newest entry older entries Get your ow
n diary at DiaryLand.com!

2004-07-30 - 11:27 a.m.

After I see a good movie, I go for a walk. Whatever I�ve just seen can just marinate, as I plod down the streets. Taking a walk in New York provides just enough eye candy to stave off boredom, but the methodical stepping can run you straight into a meditative trance. A good movie is trance worthy.

This is the reason I�d rather see movies by myself. If it�s not a keeper you feel at least partially responsible for inflicting said horrors on your buddies. If it is that good, well, I just don�t want to talk about it. I want to walk.

It�s a strange fact that I keep circling around.

�You know how I know your relationship is solid. You never talk about it.�

I sit at home with my DVD�s. Movies and television episodes I�ve seen again and again and again. I know the characters and the plot lines and the intended symbolism because I�ve listened to the commentary tracks a dozen or so times. Watching, and analyzing each actor�s and director�s choices, taking time to consider the social events that influenced its creation, occasionally I think back and try to remember what it was like the first time I saw it. I try to remember when I experienced it rather than studied it.

We�re the first generation for whom the term pop culture could be written with capital letters. There are college programs dedicated to the study of our entertainment, marketing and the business practices behind it. We�re so entrenched that so many of our trends are regurgitated versions of our studied past. Neo-swing, neo-punk, and what feels like a throw back to seventies style rock with The Strokes and The Hives and The Darkness. (A lot of capital �The��s)

Each of us could write a thesis on some cultural icon if we were so inspired.

The term �over thinking� seems to be popping up a lot. That study isn�t just relegated to our entertainment. It invades our lives, our pasts, and our future. We may be over dosing on �the life un-examined is not one worth living.�

I do not think I will ever be able to accept this, but it keeps feeling like the things worth talking about are the things best felt, and how we feel is the most elusive of all things to describe. We describe the events that brought us there, but those things�they�re ours, and unless your reader has lived your life and thought your thoughts, they probably won�t come to the same place that you have. We try metaphor and simile, to offer some point of comparison, but that only paints part of the picture. They�re words. Analysis. At best, it is feeling through a filter.

How do you catch it�snatch it up into a bottle and let everyone take a look? We�re all trying to define the ineffable. Maybe the best thing to see in all this writing is the struggle we�re making to define and connect. That grail quest deserves respect.

But sometimes, maybe, we should just take a walk.

By the way, go see Garden State. It�s pretty good.

0 Letters to the Editor

previous - next

about me - read my profile! read other Diar
yLand diaries! recommend my diary to a friend! Get
 your own fun + free diary at DiaryLand.com!