Thursday, January 10, 2008

Take 29

You know how sometimes you're watching a movie and the people on the screen seem so alive, so real - more real than anyone you know, more real than you yourself have ever managed to be? As though the entire gist of their lives were contained in a handful of scenes, and yet behind it, stretching away in every direction, were a whole life time of other scenes, of moments you'll never see but can imagine anyway, imagine as clearly as if you'd known them all their lives. And you envy them their certainty, envy them knowing, so precisely, who they are.

Because you've known yourself all your life and you don't know who you are. And you sit there wishing that just once, just for a moment, just for an hour or the space of a feature, you could be that exact, that vivid.

Perhaps Sartre is right. Perhaps all existence is the search for an authenticity that doesn't exist.

I don't mind pretending. I just don't know who I'm supposed to be.

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

And what brought this on? There Will be Blood? The Diving Bell and the Butterfly? Juno? Or could it be Bladerunner- The Final Cut?

n!

Banno said...

It's not just films. Sometimes, I catch a glimpse of someone, a pair of eyes in a passing car, and feel an entire existence, that is more real than mine.

teacup said...

This is lovely...Just yesterday I was feeling superfluous...like there's more to me but somehow am not able to grasp it...like there's more to my life, but somehow I feel like am being wasted...like I don't know what and who I am...though, somewhere I know there's more...

but then, maybe everyone feels like this...not a coincidence after all.

Falstaff said...

n!: You forgot No Country for Old Men.

banno: True. Though the thing with that is, it's easier to forget. Movie characters stay with you.

Yashita: Hmmm...personally, I always feel the other way - like there's less to me than I (or other people) think there is.

Anonymous said...

And Falsie hon, what's with the social comparison trip nowadays anyway? My life is less real than Woody Allen's, my thoughts are already and better expressed by Valery and Orwell, my haircut isn't as good as Javier Bardem's..

(and as you well know of the three, I really feel your pain on three. I could hardly watch No Country.. till the end because i was so consumed with envy at his lovely black hair. Bitch).

n!

Anonymous said...

n! - What? But are you sayin' Javier Bardem's, ummm, bristles are more real than Falsie's? Now, Now, "the beautiful uncut hair of graves" - how can they match the silver screen?

Falstaff said...

n!: who said anything about his haircut? I just want that cattle gun. What do you mean you think this paper doesn't make an original contribution? Thwack!

ronan: Ummm...the beautiful uncut hair of graves? At least we all know what you've been smoking.

Anonymous said...

lol...i think i jusss lovee n!
good to see u mortal-ised falsie...commiserations.