By the way, I’m still having to hit the space bar 10 times whenever I start a new paragraph. How is it that I haven’t figured out yet how to freaking indent? I’m getting more and more used to all of this as I go and I guess that’s the point. I’m also noticing the things I say alot. I mean, to be honest with you, don’t think I don’t notice when I use a phrase a whole bunch. I’m probably more aware of the patterns present in my speech and in my writing than you are. How crazy would I have to be to not? I mean, I mean, I mean I’m the one writing them. I’m the one saying the stuff I say, and we have already established that I pay attention to everything.
I mean, anyway, I guess I should sort of hedge a little bit on the whole Socrates thing from last night. I mean, to be fair, I am on alot of similar wavelengths as the guy but I am nowhere near Socrates when it comes to saying the things that are perfect to say. I’m not nearly as good at following my own doctrine as he is, or at least how well his character does in the book. I’m interested to see more about Socrates in real life. I know that he was put on trial for something and that is obviously gonna dictate how he represented on the internet. I don’t know. What I do know is that the version of Socrates, fictional or factual, from Plato’s the Republic is a guy I want to be more like and a guy I think I am quite like. Maybe I’m nothing like the real Socrates or the real Plato because those are real people who aren’t actually like anyone else simply due to the fact that they are human.
I should also be a teensy bit worried that reading something like this is gonna really change the way I write, at least for a while. John came home from yesterday and I was just sort of unconsciously sounding like Socrates in my argument, trying to bring up stuff and change everything around and obviously it sucked ass as a conversation. I do this with alot of things and I think that basically everyone in the history of the world does this. For example, when I was younger I would watch the same movies a bunch of times and one of those movies was Bourne Supremacy and every time I watched it I would feel really amped up after wards. I’d get stuff done after, like I’d clean my room and I’d be super efficient about everything like how Jason Bourne would clean his room. It was pretty fun but it was never something I choose to do. I’d watch the movie because I like the movie, not because it made me feel a certain way afterwards. I didn’t really think of the movie as like a cup of mental coffee to watch before going to work, it’s just what happened sometimes after watching it. I think everyone does this to some extent as the consume story and creative creations.
I’ve never felt more validated than I do when I watch a movie I used to love as a kid and as an adult I watch it with new eyes and new ideas about whats good and what isn’t. I have more knowledge than I had as a kid obviously. I didn’t pay attention to shot composition or pacing as a child watching a movie like You’ve Got Mail or His Girl Friday. What feels amazing though is rewatching it now and finding out that the movies are actually really good movies still. Like my opinion as a child was perfectly correct even though I couldn’t have really told you or expressed at all in words why I liked them so much as kids. Even from technical standpoints of film making these movies are very good and in subtle ways. You’ve Got Mail is especially easy to understand it’s subtle strengths as you watch the blend of narration, email, inner thoughts, text, and spokenm dialogue all intermingle perfectly to make the emails feel like true conversations and to see the mental process each character has as they write. It’s actually a pretty amazing accomplishment from a film design standpoint and I believe that no other movie has ever reached that quality of variable control. I loved that stuff as a kid but as a kid I felt it more than I saw it. I could feel the maturity of the characters as they talk to each other like mature intelligent adults. How could I notice how amazing it was when I wasn’t conscious of what terrible dialogue was like from a intellectual standpoint? I felt how good the movie was as a kid and I was 100% right.
I have always been a big fan of my own taste in things I care about and to have my childhood favorites put to the same test I put every movie now, and to see them pass with flying colors, feels so good. I know there’s a good amount of pride in that and maybe a little bit of smugness but it undeniably does feel good and then I watch them with people who have never seen them and they also completely agree that they are amazing. I love when other people love what I love so when my brother, who is into film, watches You’ve Got Mail with me and without even really putting much thought into the words he chooses he says something like “This is the kind of thing I want to make.” I watched His Girl Friday with my best friend Eric and I was freaking out since I hadn’t watched it years and I was in the middle of the euphoria. The euphoria was turned from a self-focused feeling to a total feeling when he kept agreeing with me and saying how good the movie was. He was noticing and praising the things I had praised for years and he was doing it without my guidance or anything.
It was like a proof that I was right and maybe more importantly it was proof that I’m more like other people than I thought. You might not think it feels good to be like everyone else but for a kid like me that never really felt like he had anything in common with your average kid, you learn to appreciate unanimity and to understand that conformity is something completely different than unanimity.
The Mind of Joshypoo 