There is no dignity in life. Everything we do is a futile attempt to avoid this knowledge. We dance, or listen to music, or get drunk or high because it makes us feel briefly immortal. We build monuments, give speeches, form governments, create rituals, profess faiths to convince ourselves something bigger exists. We stare at screens so we don’t have to look at reality. And we watch movies, those soothing two-hour daydreams in which the chaos of existence is beaten back, time and again, by purpose and resolution.
Illusions, every one of them. Despite our culture’s desperate insistence that youth can be found in the moment and that the moment can go on forever, we will all of us die. Worse, so will the people we love. How is it possible to know this and go on living, even for a day?
Comments
Ty Burr should win a Pulitzer for the first 2 paragraphs of this review alone.