Life Understood Is Life Lived

One of my favourite films of all time is Richard Linklater’s dreamy “Waking Life”. If you like something that challenges you intellectually try and get your hands on the DVD. Especially if you dig philosophy and existentialism and all those conversations you’ve had with yourself when you havenâ??t slept in over a day. Just donâ??t watch it after you havenâ??t slept in over a day. The film is digitally rotoscoped and that will be the same style of filmmaking that Linklater will be using in Philip K. Dick’s “A Scanner Darkly” which comes out later this summer.

Here’s a great scene on understanding life. Happy lucid dreaming…

On this bridge, Lorca warns: “Life is not a dream, beware!… and beware!……and beware.” And so many think because then happened, now isn’t. But didn’t I mention? the ongoing *WOW* is happening right now. We are all co-authors of this dancing exuberance, for even our inabilities are having a roast. We are the authors of ourselves, co-authoring a gigantic Dostoevsky novel starring clowns. This entire thing we’re involved with called the world is an opportunity to exhibit how exciting alienation can be. Life is a matter of a miracle that is collected over time by moments flabbergasted to be in each others’ presence. The world is an exam, to see if we can rise into the direct experiences. Our eyesight is here as a test, to see if we can see beyond it. Matter is here as a test for our curiosity. Doubt is here as an exam for our vitality. Thomas Mann wrote that he would rather participate in life than write a hundred stories. Giacometti was once run down by a car, and he recalled falling into a lucid faint – a sudden exhiliration as he realized at last, something was happening to him. An assumption developed that you cannot understand life and live life simultaneously. I do not agree entirely, which is to say, I do not exactly disagree. I would say that life understood is life lived. But, the paradoxes bug me, and I can learn to love and make love to the paradoxes that bug me, and on really romantic evenings of self, I go salsa dancing with my confusion. Before you drift off, don’t forget, which is to say remember, because remembering is so much more a psychotic activity than forgeting: Lorca, in that same poem, said that the Iguana will bite those who do not dream, and as one realizes that one is a dream figure in another person’s dream….that is self-awareness!