I will tell you why I don’t go to movies, but you will think I am insane. Or you will take it personally. Or you will assume there is an audience in the clouds, judging your every thought.
So, shut up and listen.
All of life is a Movie. And all is exquisite. It’s full of Good Actors, Bad Actors, Actors who are Bad at acting Good, and those who are Good at acting Bad. And the stage is amazing. It is never the same for two days, two hours, or two moments. The light is superb, dramatic, unpredictable. Weather comes and goes. Flowers bloom in cracks where no one would imagine; dying trees cling to stormy cliffs above heaving oceans unnamed.
Lives begin and end, love comes and goes; the Spirit, the Sacred, the Essence of Life, inhabits the eyes, the voice, the song… then, like a quiet deer in the woods: gone. Never to return. Never to play at another theater… for 8 consecutive weeks or two consecutive seconds.
This is NOT a movie, yet, this is the most incredible movie.
And you ask me to sit in a theater, and look at past light projected on a screen – light that only mimics life? You ask me to spend ten dollars and two hours of irretrievable time?
And you ask me to look at actors – uncertain of who they are themselves – trying desperately to play a character dreamed up by someone’s overactive imagination?
So, you ask me to meditate on layers of façade, meticulously placed to trick my perceptions, to manipulate my emotions, to dull my own sensitivity and creativity … so that, for a very short time, in my unbelievably boring life, I can lose myself in a non-existent “hero’s life” with exploding cars, talking animals, and cozy, suburban romance in a house I could never afford?
And, all this fantasy and expense, and overwrought lighting effects, to bring to life someone else’s arbitrary myth, where their value system, their emotions, their sexuality, their world view, are superimposed – obliterating my worthless, mundane, empty, boring one — all for ten dollars and two hours of my irrevocable time?
Hmmm.
Tonight, I watched the only sunset that will ever occur on the only Monday, April 26th 2010 that will ever occur, and saw soft seagulls crying and smelled fragile cedars breathing, and walked silent footsteps through a sacred old forest, smiling and greeting the sweet and amazing human beings who passed me by. I may never see them again, but I saw them tonight.
This is my “movie” and this is my life.
It is the sweetest production ever made, and it only shows once.
The acting, the cinematography, the plot, the lighting, the location, the props … are totally amazing.
And … it’s free.
(but very, very expensive …)