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Jan’s Posted Daily Fresh Real News
Showing You To Your Real Seat Since 1899
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“YES, WE KNOW IT IS AN ILLUSION —
SO WHAT?!”
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September 18, 2002 © 2002: JAN COX
To be alive and conscious is to be at a movie:
even before there was film and electricity — men were at a movie;
this is what has confused them since the first day their brain began to hear voices, and see images;
they are physically in a theatre (nothing strange in that),
and while there amidst the normal human goings on you expect in life,
you are simultaneously seeing and hearing other goings on, on screen,
on the screen of your mind.
Thus you are physically in one place, surrounded by one order of events, while at the same time mentally immersed in internal events of an entirely different nature.
At feeding time, this situation is irrelevant,
but little of men’s time at the movie is so spent;
the majority of their stay involves watching the movie,
and socializing with the others there —
which men do at the same time constantly, and without effort or notice.
Though they never think about it otherwise, if men are asked if the movies they see have any relevance to their life they will answer in the affirmative,
and likely note that since movies are written and produced by humans,
and all the actors are also humans —
how could the movies not have relevance to the lives of humans?! —
a view that for normal patrons is unassailable.
Even though they never think about it otherwise, if men are asked at
one particular moment in their life whether the movie they are watching is connected to their life at that moment in the collective theatre — they will say, yes,
and then if they are so queried at another time, their response will be, no.
Sometimes, if it is brought to their attention, the movie they are watching and the life going on in the theatre around them seems to them to be directly and undoubtedly connected, while at other times, if they are made to take notice,
the two worlds, at the moment of note, seem unrelated,
and however it seems to those in routine attendance — is how it is for them.
Unless from ill or injury they become a non standard attendee,
men experience no meaningful awareness of the clear, literal and physical
distinction between the life going on in the theatre all around them,
and the one depicted in the movie always being shown on the screen
which is never out of their sight no matter where in the theatre they may be;
by man’s nature are the two seamlessly merged in his ordinary consciousness,
and of the X billion in present attendance,
all but a couple are reasonably satisfied and entertained.
(“What’s the big deal with watching a movie any way?!”)
When you recognize, dispassionately, the norm for the norm,
yet individually, via experience, realize another possibility –
it privately renders the norm the strangest thing imaginable.
If you find life in the theatre and watching the movie fun and frustrating —
wait ’til you can see you finding it so.
J