10:01

A Collection of Associations/Synchronicities

 

I saw these two movies next to one another at the local video store and it made me pause.  I probably need to see There Will Be Blood again.  It did a nice job of laying capitalism bare. What did he have at the end?  Or, what did Charles Foster Kane have at the end of his life? Everything?  Nothing?  What was the treasure that Indy discovered?

Bridge To Nowhere

"The bridge connecting New York with Brooklyn hung delicately over the East River, and if one half-shut one's eyes it seemed to tremble. . ."   ---Franz Kafka, Amerika

So this was a theme that was coming at me a bit.  I kept seeing this image of a destroyed bridge. Both sides were connected to nothing.  I'll see if I can find an image.  I found the destroyed bridge.  It is the Brooklyn bridge.  It is our connection to eden, and it is destroyed.  What does that mean?  

Contrast this idea with my recent "jumpers".  Do they add up to something?  Does the bridge to nowhere indicate that we must jump?  I haven't seen Cloverfield, and probably I should.  I know that the B.B. gets destroyed in that movie too.  I have some more associations.  Let's begin with Will Smith and I, Robot and I am Legend.  It is amazing how similar these two films were.

In both of these films Will Smith is haunted by his past in flashbacks and dreams. Both feature a song he listens to when he wakes up:  Bob Marley: "Three Little Birds", Stevie Wonder: "Very Superstitious".  The number 10:01 seems to resonate with both films.  Both films are about the awakening of consciousness.

"The huddle" in both films really stuck with me.  The Zombies huddle together in the darkness, and we see this as Will Smith chases his dog (!!!) into the darkness of the apartment building. The outmoded robots huddle together in the darkness of the shipping containers.  The darkness needs to be made conscious.  Will Smith is the light (he's Hancock after all).  He is bringing the light of consciousness to us (united states).  We are the robots and zombies huddling together in the darkness.

It took me three days to watch I am Legend.  I get scared pretty easily, and when I would reach a spot (where the fear of the monsters was too great, not the monsters, just the fear mind you) I would stop for the night.  I watched The Happening last night.  Boy, what a horrible movie, eh?  It was interesting though.  Like an anti-zombie movie.  All we can do is stand in horror and watch as these unconscious zombies destroy themselves.  Kinda the point of the movie though. The zombies usually come for us, but not these.  They are us, and we are destroying ourselves.

Both of the above Will Smith films feature the broken bridge motif as well as the 10:01 (if memory serves), but the still that floored me when I saw it sometime last summer was this:

This is Times Square, and Will Smith is the last man on earth.  This is an idea that resurfaces. What's interesting about this image though is the melding of the Superman and Batman logos. They are antithetical.  Superman is the "sun god" and Batman is the "dark [k]night".  The logos (a word which means the word of god, also a ship in the Matrix) together are a union of opposites.  Will Smith is ALone in Times Square.  He is the union of opposites.  He is the saviour, the Christ (a word which means anointed--think of any other folks like this?)

Before I speak about our new president (precedent), I want to share a few more associations. Toward the end of the summer,  I was reading the first Octavian Nothing book.  At that same time, I was being pummeled with 8's, patriotism, Boston, founding fathers, revolution, etc.  I didn't see Hancock until the Fall, but it was part of this.

Hancock, Will Smith, is the Christ, again.  He is the union of opposites, Superman & Batman, and he will lead us to the center, out of our sins, toward the authentic, if we follow.  The rising sun is the illuminated self.  It is enlightenment.

Where I'm going with this is toward a question.  Does art imitate life, or life imitate art?  And guess what?  This question is totally irrelevant.  One can't separate the two because they are one.  It is all the same moment.  Our films are a reflection of our moment.  They could be viewed as our collective dream,  but what are dreams?  Most films have one message.  Wake up.

Tom Cruise arrives at this moment in Vanilla Sky.  His life is an illusion.  He can't keep reality and his dreams straight.  Here we see a similar image:  The last man in Times Square.

Of course, his means for exiting the matrix is not a good message for those of us with a tenuous grip on our reality.  Standing under "the vanilla sky" with the twin towers in the background, Tom Cruise's character is prompted by all the people in his life to jump.  That is the exit from the false reality, and the dream (!).

Since we switched gears to Tom Cruise, I noticed an interesting connection of his characters to masks

For good measure:

persona |pərˈsōnə|

noun ( pl. -sonas or -sonae |-ˈsōnē|)

the aspect of someone's character that is presented to or perceived by others : her public persona. In psychology, often contrasted with anima .

• a role or character adopted by an author or an actor.

ORIGIN early 20th cent.: Latin, literally 'mask, character played by an actor.'

Logos |ˈlōˌgōs; -ˌgäs|

noun Theology

the Word of God, or principle of divine reason and creative order, identified in the Gospel of John with the second person of the Trinity incarnate in Jesus Christ.

• (in Jungian psychology) the principle of reason and judgment, associated with the animus. Often contrasted with Eros .

ORIGIN Greek, 'word, reason.'

How to end this unruly deal?  One of the reasons for this post was the cover the most recent New Yorker.  It prompted me into thinking about Octavian Nothing.  The pictures are not as close as they were in my mind, but does illustrate a connection:

So Hancock, eh?  Revolution.  A new country.  An end of the nightmare?  Waking up?  Maybe. Could Barack Hussein Obama be the union of opposites?  Is he the reflection of the Will Smith characters?  Maybe.  What does that have to do with Tom Cruise?  I dunno.  Does that make Obama, the Sun?  His logo[s] attests to that.

Did you notice the music at the close of the neighborhood inaugural ball on abc?  It was the Zion rave music from the matrix series.  Interesting.

-final note:  I think it took me a while to figure out what the "bridge" was saying.

The Bridge To Nowhere

I remembered some wordplay I saw on a reader board.

Is this, the bridge to No Where?

Or, the bridge to Now Here?