Hephzibah. Flight.: Let The Great World Spin

I am reading a new novel called, Let The Great World Spin by Colum McCann. Danggggg.
So, I started this while in Hawai'i and am now in the middle. A lot is going through my mind.
Parallels, revelations, insights, convictions.
Once I sort them all out, I will share.

For now, I will just tell you that the story is surrounding an event on August 7th, 1974. A man named Philippe Petit, a french acrobat, tightrope walked between the 110 story Twin Towers in NYC.

But more profoundly, the story is about moments that make you stop; make you really "be", make you connected to people around you, moments that incompass the sense of loneliness or the sense of interconnection we can feel if we seek it out (if we let it). The book follows several people who one day, in the biggest and most lonely city of all, look up to see this tight-rope walker. This moment is described with lyrical beauty in the book and is the glue between the characters.

This is important to me right now. I've been thinking a lot about it. About people. About our connections to each other. (About our lack of connections to each other).

I keep getting drawn to this theme. So much that I find myself at Old Toad some nights, with a German beer in one hand writing movie ideas and themes in my moleskin with the other (I don't even write movies, I don't ever think about writing movies). But I can't shake this.

I've been looking at people and wondering about their life. About how they got to that particular restaurant that night. About why they are eating alone. What they had for breakfast. What kind of milk is in their fridge. I see people on first dates and wonder what their previous relationships have been like. I fast forward their relationship that hasn't even started yet in my mind as they are talking (as I'm watching them like a creep from the corner, scribbling notes in my journal, remember?) and imagine their next 6 months. On a screen in my minds eye I play over dates at the beach, picnics, movie nights, meeting parents, and a sad breakup. (Or happy marriage?).

I see people and wonder if they are on match.com
I watch men check out at Wegmans at 1am with TV dinners and wonder if they are divorced. I wonder where they work.
I see a group of young men at the bar discussing life, school loans, and college and wonder if they are almost graduated; on the brink of a new life undiscovered. I connect myself to these emotions they must be having, these seasons I have already passed or haven't been to yet. Many times I get the sense that we all pass through the same seasons. It's an odd feeling. Mine is gone. Mine is something new. But once I was in your season. And soon you will be in mine. Or you are in that season now, but I won't be there for another 40 years. Maybe you remember mine now? Maybe you forgot. But here we are in the same moment of time. Different seasons. Different beers. Same Old Toad.
I sit around restaurants, pubs, parks...and I just want to find these things out. Most of all, I want to introduce a game of Taboo or Guesstures and bring us all together for one night.
Is that weird?
So what.

Ever seen Wall-E? Don't make fun! That silly Disney movie gets more profound every time I see it. Sometimes I think we are headed in that direction. In a world where we don't really even see people, where we can be right next to each other but we're watching and interacting through screens. Where friendships are comprised of facebook comments, picture "likes", text messages, and wall posts.

I want to know if your water is too hot.

I want to know what board in your floor always creaks.

I want to know what you think about when you are all alone.

I want to know your favorite spot to read.

(Reminds my of my favorite poem posted in one of my other blog posts.)

I want to imagine a world where we somehow are all connected. Movies like Crash. Movies like Requiem For a Dream (but a little less intense, geesh. That movie messed me up!).

And I think I just really like that this man decided to do this. That for one moment in a city where everyone is in their own world, he brought them together. To have the air be suddenly shared. People started talking, started looking at each other, started cementing a shared memory they'd have the rest of their lives.
That he was just crazy enough to want that to happen.