Friday, May 06, 2005

Books

Have you ever wanted your life to read like a book, or maybe play out like a movie? No matter what you would answer publicly to this question I know you all are nodding your heads in agreement in the privacy of your own home. We have all been there. It's part of the human condition to want something different than what we have, it doesn't even have to be better, it just has to be different.

My previously admitted addiction to media, mediaholism if you will, makes the above condition even more exaggerated at times. Sometimes I even aspire to a more troublesome and dramatic life. Something to evoke the emotions when one involves themselves in a dramatic movie or similarly themed book. It's like what the main character in Nick Hornby's About a Boy says about everyone's life being a TV show and that we are the stars of our own shows, everyone else is just a supporting character that comes and goes, but we remain in the spotlight. Its such an absurd analogy to how we go about our lives, but unfortunately that's how much of us live out our 75+ years on this world. Heck, even Adam Smith, the famous economist agreed with this view on things, at least to an extent.

What is it that makes us want to be center stage 24/7? I mean yeah, it would be great to have life be segmented into neatly tied up, predictable packages; with an initial emotional hook, a dramatic middle, and a happy ending. How cool would that be. Initially yeah that sounds great, I could do with some predictability, but seriously, life is just too messy to be tied and wrapped into such appealing packages like the books and movies sitting there on the shelves tempting you to get involved in their story.

Don't get me wrong, I obviously love a good book or movie, or both, but I don't know if we should live our lives so that they resemble what we fill our heads with in terms of media. As a male many would view a sports analogy as stereotypical for a male, and as an artists and a person with the natural body composition of a reader I will stay away from such analogies but one I have found that works is that: Art should imitate life, not life imitating art.

I don't know if this was supposed to be an inspirational blog or a warning blog or whatever....I'm not even sure this is necessarily where I wanted to end up, but there you go, take it for whatever worth you deem it has.

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