I like people

"We are only what we know, and I wished to be so much more, sorely."

I like people. I like people a lot. I've never been too great with interacting with them, but I certainly do like watching. It's like a spectacle, to see people move everyday, shifting, unshifting, constantly swaying back and forth towards something unknown. I find the life of anyone infinitely fascinating and endlessly wonderful, because we're all beautiful in that sense.

I don't like looking at the obvious, because I know there's much more than that to you. I don't think that makes me deep in any way - I just think I want to see more than what's offered.

It's far easier to become a spectator than a participant, however. Sometimes I find watching people as sort of a passive act, that  probably shouldn't be done through life. Life should be for living, not watching others live. 

But I do it anyways, because I'm messed up

I like movies more than people, probably because they're more subservient to my needs. I don't have to put up with much effort to pick up a dvd and watch Natalie Portman transform herself into a swan. And, more importantly, I like them because they are sort of like living to me, virtually. It's passive yet active, a sort of paradoxical phenomenon. 

Because that's what films are all about. They remove you from the reality you've sunken into, and place you in theirs, which is almost always far more enthralling than your own. It creates this sort of bridge, allowing you to imagine all perspectives, forcing you to understand all sorts of human beings. I think when people watch films, they place most of their prejudices, anger, and disenchantment aside, and learn to love what's there, as if they were only kids again. They, for the most part, stop fearing what they do on an everyday basis. We crawl out of our caves, just like Plato said, and we see the sun. 

Watching a film is an experience that shouldn't be taken for granted. It's one of the most profound connections people can have with each other, without actually having to make tangible conduits. It's like any other art that allows us to touch people in the most intimate way. Film not only brings out what people are on the screen, but also brings out what people are in the audience. Not really sure about you,  but I come out of a theater a little bit changed, a little bit better at seeing things, most of the time. 

It's kind of like science for me, reinvigorating, how it can connect us all and everything around us together in this one, perfect, unified theory. It's like science to me because it's consistent, always there, never lost. If some higher power were to take everything away from me, I'd hope films would be the last thing it'd grab. It's even like science in how it's almost formulaic, almost entirely derivative. If you haven't noticed, all movies do have the same themes, reused and reshaped over and over again. It may seem sort of dull in that way, but to me, that's the magic. We can still love films even though they all do sound the same. They rework themselves over and over again so we can fall in love all over again. They can recapture our attention instantly, like we're fish falling for the same bait. It's like science in how it makes sense of all the confusion we see in our lives, condensing it into a 2 hour time span - like how we've condensed the meaning of light into a single equation. It's like science in how it can say so little, but mean so much more. 

Most people, when they look at life in the grand scheme of things, feel very small, very lonely. They know their worth is not much, and so they pick out 1 or 2 individuals to build their rabbit hole, and they live life in a very small mile range. There's nothing wrong with that, of course - you don't need everyone to feel as if you're worth something. But to me, films take me out of my rabbit hole, and put me in everything all at once, as if I'm worth everything. They make people feel larger than life in the most simple way, without making them feel pathetic about it. 

You can even argue films are for catharsis. They, like any other art form, clean the insides, making everything all beautiful again. Even for horror films, we project our disfigured insecurities onto those ugly creatures and separate ourselves from what is bad, allowing us to move on. Watching movies, you can argue, keep us sane. I know they keep me that way.

It's not living in a fantasy at all. Yeah, I guess they can be an escape from your god awful life. But for me, they embolden me to step out of myself, and into everything else. They in a way bring me back to the reality from which they took me from. 

I don't think many people acknowledge this about films. I know people, subconsciously, process this entire experience, and appreciate it in a more unconscious way. But I think it's time for people to begin to see what Good Will Hunting actually does for the soul, what Schindler's List gives to you. It's important to know that they do mean something for a person, and it's not just pure entertainment. 

So yeah, I do like films, because I love people. I love seeing how you can come together with others, or with me, and connect, like an endless spiderweb. That's all we really want in life. To understand. From there, everything else just feels...

easy