2:7:25
"Anyone who awakens is delivered into a world at war.”
-Conspiracist Manifesto, 2023
It is so strange to me that the Leftist film world has always loved and delighted in My Dinner with Andre (1981). It has always celebrated it. And yet, film critics and fans appear to be utterly oblivious to what is being revealed and discussed in the movie, to what Andre represents, most especially in the famous clip below, which is partly about escaping the Left and its art scenes.
The “terrible” thing that happened to Andre, as Wally warns us before meeting Andre for dinner, is that Andre woke up and walked out on his established life in the arts, his life in New York. And when one wakes up, like it or not, one has to change. And so does one’s entire life structure, which disappears and no longer makes sense, to you or to anyone around you; people who want you to stay the same, so that they can stay the same. Who want you to see things the way you always did, and to see them the way they see them. And when you don’t, when you can’t—because the cat’s out of the bag—then you become a problem for everyone. A pariah. An impediment. An inconvenience. A painful, uncomfortable reminder of what and who they still are. Or what and who they turned their back on.
We can save the world, and we may even do just that, but if the people—the culture—are all ruined and fucked up, and spineless, what good will it do to set us free? To save us? To show us what is true? We have to do that ourselves.
Free to do what? Free to be what?
That kind of deep inner change, cultural and social reform, and spiritual salvation can take years, or even decades to achieve. And even then, we can never go back to this old form of life, form being the operative word. Everything will soon be completely high tech/digital/AI. I’m probably too romantic about this, but oh well. I’m going by what I know, what I’ve learned. But also by what I feel. I’m old fashioned. Some people like glass and some like stone and wood. I’m a Virgo rising, so I value things I can see, feel, smell, and touch. The way things look is important to me. I want to feel tethered and supported and sturdy. I need to move my whole body through real (not virtual) space, over the Earth. Air is not enough.
A couple of years ago, while talking to some politically awake (not Woke) people over lunch, I objected to the AI/high tech future (I’ve always been a luddite) that’s coming. And they replied with: That’s because we’ve never experienced technology that actually works for us; that is healing and works for the benefit of humanity. We’ve only experienced technology as a control mechanism, as a prison system, as a dark force, a predatory algorithm. We only know technology as a monstrous surveillance apparatus, a nanotech parasite in our blood and brains. This is true. But still, I will always prefer a record player and a hard copy book to a Kindle or a pdf or screens. Antique furniture over new furniture. I never order food online. I cook. I walk everywhere, and carry my own groceries. I don’t take Ubers of Lyfts.
It’s the form I’m always looking for and missing in this form-less world. It’s the form that is gone.
Even just the fact of eating in a perfect New York City restaurant-bar from 40 years ago, with the perfect ambience and lighting, and talking for hours, as Andre and Wallace do, with no iPhones on the table, full attention, no music blasting, no idiots dressed like idiots, no idiots talking like idiots, that is the old form I miss. However flawed they might have been, people won’t be like this again.
What’s gone is something that lives in the time of the Soul and the Soul of time.
The Soul we sold, “progressed” (as in: technology is progress) from.
