Click. Click. Spin... Bang!
We've become a sophisticated people.
I was watching the trailer for a new movie, Brick, coming out in the very near future. I want to see this movie.
It deals with Crime Noir. As anyone who's followed what I've been reading of late knows, I am really digging crime noir.
It's got a life, in lit, that is so surrealistic you can't believe what is being written about, and at the same time, you are drawn into the plot and story so fully you want to believe that there really are women and men out there like what is being written about.
I'd imagine it is how the world felt before Hollywood, television, and people trying to turn smut into art.
Nudity is smut.
Nudity is art.
Nudity in movies is never necessary and is always smut.
I like smut.
I try not to watch it.
And yet, that's not really what I am writing about.
People have a tendency to want to watch things that fall in line with what they believe, what they want, and where they plan to go in life.
I want to see Brick because it matches some of my interests. For those interested, it goes where I want to go in life.
It's a crime story set in a high school.
The director said that when he positioned the crime story over the high school story they seemed to mesh very easily.
That makes sense. I was subjected to more shit in high school than I have since. Even though my life since high school would probably make an interesting biopic, high school was this entirely different beast.
People tried to get me to take drugs.
I had a gun pulled on me.
We broke a bulletproof window in front of the school late one night.
We did a lot of stupid, dumb ass things.
Yet, the whole notion of high school and life, in that vein, is renewal and getting away with the stupid because you can.
Ignore my previous post. I was experimenting with words.
And yet, here it is. A movie that meets many of the criteria of what I want to be doing.
Writing.
Creating.
Art.
Drawing.
Painting a portrait of life. My life. Of the life I think I've lived.
Literally.
Figuratively.
Corporeally.
High school.
I deal with a lot of kids who seem to be fresh out of high school; or fresh off their missions. It feels like the same thing, to me.
And yet, they don't see it.
To them, there are worlds of differences between where they are at, now, and where someone, say two years younger, is, now.
And yet, when you look back on those ages - 18 to 25 - all you can see is how similar and alike they are. All of them. Missionary. Return missionary. No mission. Ugly. Pretty. Thin. Fat. Beautiful hair. No hair. Ugly hair. Thin hair. Wigged heads.
They are all the same.
There are no differences.
It's difficult to deal with.
And yet, that's what I do on a daily basis.
I deal.
With them.
Every day. In classes. On the quads. In the cafeteria's. On the roads. I read their work. I watch them struggle and dance through life.
They date.
They get engaged.
They marry.
And I watch.
Because there is no substantive difference between them.
And them.
They just stand there being so similar it is sick.
Automatons marching to the same tune -
And all of them thinking they are marching to something entirely different.
Read the college newspaper.
The more they speak out on how different he is, or she is, the more they sound the same.
High school. College. Career.
They have a plan.
I have a plan.
My plan is not their plan.
Their goals are not my goals.
My directions, their directions, we diverged when in the woods I took an entirely different path?
And then tried to come back to the same path they were, are, on.
It's not easy.
Think about it.
We are different people.
25,000 distinctely different personalities all at the same institution doing similar things, walking similar paths, carrying similar themes, and yet, of all the similarities, the one that should matter the most, doesn't.
Student.
Sure. I'm a student. I get up in the morning. I come to school. I study and work. I pay my bills. I struggle to get the kinds of grades I want out of life.
And yet, that's not exactly enough.
Because...
I make more money simply because I have more experience. I get preferential treatment because I am somebody that has struggled and then taken a step back and has tried to start over again.
I am single.
They are all alike and I am all alone.
And at the same time I know I am not alone. Just older. Different. Different in a way that can make some people uncomfortable.
And I will continue to sit here.
Watching
Waiting
Wondering when life and realization will dawn upon the masses and they will realize that their bra burning comments and their speaking against the establishment is out of naivety and not out of understanding or some scholarly attempt at making a statement. They are stupid.
They are like everyone that has walked these halls before; like everyone who has studied and graduated; like the mass of people who've made college, strike that, university, their financial savior because you can make more money here than anywhere else.
Not immediately.
It's over a lifetime.
Once you've found yourself established.
Ready.
Rolling.
Paradigm.
Brick.
Superimposing one image over another and then see how well they mesh.
Click. Click. Spin...
Bang!
I know more than you do and you don't even realize it.
That's crime noir. That's high school. That's the college, no university, graduate.
That's me.