The ice cream truck bell is far away, who knows how long it will take to arrive because it depends on how many children are out waiting on their driveways. Ice cream trucks arose in a time when life was more simple.
I saw the ARTIST last night, the last time I saw a silent movie was during film class back in college, era:1998.. how
I loved that class, it opened my eyes up to the beauty of films in a different way then I had ever watched them.
The Artist which is showing right now at theatres is a black and white silent movie. One would on first instinct think...yuck...silent....boring....black and white..unappealing...
And that is what I thought the first time I watched a silent film in that class 15 years ago.....at first. Once I gave up my guard of "I'm not going to like it" and really got into the movie I realized I loved it! I think it might have been a Charlie Chapman film.
The Artist was the same way, I felt myself tense at first, asking how I would make it through this, would it be entertaining at all, how long will it last. And all of sudden I was swept away laughing, crying, feeling these strong emotions that you do not feel in the films that are produced today. It was with strange irony that I saw this film at this time in my life.
The reason I say this is I am going through some kind of humbling of my life. The magazine Real Simple should be my motto as of late. I am clearing out clutter from all abscesses of my life. I recently shut down my facebook account as I had mentioned in a previous post. And at times I seem scrambled when the loss of that fake friend is not there to jump on and stare at other peoples worlds, I am mostly relieved. Its like living in a busy bustling city full of traffic sounds that you get used to until you go out to the country one day and breathe in the complete simplistic silence. Breathe......in.....Breathe...out.......
I think our society is becoming so intertwined with "stuff", sounds, pictures, texts, posts, information, "likes", that we are losing all sense of just being with ourselves. Life used to be simpler because it allowed us to hear what WE wanted, not what society wanted for us. Just like the Artist movie, it was so refreshing to be entertained by a movie so different then our normal entertainment value.
Next on my list of excavating towards simplicity is getting rid of our cable. I haven't been able to think about doing it because it kind of freaks me out. That is how I relax at night, my way of zoning out into the world that comes right before sleep. How will I relax?? How will I zone?? hmm.....what a thought. I have even programmed my 5 year old child to turn the TV on as soon as he wakes and to pass the hours away even while not watching it but hearing it in the background. That saddens my heart.
As a child I rarely watched TV because we didn't have this plethora of channels awaiting us. I remember playing outside letting my imagination take me to far off lands on the farm. And what could happen if I take that TV away from our family, maybe our imaginations will revisit those lands. Maybe I will actually get out my craft stuff and work on it more, maybe I will find more music that I love, maybe I will read more of those books.
And so it is with baby steps that I make this "simple" journey, slowly opening up the cupboards filled with boredom's busy cobwebs that need swept out and removed. I want to fill my mind with empty space, positive empty space.
