One thing you can taste
The Aviator (2004) directed by Martin Scorsese
I sit in the cinema and feel the crush. The muscles in my chest tensing for impact. I clutch my knee, grounding in the darkness. 'This room is too big,' I say, staring at the ceiling, thinking, don't think of the exit. Don't think of the exit. Then, Tom Cruise on the screen, familiar features and the first round of sedation. It goes like this: like someone smashing the alarm and then, if I can make it, filling me with air. He does something cool, thumbs up in the darkness, nodding in unison. This is what life is meant to feel like. And every time adrenaline is dumped into my system, I just think, don't you want to see the end?
My love has returned in torrents. Feeling exhilarated for the first time in a long time. Answering a question I didn't know I'd been holding on to. What is it about films? Why do I worship them? It came to me as I was white-knuckling the red seats. I'm experiencing a different lifetime. I am everything and anything. I'm a fighter pilot. I'm a Yakuza. I want to be thrilled. And this is how it is now. My chest literally gallops when I watch something. Selfish in my consumption. Headphones, silence, wanting to experience it alone. Sometimes I wonder if this exhilaration is just a taster of panic. Would I feel this way if I wasn't such an exposed wire? Plastic peeled and copper burning. There are times when I finish watching and I try to picture myself, but all I can think of is someone else.
Expose expose expose. Staring at Tom Cruise's singular middle tooth is exposure now. This is how far my comfort zone has closed in. A rare cry watching the trailer, watching my childhood on screen. My childhood is an intensely charming cultist, who I never sought out when watching films, but who was always there anyway. I guess we don't choose the people that raise us. But I have to give it to him, long afternoons of lazy boredom and Minority Report already on the screen.
This experience is carving something inside of me. It's not so much contributing to my 10,000 hours but creating the room that I'll do my 10,000 hours in. It's not enough to just watch, but to watch doesn't hurt so much anymore. I can walk the streets of Japan, bloody and beaten and feel nothing but the things I'm supposed to. Liv Tyler breaking my heart, my hair slicked back, the scar on my lip and I don't feel resistant to it. When I watch something now, it doesn't feel like I'm reminding myself of something I've lost. It might not always feel like this. There might be another time when I have to separate my desperation to create from my drive to watch. But it's good, looking forward to things again, watching trailers again, entertaining things made in the last five years again.
I read a book on the science of happiness; all that matters is pleasure and purpose. This is a nice fracture to be in. Every film is research. Every moment of crisp film grain is schooling me. The sound design in Mad Men has the precision of a paper cut. And the colours, jesus, the richness of the reds. The imprint of a single frame from Batman stuck in my head. I can't explain it but the perfect shade of black and harshest white, like Tippex on tarmac. And moments, fights and horses falling, blood and mud and perfectly delivered words. Just a swamp of inspiration, and I'm crawling through it; pinned to a seat, subtle terror flowing through me, the smell of mustard and hotdogs and nothing but the screen.
I just want to make something that makes people feel like this.