Aside from A Scanner Darkly [or maybe Sin City?] this is the only “cartoon character” movie I own. On the other hand, the point of it is to transmit interesting ideas. So, whether these ideas come out of the mouths of actual flesh and blood human beings or actors mouthing the ideas as cartoon characters, really, what’s the difference?
It would be as though the film Mindwalk were made as a cartoon. Would it really have made the discussions any less fascinating?
Here the character explores the relationship between “waking life” and the stuff of dreams.
From IMDb:
While trying to figure out a way to wake up, the main character runs into many people on his way; some of which offer one sentence asides on life, others delving deeply into existential questions and life’s mysteries. We become the main character. It becomes our dream and our questions being asked and answered. Can we control our dreams? What are they telling us about life? About death? About ourselves and where we come from and where we are going?
In other words, it’s all about how we come to copy and paste – to piece together – a reality out of an existential pastiche of variables all around us.
Still, the bottom line remains the same: there are things that you can do in dreams – and experiences that you can have – that you never have the option to pursue in your “waking life”. Just as there can be enormous gap between what you can say is true with words and what you can demonstrate is true out in the world.
Dreams are surely one of the most bizarre manifestations of the “human condition”. How do we really explain them? I’ve awoken from some of my own [almost all of them I can clearly relate to my life] and have simply been astonished. As in, “how the fuck can this happen?!” In other words, the brain as “I” on a whole other level. Almost anything is possible in a dream. But lots and lots and lots of things are not “in reality”. Sometimes you wake up thinking, “thank god, it was only a dream”, and other times thinking, “why can’t my life really be like that?”
So, if you enjoy pursuing the Big Questions, you’ll think you died and went to Heaven. This film touches on them all. Indeed, even now I can imagine some of our resident objectivists reacting to particular segments.
On the other hand, look for the parts that go off [way off] the deep end.
IMDb
[b]It took up to 250 hours to make one minute of animation.
Julie Delpy and Ethan Hawke reprise their roles as Celine and Jesse from Before Sunrise written by Richard Linklater.
This movie was based on real reports of LSD trips
The basic plot of the film is based on a physiological phenomenon known as “lucid dreaming”. Lucid dreaming means dreaming while knowing that you are dreaming. The term was coined by Frederik van Eeden who used the word “lucid” in the sense of mental clarity. Many of the dream state idiosyncrasies described in the film, such as the inability to read time on a digital watch or the tendency of light switches to malfunction, are described in studies authored by Dr. Stephen LaBerge of Stanford University, the leading American authority on lucid dreaming.
When this movie was released in theaters it was preceded by the controversial music video “Pagan Poetry” by Bjork.[/b] This one: youtu.be/KqF8_UcUQdQ
at wiki: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waking_Life
trailer: youtu.be/uk2DeTet98o
WAKING LIFE [2001]
Written and directed by Richard Linklater
[b]Boat Car Guy: It’s like you come onto this planet with a crayon box. Now you may get the 8 pack, you may get the 16 pack but it’s all in what you do with the crayons - the colors - that you’re given. Don’t worry about coloring within the lines or coloring outside the lines - I say color outside the lines, you know what I mean? Color all over the page; don’t box me in! We’re in motion to the ocean. We are not land locked, I’ll tell you that.
…
Philosophy Professor: The reason why I refuse to take existentialism as just another French fashion or historical curiosity, is that I think it has something very important to offer us for the new century. I’m afraid we’re losing the real virtues of living life passionately in the sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself and feel good about life. Existentialism is often discussed as if it’s, a philosophy of despair, but I think the truth is just the opposite. Sartre, once interviewed, said he never really felt a day of despair in his life. One thing that comes out from reading these guys is not a sense of anguish about life so much as, a real kind of exuberance, of feeling on top of it, it’s like your life is yours to create. I’ve read the post modernists with some interest, even admiration, but when I read them I always have this awful nagging feeling that something absolutely essential is getting left out. The more you talk about a person as a social construction or as a confluence of forces or as fragmented of marginalised, what you do is you open up a whole new world of excuses. And when Sartre talks about responsibility, he’s not talking about something abstract. He’s not talking about the kind of self or soul that theologians would argue about. It’s something very concrete, it’s you and me talking, making decisions, doing things, and taking the consequences. It might be true that there are six billion people in this world, and counting, but nevertheless -what you do makes a difference. It makes a difference, first of all, in material terms, it makes a difference to other people, and it sets an example. In short, I think the message here is that we should never simply write ourselves off or see each other as a victim of various forces. It’s always our decision who we are. [/b]
In reality, of course, it cuts both ways. Just steer clear of all the bullshit about living life “authentically”.
Kim: Creation seems to come out of imperfection. It seems to come out of a striving and a frustration and this is where I think language came from. I mean, it came from our desire to transcend our isolation and have some sort of connection with one another. And it had to be easy when it was just simple survival. Like you know, “water.” We came up with a sound for that. Or saber tooth tiger right behind you. We came up with a sound for that. But when it gets really interesting I think is when we use that same system of symbols to communicate all the abstract and intangible things that we’re experiencing. What is frustration? Or what is anger or love? When I say love, the sound comes out of my mouth and it hits the other person’s ear, travels through this byzantine conduit in their brain through their memories of love or lack of love, and they register what I’m saying and they say yes, they understand. But how do I know they understand? Because words are inert. They’re just symbols. They’re dead, you know? And so much of our experience is intangible. So much of what we perceive cannot be expressed. It’s unspeakable. And yet you know, when we communicate with one another and we feel that we have connected and we think that we’re understood I think we have a feeling of almost spiritual communion. And that feeling might be transient, but I think it’s what we live for.
Take that Mr. Objectivist!
The didactic pedant [or that’s what I call him]: If we’re looking at the highlights of human development, you have to look at the evolution of the organism… and then at the development of its interaction with the environment. Evolution of the organism will begin with the evolution of life… perceived through the hominid… coming to the evolution of mankind. Neanderthal, Cro-Magnon man. Now, interestingly, what you’re looking at here are three strings: biological, anthropological-- development of the cities, cultures-- and cultural, which is human expression. Now, what you’ve seen here is the evolution of populations, not so much the evolution of individuals. And in addition, if you look at the time scales that’s involved here-- two billion years for life, six million years for the hominid, years for mankind as we know it-- you’re beginning to see the telescoping nature of the evolutionary paradigm. And then when you get to agricultural, when you get to scientific revolution and industrial revolution, you’re looking at years and years and years. You’re seeing a further telescoping of this evolutionary time. What that means is that as we go through the new evolution, it’s gonna telescope to the point we should be able to see it manifest itself… within our lifetime, within this generation. The new evolution stems from information, and it stems from two types of information: digital and analog. The digital is artificial intelligence. The analog results from molecular biology, the cloning of the organism. And you knit the two together with neurobiology. Before on the old evolutionary paradigm, one would die and the other would grow and dominate. But under the new paradigm, they would exist… as a mutually supportive, noncompetitive grouping. Okay, independent from the external. And what is interesting here is that evolution now becomes an individually centered process, emanating from the needs and the desires of the individual, and not an external process, a passive process… where the individual is just at the whim of the collective. So, you produce a neo-human with a new individuality and a new consciousness. But that’s only the beginning of the evolutionary cycle… because as the next cycle proceeds, the input is now this new intelligence. As intelligence piles on intelligence, as ability piles on ability, the speed changes. Until what? Until you reach a crescendo in a way… could be imagined as an enormous instantaneous fulfillment of human, human and neo-human potential. It could be something totally different. It could be the amplification of the individual, the multiplication of individual existences. Parallel existences now with the individual no longer restricted by time and space. And the manifestations of this neo-human-type evolution, manifestations could be dramatically counter-intuitive. That’s the interesting part. The old evolution is cold. It’s sterile. It’s efficient, okay? And its manifestations are those social adaptations. You’re talking about parasitism, dominance, morality, okay? Uh, war, predation, these would be subject to de-emphasis. These would be subject to de-evolution. The new evolutionary paradigm will give us the human traits of truth, of loyalty, of justice, of freedom. These will be the manifestations of the new evolution. That is what we would hope to see from this. That would be nice.
Got all that?
The nihilist/cynic: A self-destructive man feels completely alienated, utterly alone. He’s an outsider to the human community. He thinks to himself, “I must be insane.” What he fails to realize is that society has, just as he does, a vested interest in considerable losses and catastrophes. These wars, famines, floods and quakes meet well-defined needs. Man wants chaos. In fact, he’s gotta have it. Depression, strife, riots, murder, all this dread. We’re irresistibly drawn to that almost orgiastic state… created out of death and destruction. It’s in all of us. We revel in it. Sure, the media tries to put a sad face on these things, painting them up as great human tragedies. But we all know the function of the media has never been… to eliminate the evils of the world, no. Their job is to persuade us to accept those evils and get used to living with them. The powers that be want us to be passive observers. And they haven’t given us any other options… outside the occasional, purely symbolic, participatory act of voting. You want the puppet on the right or the puppet on the left? I feel that the time has come to project my own… inadequacies and dissatisfactions… into the sociopolitical and scientific schemes, Let my own lack of a voice be heard.
Then he sets himself on fire. No, really.
Jesse: I heard that Tim Leary said as he was dying that he was looking forward to the moment when his body was dead, but his brain was still alive. They say that there’s still to 6 to 12 minutes of brain activity after everything is shut down. And a second of dream consciousness, right, well, that’s infinitely longer than a waking second.
I’ve never actually timed it myself.
Man in jail cell: I’ll get you motherfuckers if it’s the last thing I do. Oh, you’re gonna pay for what you did to me. For every second I spend in this hellhole, I’ll see you spend a year in living hell! Oh, you fucks are gonna beg me to let you die. No, no, not yet. I want you cocksuckers to suffer. Oh, I’ll fix your fuckin’ asses, all right. Maybe a long needle in your eardrum. A hot cigar in your eye. Nothin’ fancy. Some molten lead up the ass. Ooh! Or better still, some of that old Apache shit. Cut your eyelids off. Yeah. I’ll just listen to you fucks screamin’. Oh, what sweet music that’ll be. Yeah. We’ll do it in the hospital. With doctors and nurses so you pricks don’t die on me too quick. You know the best part? The best part is you dick-smokin’ faggots will have your eyelids cut off, so you’ll have to watch me do it to you, yeah. You’ll see me bring that cigar closer and closer… to your wide-open eyeball… till you’re almost out of your mind. But not quite… ‘cause I want it to last a long, long time. I want you to know that it’s me, that I’m the one that’s doin’ it to you. Me!
Any particular reason he had to be black?
[b]Intellectual: In a way, in our contemporary world view, it’s easy to think that science has come to take the place of God. But some philosophical problems remain as troubling as ever. Take the problem of free will. This problem’s been around for a long time, since before Aristotle in 350 B.C. St. Augustine, St. Thomas Aquinas, these guys all worried about how we can be free… if God already knows in advance everything you’re gonna do. Nowadays we know that the world operates according to some fundamental physical laws, and these laws govern the behavior of every object in the world. Now, these laws, because they’re so trustworthy, they enable incredible technological achievements. But look at yourself. We’re just physical systems too. We’re just complex arrangements of carbon molecules. We’re mostly water, and our behavior isn’t gonna be an exception to basic physical laws. So it starts to look like whether it’s God setting things up in advance…and knowing everything you’re gonna do… or whether it’s these basic physical laws governing everything. There’s not a lot of room left for freedom. So now you might be tempted to just ignore the question, ignore the mystery of free will. Say, “Oh, well, it’s just an historical anecdote. It’s sophomoric. It’s a question with no answer. Just forget about it.” But the question keeps staring you right in the face. You think about individuality, for example, who you are. Who you are is mostly a matter of the free choices that you make. Or take responsibility. You can only be held responsible, you can only be found guilty or admired or respected… for things you did of your own free will. The question keeps coming back, and we don’t really have a solution to it. It starts to look like all your decisions are really just a charade. Think about how it happens. There’s some electrical activity in your brain. Your neurons fire. They send a signal down into your nervous system. It passes along down into your muscle fibers. They twitch. You might, say, reach out your arm. Looks like it’s a free action on your part, but every one of those–every part of that process–is actually governed by physical law: chemical laws, electrical laws and so on. So now it just looks like the Big Bang set up the initial conditions, and the whole rest of our history, the whole rest of human history and even before, is really just sort of the playing out of subatomic particles… according to these basic fundamental physical laws. We think we’re special. We think we have some kind of special dignity, but that now comes under threat. I mean, that’s really challenged by this picture. So you might be saying, "Well, wait a minute. What about quantum mechanics? "I know enough contemporary physical theory to know it’s not really like that. “It’s really a probabilistic theory. There’s room. It’s loose. It’s not deterministic.” And that’s gonna enable us to understand free will. But if you look at the details, it’s not really gonna help…because what happens is you have some very small quantum particles, and their behavior is apparently a bit random. They swerve. Their behavior is absurd in the sense that it’s unpredictable…and we can’t understand it based on anything that came before. It just does something out of the blue, according to a probabilistic framework. But is that gonna help with freedom? Should our freedom just be a matter of probabilities, just some random swerving in a chaotic system? That just seems like it’s worse. I’d rather be a gear… in a big deterministic, physical machine… than just some random swerving. We have to find room in our contemporary world view for persons, with all that that it entails; not just bodies, but persons. And that means trying to solve the problem of freedom, finding room for choice and responsibility… and trying to understand individuality.
…
Alex Jones: “You can’t fight city hall.” “Death and taxes.” “Don’t talk about politics or religion.” This is all the equivalent of enemy propaganda, rolling across the picket line. “Lay down, GI! Lay down, GI!”. We saw it all through the 20th Century. And now on the 21st Century, it’s time to stand up and realize, that we should NOT allow ourselves to be crammed into this rat maze. We should not SUBMIT to dehumanization. I don’t know about you, but I’m concerned with what’s happening in this world. I’m concerned with the structure. I’m concerned with the systems of control. Those that control my life, and those that seek to control it EVEN MORE! I want FREEDOM! That’s what I want, and that’s what YOU should want! It’s up to each and every one of us to turn loose of just some of the greed, the hatred, the envy, and yes, the insecurities, because that is the central mode of control, make us feel pathetic, small, so we’ll willingly give up our sovereignty, our liberty, our destiny. We have GOT to realize we’re being conditioned on a mass scale. Start challenging this corporate slave state! The 21st Century’s gonna be a new century! Not the century of slavery, not the century of lies and issues of no significance, of classism and statism, and all the rest of the modes of control… it’s gonna be the age of humankind, standing up for something PURE and something RIGHT! What a bunch of garbage, liberal, Democratic, conservative, Republican, it’s all there to control you, two sides of the same coin! Two management teams, bidding for control of the CEO job of Slavery Incorporated! The TRUTH is out there in front of you, but they lay out this buffet of LIES! I’m SICK of it, and I’M NOT GONNA TAKE A BITE OUT OF IT! DO YA GOT ME? Resistance is NOT futile, we’re gonna win this thing, humankind is too good, WE’RE NOT A BUNCH OF UNDERACHIEVERS, WE’RE GONNA STAND UP, AND WE’RE GONNA BE HUMAN BEINGS! WE’RE GONNA GET FIRED UP ABOUT THE REAL THINGS, THE THINGS THAT MATTER - CREATIVITY, AND THE DYNAMIC HUMAN SPIRIT THAT REFUSES TO SUBMIT! WELL THAT’S IT, that’s all I’ve got to say. It’s in your court now.
…
Student masturbating mentally: The main character is what you might call “the mind.” It’s mastery, it’s capacity to represent. Throughout history, attempts have been made… to contain those experiences which happen at the edge of the limit… where the mind is vulnerable. But I think we are in a very significant moment in history. Those moments, those what you might call liminal, Limit, frontier, edge zone experiences… are actually now becoming the norm. These multiplicities and distinctions and differences… that have given great difficulty to the old mind… are actually through entering into their very essence, tasting and feeling their uniqueness. One might make a breakthrough to that common something… that holds them together. And so the main character is, to this new mind, greater, greater mind. A mind that yet is to be. And when we are obviously entered into that mode, you can see a radical subjectivity, radical attunement to individuality, uniqueness to that which the mind is, opens itself to a vast objectivity. So the story is the story of the cosmos now. The moment is not just a passing, empty nothing yet. And this is in the way in which these secret passages happen. Yes, it’s empty with such fullness… that the great moment, the great life of the universe… is pulsating in it. And each one, each object, each place, each act… Leaves a mark. And that story is singular. But, in fact, it’s story after story.[/b]
Got that?
[b]Chimpanzee: Our critique began as all critiques begin: with doubt. Doubt became our narrative. Ours was a quest for a new story, our own. And we grasp toward this new history driven by the suspicion… that ordinary language couldn’t tell it.
…
Man at bar: There are two kinds of sufferers in this world: those who suffer from a lack of life… and those who suffer from an overabundance of life. I’ve always found myself in the second category. When you come to think of it, almost all human behavior and activity is not essentially any different from animal behavior. The most advanced technologies and craftsmanship bring us, at best, up to the super-chimpanzee level. Actually, the gap between, say, Plato or Nietzsche and the average human is greater than the gap between that chimpanzee and the average human. The realm of the real spirit, the true artist, the saint, the philosopher, is rarely achieved. Why so few? Why is world history and evolution not stories of progress but rather this endless and futile addition of zeroes? No greater values have developed. Hell, the Greeks 3,000 years ago were just as advanced as we are. So what are these barriers that keep people from reaching anywhere near their real potential? The answer to that can be found in another question, and that’s this: Which is the most universal human characteristic-- fear or laziness?
…
Woman in cafe: What are you writing?
Man: A novel.
Woman: What’s the story?
Man: There’s no story. It’s just…people, gestures, moments, bits of rapture, fleeting emotions. In short, the greatest stories ever told!
Woman: Are you in the story?
Man: I don’t think so. But then I’m kind of reading it and then writing it.
…
Man on TV: A single ego is an absurdly narrow vantage from which to view this experience. And where most consider their individual relationship to the universe, I contemplate relationships of my various selves to one another.
…
Man with Long Hair: They say that dreams are only real as long as they last. Couldn’t you say the same thing about life? A lot of us out there are mapping that mind/body relationship of dreams. We’re called the oneironauts. We’re explorers of the dream world. Really, it’s just about the two opposing states of consciousness…which don’t really oppose at all. See, in the waking world, the neuro-system inhibits the activation of the vividness of memories. This makes evolutionary sense. It’d be maladapted for the perceptual image of a predator… to be mistaken for the memory of one and vice-versa. If the memory of a predator conjured up a perceptual image, we’d be running off to the bathroom every time we had a scary thought. So you have these serotonic neurons… that inhibit hallucinations… that they themselves are inhibited during REM sleep. This allows dreams to appear real… while preventing competition from other perceptual processes. This is why dreams are mistaken for reality. To the functional system of neural activity that creates our world, there is no difference between dreaming a perception and an action… and actually the waking perception and action. [/b]
Go ahread, prove this is right. Or prove this is wrong. Your choice.
Caveh [the film/art/mystic man]: Cinema, in its essence, is about reproduction of reality, which is that, like, reality is actually reproduced. And for him, it might sound like a storytelling medium, really. And he feels like, um-- like film-- Like-- like literature is better for telling a story. And if you tell a story or even like a joke-- “This guy walks into a bar and sees a dwarf.” That works really well because you’re imagining this guy and this dwarfing this bar. And it’s an imaginative aspect to it. In film, you don’t have that because you actually are filming a specific guy… in a specific bar with a specific dwarf… - of a specific height who looks a certain way, right? - Mm-hmm. So like, um, for Bazin, what the ontology of film has to deal-- it has to deal with, you know, with-- - Photography also has an ontology, - Right. except that it adds this dimension of time to it… and this greater realism. And so, it’s about that guy… at that moment in that space. And, you know, Bazin is, like, a Christian, so he, like, believes that, you know-- in God, obviously, and everything. For him, reality and God are the same. You know, like-- And so what film is actually capturing is, like, God incarnate, creating. You know, like this very moment, God is manifesting as this. And what the film would capture if it was filming us right now… would be, like, God as this table, and God is you and God is me and God looking the way we look right now… and saying and thinking what we’re thinking right now… - because we’re all God manifest in that sense. - Mm-hmm. So film is like a record of God or the face of God… or of the ever-changing face of God. You have a mosquito. You want me to get it for you? - You got it. Yeah. - I got it? And the whole Hollywood thing has taken film… and tried to make it this storytelling medium… where you take these books or stories… and then you, like, you know-- you get the script and then try to find somebody who fits the thing. But it’s ridiculous. It shouldn’t be based on the script. It should be based on the person, the thing. And, um-- And in that sense, they’re almost right to have this whole star system… - because then it’s about that person instead of the story. - Right. Truffaut always said the best films aren’t made-- The best scripts don’t make the best films… because they have that kind of literary, narrative thing that you’re sort of a slave to. The best films are the ones that aren’t tied to that slavishly. So, um-- So-- I don’t know-- The whole narrative thing seems to me like-- Obviously, there’s narrativity to cinema 'cause it’s in time, just the way there’s narrativity to music. You don’t first think of the story of the song, then make the song. It has to come out of the moment. That’s what film has. It’s just that moment, which is holy. You know, like this moment, it’s holy. But we walk around like it’s not holy. We walk around like there’s some holy moments and there are all the other moments… - that are not holy, but this moment is holy. - Right. Right. And film can let us see that. We can frame it so that we see, like, “Ah, this moment. Holy.” Like “holy, holy, holy” moment by moment. But who can live that way? Who can go, “Wow, holy”? Because if I were to look at you and let you be holy-- I don’t know. I would, like, stop talking. Well, you’d be in the moment. The moment is holy, right? Yeah, but I’d be open. I’d look in your eyes and I’d cry… and I’d feel all this stuff and that’s not polite.
Ever had a “Holy moment” yourself?
All theory and no action men walking down the street:
“If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible.”
“On the way to discovering what we love, we will find everything we hate, everything that blocks our path to what we desire.”
“The comfort will never be comfortable for those who seek what is not on the market”.
“A systematic questioning of the idea of happiness.”
“We’ll cut the vocal chords of every empowered speaker. We’ll yank the social symbols through the looking glass. We’ll devalue society’s currency.”
“To confront the familiar.”
“Society is a fraud so complete and venal… that it demands to be destroyed beyond the power of memory to recall its existence.”
“Where there’s fire, we will carry gasoline.”
“Interrupt the continuum of everyday experienceand all the normal expectations that go with it.”
“To live as if something actually depended on one’s actions. To rupture the spell of the ideology of the commodified consumer societyso that our oppressed desires of a more authentic nature can come forward.”
“To demonstrate the contrast between what life presently is and what it could be.”
“To immerse ourselves in the oblivion of actions and know we’re making it happen.”
“There will be an intensity never before known in everyday life to exchange love and hate, life and death, terror and redemption, repulsions and attractions.”
“An affirmation of freedom so reckless and unqualified, that it amounts to a total denial of every kind of restraint and limitation.”
Words to, uh, not live by?
[b]All theory man: Why so glum, Mr. Deborg?
Mr Deborg: What was missing was felt irretrievable. The extreme uncertainties of subsisting without working made excesses necessary and breaks definitive. To quote Stevenson: “Suicide carried off many. Drink and the devil took care of the rest.”
…
Man on the Train: Hey, are you a dreamer?
Wiley: Yeah.
Man on the Train: I haven’t seen too many around lately. Things have been tough lately for dreamers. They say dreaming is dead, no one does it anymore. It’s not dead it’s just that it’s been forgotten, removed from our language. Nobody teaches it so nobody knows it exists. The dreamer is banished to obscurity. Well, I’m trying to change all that, and I hope you are too. By dreaming, every day. Dreaming with our hands and dreaming with our minds. Our planet is facing the greatest problems it’s ever faced, ever. So whatever you do, don’t be bored, this is absolutely the most exciting time we could have possibly hoped to be alive. And things are just starting.[/b]
Dream on, right?
Soap Opera Woman: Excuse me.
Wiley: Excuse me.
Soap Opera Woman: 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 antennas bouncing off one another, continously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. “Here’s your change.” "Paper or plastic?’ “Credit or debit?” “You 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 ant, you know?
Wley: Yeah. Yeah, I know. I don’t want to be an ant, either.
Soap opera woman: Yeah, thanks for kind of, like, jostling me there. I’ve been kind of on zombie autopilot lately.
Wiley: I don’t feel like an ant in my head, but I guess I probably look like one. It’s kind of like D.H. Lawrence had this idea of two people meeting on a road… And instead of just passing and glancing away, they decided to accept what he calls “the confrontation between their souls.” It’s like, um-- like freeing the brave reckless gods within us all.
Soap opera woman: Then it’s like we have met. I’m doing this project. I’m hoping you’ll be interested in doing it. It’s a soap opera, and, so, the characters are the fantasy lives. They’re the alter egos of the performers who are in it. So you pretty much just figure out something that you’ve always wanted to do… or the life you’ve wanted to lead or occupation or something like that. And we write that in, and then we also have your life intersect… with other people’s in the soap opera in some typical soap opera fashion. Then I also want to show it in a live venue… and have the actors present so that once the episode is screened, then the audience can direct… the actors for subsequent episodes with menus or something. So it has a lot to do with choices and honoring people’s ability… to say what it is that they want to see… and also consumerism and art and commodity. And if you don’t like what you got, then you can send it back… or you get what you pay for, or just participating, just really making choices.
On the other hand she is just a character in a dream.
[b]Wiley: I’ve got the benefit in this reality, if you wanna call it that, of a consistent perspective. Soap opera woman: What is your consistent perspective?
Wiley: It’s mostly just me dealing with a lot of people who are exposing me to information and ideas… that… seem vaguely familiar, but, at the same time, it’s all very alien to me. I’m not in an objective, rational world. Like, I’ve been, like, flying around. Uh-- I don’t know. It’s weird, too, because it’s not like a fixed state. It’s more like this whole spectrum of awareness. Like the lucidity wavers. Like, right now I know that I’m dreaming, right? We’re, like, even talking about it. This is the most in myself and in my thoughts that I’ve been so far. I’m talking about being in a dream.
…
Soap opera woman: We seem to think we’re so limited by the world… and-- and the confines, but we’re really just creating them. And you keep trying to figure it out, but it seems like now that you know that what you’re doing is dreaming, you can do whatever you want to. You’re, uh, dreaming, but you’re awake. You have, um, so many options, and that’s what life is about.
…
Afro man: We are all coauthors of this dancing exuberance… where even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, coauthoring a gigantic Dostoyevsky novel starring clowns. This entire thing we’re involved with called the world is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each other’s presence. The world is an exam to see if we can rise into the direct experiences. Our eyesight is here as a test to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write a hundred stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling into a lucid faint, a sudden exhilaration, as he realized at last something was happening to him. An assumption develops that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely. Which is to say I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood is life lived. But the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and make love… to the paradoxes that bug me. And on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don’t forget. Which is to say, remember. Because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgetting. Lorca in that same poem said… that the iguana will bite those who do not dream. And as one realizes… that one is a dream figure… in another person’s dream, that is self-awareness. [/b]
Or, sure, maybe not.
[b]Man on TV: I do not await the future, anticipating salvation, absolution, not even enlightenment through process. I subscribe to the premise that this flawed perfection is sufficient and complete, in every single ineffable moment.
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Another man on TV: Allegedly, the story goes like this. Billy Wilder runs into Louis Malle. This was in the late '50s, early '60s. And Louis Malle had just made his most expensive film, which had cost two and a half million dollars. And Billy Wilder asks him what the film is about. And Louis Malle says, “It’s sort of a dream within a dream.” And Billy Wilder says, “You just lost two and a half million dollars.”
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Woman on TV: Down through the centuries, the notion that life is wrapped in a dream has been a pervasive theme of philosophers and poets. So doesn’t it make sense that death, too, would be wrapped in dream? That, after death, your conscious life would continue in what might be called, “a dream body”? It would be the same dream body you experience in your everyday dream life. Except that in the post-mortal state, you could never again wake up, never again return to your physical body.
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Old man on street: As the pattern gets more intricate and subtle, being swept along is no longer enough.
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Convenience store clerk: Man this must be like parallel universe night. You know that cat that was just in here? Just ran out the door? Well, he comes up to the counter, you know, and I say “What’s the word, turd?” And he lays down this burrito and he kind of looks at me, kind of stares at me and says, “I have but recently returned from the valley of the shadow of death. I’m rapturously breathing in all the odors and essences of life. I’ve been to the brink of total oblivion. I remember and ferment the desire to remember everything.”
Wiley: So, what did you say to that?
Boat Car Guy: Well, I mean, what could I say? I said, “If you’re going to microwave that burrito, I want you to poke holes in the plastic wrapping because they explode. And I’m tired of cleaning up your little burrito doings. You dig me?” 'Cause the jalapenos dry up. They’re like little wheels.
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Woman at Restaurant: When it was over, all I could think about was how this entire notion of oneself, what we are, is just this logical structure, a place to momentarily house all the abstractions. It was a time to become conscious, to give form and coherence to the mystery, and I had been a part of that. It was a gift. Life was raging all around me and every moment was magical. I loved all the people, dealing with all the contradictory impulses - that’s what I loved the most, connecting with the people. Looking back, that’s all that really mattered.
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Man out of the blue: Kierkegaard’s last words were, “Sweep me up.”
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Pinball Playing Man: I mean, I’m not saying that you don’t know what you’re talking about, but I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Wiley: No, see, you guys let me off at this really specific spot that you gave him directions to let me off at. I get out and ended up getting hit by a car. But then I just woke up because I was dreaming, and later, I found out that I was still dreaming, dreaming that I’d woken up.
Pinbally player: Those are called “false awakenings.” I used to have those all the time.
Wiley: But I’m still in it now. I can’t get out of it. It’s been going on forever. I keep waking up, but I’m just waking up into another dream. I’m starting to get creeped out too, like I’m talking to dead people. This woman on TV’s telling me about how death is this dream time that exists outside of life. I mean, I’m starting to think that I’m dead.
Pinball player: I’m gonna tell you about a dream I once had. I know that when someone says that, usually you’re in for a very boring next few minutes, and you might be. Anyway, I read this essay by Philip K… Dick.
Wiley: What, you read it in your dream?
Pinball player: No, no. I read it before the dream. It was the preamble to the dream. It was about that book, “Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said”. He won an award for that one. That’s the one he wrote really fast. It just, like, flowed right out of him. He felt he was sort of channeling it or something. But anyway, about four years after it was published, he was at this party and he met this woman who had the same name as the woman character in the book. And she had a boyfriend with the same name as the boyfriend character in the book. and she was having an affair with this guy, the chief of police. And he had the same name as the chief of police in his book. So she’s telling him all this stuff from her life, and everything she’s saying is right out of his book. So that’s really freaking him out, but what can he do? And shortly after that, he was going to mail a letter, and he saw this kind of, um, dangerous, shady-looking guy standing by his car. But instead of avoiding him, which he said he usually would have done, he walked right up to him and said, “Can I help you?” And the guy said, “Yeah. I ran out of gas.” He pulls out his wallet and he hands him some money, which he says he never would have done. And then he gets home and he thinks, “Wait a second. This guy can’t get to a gas station. He’s out of gas.” So he gets back in his car. He finds the guy, takes him to the gas station. And as he’s pulling up to the gas station, he realizes, “Hey, this is in my book too. This exact station. This exact guy. Everything. " So this whole episode is kind of creepy, right? And he’s telling his priest about it, describing how he wrote this book, and four years later, all these things happened to him. And as he’s telling it to him, the priest says, “That’s the Book of Acts. You’re describing the Book of Acts.” He’s like, “I’ve never read the Book of Acts.” So he goes home and reads the Book of Acts, and it’s, like, you know, uncanny. Even the characters’ names are the same as in the Bible. And the Book of Acts takes place in 50 A.D., when it was written, supposedly. So Philip K. Dick had this theory that time was an illusion and that we were all actually in 50 A.D. And the reason that he had written this book was that he had somehow momentarily punctured through this illusion, this veil of time. And what he had seen was what was going on in the Book of Acts. And he was really into Gnosticism. and this idea that this demiurge, or demon, had created this illusion of time to make us forget that Christ was about to return and the kingdom of God was about to arrive and that we’re all in 50 A.D. and there’s someone trying to make us forget, you know, that–you know, that God is imminent. And that’s what time is. That’s what all of history is, this kind of continuous, you know, daydream or distraction. And so I read that, and I was like, “Well, that’s weird. " And then that night, I had a dream, and there was this guy in the dream who was supposed to be a psychic. But I was skeptical. I was like, " He’s not really a psychic.” I was just thinking to myself. And then suddenly, I start floating, Like levitating up to the ceiling. And as I almost go through the roof, I’m like, " Mr. Psychic, I believe you. You’re a psychic. Put me down, please.” And I float down, and as my feet touch the ground, the psychic turns into this woman in a green dress. And this woman is Lady Gregory. Now, Lady Gregory was Yeats’ patron, this, you know, Irish person. And though I’d never seen her image, I was just sure that this was the face of Lady Gregory. So we’re walking along, and Lady Gregory turns to me and says, " Let me explain to you the nature of the universe. " Now, Philip K. Dick is right about time, but he’s wrong that it’s 50 A.D. "Actually, there’s only one instant, and it’s right now. "And it’s eternity. "And it’s an instant in which God is posing a question. "And that question is, basically, 'Do you want to, you know, “‘be one with eternity? " Do you want to be in heaven?’ “And we’re all saying, ‘No, thank you. Not just yet.’” And so time is actually just this constant saying no… to God’s invitation. That’s what time is. It’s no more 50 A.D. than it’s 2001 you know? There’s just this one instant, and that’s what we’re always in. And then she tells me that actually this is the narrative of everyone’s life. That behind the phenomenal difference, there is but one story, and that’s the story of moving from the “no” to the “yes.” All of life is, " No, thank you. No, thank you.” Then ultimately it’s, “Yes, I give in. Yes, I accept. Yes, I embrace.” I mean, that’s the journey. - Everyone gets to the “yes” in the end, right? So we continue walking, and my dog runs over to me. So I’m petting him. I’m really happy to see him. He’s been dead forbears. So I’m petting him and then I realize there’s this kind of gross oozing stuff coming out of his stomach. And I look over at Lady Gregory, and she sort of coughs. She’s like-- “Oh, excuse me.” And there’s vomit dribbling down her chin, and it smells really bad. And I think, "Wait a second. “That’s not just the smell of vomit, which doesn’t smell very good. “That’s the smell of dead person vomit. You know, it’s, like, doubly foul.” And then I realize I’m actually in, you know, the land of the dead. And everyone around me was dead. My dog had been dead over ten years. Lady Gregory had been longer than that. When I finally woke up, I was like, “Whoa. That wasn’t a dream.” That was a visitation to this real place, the land of the dead.”
Wiley: So what happened? How did you finally get out of it?
Pinball player: Oh, man. It was just like one of those, like, life-altering experiences. I could never really look at the world the same way again after that.
Wiley: Yeah, but how did you finally get out of the dream? See, that’s my problem. I’m trapped. I keep-- I keep thinking that I’m waking up, but I’m still in a dream. It seems like it’s going on forever. I can’t get out of it. I wanna wake up for real. How do you really wake up?
Pinball player: I don’t know. I’m not very good at that anymore. But, um, if that’s what you’re thinking, I mean, you probably should. If you can wake up, you should…because someday you won’t be able to. So just, um, it’s easy. Just–Just… wake up. [/b]
People really do manage to talk themselves into believing things like this. And not just in dreams. Which doesn’t mean it’s not true of course.
