Quotable me - 6

It's a fine line between acting with aplomb...and acting like a plum.

In Praise of the Dreamers

I used to listen to a few soundtracks, not a lot I guess, but maybe I thought it was something that made me…different.
No, it wasn't that. But that doesn't make it less true. (I can highly recommend the excellent orchestrals of the first RoboCop movie).

And yesterday, I couldn't help but watch Groundhog Day.
Again.

I could even dial up a few clips on Youtube of television that know how to push my buttons.

And I don't mind horror, in fact I like it at times. Quite a bit.

So what is it about entertainment?

It's this.
It's emotion with personally defined boundaries.

You allow it access to your code. You can select the aspects of it that you desire whether it be manga, opera, gaming, torture porn, Corrie.
You can select the flavours  that push your buttons. And  that do it in the most efficient way.  It may only be the most efficient way for you but then that is the only thing that is relevant.

If someone gets moved by La Boheme, in the same way that I am affected by Saw IV, then that's fine. (At least to me, if not to them, the racist bastards).

If someone needs a Rembrandt to give them an erection, I'm okay with that.
I don't think is normal. I've never got off on watercolours myself. But I have no objection to these artistic perverts pleasuring themselves in whatever medium they desire. We live in a free country.  At least some of us do (sentence inserted for the global market).

So what is it?
Exactly?
What's going on?

Well with entertainment, you can experience the highs and lows of the emotion, as well as the side to sides.
Happy, sad, anxious, concerned, energised, optimised.
But you do it.....
In safety.

And it's an interesting trip.

Our extremities are inside us, asking us to push them, ease them out.
They are not at the end of a bungee rope. That's the sort of experience you brace yourself for, put up your walls to allow nothing in. The light and the love, when they get in to change you,  get in much, much more sneakily than that.

Our extremities temporarily finish at our toes and fingers, because here there is a secret relay which reflects and reprocesses the internal journey so that it is organised into a learning point. And normalised into part of our individual identities.

They don't finish at our toes and fingers because they need to be expelled and walked to the top of a dead mountain, or thrown off a rock. Because many of those people have already missed the first stile, with the notice that said "go back".
"Go back inside".

Star Trek said it best, when it relayed that "the human adventure is just beginning".
Even at the end of the galaxy.
And yet you can still spot a moron if ever you hear the words "I don't like sci-fi".
Because either they don't "get it" or they don't like the human adventure. They don't like life. They're not interested in the learning process. They are empty.
Dead.

And why should they like it? It's hard. Predictable and unpredictable. I meet people every day who don't engage with it.
I don't blame them. I try to rectify them, but I don't blame them. That's my arrogance. (And I don't avoid blaming them because blame's a bad thing. I don't think it is. A few more government ministers need to eat a bit of that).

But if the only emotional tilt you get is from harsh reality, you have no real chance to practice, to rehearse your best response, no chance to present yourself as professional, or decent, or accomplished, or increasingly, if you're male, as a man.
If you react well in the next circumstance, it may be more through luck than anything else.

Entertainment gives us a chance just to work out our responses, and more than that, to learn what they should be.

This has been a public service announcement for supporting the arts.