Twisting up some newspaper for this morning’s fire, I noticed an ad for the local cinema: Wonka and Maestro. Got me thinking about what we celebrate, that is, what we blow up into great God-sized pictures and worship sitting before a supernatural canvas, and I thought -- Wonka. Maestro. Both revisions of some past dream. Monumental, cherrypicked memories featuring heroes we recognize and adore.
And why not? We need heroes, fighters, winners. We need to see a grand scale battle and we need to see something telling us it’s okay, you’re okay, you can do this…sure, there’ll always be a fight but you’ll survive, heck, you’ll kick some major ass…you’ll feel huge and important and you’ll be huge and important and others will gather round to watch you and see how you did it because…you are a hero.
In the public dream of movies, we’re not really watching Wonka and Lenny in their private worlds of wonder. We’re watching ourselves, aren't we? That’s you up there. That’s me. Heroes in a kind of myth celebrating our belief in something else, something eternal.
And (maybe most importantly), the celebration is collective. It’s not just you dreaming alone in the dark. You’re with others. Even when you're watching on a pint-sized gizmo. You don't feel as alone you really are.
And I thought — humans must feel lonely and sad and small to need so many heroes everywhere. And to imitate them so thoroughly, every waking moment, so that we can know who we are. Or who we might soon become if we practice the jargon and the faces. Are we always playing at the image of something else that we wish we were? I'm not sure I know.
The whole Blow Up project is about exactly this. A feeling of being small in a huge world that seems to care not one bit about you. Not that people don’t care, that’s not what I’m saying. It’s bigger than people. Nature. The cosmos. Something eternal. Something we’re not.
It’s a philosophical quagmire, is what it is. And I think, when you hit a place like this in your mind and your heart, and you run out of words or even the right ones don’t really say what you’re trying to say — that’s what art is for.
The guy in the song says it all, really: I’m doing the best I can.