I’ve never been one of those people to go wishing I’d beed born somewhere in the distant past every time I can’t get to grips with what’s happening today. Although I’ve always let my senses wonder to long forgotten sets every time I saw one of those old photos of … how this place used to be, I really wouldn’t want to have lived there. There’s a time and place for everything.
I find the whole approach puerile and simple though deeply sunken in the bourgeois atmosphere of long forgotten days. I find the situations depicted to be petty and the whole typology of character used too commonplace. Still is this such a bad thing? The core issue itself is so puerile and the entire situation is commonplace. We all go through this from time to time. It’s in our nature. We do this often, wishing we could go back, albeit we can’t actually go to those distant places and have an epiphany as our man does. Be it small glimpses of times when color shone brighter, be it places and friends we lost along the way, be it images and sounds that used to comfort us, we all feel the need to rejoice in the certainty of what used to be. It’s only natural, it’s commonplace. It’s easy to frown upon a masterpiece maker’s raw rendering of a very crude idea. It’s a contradiction. How come there’s nothing more to the film? Its the simplicity and obviousness of the situation itself that requires no further complications. That’s the stroke of genius. There’s nothing more to it. Why should there be?!
Keep walking
I think we need to do this. I think it’s a deeply rooted need we have to walk along streets of unknown cities. When I visit a new city, the first thing I do is to walk the streets, I need to breathe in the air and I need to see the faces of the people. I do this not for logistical or strategical purposes, but in order to take the whole scene in for all it’s worth. Most of the people I’ve met have lost the need to keep walking. To tread along new paths. We’re born with this unquenchable desire to absorb every new bit of information that comes our way and, somehow along the way, we start to settle, we start to let mundane stuff bear down on us. When do we lose the thirst?
A friend of mine calls this the spiral. It starts with the tiniest bit of settling for less than you think you ought to and it invariably grows with every other compromise we do in our lives. “I know I could have done better but this will do for now“. “Things are going well; of course there’s this and that and the other one, but it could really be much worse“. No, it couldn’t. It already is worse. You’ve settled for something you know deep inside is not what you really want or need. We’re so fearful about … what exactly? Have we become so jaded that anything will just satisfy us. So why keep on walking? Why walk along the streets at midnight looking for who knows what. Well, that’s … simple and one should try to go way back to their past to find this out. A very smart man once wrote that maturity is to have rediscovered the seriousness one possessed as a child at play. When you’re a child, life is limitless: there are no boundaries or unattainable goals. Why settle for less now? It’s that simple. There is no need to make it more complicated by bringing in the ties and constraints of modern day life. Of course the approach is linear and childish and puerile.
I’ve often been accused of being a childish, spoiled, idealistic brat. Truth is I live in a world where genuine, true emotions and ideal outcomes exist. I’ve been fortunate enough to have this belief hardwired into me in such a manner that, even when it seamed that I was a raging lunatic, I would always manage to see some hint that maybe my beliefs weren’t that far fetched. So what if the search takes a really long time? I mean really: do you actually have a deadline? For instance I do. I have a very concrete and real, physical deadline. That’s precisely why I don’t want to stop chasing my ideals. I don’t have the time to stop for second best … anything. As I’ve said, I know what I want and I won’t ever settle for anything less.
My point is don’t stop looking, don’t stop treading new paths, don’t let norm compromise your ideals, be content to be thought foolish and stupid and keep looking for whatever it is you’re looking for. Eventually, it will come to you.
