So far, the title of this blog has been partially disingenuous, considering its content. I do use words here, but I could just as easily have named the blog “UseYourYoutube.” There are a number of potential reasons for this, some better than others, but either way I do recognize the fact of the situation.
However, (and who didn’t see that word coming?) this weekend I had the rare and wonderful experience of spending an uninterrupted 36 hours with some of the nearest and dearest friends from different parts of the last decade and a half of my life. I don’t think I can actually convey in words what this meant to me, and I’m not sure I did a good job of conveying it to my friends during the weekend, but I can say that it was . . . just tremendous. Although my weekend ended somewhat anticlimactically with some serious gastric distress, the easy rhythm of being surrounded by amazing, familiar, loving people – and the attendant sense of deep gratitude for such – will surely be my major takeaway. In short, I had a weekend-long Friend-Contact-High™. It was pretty cool.
On the way home from this adventure, I was thrilled to discover a fabulous aftereffect of the FCH phenomenon, as it will henceforth be known. I am not a very good car-rider to begin with, and the aforementioned gastric difficulties (happily self-inflicted, I should note) persuaded me that strolling the final mile home in the fresh air would be a better choice than spending any further time in a car, even to chat with the very good pal who was driving. E was out doing chores in the vicinity of my drop-off point, so we met up, and then he took a cab home carrying my suitcase and the many awkward/heavy things he bought at Target (seriously, how many bags of soil do we really need?). I walked the rest of the way to the apartment, enjoying the sunshine and occasionally stopping to smell a rose - as I am wont to do.
While I was walking, I started doing what I always do when I’m alone and unoccupied: telling the story of myself, to myself. This is something I assume everyone does to some degree, though the details and scope may vary - from telling the story of a work day to the story of a relationship to the story of one's whole character. In my own story-telling, I tend to take a relatively long view. I recognize that such stories can have limited utility, and when shared can be really obnoxious, so I’ve been keeping them more to myself these days. But as I was walking, words and stories and ideas came flooding through me in a way that they haven’t done much, of late. I felt eager, even anxious, to get home and write it all down. I can’t remember the last time I felt so motivated to get home and write. Being with people who knew me so well, and who I knew so well, for that amount of time (frequently in a hot tub, with substantial servings of wine) opened some aperture in me that had been slowly contracting without my knowledge or consent. It felt exciting, but not entirely foreign, and I enjoyed the unusual sense of urgency.
As I approached our building, it occurred to me that this feeling is probably the genesis of all the ubiquitous ensemble dramedies/cinematic circle jerks that litter the television and movie landscape. Gathering a group of friends in one place with no real responsibilities aside from telling stories to each other really does create a synergy that is distinct from everyday and one-on-one interactions. I still think ensemble dramedies are almost uniformly clunkers, because they are so painfully self-aware (and they so frequently, and inexplicably, end with a pity fuck – e.g. The Big Chill and St. Elmo’s Fire). By the third ham-fisted speech I’m always reminded of this exchange from Anchorman:
Brian Fantana: Don't say anything Ron; just let it happen.
Ron Burgundy: ...laughing and enjoying our friendship, and someday we'll look back on this with much fondness.
Brian Fantana: Yeah, yeah.
But I have to admit that the Ron Burgundy mindset here is kind of my bread and butter. I can absolutely understand how screenwriters get FCH after a weekend like I just had and can’t resist the urge to turn it into a self-indulgent movie like Four Seasons.
I didn’t write a movie today, but I did write a blog post. Whether that’s better or worse is debatable, but it’s certainly cheaper.
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