On: Painless Escapes
This article is best enjoyed whilst listening to the song "I lived" by One Republic - https://youtu.be/z0rxydSolwU
The older I get, the more I’ve come to appreciate the beauty of imitations. I recognize that often, the thing that captures our hearts — our attention — about art, be it music, movies, or poetry, is the knowledge that imitations, as intriguing as they tend to be, can never replace our realities. And that realization in some way is a welcome relief. To simply explain this, I’d refer to a recent movie I saw about a week ago that I’m sure you may have seen or heard of at least. The movie is called: Everything, Everywhere, all at once. Barring its bizarre title, I can legitimately confirm that this movie is one of THE best movies of the year. I won’t delve into its plot, but central to everything that happens in the movie is the uniquely bizarre ideology that whenever we make choices, the ones we make or do not make branch out to form an entire new multiverse that is separate from the one where our main consciousness is tethered to. If you think any of that sounds bizarre, you should watch the movie and spend an hour with your mouth agape at the intriguing ridiculousness of it all.
Flirting with Imitations.
So, why did I bring up this bizarre movie? Well, it is to point out how these sorts of art forms are so effective in showing us an imitation of reality and yet, are able to clearly tell us that none of it is; hence, our willingness as spectators to be lost in this reality-esque world that looks or maybe even feels familiar but actually isn’t. With respect to the movie I mentioned earlier, the reality that feels familiar is centered around the idea of family and love and rejection and depression and trying to reconcile your past decisions, actions, or inactions with where your life currently is in the present. Does any of that sound familiar to you? Of course, I’m sure they do. Yet, tethered to all these familiar emotions that such arts evoke, which ideally should get us to remember the dreariness of our own existence and choices, actions and inactions, love, rejection, and regrets, we are still heavily moved not by those ideas that feel familiar, but by the premise that makes the familiar feel like an escape from the truism of our reality.
Think of it this way: in what is our current reality, there are no multiverses. We can hardly explain what the hell is going on in the vastness of our current universe to even think of delving into the idea of what an actual conglomeration of multiverses would mean. Yet, I can bet that all of us —save for maybe a few— have, at one time or another, considered the possibility that somewhere in the vastness of the cosmos, there’s an alternate world where we, as ourselves (or some version of ourselves), are doing somewhat better than we currently are. Sometimes, we go as far as remembering key decision points in our past and wondering, nay, reconstructing an entirely different sequence of events that diverge from our current situation and in it, welcoming the possibility that maybe, if we had taken that step to go out with friends that one time instead of sleeping in, we may have changed the course of our lives. Or if we had stuck it out with that dead-end job just for a while longer, maybe, the situation would have been better financially for us than it currently is. And in all of these, we imagine doing just that in relation to the possible sequence of cause-and-effect that it would have amounted to.
Still, in our reality, nothing changes. We are still tethered to the lives our past decisions have wrought on us — some good, others maybe not so much. Yet, when we see movies or listen to music that ideally mirrors these realities, we are not moved by how much they represent us or our decisions, but rather, by how much we know they don’t. In being depressed and feeling down on your luck, for example, a movie about a person who's depressed and down on their luck does more than just remind us of our own situation. Instead, it gives us an escape to view what ideally should be our own situation through the lenses of an outside observer, observing a sequence of events that captivates our minds. And for those brief couple of minutes or hours, it allows us to escape ours. This does not mean we do not necessarily see ourselves in characters or situations that imitate our own; it would be disingenuous to think that. Instead, it means that even when we do recognize the familiarity, even when the reality of whatever the art form portrays hits so close to home it could almost be considered a biopic, we are still able to find that sliver of escape from the truth of our own reality. Deep down we are never too lost in these art forms to not remember a fundamental truth: an imitation is just that — an imitation.
And I would love to think that such realization is registered deep in our subconscious, so much so that it permits us to get lost in art, in whatever form we fancy, without ever necessarily losing our grip on the truth of our existence. Yes, we can idolize the characters. We can even do the most extreme and try to be these characters in some version of our reality, but at the end of the day, we know that the most captivating thing about these stories or characters is that they cannot be a replacement, even if some part of us might want them to be. Their function — as forms of entertainment — is to provide us with a little bit of respite from our current state. It is why ideally it should make no sense for us to listen to sad songs and enjoy them so well, especially when we are sad, but that’s exactly what happens. I reckon that this is because we know that even though these songs are sad, or at least, that they imitate someone’s sadness, they are not necessarily our own. Hence, we can allow ourselves to be lost in them and use their pain to escape ours.
Dancing with Reality.
Returning to the movie I mentioned earlier, the denouement of the story has a sequence of very touching self-realization moments with respect to one of the main characters. In it, this character realizes that because of how much she wanted more from her life, she lost sight of how much she gained from the little, but big choices she had made and continues to make daily. She also realizes that her pain was not necessarily too unique to her that no one else would understand or be able to empathize with, since the truth was that although how she experienced pain may be different, one certainty was that everyone else goes through their own version of it as well; and if she took time to pay close attention, she’d be surprised at how much even those closest to her suffered just as much as she did. This summary of the movie for this character is something anyone with an inkling of empathy in their veins would be able to relate to. It is so profoundly true yet, so entertainingly different from what our realities are that even with empathy, we still know that this is just an imitation of the truth.
Because the truth is, in our reality, our pain is very unique even when it mirrors the pain of others. In this reality, we do realize that those closest to us suffer and we do harbor a tendency to want to help them, but more often than not, we are unable to because we are so busy dealing with the uniqueness of our own pain, as they are with theirs. Yes, in this reality, we are not as selfless as movie characters tend to be. In this reality, the truth doesn't come rushing back to our senses to inform our decision so we can live happily ever after with our loved ones. In this reality, pain lasts for so long for some people that their entire existence depends on it. In this reality, sometimes, families do not forgive each other. In this reality, depression is never cured with a parental hug or by finding new passions. In this reality, our sense of self-worth isn’t necessarily something we are able to rebuild after a monologue on the truisms of happiness or a TED Talk about the strategies for seeking true fulfillment.
In this reality, when we die, sometimes, gruesomely —stoned to death, burned alive by people like us in defense of tenets that are as arbitrary and abstract as the idea of a multiverse or we are ambushed and shot while praying to a god that ideally should shield you but is unable to— we don’t have people bringing wreaths to our gravesides; songs aren’t sung for us in perpetuity. No. Instead, in this reality, when you die, no matter how you died, people forget; loved ones cry, but still find ways to move on. And in that little bit of memory patch that your thoughts still stick to in the heart of those who truly cared about you, there’s a sense that if they could —and they would try hard to— they would prefer so much to forget; in fact, if there was a possibility that you, while dead, could look in towards your loved ones, you’d probably want them to.
Two Peas without a Pod.
The beauty of any art form you love and spend enough time with whether it be in consumption or even in creation is that they offer respite. They are painless escapes that mirror our realities in all their ridiculousness and unlimited possibilities. Death, pain, depression, joy, sadness, beauty, etc, all of these feel saner in this mirror reality as opposed to how insane they feel in ours. I reckon it’s why we are so drawn to it.
Scores of churchgoers were massacred senselessly yesterday and it felt like the end of the world for me. I cried as I watched a video clip of bloodied corpses spread across the church. In one instance, a man can be seen laying over his son, bullet holes in his back, apparently trying to shield the child. Both were shot dead. It was a scene that evoked horror in my spine. A few hours later, I put on a movie called “The Interceptor”. It had a plot not too far off from “the end of world” premise too. Scores were shot dead on a rig in the middle of the ocean trying to launch nuclear missiles to end more lives. It almost mirrored reality, but not quite; a brave heroine saved the day. Unfortunately, no one could save the lives of the scores lost in that church. The reality was dreary but the imitation offered an escape. Two peas without a pod.
In the end, music, movies, paintings, writings, etc, are art forms where imitations are able to help us cope with our realities without necessarily altering them. And in some way, I reckon that that in itself is a reality we have to learn to live with, savor and understand, all the days of our lives for as long as we abide in this universe of blandness.