What...about Nick and Norah's Infinite Palylist?

Great book...kickass movie...amazing music...Nick and Norah are just what everyone dreams about. But who are they?

Nick:

"I throw the chords at them, I drench them in the soundwaves, I am making time so loud that they have to hear it. I am stronger than words and I am bigger than the box I’m in, and then I see her in the crowd and I fall apart."

Norah:

"And I’m left with this girl, this Siren of Mixed Signals, this Norah. She’s a fuck-good kisser, but clearly has some massive consistency issues."

But together, they are:

"We are moving to the music and at the same time we are a stillness. I am not losing myself in the barrage. I am finding her. And she is—yes, she is finding me. The crowd is pressing in on us and the bassline is revealing everything and we are two people who are part of a lot more people, and at the same time we’re our own part. There isn’t loneliness, only this intense twoliness."

What...if we loose our minds?

"What does a scanner see? he asked himself. I mean, really see? Into the head? Down into the heart? Does a passive infrared scanner like they used to use or a cube-type holo-scanner like they use these days, the latest thing, see into me - into us - clearly or darkly? I hope it does, he thought, see clearly, because I can't any longer these days see into myself. I see only murk. Murk outside; murk inside. I hope, for everyone's sake, the scanners do better. Because, he thought, if the scanner sees only darkly, the way I myself do, then we are cursed, cursed again and like we have been continually, and we'll wind up dead this way, knowing very little and getting that little fragment wrong too."

Bob Arctor from "A Scanner Darkly", written by Philip K. Dick.

What...about death?

Do not go gentle into that good night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Dylan Thomas

What...about freedom?

"The hardest freedom to maintain is the freedom of making mistakes."
Morris West

Make your own mistakes. Don't ever let people tell you you're wrong just because you're not taking the usual way, just because you're not following other people's road. Make mistakes. Learn from them. Be free from any strings that may attach you to a life you did not choose. Live the way you want to live. In the end, it will all be worth it. Or, if not, at least you'll be able to say "I took the one less traveled by,and that has made all the difference".

Coldplay- Swallowed in the Sea

What...about a little bit of Jane Austen?

"It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife. However little known the feelings or views of such a man may be on his first entering a neighbourhood, this truth is so well fixed in the minds of the surrounding families, that he is considered the rightful property of some one or other of their daughters." (Pride and Prejudice-Ch. 1)

"If any one faculty of our nature may be called more wonderful than the rest, I do think it is memory. There seems something more speakingly incomprehensible in the powers, the failures, the inequalities of memory, than in any other of our intelligences. The memory is sometimes so retentive, so serviceable, so obedient; at others, so bewildered and so weak; and at others again, so tyrannic, so beyond control! We are, to be sure, a miracle every way; but our powers of recollecting and of forgetting do seem peculiarly past finding out." (Mansfield Park)

"But when a young lady is to be a heroine, the perverseness of forty surrounding families cannot prevent her. Something must and will happen to throw a hero in her way." (Northanger Abbey)

"Human nature is so well disposed towards those who are in interesting situations, that a young person, who either marries or dies, is sure of being kindly spoken of." (Emma)

"One does not love a place the less for having suffered in it, unless it has been all suffering, nothing but suffering." (Persuasion)

"You are in a melancholy humour and fancy that anyone unlike yourself must be happy. But remember that the pain of parting from friends will be felt by everybody at times, whatever be their education or state. Know your own happiness. You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it hope." (Sense and Sensiblity)

What...is "living"?

The one and only Henry David Thoreau in his most exquisite work "Walden or Life in the Woods"

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan- like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion. For most men, it appears to me, are in a strange uncertainty about it, whether it is of the devil or of God, and have somewhat hastily concluded that it is the chief end of man here to "glorify God and enjoy him forever."

What...if you're sad?

Sadhearted today...feeling like Anne from Jane Austen's "Persuasion", even though I'm not in her condition. It's just that overbearing sadness of having to face the cause of your misery every single day and having to pretende everything's fine. Today's cultural moment: "Hearts So Heavy" by John Mayer Trio

I want to walk in tonight
Because I need too
Everything that I had I'm waiting on
Gave till I gave all I could
Kept a little
Finding it hard to believe
Everything's gone, gone, gone

How am I gonna run back home
With a heart so heavy
How am I gonna make my way
When I can't find the road
How am I gonna beat this pain
When I can't see how deep it goes
Heaven knows
But I don't

Faith is a backwards design
But I still choose it
I fall on it all of the time
I carry on
I used to live by the line
As good as a circle
What does it do for me now?
Everything's gone, gone, gone

How am I gonna run back home
With a heart so heavy
How am I gonna make my way
When I can't find the road
How am I gonna beat this pain
When I can't see how deep it goes
Heaven knows, heaven knows
But I don't

So how am I gonna run back home
With a heart so heavy
How am I gonna make my way
When I can't find the road
How am I gonna beat this pain
When I can't see how deep it goes
Heaven knows, heaven knows
But I don't

I still believe in love
I still believe in love
I do, I do
I still believe in love
I still believe in you

Me too!