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"The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving." -Waking Life
You should challenge your notions and beliefs about existence, life, reality, love, morality, rationality etc etc every once in a while. Create a "crisis in consciousness" as Krishnamurty said. Sometimes you need to sweep the firm ground you usually stand upon in everyday life and, well, free-fall! Then go salsa dancing with your confusion. Every once in a while. I've been free-falling for a few days now. Its been a free flowing stream of surrealistic films, cheese, classical music and sleep. Exploring alternate realities, like in a lucid dream. I never really was much into drugs but this is the closest I have come to tripping, yet.
It all started when I got my hands on some really cool previously-unseen DVDs through a generous friend(such a boon to have those). With nothing to do except wait for Sunday when I leave for my film-school in the Philippines, I decided that it would be a nice prelude to the whole thing if I caught some experimental, challenging movies. An overture of sorts, just to set the mood. I started with Stanley Kubrick's 'A Clockwork Orange', which really set the ball rolling. A cult classic, its a surreal, deeply offending, black humored work of art. Simply loved it. It is interesting how we can get so easily offended by any world-view that is different than ours. Its not a case of narrow-mindedness so much as it is a fear of the unknown. Thats exactly the idea behind free-falling. Letting go of the concepts and the definitions that restrict us and, for a while, look beyond. Exploring, venturing, letting the imagination flow freely.
Thats where art comes in. And surrealism. I was introduced to the movement quite early; the first director I worked with was an avowed surrealist. Making promos for MTV-Vh1, various ad-films, music videos and stuff, I was hooked on to his office-library that boasted of works by Floria Sigismondi, David Lachapelle and our very own Tarsem Singh. He couldn't see anything beyond these three and it showed in his considerable body of work but he was good at what he did. Really good.
Anyways, coming back to the topic, I finished watching A Clockwork Orange. On to the next one. Monty Python's Meaning Of Life, an even more offending, dark,extremely satirical pure work of art. Lovely. Then it was Adaptation by Spike Jonze and Richard Linklater's masterpiece Waking Life followed by (the most offensive of all) Un Chien Andalou, the genre-defining classic silent short film by Salvador Dali and Luis Bunuel. All one after the other. Exhausting? Yes! I slept for a couple of hours, woke up, and started reading about the phenomenal films I had seen, eating a rather large piece of raw cheese stolen from the fridge. The reviews and different interpretations.The philosophical themes behind them, the between-the-lines. Existentialism. Solipsism. Nihilism. Hedonism. Nietzsche. Flynt. Ebert. Everything I could find. Views and counter-views. Phew! Slept again, this time for fourteen hours straight. I woke up in a dream-like state, all the theories and counter-theories muddling my head. Had to clear my mind. Made some green tea(Mom has learned to leave me alone during such times) and listened to Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata on loop for an hour. I was free-falling. My definitions of what a film should be had been destroyed. My perception of reality lay shattered. My mind was still reeling from the
aftershocks. I was feeling what Neo feels in The Matrix when Morpheus says to him, "Welcome to the real world...". A whole new world of possibilities had been shown to me. A new dimension had been opened. Like when the Sphere first visits Mr Square in Flatland.
Siting there, listening to 'Beets', I felt a sudden surge of creativity inside me. I just started typing. My mind was buzzing. my fingers were ablaze. Within an hour, I wrote one of my finest poems, wrote some new movie ideas and fine-tuned some old ones. Just like that. I returned to stories I had thought of , filed and forgotten.I had really become an Oneironaut: a person who travels without physically moving. Explore new realities and dimensions. I was doing just that. I found new stories to tell where there were none. New insights. What an experience, what a prelude to film school!
Looking forward to discussion with friend and mentor Shreyas. Man, I will miss those conversations over hot Maggi.
I intend to keep falling till I fly - on Sunday to film school!
Following are the films I recommend to fellow and wanna-be Oneironauts. Please note that this is not an exhaustive list. Only the ones that I have seen:
Adaptation
Waking life
Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind
A Clockwork Orange
Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy
Paprika
The Matrix
Trainspotting
Waltz With Bashir
Apocalypse Now
Un Chien Andalou
Monty Python's Meaning Of Life
