Art

I came to the alarming conclusion recently that not all people think of art in the same way that I do. I don't just mean a single work of art and that two people shouldn't have diverse reactions to it. I mean that I have discovered not all people see art in the same life-defining soul-wrenching way.

I'm going to talk primarily about movies here. Yes, movies are an art form. A few months ago U went out with some friends to see a movie that I'm not going to name for reasons which I will explain below. In any case, he went with these friends to this movie, all of them thinking they were going to an action movie. They were planning to come home afterwards and just go on with their lives as if nothing significant had happened other than them having a fun night out together.

When they came out of the movie they talked about it. His friends chattering away about nitpicky details and saying
"I guess I liked it," while U, dazed, could only think, "My life has changed. I need to take Evenewra to this. I need to do it now.

He came home and told me we were going, that he would not tell me anything about the movie, that maybe it was a little scary but he could not tell me why. He told me clearly and conclusively that this was not an invitation but a requirement. I had to see it. I didn't know anything about it and decided to keep it that way.

The trailers blared at us and then fell away and the experience began.

The setting was so barren and open that from the very first moments of the film I felt my inner landscape was expansive and anxious simultaneously. The first crisis in the movie came and I felt the fear add into that expansive place within me. Then quiet moments of the movie could come and the basic details of the character's backstory were filled in. I felt myself getting stripped down to my very core. This was not an action movie. This was a movie about loss and depression and spirituality and being reborn. Because the setting was so barren, there were no distractions of extra characters, music, trivial events. It had a plot, for sure, but it was so much more about raw emotion than about event that I found myself silently sobbing, shaking the entire row of chairs in the theater throughout the entire movie. (We were the only ones on that aisle thankfully.) I went home shaky and desperate for sleep.

U and I talk about this movie now with complete reverence. To show we aren't completely blind followers, we've named our criticisms, but we say things like. "It's been three weeks since the day we saw _________ together."

Our friends say, "Yeah, I enjoyed it."

We say, "Enjoyed? You don't enjoy something like that."

In our post-movie haze I have dreaded conversations we've had with those and other friends about the movie. One friend for whom movies are an important part of her life said, "You liked it? I'll never understand you guys. I'm not planning on seeing it," without me having the chance to say that it had shaken my soul and that I'm leaving in a different reality since seeing it.

The friends U went with initially have been weirded out by our awe and say that one of the most heart-wrenching scenes in the movie was silly.

Then they say, "It's just a movie."

But they are still our friends, so they try to talk about what movies mean to them, and then each will shyly say, "You know, there is a movie I really love," and they'll start to talk about it. You can tell it's impacted their life and they say, "But this is silly, because it's just a movie."

So this is where I say that I've discovered not everyone sees art the way I do. Art can be just entertainment, but it needn't be. When I view art - music, movie, play, painting, I'm offering the creator the chance to share with me, to shake me and to haunt me.

I have an album that I listen to every single week, usually on Fridays when I'm alone as the week comes to a close. I sing at the top of my lungs with it and I usually sob. It's not because I'm the saddest person in the world, but because my physical makeup is one of emotional person and this music gets to me. Listening to it and crying are cleansing and part of my regular spiritual practice.

I can't tell you the names of this movie or this album because they won't be the same for you. When you hear them and are not jarred like I am, then I will feel alone and isolated. So I shared the album once with U and he knows how dear it is to me, but I haven't asked him to come that journey with me because it's mine and not his.

That said, I'm so incredibly grateful that this movie could affect us the same way.

Hear that? A movie not only being entertainment but actually being a shared memory that bolsters a relationship.

In any case, for U, movies have always been his first love in art. He has top ten lists of all kinds and for a long time pushed me to write my own top ten. My problem was I couldn't find my top ten what? Funniest? Saddest? Most powerful? I finally wrote my ten and afterwards defined them as life-perspective-changing. They are the movies that speak to something so deeply inside me that I think about them long after they're over. I feel I've been spoken to in a new way and that I've heard what's been spoken and that somehow it's about me. It's a diverse list. Once again I won't share it because it's personal, but I can say a few details. One is a fantasy movie. A B movie about the apocalypse is there too. And a true story about a manipulative person being sweated out of a lie he was living.

The first is there because it made me think about the journey of a humble person forced to stop a machine of pain and evil. The second is there because it made me think about my relationship with G-d and any anger and resentment that's wrapped up with it. The third is there because it made me think about relationships with people that were not as they seemed and the deep betrayal that went with that, as well as relief over their resolution.

And of course there are 7 more on the list.

I don't want to just live a life of work, sleep, love and a little fun thrown in. That's not a bad place to start at all, but I need some depth and spirit and tears in their too. Shul is not the only place to find it. Neither is the meditation cushion. It can be found too in electric guitars or on stages or even digitally.

Sparks are everywhere.