I ask a lot of people. I know. So, first off, watch the trailer above (it's 2:42 long) and then either click back or stay. Good, that was easy. Those who weren't curious have gone. Now it's just the rest of us. I watched, for the second time, "You and Me and Everyone We Know" last night. I have wanted to show this movie to a friend, but I have not had the opportunity to do. There's something precious and vulnerable and special about this film. I remember watching it with my wife when it came out back in 2005. We lived in a different house then, our son was about two years old and life was different. I'm not the person I was then, but I am. It's the contradiction of life. We grow, we change, but some of who we are stays the same.
I wanted to know about Miranda July and so I went to her website and a wave of emotion swept over me. She has a way of disarming me through her works, touching at the base of that intimate part of me through her art. I was literally taken aback in visiting her home page, just welling up with emotion because she's gets it.
And what does she get? Life is so precious and so wonderful, filled with amazing and special and unique moments--each day--that we typically don't see or pay attention to or are aware of. We're little islands of loneliness, walking through a vast sea, sometimes bumping into other islands, yet we often don't share who we are or what we feel. I think I identify with July's work so much because I can connect to it and I remember a time in my life when I was so filled with creativity and power but I didn't know what to do with it.
When I was around 19 or 20, I used to take the bus to college and I would be feeling so much. I was going through my teenager, angst period, I guess. It was as though I was a big radio dish and I wasn't broadcasting, but I was receiving all the signals from those around me. I could just feel life, people and I didn't know what to do about it. It was around this time that I started writing short poems. I didn't do it often, but I would write a short piece and then leave it on a seat for the next person to find. It wasn't so much that I wanted someone to notice me (though I used to joke with myself and think I was the "mad poet of SEPTA"), but I wanted someone else to know that I felt the same loneliness and confusion and possibilities that they did.
A year or so later, at my clothing store department job, I began writing poetry and leaving the poems at the cash register for my colleagues. Unfortunately, the people who I left the poetry for never said anything. They were worried about sales, numbers, figures and their own looks. Nothing negative was said, but nothing positive either.
And then in graduate school, I started going to poetry readings and I took the chance to be like Miranda July. I would read some of my most intimate works or I'd make something up--a bit of a skit or a performance art piece. I wanted to open myself to people, to show the energy I had and to connect with people. It was scary, fun and now that time is long gone.
I (and anyone reading this) now have the power to communicate with anyone, anywhere in the world. I can post blogs, Facebook notes, tweets, videos through YouTube--we have tremendous tools.
But what I want to do today is to simply have you watch the trailer for that movie, to maybe go rent it, see its quirkiness and to then stop. I mean really stop and look around. Look at things with a different eye, from a different angle. Maybe stand on a chair, or look up or get on your belly and look at people or places in ways you never did before. There's magic happening around us all the time, but we don't notice it. It's right there for us to touch and to see. (This is why I asked you to watch the trailer and then stay or click the back arrow. I'm too aware to know that people think this sort of thing dumb. That's why I told them to leave if they wanted.) When I see Miranda July's work, I'm reminded of that. I'm reminded that not everyone is lost or closed or afraid.
If there's anything I could say to end this, I'd simply say that I'm so thankful that I have the ability to see and sense. It doesn't make me special or different. It's just what I am aware. I just want to be. A person, a worker, a husband, a son, father, colleague, friend, lover, lost and found and complicated and alive. To be. To be--me.
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