Before Sunrise
Late the other night, one of those thousands of nights I haven’t felt like going to bed until 3am, I caught part of this excellent movie on TV. After the second commercial break I had to give up on watching it again, it’s a crime to step away from this movie for any non-emergency reason. Yes, it’s a collection of individual scenes but it builds an atmosphere and feeling you just can’t appreciate properly when it’s broken up by soulless commercials.
I wonder if anyone can truly know me on certain deeper levels if they haven’t seen this movie. Which is sad considering I don’t think I’VE seen it since the 90s.
Like that part about being sick of yourself. He talks about how “I’ve never seen a movie that I didn’t go to with myself, I’ve never experienced anything without hearing my stupid jokes and little opinions in my head” or something to that general effect. This itself probably explains why I so often stay up until 3am. It’s my way of getting away from myself. Higher brain functions seem to cease and you can finally shut off that endless commentary running in your own head and just be. I’m completely indecisive and it’s great.
I guess that’s probably part of my Silly Single Behaviour that may need to go. It’s simply not practical and who would put up with it? I can picture it now…
“What are you doing honey?”
“Soul searching and achieving oneness with myself”
“Well could you turn off the light? It’s 3am for God’s sake…”
Is this why people drink?
You know, to escape that voice in your head that IS you. I can be pretty obnoxious sometimes, I’m certain I could get sick of myself VERY fast…
I think the movie killed my interest in Europe when I realized you could have experiences like that anywhere. It occurred to me, in my quest for similar experiences, that many of them could be constructed with effort. Now is this being a romantic soul, an opportunist, or completely missing the point? I don’t know but that’s a property of self, not location. These realizations or questions pretty much killed the romance of Europe because really, romance is often all about making choices, wherever you are. I guess that’s kind of sad.
The themes struck ever closer to home. A last night, a future that doesn’t exist beyond the sunrise the same as it were before. Acknowledging that you have to become a different person the next day due to the realities of your situation and just fighting that to hold on to the magic of today would kill the magic and at the risk of rhyming, be tragic. Fed right into my packing lethargy.
I need to pick this flick up on DVD after I move and just sit and watch it silently…with cookie dough of course. Traditions, even those ignored for nearly a decade, need to be respected after all. The funny thing is, I already have but have yet to watch the sequel. Isn’t that just me? Having the sequel before the progenitor, having seen the first but waiting to re-watch it before attempting a viewing of the second? Very me I think.
It’s interesting, movies like this and dilemmas like my recent career question seems to make me feel more alive somehow. Deeper and able to see past the mundane. I guess having problems means you’re alive. That said I still despise drama of the real life variety so perhaps it’s not problems but just having really good questions about life that mean something to you. It kind of puts the “do I keep the yo-yo?” type questions in perspective.
Despite all the dialogue I think the lesson I often walk away from this movie with is about living in silence. There’s my oft-quoted bit, which I didn’t happen to catch last night but still remember vividly, about how it’s easy to share a conversation with someone but sharing a silence is something else. Something harder and more special somehow. I think perhaps that’s really what you’re supposed to walk away with, patience. An understanding that you DON’T have to go manufacturing special moments, just be quiet and let them come. Keep an eye out, but don’t play God…or cupid.
Then again I do have a tendency to over-analyze or over-romanticize these things, particularly at 3am.
