A lot of people will hate this movie and a lot of people will love it. Uncomfortable, challenging, hilarious, ridiculous, confusing, poetic, subversive, beautiful, childish and unforgettable. I’d love to make something with this style and tone set in Canada and with rollerblades in it.
A ten step recipe to being happy, by Alejandro Jodorowsky.
1.When in doubt between “doing” and “not doing,” choose “doing”. If you’re wrong at least you’ll have the experience.
2. Listen to your intuition more than your reason. Words forge reality but they are not it.
3. Make some childish dream of yours come true. For example, if you wanted to play but were forced to become an adult before your time, save some 500 euros and go play them at a casino until you lose it. If you win, keep playing. If you keep winning, even if it’s millions, continue until you lose it all. It’s not about winning, but about playing with no end.
4. There is no greater relief than to start becoming what one is. Since childhood, we’re coerced into other people’s destinies. We are not in this world to pursue the dreams of our parents, but our own. If you’re a singer and not an attorney like your father, abandon your law career and record your album.
5. Stop criticizing your body right now. Accept it as it is without concerning yourself with the stares of others. You’re not loved because you’re beautiful. You’re beautiful because you’re loved.
6. Once a week, teach others the little or lot that you know. What you give to them, you give to yourself. What you don’t give to them, you take away from yourself.
7. Every day, look for a positive story in the newspaper. It’s difficult to find one. But, amid all the atrocities, somehow, there always is one. A new species of bird was discovered; comets transport life; a boy who fell from the top of a five story building landed unharmed; the daughter of a president intent on drowning herself was saved by a laborer with whom she fell in love and married; young Chilean poets bombarded the palace of La Moneda where Allende was assassinated with 300,000 poems from a helicopter; etc.
8. If your parents abused you when you were a child, calmly confront them in a neutral place that is not their territory, developing four aspects:
This is what they did to me.
This is what I felt.
This is what, because of that, I now suffer.
And this is the reparation that I ask. Forgiveness without reparation has no use.
9. Even if you have a large family, assign yourself a personal territory where no one may enter without your permission.
10. Stop defining yourself: allow yourself every possibility that could be, and change paths as often as necessary.
# Failing does not exist. With each failure, we change paths. To arrive at what you are, you must go through what you are not. The greatest happiness is to become what you are. In every sickness there is: A prohibition: You are prohibited from being what you are.
# A lack of consciousness: When you don’t realize what you are.
# A lack of beauty: When you lose beauty, you become ill.
CONVENTIONAL SLUMBER
“The normal adjustment of the average, common-sense, well-adjusted man implies a continued successful rejection of much of the depths of human nature.”
-Abraham Maslow
At first the hero slumbers unreflectively within the conventions of society like the rest of us. To a large extent, the culture’s conventional beliefs are accepted as reality, its morals deemed appropriate, its limits seen as natural. This is the developmental stage of conventionality, where most of us languish unquestioningly throughout our lives.
Conventionality is an essential stage on life’s journey, but it can be a stopping point or a stepping-stone. Since our culture rarely recognizes further possibilities, most people settle here and die here. But if there is on which ‘Master Game’ players agree, it is that through conventionality may be a necessary stage of life, it is definitely not the highest.
In fact, the conventional way of being and state of mind are considered as suboptimal, clouded, and inauthentic. In Asia, this clouded state is described as maya, illusion, or like a dream. In the West, existentialists describe it as automation conformity, everydayness, or inauthenticity, while psychologists label it as a shared hypnosis, a collective trance, or “the psychopathology of the average.” Whatever its name, the painful implication is that most of us sleepwalk through life, ignorant of our potentials, and unaware of our trance because we are born into it, we all share it, and because we live in the biggest cult of all: cult-ture.
The hero’s task is to go beyond these conventional limitations. This task involves more than simply reacting against social norms in blind countercultural defiance. Rather, it requires facing the inner fears and outer social sanctions that constrain and cripple our capacities, growing beyond conventional developmental stages, and realizing the fullness of our potential. This requires recognizing and awakening from the collective trance that is the source and sustainer of conventional beliefs and limits. Only in this way can the hero effectively help others to awaken.
One aspect of this awakening is “detribalization.” This is the process by which a person matures from a limited tribal perspective to a more universal one. Such a person no longer wholly looks at life through his or her limiting and distorting biases, but rather begins to recognize, question, and correct them. In fact, this correction of cultural biases is one of the hero’s great gifts. However, before this can succeed, many other tasks must be accomplished, and the first of these is to respond to “the call.”
Continued in Part.2
Endless inspiration:
The music video format has been the biggest influence on my life. My sister and I grew up watching in ‘the golden age’ of music videos (1990-2000ish) when a whole bunch of good shit went down… Then the decade after that I pretty much had access to every music video ever made (fuck!). Here are the ones that stuck don’t cha’ know.
Nothing, nothing… NOTHING will ever touch this video. The feeling I get when he pops the bottle of champagne is like nothing else in this world. This is it for me…
More emotion in 4 minutes and 19 seconds than in most movies. Female director of course…
There’s something so dark about boys and girls and sex that only this video can capture for me. This video and ‘Kingdom of Rust’ were proof that I could have powerful viewing experiences on my computer.
Big and stupid… and totally something I would make.
Stone Temple Pilots – Big Bang Baby
Scott Weiland just fucking selling it here and I’m definitely buying… This video looked like my first porno which made it alluring in a strange way.
Etienne de Crecy – Someone Like You
N0 No No! Issa too sexy!
So if you take a bearded guy… and put him on a roadtrip to nowhere and show a lot of nature it’ll be awesome? In my world: YES.
Took everything I loved about anime and video game intros and blew it away… I remember seeing this for the first time before school and not being able to concentrate for the rest of the day. If you haven’t seen it in a while you’re welcome.
Brave and honest… Seeing inside of a mind and the polarity that comes with it.
One of the best things about being alive: Exercising on a nice day with no destination…
Jane’s Addiction – Been Caught Stealing
There’s something about the 90′s where no fucks were given… People try to make things like this now… But they usually try way too hard… This is effortlessly badass.
Whale – Hobo Humpin’ Slobo Babe
I had no idea what sex was until I saw this video. Again… No fucks were given in the 90′s… this girl is sexy instead of trying to be sexy.
My favorite version of travel sickness next to ‘Lost in Translation’.
I’m not usually into things that are clever or things that look like art & design wankfests… But I can’t believe this video came from someones imagination… It’s the exception (thanks Monique.)
The page it steals from Windowlickers book doesn’t work at the end… But the combination of vanity, food and sex captures something about the female species that is difficult to articulate. Bravo to the girls in the video for agreeing to do it.
The sincerity and energy that Weird Al brings to his performances transcend parody and exist in their own place… His dancing in the pool hall in ‘Eat It’ taught me a lot about giving 100% to being silly.
I performed to this song in front of Stuart Wood Elementary when I was 5… I was a really shy kid but this video and song made me believe I could spin, dance and be weird in front of a crowd of people… This predated my rollerblading by many years.
The Strokes – You Only Live Once
Julian’s performance (hamming it up), futureman outfits, Nick Valensi’s hair and a statement on the band being done… Has a science fiction vibe to it that clicks with me.
Daft Punk – Prime Time of Your Life and Clinic – Walking With Thee
Hate is a strong word… But I hate what television can do to people (especially young females.)
Human movement at its best.
Well it’s basically a music video… One of my favorite depictions of sweet solitude. Wandering around with no plan, no phone, no friends… Just busy doing nothing (but everything) by yourself with your Self in your own space and time.
Sophie Ellis-Bextor – Me And My Imagination
Legs.
Much bigger than just a ‘music video’… a life flashing before your eyes. We need to project this one into space to teach aliens about human memory.
I absolutely can’t stand child actors… So this barely made the list… But the climax is what the power of the imagination is all about.
Guns N’ Roses – You Could Be Mine
I had no idea what a ‘montage’ was and I didn’t know that I was being marketed to… But I thought this was the coolest thing I’d ever seen. I bought the tape single and played it over and over imagining the music video in my mind.
Probably the greatest song about love. Like cleverness and art design wankery… Computer animated stuff doesn’t get my mojo going. But you can’t go wrong with simple beauty.
Andrew WK floating in space with a piano… belting into the nothingness. It reminds me to be good to the most important person in my life: my Self.
