Hand-wringing 101

How does one develop passion? Is there a handbook? I feel like I’ve been deprived of a basic rule set of human existence. Certain parts of the game are unclear to me.

This is the shit 16 year olds worry about. Does being 23 mean that I’m behind the curve or that I’m hung up completely? I still don’t know these answers and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to recognize them if I find them.

I’ve seen Lost in Translation probably a half dozen times; it’s a movie that resonates strongly with me. I really only think I’ve seen it twice. I should watch it a few more times before writing something like this, but who has the time? I would, if I didn't waste so much of it. 

Charlotte and I are similar characters. Red-headed philosophy majors with comparably sized breasts.

Like the best escapism, it starts by entering into a common dialogue with the viewers it affects.

We’re both awash in a world not our own. It’s all very sad and languorous. Familiar, that.

Of course Charlotte has the benefit of a jet set to spurn. They're trendy, insipid. They’re beneath her. Who do I have to spurn? Nobody. You have to be part of something in order to turn your back on it. Maybe I need a semi-famous spouse to become disillusioned with. Then I can spend weeks lying around a Japanese hotel room in my underwear. Maybe then I'll get some perspective.

She’s also lucky in that she has a loose three act structure from which to draw direction. Even if that direction is to be, for ninety minutes, totally without direction, it’s still something.

That’s the calling card of good postmodern cinema: the same weepy despair, the same lack of cohesion with the world at large, but in an exotic location populated by hip people with good hair.

Like Mark Ruffalo’s coiffure in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. To . . . Die . . . For.

"I wish I was adrift in that sea of despair."

Like they say, the water is always blue-greener on the other side.

Truthfully I’m drawn to these kinds of movies because they find a way to authenticate the gentle, aimless loathing I feel and romanticize it at the same time. That’s the trick I’m increasingly unable to do without help. The romanticizing. I used to be much better at it. I think this means I’m losing my imagination. Maybe I’m just losing my youth.

One existentialist or another—pretty much all of them really—thought of birth as absolute freedom, a more or less limitless spectrum of possibility. It’s as close as you'll ever get to a point of infinity. There is almost nothing you can’t do—except, as the saying goes, pick your parents.

Then something happens. You make a precognitive decision, you spit up on someone's shoulder, your parents name you, you come out breach, whatever. You become imbedded in the world. A choice has been made, an event imposes itself on you, and that absolute freedom gets a big chunk taken out of it. All those things that might have happened if you were named George are fucked because you’re Cecil. Your freedom is narrowed and you can’t really get it back. Even changing your name to George won’t let you reinvest the Cecil years. Life is full of events like this, more and less important ones. More than that though, life is the sum of these events, all events, and that’s really it. It’s an inevitable move, from freedom to helotry. The thing that makes Existentialism the supposed antidote to the horrible crippling despair of determinism (evolution et al) is that you have an occasional voice in how your freedom is taken from you. That’s not how they spin it of course, but that’s what it boils down to. And that’s what sucks about modernism. On one hand, there may be no freedom at all, despite what you may think. That’s determinism and it’s probably the more frightening prospect. In the best case scenario though you only really get to pick the doors you get locked out of.

This is the new optimism and it sucks.

There’s no more transcendence--maybe we’re just realizing there never was in the first place. You can’t get freer.

There can be no transcendence without a god, but gods are pointless without humanity to worship them, and still it seems, no humanity as we define ourselves without at least the idea of transcendence—the idea of freedom. So which came first? That seems to be the crux and crucial difference between all world views, religions and whatnot. Which came first? Either a god created man and implicit in that creation comes transcendence, or man created transcendence and needed a god to work out the logistics. This seems to be the real trinity.

Even the existentialists wanted transcendence, and got as close as they could get to it.

Does this have something to do with my lost imagination? I don’t know anyone who isn’t a goddamned liar who thinks they’ve become more imaginative with age. Does imagination fade as a matter of course or as a matter of survival? Who wants to be the guy that can extrapolate all those lost opportunities? I couldn’t get anything done if I could see past the countless doors that have closed on me. At the same time, can you think of a better way to describe transcendence? Seeing through closed doors? Isn’t that just imagination? Is that all we’ve got to raise ourselves up? It makes sense in this context to think of imagination as the most transcendent part of ourselves. And we lose it.

What does that  say about the ability to attack something with passion? If passion here means “a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity, object, or concept,” then how do we come to be devoted to an object or idea? Do you just get whittled down until there’s only one thing left to occupy you?

Does that then become your passion and the thing you pursue? It’s bleak but I can’t really get my head around anything else.

So then, is it good that I don’t know what I want to be good at? Does that mean I’m more free? Or am I just hobbled by indecision, by a lack of clarity?

Sometimes it feels more like the latter. Other times it’s the former.

One thing I think I’m sure of: passion isn’t archetypal, it’s contextual. As Charlotte loses the only thing she’s been passionate about maybe ever—and before she’s had a chance to really embrace it—you feel more hope for her than grief, like maybe passion is just a matter of stumbling through the right doors until you’re at the right place and time to meet the object of that moment’s passion. That’s Sophia Coppola’s big contribution with this movie.

And maybe that’s a better way of looking at the new optimism.

This reads like some reading response I would have written in college. It feels like old times. Maybe I'm transcending . . . or just remaining obstinately immature.