Right, ranting time, needs must. There's a few things I want to talk about as a method of getting back into the swing of writing blogs, the foremost among these being influenced heavily by a film I recently watched: Into The Wild, trailer below. It's a coming of age story of sorts about a real person named Christopher McCandless forward slash Alexander Supertramp as directed by Sean Penn and staring up and coming actor Emile Hirsch (who is wonderful in this film and has a very bright future ahead of him in spite of unfortunately only really being known for playing the title role in the dreadful Wachowoskization of Speed Racer). When he was a college student McCandless destroyed all personal identification, gave all his student loan money and almost all of his savings to charity and headed out on a cross country adventure first by car and then on foot, ultimately headed for Alaska with no-one but himself for company.
The reason I bring this up is not only because it is both a captivating and beautiful story (albeit one with a -spoiler warning- tragic conclusion) but because one of the first thoughts that wormed its way into my head when I heard the premise of the film, let alone actually saw it, was that I would happily leave everything behind and disappear into the wilderness. It got me thinking about why that's such an enticing prospect, to just leave everything you know and trust behind; it also got me thinking about why it appeals to me in particular so significantly, to the point where I seriously considered doing it, or something similar. I think, in terms of myself it's probably because I've sought solitude my entire life, I'm just one of those people, the more social interaction has felt required, the more time I've tried to spend on my own, I used to cut class to walk around Cambridge, I'd go to the Grand Arcade, to Lion Yard, hell I sometimes went to the cinema when I should have been in class, it's not a habit I regret, I appreciated the alone time and I still do. The more generally overarching reason is one of the reasons I want to make films, because the world is amazing and I don't feel like I can really comprehend how amazing it is without seeing as much of it as I can, I don't think anyone can. 'Bullshit!' you might say 'I've seen images of the grand canyon and I've been to Aires Rock don't you know!', that's all well and good, but it doesn't really prove anything. In my opinion you can't comprehend the beauty of the world based on what's considered to be its highlights because that's what other people said. I'm not going to sit here and contest that the grand canyon isn't astonishing, but take for example this image you see below you.
That is the seven coloured earth in Mauritius, an island west of Madagascar best known for being the last place on earth where the dodo existed. The reason it looks like that is because the heat and humidity of the climate speeds up the decomposition of the basalt of the earth into clay, resulting in large compositions of iron and aluminium, which creates the colouration, which in turn alters between blues, purples, reds and browns depending on the time of day and angle of the sun. You probably had no idea this existed until I told you, I didn't until I saw it, even having seen it you might be thinking 'well that's fascinating but it doesn't exactly take my breath away'. Of course it doesn't, you haven't seen it, experienced seeing the sunlight move across the surface making it change from red to blue like a chameleon's skin. The world is what you make of it and I think it's almost a travesty that people can go through life without seeing anything as phenomenal as the seven coloured earth or even being aware it exists.
I'm not blaming anyone for not knowing about these things, I just think the world would be a far better place if people just went out and saw things, experienced things, if they just went out and fucking lived. Take Mauritius as an example, when tourists usually go there they stay in these grotesque all purpose hotels that look like every picture of a tropical island beach you've seen ever. Everything is there, well maintained beach, restaurants, evening functions, diving programs, boat trips, on the face of it they give very little reason to ever leave, so people don't. It's like living in a glass bubble, you go out to see the world and you never stray beyond what you've seen on the fuckmothering postcard! When I went there we stayed at a house in one of the towns, or just outside it, we went to the public beaches where there were almost exclusively people who lived there. Granted that while I was there I'd never felt whiter but it was amazing, yes we had to travel through very poor areas of the island and yes there were hints of criminal activity lurking around here and there and yes we had to do our own laundry and cook our own food but I didn't care about any of that, I preferred it, being waited on hand and foot is fine when you're at Disney World but a place like that is meant to be seen, experienced, lived, it's like that Smash Mouth lyric 'so much to do so much to see, so what's wrong with taking the back streets? You'll never know if you don't go'. Again this is just my opinion on the matter but it's the main reason why Into the Wild presented such an appealing prospect for a guy like me, I've seen a tiny fraction of the world and I'm impatient to extend that figure. Anyone who takes Into the Wild's message to heart probably has a similar idea of the world, maybe not expressed in quite the same way.
There was actually another thing, or some other things I wanted to discuss but looking at the time I'd probably best leave that for another day, I've written quite a lot already, more than I was expected to, so in the mean time I'll just leave you with a funny video type thing and go to bed:
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