When I was 20, I spent the night on the outdoor set of Days of our Lives. Perhaps the picture becomes more clear--though no less puzzling--if I tell you it was 1996 and we were sleeping there to be first in line to get tickets for an L.A. taping of the Rosie O'Donnell show (the NBC box office is located through the one of the dummy set doors). Also, I was wearing plaid pajama pants, Birkenstocks, and an Abercrombie & Fitch sweatshirt.
Talk about a time capsule. But none of this is my point.
I've been thinking a lot lately about how a lifetime of exposure to TV, movies, music, and books shapes how we act--or should act--in a given situation. Anything that could possibly happen to us--falling in love, falling out of love, going to war, having a child, losing a parent, having a fight, breaking up, personally triumphing, failing miserably, rousting the troops--already has a script, a soundtrack, and a novelization in book form.
Tangent: it will not surprise you to learn that I was reading the novelization of The Karate Kid II on the way home from school when I almost got beat up in fifth grade (which, set objectively like that, makes me look like I was crusin' for a nerd bruisin'). Seems ironic: I was reading a book about martial arts and all I could do was curl up in a ball and cry. Where was the wax on, wax off? Ha, but even this tangent proves the point. Or maybe it's just me.
What I find interesting is this question: can you still act organically and genuinely when you are thinking of that one song by that band or that one scene in that one movie? Do we say what we want to say, or what we think we should say based on the script we all got after watching Casablanca or Jerry Maguire?
Anyway, we got the tickets. Chandler from Friends and George from Seinfeld were the guests. She didn't fling kooshballs at us. Instead, she gave away hot dogs. We declined, and drove straight home to San Diego.
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3 comments:
I think anything we do is copying somebody we saw - whether it was something we saw on tv or in the kitchen. Different sources, same response. And THOSE folks were copying somebody that did it before them.
Once I realized nothing is original, I stopped thinking about it so much.
What makes your actions your own is that you are expressing them. That's enough.
i was just thinking about this yesterday on my long road trip and wishing i could have an 80s movie dance sequence in my room. do you know anyone who does this? what fun it looks like! girls just wanna have fun!
dude i have a picture of you in front of Salem Place! if only i had a scanner and knew how to use it.
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