forthcoming-imminently

Inland Empire

I actually went into a rather deep, dark place, the rabbit hole itself perhaps, after watching the David Lynch movie, or rather, it opened up something dark in me. I have been having a depression thing for a while, the kind of depression where you are just so exhausted and can barely move all the time. I feel like it was this darkness that was sitting there, untouched, and something in this movie opened it up. Now that I went deep into that place instead of skirting around it, there is movement instead of stagnancy, a re-invigoration. I am not sure how long it will last, but it is a nice respite. Today was the first day in weeks that I was not utterly exhausted all day. But on Saturday when I saw the movie, (full moon I realize now!) I had great plans of things to do afterwards, to continue my day off, but after the movie I was so exhausted I could barely walk, I came home and I collapsed onto the bed and slept for an hour. When I woke up, I don't know what kind of half dream thought I had but I burst into tears and just sobbed for half an hour. Rest of the night felt morose and puffy-eyed. My friend called me at 11:30 and wanted me to go to the park near Japantown, for fireworks for chinese new year, I think, but I couldn't, maybe I should have, but at that point I just wanted to go to sleep and obliterate. Also, my eyes really hurt.

I keep thinking about this movie and keep thinking about this movie, it seems to me to be one of the most deeply spiritual experiences I have had in a while. I guess my religion is art? And David Lynch is the god I pray to? The way movies can really open you up in ways that you just cannot really be touched in normal life, is really amazing.

I find it really interesting that Lynch operates on a logic of symbolism, I think not just in his movies, but in his life, from things that I have read, and I wonder how can he do that, believe, at his age? I am much younger and I've pretty much stopped believing in that kind of thing. Maybe it is not age related. I want to believe but I just don't, can't, feel it. When something happens that seems synchonicitous, I would always, before, think that it meant something, like it was a message from the universe about my life, about being on the right path, etc. But I've totally lost that belief now, really since moving to SF in 2001. Which is part of why I started this blog, to investigate, keep track of the spiritual, the visionary, those weird moments that seem to happen less and less. To try and capture it, because it is the only thing that really ever makes me feel real. And it barely ever happens anymore, and I don't know if it is me, not being engaged with the universe, or if it is just maturing, growing up finally, getting practical; things that happen are not messages, they are just the things that happen. Stop reading shit into things.

Maybe I should start keeping track of synchronicities, and will meaning into them? Today, for example, someone was out sick with the shingles, of all things. At lunch, I was reading the new Effing, and Mairead Byrne has a poem called "Shingle." Deep, yes? I alas, had no deep insights about stress, itching, or roofing.

A big part of what this Lynch film is about, for me, is about searching for information. Which is what reading into synchronicities is. The universe has information that it is not sharing. But there is meaning out there, we just have to investigate deeply into it to find it. Is the thought. Depression is seeing things 2-dimensionally, seeing no meaning. I do feel, today, that it is not a mere practicality, but depression that keeps me from seeing things as I used to. Because how is 2-dimensionality ever wise or mature? It seems just hardened. I think there is a point where too much belief can become delusional, and you have to find the "middle path" between illusion and hard reality, which is itself also a form of illusion.

In Inland Empire, there is always a secret, things kept from others, secret symbols that are unexplained. And there seems to be a place you can go to where there is the still unexplained but yet it is also the un-unexplained, you get it in a way that is unexplainable in a regular linear way, and he presents it in such a way that you don't try too too hard to figure it out, because you can't.

I am glad I went to the film alone because it was a deep personal solitary journey that if my friend I invited had ended up going with me, the energy would just not have been the same and I would probably have had a less deep experience. I really like this aspect, that I haven't noticed in a Lynch film before, of a mythological, epic journey, ancient Greek almost. The Laura Dern character has to kind of go underground, Persephone-like, or like Inanna, wasn't she associated with the underworld too? She has to go there, underground, literally die for the sake of the journey she has to make. Not ironical, that she is covered in dirt at the end. And the chorus of whores. How are they not mythological sirens or some such, creatures of the underworld, holy harlots!? The way they seem to be helping her sometimes, and disregarding her at others, maybe Lynch knows about the fluctuations between believing in symbolism stuff and not, and they are meant to be personifications of synchronicity itself?