Yes.
Whether a forklift operator or physician, that inclination to tick boxes, to iron it out, to get to the bottom, to solve and be satisfied, to close on an idea, and move on—we humans resist protraction, don't we? Waiting rankles. It can be uncomfortable. We don't like to not know. It feels like...losing. My words are not intended to criticize this type of thinking; I haven't read the book yet, but there's obvious value in both thinking fast and thinking slow.
But art...it invites us to to think s l o w to decelerate, to ease off...to pull ideas around us, closer, like a blanket, a weighted blanket.
Have you seen the film Train Dreams? There's a scene—perhaps 90 seconds (?)—where one character's quick decision, his reluctant yet undeniable involvement, haunts him forever. He engages with an idea without thought, an idea with an alarming outcome, one he surely did not expect nor want, and this idea, this moment, the burden of it... he spends his life doomed by it.
Train Dreams does something so well: it emphasizes scale and image over discourse. With little dialogue, the film's director paints a stunningly beautiful portrait of a man and a life hinged on regret and loss and grief and the terrible and grand mystery of it all; he invites us to sit, sit without answers, sit and contemplate the whys.
Perhaps I loved it so because my Dad was a logger? Perhaps I loved it because I revisited my past, even the difficult past with rash decisions and regrets? Perhaps it was the time and place, the nostalgia? Yet how am I nostalgic for days before even my grandfather's birth (1913)? Perhaps because I long for a slower past, where change didn't constantly hit us all like middle school spitballs? Yes yes yes...but perhaps mostly these themes, these ideas, the invitation to contemplate.
Film, as an art form, invites us to inhabit a space, to walk in those shoes, to join the protagonist's journey (somehow making our own a little less lonely), and to reflect on the story it constructs on the screen but more so, within us—all stories are interior stories, aren't they? That's art. It gets inside us. And what does it do there? It challenges us, it stirs us, it pushes, but it repairs us too, it restores us, it soothes and settles us, if we allow it, if we unclose ourselves to the ideas.
Contemplation is good.
ReplyDeleteThinking Fast and Thinking Slow is a good book if you are interested in how the brain works and why people often act the way they do.
"All stories are interior stories." I'd never thought of them in this way before, but you're right.
ReplyDeleteI haven't seen "Train Dreams" yet and am not rushing to see it because it seems like there's an awful lot of heartbreak in it. I don't know if I'm up to it.
ReplyDeleteI was just thinking of that book today although I have never read it. I am generally a slow thinker, sometimes too slow to be useful. When I do make a quick decision, however, it is often a regrettable one.
ReplyDeleteCodex: there is so much essence here. Max Frisch biography a game is a must read on this topic.
ReplyDeleteI think it really depends on the situation. My "instinct" often makes the decision and is usually right. Everytime someone pushes against it it's a no rather than ill think about it.
Heard it's a very good movie but like debra can't go there right now.
We watched Train Dreams recently. What I took from it was how gentle and loving a man could be in spite of so much loss and grief and horror. The rest -- the themes behind the plot? -- I didnt think much about. I'm terrible when it comes to identifying themes in films and books.
ReplyDeleteLike some of your other readers, I prefer films with more joy these days.
-Kate