I saw Marcel The Shell With Shoes On twice in the theaters and both times I was struck- whatever the opposite of speechless is. I had so much to say. About loneliness and community and searching for your place in the world. About the way a world can shrink after loss, but the hole inside you doesn’t. About needing more than you have and wanting more than you need. About the resilience of our spirits to keep going, to make do, in spite of everything.
Anytime someone’s art speaks straight to the center of my experience, I want to perch on the stool across from them- the character they created or the human who imagined them into existence- and say Yes! Me too! I know just what you mean.
So, that’s what I did. I just went ahead and wrote myself into the conversation with Marcel The Shell and Dean, who is both a character and one of the creators.
Note: This isn’t really the kind of movie you can spoil, so, while you may not enjoy the full context, I think you are safe to enjoy this essay even if you haven’t seen the film. That said, please rent this little, big-hearted movie. It is sweet and charming and warm. Deceptive in its simplicity while somehow managing to wrap its arms around some of the deepest, most complicated parts of our shelled1 human experience. It feels like a hug. (For a taste, start with these shorts that led to the full feature)
When we meet Marcel, it’s just him and his grandmother, Nana Connie. Following a mysterious tragedy, all of his friends, family, and neighbors are gone. Vanished. They are two shells maintaining a life, inhabiting roles, navigating a world built to support, and built to be supported by, a much bigger group.
Dean arrives at the airbnb where Marcel and his grandmother live- in the corners and cupboards and house plants- following a break up. He is also alone in a way he didn’t used to be and he is trying to move forward in the way that humans do- through the courage of someone else’s story. He begins filming Marcel for a documentary, asking questions he can’t yet answer himself.
For different reasons, I am joining them in a similar place. Emerging from an isolation following a closed business, a period of wandering, chosen adventures, unexpected tragedies, and a global pandemic. Figuring out how to thrive in the smallness of my current world, while holding a vision for being a part of something bigger.
Let’s begin here…
Dean: Is it hard for you? Has it been hard for you since...
Marcel: Not in the way that I think you would think it would be, but... it's pretty much common knowledge that it takes at least 20 shells to have a community. That’s about the minimum that you need to survive, so… Yeah.
Tami: Since closing The Wheelhouse? Yes… I mean, it’s been hard because closing a business is always hard. But it’s also been hard because, to us, it wasn’t just a business. It was our home. The people there were our family. Having the shop was the first time I felt like I really had a place here, in LA.
The great irony of starting a business to connect people and place is that we became really isolated in the building of it and then again in the closing of it. The middle was magic, but afterwards…our world got a lot smaller. A lot quieter.
We started the shop about six months after we got married. So, that time when we would have been making new friends and a home, we were meeting contractors and investors, making pitch decks and design budgets.
Instead of building a life, we built a business. There wasn’t a lot waiting for us on the other side of it. At least not that wasn’t also, in some complicated way, attached to it.
Dean: Tell me about what life is like now?
Marcel: I appreciate its different beauties, but... it's not the way I would've done things if I was still in the group. Back when the man and the woman lived here, there were a lot of us. More sounds and smells and, things to say 'cause there were more people to talk to.
Tami: At first, we spent a lot of time traveling. Roadtrips, especially. We’ve driven across the country eight times at this point. Spent time with our families after not really seeing them for a few years. Spent time just kind of wandering and thinking about what’s next. Where else we might want to live. What else we might want to do.
The thing is, when we’re in the car, it’s only supposed to be the two of us. We can pretend the life waiting for us back home is full. We can pretend that everywhere we go is our home. That being by ourselves is a choice.
When we’re driving, we listen to a lot of podcasts together and talk about them, talk along with them. Sometimes, if I’m being honest, talk back to them. It’s a kind of substitute for being in larger conversations with other people, with friends.
When it’s just the two of you, you get inventive. Neither of us ever wanted to be everything to the other, but you do figure out how to fill all those empty roles. Friend. Coworker. Coach. Advisor. Cheerleader. Collaborator. Confidante.
After we got back from one of our last trips, we decided we were going to stay in LA for the time being and we were really going to live here. We were going to enjoy all the things we- hypothetically-love about the city. All the things we said we’d miss if we moved somewhere else. We were going to make a real effort to participate and join in and meet new people.
A few months later, we all went into lockdown.
So, in a lot of ways it’s still just the two of us. We’re still trying to solve the problem that led to us building the shop in the first place. But we’re doing our best to change that. Maybe not for the whole city this time, but at least for us.
Marcel: (on finding a lost community) There's so many places that they could be. Do you think it's impossible?
Tami: These days, we don’t travel as visitors so much as prospectors. Everywhere we go, we are evaluating the potential of that place for a home. We try cities on for size- walk the streets, eat with the locals- pretending to live there during our stay. We imagine a life in these places. Imagine who we are there and what we do, where we spend time and who we would spend time with.
The real question, the question we are always asking is- are our people here? Which is to say- could we make friends here? And maybe more specifically- would it be easier to make friends here?
Maybe there isn’t one right answer, but I keep asking these questions because I think there might be a simpler one.
Because it’s not that I don’t have friends. I have beautiful, deep friendships. They are scattered across the city and the country, and in a place like LA, that distance can feel pretty much the same.
So, I just wonder…
Do you move somewhere smaller? Where the options- for people, but also pretty much everything- are more limited, but far more accessible. And would that ease ultimately make what you do have more enjoyable?
Or do you just pick a place where you want to live and risk trying to make new friends there? Or do you stay where you already have a start?
Do you continue to try and grow your existing friendships, to expand and connect your network so it feels less fragmented, even when current effort has already proven this to be so hard?
And what about family? Do you move to be closer to that inherited support system even if that means you live somewhere you don’t really want to?
Do you prioritize shared origins or shared interests?
Do you plant a flag for place or people or work?
Marcel: Have you ever done that before? Like, when there's a party in your house? Sometimes it's easiest to rest when you go off by yourself and you can still hear the noise of the party, and you feel safe knowing that so many people are around...
Tami: Sometimes, when you can’t find something, it forces you to think about what exactly you’re looking or. To describe it in detail to others in case they know where it is. To think about when you last had it, in case that points you in the right direction or helps you know where to start looking.
I have this vision for friendship that feels like a giant, loud, eclectic family. I know it seems strange for an introvert like me, who genuinely enjoys being by myself, who often gets overwhelmed in crowds and thrives in quiet conversations about meaningful things, to talk about wanting a big group of friends.
It’s hard to describe the joy and the relief of not always being one of two, but one of many. To know with certainty that you are a part of something without having to be in the middle of it. The weight and support distributed, like being held in a hammock. Or feasting on a potluck dinner, enjoying a buffet of dishes, everyone bringing something different to the table. A full meal you didn’t have to cook entirely yourself.
But it isn’t just about friendship.
It’s also like how, when I was little, I didn’t even know we had library cards. Because the librarians knew us and had memorized our card numbers and would check us out automatically.
It’s being known, in specific and important ways, by strangers.
Or how my mom would disappear on a Saturday morning because she’d brought the second loaf of banana bread to our neighbor who invited her in for coffee and how she’d return home with peonies from their garden.
It’s casual acquaintances sharing resources and bounty and ordinary life.
Or how thousands of people cycled2 through our shop and even though we didn't get to meet half of them, we became part of their story. We were a daily routine during a particular time in their life, a meeting that launched a career or a collaboration, a single destination on a west coast vacation, the backdrop for a love story or a friendship or a creation, an anecdote paired with a picture on their phone, the reason they starting riding their bike again and all the places they've gone since.
It’s the way that, big or small, everyone who walked through our doors left carrying a piece of something we created and, in turn, left their own impression behind so that what we started was no longer just ours. It belonged to all of us.
Marcel: I felt like everything was in pieces, and then I stood there, and suddenly, we were one large instrument. I like to go there a lot because it reminds me that I'm not just one separate piece rattling around in this place, but that I'm part of a whole. And I truly enjoy the sound of myself connected to everything.
The other day, Chase and I walked into our local coffee shop and the owner was behind the bar wearing a Wheelhouse t-shirt.
The way that one person can make the big, wide world suddenly feel cozy and small.
“Hey, I like your shirt.”
We had never seen him in our shop. We didn’t know if he knew who we were.
His eyes got wide and bright with recognition, three people pulling the same shared secret from their pocket, knowing it together.
“Did you ever get to go?” He asked, like he was wondering if we had been so lucky.
The way nothing can ever be forgotten when we remember it together.
“Yeah….That was our shop…We built it.”
“No way,” he said. “It was my favorite place.”
Ours too.
What we share belongs to all of us.
Marcel: At first I was thinking we're not gonna make it. But sometimes you just have to disregard those rules and think, well, actually, the rule is that I want to be having a good life and stay alive, and...and not just survive, but have a good life.
Tami: Lately, I will catch myself in a moment and whisper to myself- here it is.
Here- you are standing in your yard, watering your plants and talking to your neighbor who knew you were traveling and asked how your trip was.
Here- you are in your house surrounded by friends, sitting around your dinner table, playing games.
Here- you are walking down the street, in the middle of this giant city, and you are waving to people you know and smiling at people you recognize because you pass by each other all the time.
Here- you are.
You are here.
If you could choose- what fictional friend group, family, or community would you most want to be a part of?
It’s no secret that I’d move to Stars Hollow in a heartbeat, but I’d also really love to be a Braverman in the Parenthood family or a Pearson in This Is Us.
Puns, as a general rule, are intended
See above
Just loved this thoughtful look at what makes for a full life. For years I’ve mourned the loss of a knitting group. Twenty-something’s who met weekly to knit, eat chocolate and talk...about everything, work, partners, books, movies, TV, politics. Many of us only socialized inside the group. Then post docs moved to faculty positions in far off places, others had kids, some just got busy...I’ve been contemplating starting my own group, or trying to find another...but as an early retirees...I’m not in sync with many of my friends. I’m going to try what you did...defining what I’m looking for...thanks! ❤️
Oh my goodness. This took my breath away. "About the way a world can shrink after loss, but the hole inside you doesn’t." I lost my father during the pandemic and less than a year later I was unexpectedly pregnant with my first baby.
The questions you ask about belonging are the ones we're asking now as a young family. We're hoping to relocate but are facing all of the same challenges and complicated layers. Do we move for place, people, work? All of the above? Stay put and deepen what we already have?
We don't know yet but I will be returning to this post often in our wondering. Thank you. This was a true delight.