today...

Today I am in a funk, and I don't feel like talking about it so I''ll just write a few things.

Someone said that they don't like to watch movies and it got me to thinking about what motivates people to go to the movies. What do they get out of the experience? Do we watch movies differently, just like we listen to music differently, using different parts of the brain, allowing different parts to be stimulated, allowing others to rest?

I developed the music theory a few years back when I realised that two of my closest friends had the same strange resistance to listening to music they'd never heard. I would try again and again to introduce them to something new that I was sure they would love, to no avail. They continue to this day to listen to the same music over and over again. And I think it's for nostalgia. They listen to music to reconnect with feelings or events from the past, and that is their primary reason for listening. They listen to music with their memory. I do this also, but it is more often that I listen to music to have a new experience, to reach for new emotion. I like to hear new sounds, new note and chord combinations, new style combinations, new voices. Not necessarily new time-wise, but new to me. And eventually, if I like something enough to incorporate it into my daily life, it becomes nostalgic. Like Electrelane's The Power Out will always remind me of a certain summer and my sister Penelope and a lot of garage sailing. There are lots of other ways that people listen, I'm sure as many ways as there are different people who listen.

And movies, well I haven't yet put much thought into this theory, but I can speak for myself. I actually enjoy some really bad movies. I really enjoy good movies, too. I try my best not to pay for bad movies, and to spread the word when I see a good one. Like Paris, Je T'aime. This film is for everyone. Go see it, that's all I'm saying. I know that I am usually completely absorbed, especially when in the theatre, and so I can say that I go to escape my own world and to enter another. I go to travel, to have adventure, to be shown new ways to sympathise with unsympathetic people, to laugh, to cry, to be frightened... I used to enjoy really disgusting and horrible movies, the more gory and graphic and horrifying the better. In my old age I'm less drawn to those stories. Perhaps I'm becoming more like my mother, that's a good thing.

I'm going to start asking people about thier own experiences in visiting the theatre. What are your reasons for going, and what do you get out of it?