"My Happiness"

¶ … Happiness The Warm Fluidity For the most part, internal (as opposed to external) influences bring me the greatest degree of inspiration and happiness. What this statement means is that I am not necessarily inspired by appearances, and I am much more of a verbal person (whether accessed in spoken language or via the written word) than I am a visual person.

As such, I derive significantly greater insight from music and films than I do from paintings and architecture -- which is not to imply that I see no aesthetic quality in paintings and architecture. It is just that I do a lot less so, and generally to a lesser degree, than I do in music and films. Music, the world of sounds and emotions, precious words, harmony and intangible associations such as fire and ice, has long been my world and that with which I am most comfortable.

I ascribe to the notion that there is a sincerity associated with music that helps to distinguish that which is termed "good" from that which is not. In this respect, there really is only one type of music -- that which innately moves a person (in the metaphoric sense), and that which does not. Therefore, the music which brings me the maximum amount of pleasure and supreme inspiration is that type of music in which its sincerity is revealed in all of the different elements that comprise it.

When the bass line, the drum patterns, the instrumentation, and even the words all are moving in a simultaneous direction -- when each of those elements is saying the same thing in a different way, seamlessly amalgamating and adding to that direction with its own variety -- I am intensely moved by a work of music. I have experienced this sort of sincerity in incendiary rap music (most frequently from the late Tupac Shakur and contemporaries such as Eightball).

However, I have also experienced this same sort of sentiment and perfection of groove, of harmony, of lyrical value, in oldies from the 1950's and 1960's during the doo-wop era. There are also certain films that I have a visceral reaction to, and which both inspire me and are an extreme joy to watch. What is interesting about this fact is that on a basic level, there is a visual element incorporated into all movies which I cannot deny.

However, the movies that I watch again and again (at least once a year, in most cases) are those in which the language is textured and layered with uncommon academoc vocabulary which inevitably, regardless of how many times I have seen the film, command my attention. Additionally, it is not accidental that of the films that I continually watch and have added to my own private collection and which I immensely value, perhaps only one or two of them do not have a leading female character.

Although not all of these movies are expressly romantic, a good number of them are love stories, and furthermore, tales about love from an idealized Hollywood perspective which is difficult to match (or perhaps to sustain) in real life. At the heart of my fascination with these movies is the ardor they depict -- whether between people or between the principles that individuals stand for.

I can relate to most of the characters in a basic way because of their values and their attempts to assert them and produce meaningful action from them. Head in the Clouds (Duigan), for example, has inspired me to write poetry on more than one occasion.

There is a conviction found within this tale, within the characters and their attempts to exert their influence both in conjunction with and against the vicissitudes of life, that rejuvenates me and enables me to see my own life plainly -- both how it is and how it should be. Perhaps I aspire to love to the extreme ways that are depicted by the main characters in this movie. Regardless, I feel charged to live to no less an extreme.

Another film that has inspired me for several years is entitled "Dream A Little Dream." It is an older movie created in the 1980's that my big sister initially referred to me. It is difficult to describe the various levels that I relate to this film, and the myriad effects which it produces within and through me.

As the title suggests, there is a good part of this film that takes places in that smoky, ethereal world of dreams -- where the conscious mind falters and where anything can take place, at any point in time. Perhaps I relate to that wide open possibility that this film propagates and, to a somewhat lesser extent, induces within me. What I believe has consistently played a profound effect in my perception of this film is the love realized between the two main characters.

It is a love borne from senior citizens and funneled through two angst-ridden teenagers. The depths of emotion that they summon to overcome various obstacles simultaneously forbidding and dampening their love, their torrid expressions of it and the whirlwind of violence, confusion and conviction which surround their every step close to one another, timelessly attracts me and keeps me singularly enthralled. Another.