It was the early Eighties,
and I was moving my way out of high school and into college. A little
prematurely I thought then and think now; I was only 17 and wanted to spend a
year saving money and thinking about what I wanted to do. But my family was
sure I needed to go right into college.
One of the things I wanted
to figure out was my philosophy of life. Anyone who remembers the Eighties
knows the main philosophy of the time was Hedonism, either the Conservative
version of Money and Success or the Liberal version of Sex and Drugs. For some
reason people thought they were diametrically opposed, but their common
denominator is materialism.
I suppose what I yearned for
was Romanticism in its classical sense (there’s a joke there, or an irony); I
had been indulging in Fantasy in the literary sense as sort of training wheels.
The main tenet is that things are not simply what they seem to be, that
everything has a secret side, not provable in the ordinary sense, perhaps, but
palpable and not merely feelings. That there is value in breaking out of rigid
modes of thought without completely bursting beyond all thought: that you could
“break all the rules while keeping all the Commandments.” It is not, of course,
without suffering, but suffering is part of what gives it value. It is no
blithe stroll through the daisies, although it can bring joy.
To that end I collected
certain movies and other works of art that I thought best exemplified this
outlook, or at least parts of it. I still treasure them all, as steps along the
way, or clues if you will; I would not abandon them or deny them even though I
have found the greater truth to which they have led me. I can never watch them
without thinking of that time, when I was clutching rather wispy straws against
a certainly raging flood.
Man of La Mancha (song)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bt6RYf5ocfo
Cyrano de Bergerac (Clip)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMDRrWiaAjM
They Might Be Giants (Full)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1uaqGkpI9o
You Can’t Take It with You (Full)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uUEq-GM9gSg
A Mid-summer Night’s Sex
Comedy (Clip)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsYxCtDu1jY
Dr. Detroit (Clip)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeOBZWQEJE4
Manalive (Clip)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J_cTWsDF3qQ
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