Time Return: Current
I've been watching a fuck-ton of films lately, enjoying them all so far and really just trying to round out the ol' lexicon of film vocabulary, and I'm having the best time with it. I have the Netflix circulatin' and the library check-outs coagulatin' and the weekly screenings pontaculatin' and the occasional trips to the cine with the Mrs. smick-smack-u-latin', so it's all going to plan.
Thing is, it's made me start thinking about why I'm studying film so damn much. Today my personal favorite professor was lecturing us (redundant-and-clarifying as it may be for me personally) about the subjects of camp, kitsch, and cult. Really, all film students (or at least all students of film) should be cultists. They should be obsessed with and reverent of film. They should worship it. Lord knows I do.
So why? I've been thinking about this, and I fall back on my old standard of film being the highest form of human achievement. Literally. I think the greatest thing a human being can do, the most important thing, is to create art, and the highest form of art is film. This is not to say that all films are great, or even good to any extent, but the medium of film is the American artform, it is the modern canvas, and it is the pinnacle of artistic achievement. So, to achieve greatness in film is to achieve greatness in existence as a human.
But why, I ask? Why should we even care? For me, as I see it, I think we can discern something about the human condition from the study of film, as I have chosen to devote my short time on this planet to. Much in the same way that Mendeleev noticed a progression in atomic weights while flipping through flashcards of the elements and saw the periodic table, I think great truths about the human situation can be gleaned from watching, analyzing, and understanding film. Not just film, but the reasons for film and the reactions to film. Lucky for us it's become such a popular entertainment, so gauging reactions is easily done. Lucky for us our answers are all there for us to discover, for us to extract.
On the other hand, one must look at the reality, objectively. I spend a good deal of my life alone in a dark room squinting at a screen. I've decided to commit myself to discerning truth and beauty and meaning from these art works, these reflections of life, but at the same time I have condemned myself to the life of sitting and watching. Watching and sitting. Like Plato's prisoners, my life has become, quite literally, the worship of shadows on a wall, and while I do love it so, I hope that one day it becomes validated when I'm able to break the chains.
...
The Day of the Bubbles (the special show we had going at the ol' Salt Mines) is over, and with it goes the Maker of the bubbles. I still carry around the small vial of solution with which to create the spherical, magical temporaries, and was entertaining the kittens upstairs with them eariler, only proving that the transparent transitories. It is a question of some wonder that such beautiful and fascinating creations are so, by their very nature, inherently ephemeral.
I was sad to see him and, subsequently, them go, but am happy and proud to say that the Mrs. was invited along by the God of Bubbles himself to become a part of his corporation, indeed, to go and work for him! To run the shows when he can't be there! To be his avatar of effervescence. In fact, I'm going to suggest her nametag read just that.
DAMN that's good.
To be completely honest, I'm more than a little jealous, but at the same time I know I wouldn't be able to devote the kind of time he requires to bubbles. I'm too busy focusing on my own waste of life to whittle months away on a totally separate one. Before he left though, I managed to teach myself to do quite a few of his bubble-ations... and even managed one rather difficult one that surpassed even he! Dare I reach higher than the gods? Dare I fly on these wings of bubbles, Dawn and Gatorade? YES I DARE!
I'm sincerely going to miss him, and I'll miss working in his show every day. Going back to the floor, to demonstration, is going to be a bit of a wrench in the cog factory. I didn't go in today, as my head really hurts and I'm beginning to get anxious about this film project I have due on Monday, but I wonder how much of it was my head hurting and not feeling up to it compared to not necessarily wanting to go back to what my job had been. I recieved a raise during the Parade of Bubbles... which was nice enough (at least I'm sure my employer thinks so) to tide me over until the next round of raises. Keep my there and quiet. But just the same, is there a better opportunity out there for me? Could I find a better-paying job, maybe a more stimulating job? Could I make a living editing?
Hell. Maybe I'll just stick it all out, man. Stick out the whole damn thing until I have some sort of kick-ass degree that I can walk into some place with, flash at the receptionist-a, and have him scuttle off like a frightened crab to tell whatever mucky-muck is going to be paying me enormous amounts of green to tell them what the hell to do from now on that I'm-the-fuck-HERE.
Niiiice.
I am so down with the Graduate Studies! Who's down?!
Thing is, it's made me start thinking about why I'm studying film so damn much. Today my personal favorite professor was lecturing us (redundant-and-clarifying as it may be for me personally) about the subjects of camp, kitsch, and cult. Really, all film students (or at least all students of film) should be cultists. They should be obsessed with and reverent of film. They should worship it. Lord knows I do.
So why? I've been thinking about this, and I fall back on my old standard of film being the highest form of human achievement. Literally. I think the greatest thing a human being can do, the most important thing, is to create art, and the highest form of art is film. This is not to say that all films are great, or even good to any extent, but the medium of film is the American artform, it is the modern canvas, and it is the pinnacle of artistic achievement. So, to achieve greatness in film is to achieve greatness in existence as a human.
But why, I ask? Why should we even care? For me, as I see it, I think we can discern something about the human condition from the study of film, as I have chosen to devote my short time on this planet to. Much in the same way that Mendeleev noticed a progression in atomic weights while flipping through flashcards of the elements and saw the periodic table, I think great truths about the human situation can be gleaned from watching, analyzing, and understanding film. Not just film, but the reasons for film and the reactions to film. Lucky for us it's become such a popular entertainment, so gauging reactions is easily done. Lucky for us our answers are all there for us to discover, for us to extract.
On the other hand, one must look at the reality, objectively. I spend a good deal of my life alone in a dark room squinting at a screen. I've decided to commit myself to discerning truth and beauty and meaning from these art works, these reflections of life, but at the same time I have condemned myself to the life of sitting and watching. Watching and sitting. Like Plato's prisoners, my life has become, quite literally, the worship of shadows on a wall, and while I do love it so, I hope that one day it becomes validated when I'm able to break the chains.
...
The Day of the Bubbles (the special show we had going at the ol' Salt Mines) is over, and with it goes the Maker of the bubbles. I still carry around the small vial of solution with which to create the spherical, magical temporaries, and was entertaining the kittens upstairs with them eariler, only proving that the transparent transitories. It is a question of some wonder that such beautiful and fascinating creations are so, by their very nature, inherently ephemeral.
I was sad to see him and, subsequently, them go, but am happy and proud to say that the Mrs. was invited along by the God of Bubbles himself to become a part of his corporation, indeed, to go and work for him! To run the shows when he can't be there! To be his avatar of effervescence. In fact, I'm going to suggest her nametag read just that.
DAMN that's good.
To be completely honest, I'm more than a little jealous, but at the same time I know I wouldn't be able to devote the kind of time he requires to bubbles. I'm too busy focusing on my own waste of life to whittle months away on a totally separate one. Before he left though, I managed to teach myself to do quite a few of his bubble-ations... and even managed one rather difficult one that surpassed even he! Dare I reach higher than the gods? Dare I fly on these wings of bubbles, Dawn and Gatorade? YES I DARE!
I'm sincerely going to miss him, and I'll miss working in his show every day. Going back to the floor, to demonstration, is going to be a bit of a wrench in the cog factory. I didn't go in today, as my head really hurts and I'm beginning to get anxious about this film project I have due on Monday, but I wonder how much of it was my head hurting and not feeling up to it compared to not necessarily wanting to go back to what my job had been. I recieved a raise during the Parade of Bubbles... which was nice enough (at least I'm sure my employer thinks so) to tide me over until the next round of raises. Keep my there and quiet. But just the same, is there a better opportunity out there for me? Could I find a better-paying job, maybe a more stimulating job? Could I make a living editing?
Hell. Maybe I'll just stick it all out, man. Stick out the whole damn thing until I have some sort of kick-ass degree that I can walk into some place with, flash at the receptionist-a, and have him scuttle off like a frightened crab to tell whatever mucky-muck is going to be paying me enormous amounts of green to tell them what the hell to do from now on that I'm-the-fuck-HERE.
Niiiice.
I am so down with the Graduate Studies! Who's down?!
posted by DeadLanguage at 3:22 PM
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