Guilt

Art enables us to suspend our self and become something alien to our being. Even something innocent like sunflowers when seen through the eyes of Van Gogh can take us to the edge of madness.

In the fantasy of James Bond we can have guilty pleasure in the thrill it might be to kill.

If we never have to steal to eat we are born lucky. If we never have to cross a border to find work we are born lucky. I have never had to do anything illegal and am lucky.

A film can transport me to a feral world where that luck is taken away. The artists who made the film are revealing what is real to them or to people they met. How does Shakespeare ubderstand the mind of Lady Macbeth? How do we know that he reveals the truth? We know because we share in the wickedness.

Art is not just about dreaming of the experience we may never have. It is teaching us compassion for the unlucky. It teaches us how those much luckier than ourselves are also unlucky.

When children are born unwanted and unloved they will become illegal. It is their destiny. Naturally society has to protect itself by making them so.

We can watch Bonny and Clyde and enjoy it. If we meet them we have to lock them up.

Just be careful when thinking about guilt. It is like a spirit that we can somehow expunge by passing it on to others.