If you haven’t had the pleasure of watching Waking Life. It’s worth a spin. Really it’s worth a few spins. Besides it being an early rotoscoping film in an era that is seeing it done more and more it’s a great work of art and psychology. Check it out on a day you want to relax and just drift through the clouds of your mind thinking those interesting ‘why’ thoughts. There are a few moments that might imprint on an individual and this has always been one of mine …
(Main is character coming out of a subway and bumps into a girl.)
Excuse me.
Excuse me.
Hey, could we do that again? I know we haven’t met, but I don’t want to be an ant, you know. I mean, it’s like we go through life with our antennaes bouncing off one another, continuously on ant auto-pilot with nothing really human required of us. Stop, go, walk here, drive there, all action basically for survival, all communications simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient polite manner. Here’s your change. Paper or plastic? Credit or debit? Want ketchup with that? I don’t want a straw, I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to be an ant, you know.
Yeah, I know. I don’t want to be an ant either. Ha ha. Thanks for kind of jostling me there. I’ve been kind of on zombie auto-pilot lately, I don’t feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It’s like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road, and instead of just passing and glancing away, they decide to accept what he calls the confrontation between their souls. It’s like freeing the reckless gods within us all.
Well, then, it’s like we have met.
(They shake hands)
I don’t want to be an ant either. I don’t think any of us should. When was the last time you touched base with your neighbor, the last time you asked someone who waited on you what their favorite color was? Every once and a while help break the static shell that we so easily fall into by _living for a moment_.
I want real human moments.
I want to see you.
I want you to see me.
I feel some imagry around these contexts that I need to explore (*jots down notes*). Keep these thoughts with you, spread the meme. We need to stop commoditizing ourselves.
-a