My dreamday began when I pulled myself out of bed to go see Zero Dark Thirty with my delightful new friend Andrea. Andrea is my first real, brand new friend here in LA and I'm excited and happy to have her. After the movie we talked about my favorite talkin' subject, religion, as I ate from my cauldron.
I thought out loud about the idea I've been thinking about since seeing the Kubrick exhibit at LACMA and (bringing it up for the second day in a row) the monolith, the symbol in 2001: A Space Odyssey for the Divine Unknowable. I talked about how I don't think there can be such a thing as a pragmatic religion. The practical aspects of every religion (or cult, for that matter) are usually universally accepted but a religion isn't a religion without some aspect that is is completely bonkers. In other words religion must require faith. And that I think from the outside we try and pigeonhole these crazy aspects - virgin births, past lives, etc. - in either literalism or metaphor but neither does justice to what I'm again going to call the Divine Unknowable.
When watching 2001 no one ever explains what the monolith is/represents/means, but we as a viewer understand it in a space beyond the left or right sides of our brains. There's some great, cosmic truth that religious imagery and miraculous stories (and, I would argue, folk and fairytales) give us peepholes to and it's a truth that makes sense in a base, biological way beyond our intellect.
Or perhaps these things have a character that invites projection and rather than tapping into something divine we instead invest them with their meaning from this same subconscious place. And then, trying to make sense of our emotions that such an act stirs within us, we end up worshiping what is tantamount to a blank projector screen. And if that's the case is it any less mysterious and beautiful and... divine?
So that's what I batted around over a late lunch while we also talked about visiting ghost towns and a potential documentary on an aging Marilyn Monroe-impersonating drag queen Andrea might decide to helm.
It was a good way to end a day of running out of the movie theater every hour to feed the meter and stop myself from getting another ticket (there was one on the windshield today because while I was sick in bed I forgot to move it out of the street cleaning zone on Wednesday). All this running back and forth trifurcated Zero Dark Thirty but it didn't matter because 1. that movie was fucking amazing anyway and 2. I actually did end up fending off the meter maid who strutted away after disdainfully calling me "sir" in that way I hate and 3. my dreamday has been so borderline surreal that Zero Dark Thirty was almost just a collection of pictures and sounds anyways. Thankfully it's an intense enough film that I could follow it but now that I'm back home and the blood is rushing to my tummy I know I only have so much consciousness left in the day.
I'm still supposed to go to a party tomorrow - and want to go to a party tomorrow - but that's going to mean a drive out to Santa Monica and an evening spent awake when I should be lying down with a fruit juice IV or something. Worst comes to worst I'll just make a nest on the beach and pass out there. Because they have a beach in Santa Monica and such a thing is possible.
Speaking of things that make a sort of dream sense, the other highlight of my day was watching this video of Slim Gaillard. Talk about touching the divine... Everything about Slim's performances are dreamlike to me, including the seemingly nonsensical moments the audience chooses to laugh. I aspire to this.
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