Tarsem’s The Fall #2 - Immersion

Battle of tastes

What book (Out of ALL!) has the best opening lines?

the word

In the post you’re about to make, replace cis/white/hetero/male people with the Jews and if the result sounds like something that could be straight out of Mein Kampf, you should probably reconsider your social justice blogging habits.

Sherlock's Wisdom on Getting Married

I quite recently watched a Sherlock episode, titled: The Sign of Three. It was, in my sincere opinion, a relief after the surprisingly disappointing season premier--and I haven't watched the season finale, so please don't spoil that for me.

In this episode, besides of a number of complicated and smartly intertwined cases being solved by Sherlock, Dr. Watson gets married. Well, marriage is and has now been for a pretty good while a sensitive and controversial subject and no one blog entry could contain the expression of the complete set of my views on this topic, so I'll just reflect on one thing.

As Sherlock prepares for his awkward and unromantic best man speech, he points out a flaw in the institution of marriage. He says, that a wedding is not a big day, since two adults, who already live in the same household, will merely continue their relationship, without any addition or alternation in regards of form or content, just implementing a brief intermission consisting of a grand celebration and a short vacation.

Sherlock's argument against marriage is, however, not, that it should be done differently but that it shouldn't be done at all, having understood the little relevance it has. Of course we discard this argument as a trivial mistake. We feel this way because the essence of marriage and what it constitutes are unuttured but very valuable things.

The essence of marriage is problem #1. Out of all the definitions I've heard in my short life, the most easily acceptable and most up-to-date is this: a union between two willing adults, sanctified by the state, promoting romantic values. This is fairly true to popular contemporary views I believe.

On to problem #2: what does marriage constitute? To answer this question, we will now draw consequences about our answer to problem #1. Marriage essentially constitutes a state, in which the participants have their relationship recognized by the state and their pursue of romantic goals is hence justified.

I will now try to contradict my previous statements and conclusions by explaining faults I believe to have identified.

Fault #1: the state's sanctification is inadequate. I will demonstrate this by one argument but I believe even more exist. My example is this: take a christian couple. They get married and according to their beliefs their marriage was sanctified not solely by the state but also by God. If we define marriage as a thing getting its sanctification by the state we have disrespected and at least the way the given couple sees it, degraded their marriage. On the contrary, it would be problematic to change the definition in their favor because that would be misfit for the people not sharing christian faith.

Fault #2: in case marriage essentially promotes romantic values, such as romantic love, fidelity, companionship and such ones, it must mark the distinction between the state of promotion and the state, where these values were not promoted or not in the same manner. This means, that, for instance, before the marriage you have the liberty to break up the relationship you have, however, after you're married, you willingly give this up and thus will never have the freedom to get a divorce. Of course this seems extremely orthodox and hard to accept but given the definition above, the state of marriage does not allow you to violate the institution of it.

The list of problems and faults may be too short or inaccurate in contrast with others' views but I believe it's quite enough food for thought for now.

Both faults, listed above, originate from how we define the essence of marriage and what we want it to constitute. Now, that I have questioned and denied the modern day thinking about this topic, it may seem, that I agree with Sherlock and see marriage as an irrelevant contingency in life but that's not the case either. What I personally think about it is, that as long as we don't have a unanimous definition of marriage, we can't make court rulings or legislations defining its aims, since no matter how liberal we are, it will always take away the freedom of at least a few. And to give my view on what to make of the current problem, I will say, that marriage is valuable and it should continue to exist, however, to fill it with importance, contemporary thinking about it should indeed be changed.

The phrase: leap of faith, has been banished from our realities. It only exists in books and films. But why? If we don't have the courage to make efforts for the uncertain, it's certain we'll have no more than what we have now.

Spring-sickness and Nostalgia

It’s May 2015. When have the days passed me by? Last time I looked out the window it was two years ago and it was a today. Wasn’t 2013 the future just enough?

I have a friend, who likes to refer to the 1920′s, as a good age and I guess I feel it, too, but it’s always just an intellectual longing to something currently romanticized. At the same time there exists a predominant nostalgia in me, which is personal. I have lost a very good time, when I was healthier than now, fresher, more beautiful.

My spring is always about losing time. I have a favorite interval in my past, which I’d love to bring back--not because I wasted it away but because I couldn’t hold on to it. Spring is also like that: it’s romantic, it’s crisp and it gives me a warm feeling about life but at the same time, I can’t hold on to it.

I’m not talking about fear of change. The idea is changing for worse. Not the possibility but the actual thing. Summer’s a nice season but it is not as appealing to me as spring. It has to do with my taste, so it doesn’t necessarily apply to you but what does is that everything around you is constantly disappearing. And it’s an irrecoverable state.

Things are sweeter when they're lost. I know--because once I wanted something and got it. It was the only thing I ever wanted badly, Dot, and when I got it it turned to dust in my hand.

F Scott Fitzgerald - The Beautiful and Damned

You'll find another.' God! Banish the thought. Why don't you tell me that 'if the girl had been worth having she'd have waited for you'? No, sir, the girl really worth having won't wait for anybody.

F Scott Fitzgerald - This Side of Paradise

Optimism, Pessimism, Perspective and the Question of Society and Art

Recently I experienced an emotional antinomy in regards of how current technology and social media affect art.

My first observation was that it multiplies the art outlets and creates a vast stock of memorabilia about artists for the ages to come. How nice would it be to read Fitzgerald’s tumblr posts.

The second observation was that the increased outlets and the conservation of everything brings about a horrific picture about our age. As cheap horror flicks went down the sewers a hundred years ago and then disintegrated from human remembering, we cannot anticipate today’s trash to just disappear because it will haunt the internet forever.

But just today I woke up with a realization that alleviated my passionate opinions. I remembered that people read and watch and touch what they choose to. The internet does not change the people fundamentally, it is exactly the other way around. However the current society wishes to shape the world of art, it is not a danger on the bigger arc of things. The case has never been changed, not even slightly, dumb people have always been into dumb things and smart people have always been into smart things. Any alternation that has ever happened happened in the individual’s life. We, as persons, and not as society, move forward. It is because of each individual’s limited time on earth: we start from nil and run as fast as we can to get the farthest possible but it does not affect society, as it survives the individual. Unless people can somehow learn to give birth to children with a refined sense of society in their heads, society will not become smarter or dumber, just a mass of us.

Hope seems to be the most stubborn thing in my head. After being proved wrong, pulled through unwanted things, failed, hurt, it still is there, constantly making me take the next step, even when I see no viable chance for things to work out.