Drive!

(based on the novel Push by Sapphire)



The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures, & Commerce (RSA) apparently has someone do animated storyboards for the series of lectures they host. This was brought to my attention twice this week. First, BoingBoing posted a link to a Marxist critique of late crises of capitalism (which I followed through to a rebuttal to its rebuttal), and then, someone from church sent a link to a similar storyboard for a lecture on cross-cultural perceptions of the passing of time. I'm not sure I'd have been able to sit through either lecture attentively without the animated storyboard. Actually, I found myself pretty well distracted by the drawing process anyway. Inspired, yes... but.... Well, I don't know if I retained a whole lot of what they're talking about, but I can certainly enjoy watching it again! They have a playlist of such RSAnimated lectures, along with the non-storyboard versions, on YouTube.

The one embedded above resonates, as I'm headed into the woods this weekend on a purpose hunt, a vision quest. I didn't find its "truth" all that surprising: apparently, what motivates us is having a sense of purpose. Well, duh. I still can't reconcile my craving for motivation with my mysterious aversion to it.

I knew a hypno-therapist at one time, who said he was very good at helping people quit smoking--so long as they were motivated to quit smoking. He offered to hypnotize me out of whatever habit I long to discard, with the caveat that I must be motivated. I couldn't then convince him--nor have I yet convinced myself--that I'm motivated to be motivated!

Is the answer somewhere in the woods?

Soon see...

Vision Quest Film Fest

I remember seeing Rivers and Tides in the theaters, when it came out in 2001, and really enjoying it then, but I hadn't seen it since. Fate or circumstance brought it to mind last week, and Deb and I found it was up on Netflix Instant Watcher, so we watched it straightaway. I gotta tell ya (so I am), speaking as someone preparing to wander off into the woods, to build some sort of ritual out of communing soulfully with my natural surroundings, to ceremonially give witness to a change of nature within myself, as it is reflected or amplified in that environment--I can't imagine a cinematic experience more conducive to establishing such a frame of mind!

If you're not familiar with the movie...