Life as the Medium

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From the Diaries of John Henry

10 min readAug 11, 2016

The eye, which is called the window of the soul, is the chief means whereby the understanding may most fully and abundantly appreciate the infinite works of nature; and the ear is the second, inasmuch as it acquires its importance from the fact that it hears the things that the eye has seen. If you historians, or poets, or mathematicians had never seen things with your eyes you would be ill able to describe them in your writings. And if you, O poet, represent a story by depicting it with your pen, the painter with his brush will so render it as to be more easily satisfying and less tedious to understand. If you call painting ‘dumb poetry’, then the painter may say of the poet that his art is ‘blind painting’. Consider then which is the more grievous affliction, to be blind or to be dumb! Although the poet has as wide a choice of subjects as the painter, his creations fail to afford as much satisfaction to mankind as do paintings, for while poetry attempts to represent forms, actions and scenes with words, the painter employs the exact images of these forms in order to reproduce them. Consider, then, which is more fundamental to man, the name of man or his image? The name changes with the change of country; the form is unchanged except by death.
- from the Notebooks of Leonardo da Vinci

I have heard it claimed that film (i.e. movies, tv, etc) is the penultimate medium for art, presumably because it incorporates elements of all other media such as the visual of painting or photography, the audio of music or the environment, and the speech of the written word. We can look to films for inspiration to our personal lives, for where else but the land of films can even a drag queen find a traditional marriage, a delusional romantic his grounding, or a stodgy dweeb his heart. Film can inspire us, but it can also shock or repulse us. There are certain filmmakers that set out to unhinge an audience, to shock or elicit extremities of experience, perhaps because there is an audience that needs such conditions just to feel something. I speculate that as one becomes lost in movies over the years he can eventually become desensitized to the more common forms of drama, just as a porn addict can find the escape interfering with a capacity for human connection.

Infinite Jest (V?), Year of the Trial-Size Dove Bar. Poor Yurrick Entertainment Unlimited. ‘Madame Psychosis’; no other definitive data. Thorny problem for archivists. Incandenza’s last film, Incandenza’s death occurring during it’s post-production. Most archival authorities list as unfinished, unseen. … Though Canadian archivist Tête-Bêche lists the film as completed and privately distributed by P.Y.E.U. through posthumous provisions in the filmmaker’s will, all other comprehensive filmographies have the film either unfinished or UNRELEASED, its Master cartridge either destroyed or vaulted sui testator.
- from Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace

As a combination of other forms of media, film offers a heightened level of complexity, sometimes to the detriment of coherency. In an inked hand drawing, a simple horizontal line can form the basis of a beachside sunset’s horizon or sometimes even the more surreal, but it is the reductionism that adds to its clarity, for if you walk into an art exhibit with one painting on display it will always carry much more weight than four cluttered walls. This phenomenon is especially heightened in audio media, where the capacity for coherent experience is limited to one or two non-synchronous elements at a time (although some mashup artists may argue this number could be higher). Try giving a speech in a room adjacent to an amateur dj exhibition and you will know what I mean.

Recall that quantum computers have the ability to perform many computations simultaneously, using quantum parallelism. Almost all input quantum bits are superpositions of 0 and 1. There is only one state that is 0 and one state that is 1, but there are an infinite number of possible input states that are superpositions of 0 and 1. Consequently, almost all one-qubit inputs to the quantum computer tell it to do this and that simultaneously.
- from Programming the Universe by Seth Lloyd

Of the film medium disparate components, it is the speech or the written word (the two of which I would argue as equivalent or at least interchangeable) that I find the best window into a mind. It is true that some people’s thoughts and inner voices are predominately experienced through music, equations, rhyme, colors and shapes , or perhaps even memories of some fancy water ski trick — I would argue that we all have these elements to some varying degrees (some more than others, perhaps even based on time of day), but in the end it is only those aspects of our thoughts that we can successfully communicate with others that becomes a shared experience and thus a part of objective reality. To most it is the common language that allows this coherence or coarse graining to transpire. This is an especially important point, for in the end it is only through our shared experiences, friendships, family, and relationships that the clutter of our inner lives manifests into something that can ever be of any value to others, and that is why we’re here after all. When we were young many of us may have sought to fill this need with an imaginary friend, a stuffed animal, or perhaps even a pet dog or cat. In today’s world it is especially easy to accumulate what is sometimes only the illusions of friendships through a steady stream of a social media feed. It is definitely possible to establish friendships and relationships through social media, sometimes even meaningful ones, but it will never happen to those who participate mainly toward the extremes of voyeurism or exhibitionism; it requires a sustained effort to establish _two_way_ dialogues. Frankly, it is simply much easier to communicate to those with whom you have some shared experience. With the fragmentation of television to on demand streaming, it is even harder to even find mass media points of commonality. My Seinfeld references are lost on the younger generation. Books and the written word can serve as some kind of stopgap substitute for dialogues: it is a thrilling experience to view first hand the thoughts of those you admire or live vicariously through the experiences of fictional characters or historical figures, but it is a solution that will always be a somewhat hollow thrill and thus a poor substitute for real interactions — tofu versus turkey. Poetry perhaps allows some additional layers of communication in the written word, a passage can be subject to novel interpretations based on its symmetry or its context, and thus has more density / a higher Shannon entropy value but still lacks the relational bonding capacity of simple small talk dialogue about the weather or a sports team (not sure we’re still talking about film here but I digress, actually you know what? I digress on my digression, back to the important stuff:). How do we know for sure how valuable these relationships turn out to be, how much they really mean to us or how much they improve our lives? Look to those who have lost one, a loved one, a spouse, parent, sibling, or cherished one. The intensity of the grieving process is a direct measure of the depth of the connection. Even in deaths and departures one can learn and grow though. The poetry of one who has lost a love is somehow deeper than that of one merely trying to woo. The contrasts of the lows adds significant weight to the highs and I think perhaps teaches one more about love than she may have known otherwise. When our local historians look back at our city, at who founded which railroad line or who established which colony, these will be important milestones to a community but they will never carry the weight of a simple first kiss that led to a marriage and eventually grandkids. Perhaps such a kiss could have been a French kiss (I’ve heard in some cases morality codes can vary by time of day) Of course not all families are perfect, we all have a black sheep cousin, racist grandparent, or the like. Modern Florida isn’t as bad as say growing up in Mississippi, perhaps because trailblazing multiracial musical acts such as the Spice Girls or other pop crossovers helped pave the way for acceptance of mixed racial friendships. For some of us the unfortunate relative may even have been a direct parent. These situations are never easy, but it is a real mark of strength in a survivor that he was able to make the best of a bad situation and find a way to move on with his life. The bruises will heal as surely as a chemo treatments’ hair will return (even if returning slightly thinner it would be really difficult to tell when it’s all grown out). It’s easy to feel objectified by a hair style, just like one might feel pressured to wear a lacy bra. My advice is to burn the bra, stick to tie dye, and might as well put some flowers in your hair if you go that far.

Four-dimensional cubes or tesseracts, hyperspheres, and other hypergeometric forms are old stuff both to mathematicians and to science fiction writers. Supposing a fourth dimension like unto the three which we know, we can imagine many three-dimensional worlds existing as close to one another as the pages of a manuscript, each imprinted with different and distinct characters and each separate from one another. … Years and years ago I found in the public library of St Paul a little book which introduced me to the mysteries of the fourth dimension. It was Flatland by Abbott. It described a two dimensional world without thickness. Such a world and all its people can be drawn in complete detail, inside and out, on a sheet of paper.
- from An Introduction to Information Theory by John Pierce

In the end, we all go through tough times here and there. For some those might last a season and for others much longer, but just remember what Seneca said: “Difficulties strengthen the mind, as labor does the body.” When faced with hardship we can grin and bear it even if the grin is a lie, or we can turn inward, possibly even dragging our nails into our arms, like Jesus had nails in his arms to the cross. Jesus eventually found strength on the cross, sometimes we apply our own nails only to find redemption through the suffering.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom always to tell the difference.
- from Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Even as the penultimate art media, film falls short in one crucial regard. The fare of the film is that of our highest highs and lowest lows. The once in a lifetime adventure or the love at first sight. Thus, film deals in the tail extremities of human experience, the sultry and the fantastical and the surreal. Life doesn’t stop once the film does though. We have seen some incredible experiences as part of this film, vicariously experiencing a couple of highs or plowed to the very depths of the outer rims of hell, but once the credits roll here we are back to ask ourselves what now? Back to rush hour commutes and feeding the dog and mowing the lawn, and trying to find some meaning, some purpose, some way that we can make a difference for the benefit of the community, hopefully making a few new friends or who knows maybe even a girlfriend along the way. That is what we’re here for after all.

Josh Ritter — Thin Blue Flame

*For further readings please check out my Table of Contents, Book Recommendations, and Music Recommendations.

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