What is it that we’re reaching for? In that Andy Warhol documentary on Netflix (which is incredible, by the way), where they have an AI generated version of his voice reading from his famous diaries, Warhol says:
“People sometimes say that the way things happen in movies is unreal, but actually it’s the way things happen in life that’s unreal. The movies make emotions look so strong and real, whereas when things really do happen to you, it’s like watching television – you don’t feel anything.”
There’s something very unsettling to my experience of this truth. I’m chasing these moments of life where the layered density of feeling compounds into that thick intoxicating air of pure experience, the vital additive quality of life. Some call it a bounding pulse, others simply ‘magic’, but whatever it is, it’s elusive, and it is not dependent on the content of the situation it may flow through.
Somewhere in the years between 2010-2014, we rode out to Parker’s Pit, taking a trail off Bamber-Lacey Road into the wet, open, clay mountains and green waters of Parker and his massive dredging up of building materials. The sun was setting and the dirt rose into the air as we kicked it up with our fat, under-filled bike tires. It may have been getting dark, but the way to the dredging lakes was made clear by the luminescent appearance of a family of fireflies. At the time it seemed that the lightning bugs formed a communicative mega-structure beyond our comprehension, blinking their little lights all together, as one. I now know this belongs to a rapidly expanding catalogue of what scientists call ‘synchronized living systems,” where order seems to, beyond comprehension, reach out through the chaos of nature. The fireflies begin flashing at random, but when there are enough of them, eventually they will form a wave of lights, trying to sync up with the brothers and sisters nearest them. This syncing gets closer and closer until someone lucky enough, like myself or my friends, pedals through the green-lit mounds amid the lush, through its diffuse, connective light switch. The orange of the sun, mossy air, green light on, green light off, the open clearing of orange clay and twinkling cyan waters. Parker’s was a man-made place, but maybe it was more beautiful because of this fact. When I think about that ride, I wonder if I felt it like I feel it now, or if it is through its analogue recording, its etching into the synapses of my brain that gives it this powerful presence of meaning, bursting at the seams. Would it be a sad trick if such experiences only accumulated that weight through biological human intervention? Through the scribbling of abstract flows, forces and materials into intelligible memory? It would mean that only when you refuse to pre-define a moment, only when you forget you are the one living it, as it happens, will your brain intuitively fill in the gaps later, adding that existential heft, that beauty, the feelings that make nostalgia a son of a bitch you want to hit and kiss at the same time.
I don’t know how to not think about these moments as something other than what I want more of. But I remember that day. I wasn’t taking it all in like some 17 year old guru who understood time. I didn’t give a shit. I was having fun. I was enjoying the pure experience of it, raw sensation, like a feeling-machine in the ether of space, stitching ones and zeroes together to make a thin fabric. But wanting these moments seems to make them ever more difficult to conjure. You can’t self-consciously experience your blissful dissolving of the conscious, it seems. I guess that would defeat the purpose. Still, I want to feel like these moments are not only possible, but inevitable. I don’t want to be like Joaquin Phoenix in Her wondering if I’ll ever feel something new again, or like Andy Bernard in The Office, wondering how to spot the ‘good old days’ while you’re still in them.
I don’t know what’s real, or what’s television, or what feelings are supposed to belong to which experiences or why. I just know that sometimes, on a cool day, drinking coffee on my balcony, I can feel just as alive as I did on that ride into Parker’s Pit. But on other days, for abstract reasons I will never conceptually understand, I can go out to that same balcony, with the same mug, and the same damn coffee, and it just feels like I’m trying too hard. Faking it. Like when you’re reading a book and 70 pages goes by in flash, but all of a sudden you realize that you’re reading, and you have to ignore that extra dimension of perception of your own experience until it disappears once again.
There was not a point to this. Sorry if you were looking for one. The Sunday was actually great, went for a long walk with Victoria through the city and up into a giant park overlooking the river. There must’ve been 1000 people there, grilling meats, hula-hooping, kicking around the old soccer ball. It was a perfect Sunday. Except the part that scared me, the strange feeling. You’re trying too hard. You’re faking it. The magic was elusive once again. The difference between a great day and a life-affirming one. It felt like watching television. Hopefully the next one will feel like a summer’s ride at dusk through a gossamer cloud of fireflies.
See you tomorrow,
Nick
Nick Denardi 