplored, 
No doors left unopened
Rule number 1 of scientific research
and of sex

After that, one can relax
But not before, are we crazy? 
Before 
is the time to enjoy the earthly pleasures 
that I was promised. 
I was sure…choosing this body would give me some sort of advantage or 
guarantee. 

It’s fucked up, 
that this is where it ends, 
and I didn’t get anything to belong to me

Indeed nothing belongs to me 
and so I am clean. I belong to nothing 
I am free
so I am ready, my Virgin, 
you see that I am?

How wrong I was to think 
that I could stay away from you
for one day even

I found peace now
knowing that I will be accepted
in the realm of the impossible
and the divine
God knows I found he impossible
and I nodded, agreeably

Divine invincibility
one has to have to face you
How could I be prepared?
I found restraint I never thought possible
What creature are you?

You were right when you said
that maybe-