There’s something funny about the way things happen, I think. How there will be a cluster of points on the timeline that hang together in such a particular way that you’re like, “Wow. A cluster!” And the same can be said for people. Most of the time, there are just a bunch of individuals running around, and sometimes they’ll date, or go to school together or share an apartment or whatever. But once in a while, there’s a group that forms, and maybe you don’t even notice until after the fact, but the point is, one day you look around and you think, “Hey! It’s a cluster! (Or a crew, or gang, or whatever it is you call a cluster of people).
Another thing is, once a cluster of events or people like this gets started, it tends to accumulate more people and events to it, until eventually whatever coincidence of time and place and energy that led to the creation of the cluster winds itself down and finds another thing to do. Now I know that this is a really weird way to start off talking about a movie, but it’s a weird movie, so you’ll have to bear with me for a bit.
When I was in college, there was definetly some kind of clustering going on. I’m now going to bore you with the details. Some of us were “all into” Buddhism. Everyone was experimenting with various aspects of that, as well as certain other things that I’m not going to mention. We were visited frequently by avatars of as many schools of thought as can be imagined, and without naming anyone by name, I’ll say we knew hedonists, ascetics, nihilists, intellectuals, hipsters, weirdos, and etc. Radiohead put out “Kid A” and so that got played a bit. We watched “Mr. Show” and “The Big Lebowski” and even “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” We talked, at length, about philosophical matters. Mind vs. Body and stuff like that. This was the subject matter of the cluster.
Now I’m not at all trying to say that any bold new ideas were forged here, or that clusters like this don’t happen all over the place, all the time. That’s not the point. But what’s important is, when these things were happening, you could point at something like “Kid A” and say, “That’s part of the cluster!” (or words to that effect) and sure enough, it would be.
I guess there are terms for the kind of thing I’m talking about here. Maybe “zeitgeist” gets at it, maybe “collective unconscious” would work. I don’t know really, and if you check the name of my site, you’ll find that I’m not all that concerned with putting a label on it. But anyway, if I might finally get to the point of all this rambling, it’s this:
If I ♥ Huckabees had been released in 1999, I know a bunch of people who would have pointed at it and said, “That’s part of the cluster!!” And what’s more, this type of thinking is exactly what Huckabees is about. It’s literally about nihilism and coincidence and the collective unconscious and all that. So, I guess what I’m trying to say here is, “Isn’t that strange?” or perhaps, “Isn’t that awesome?” =) Anyway, I just think that everyone should see it. Maybe I read way too much into it, but that is how I am. Philosophy aside, it’s a lot of fun, and for that I am in it’s debt.
Well, as one of the lucky few who was able to live and interact with the so-called “cluster” of Eric’s post, I think that perhaps I will go see this film… it was not something I was planning to do before. However, like Rahul Duke, I beleive that I’ve been blessed with the right kind of eyes to look back at Chicago… to the place where the big wave broke, and rolled back into Lake Michigan.
To 1999 and the early parts of 2000… a time that will forever seem to have never really been.
Beautiful! But keep in mind, it’s not so much that I think this film is an accurate representation of our real situation. It’s just the kind of thing I can I can imagine we would have spent lots of time debating, and possibly included as part of a “personal response” paper for Ziporyn. =)
Ah yes… good old Ziporyn…
“I just now took a break from writing this paper. I actually read the preceding parts of the paper to my friend John and also to Grover. Both of them laughed at my ìfrankness.î I think this was a good thing, but I am not completely sureÖ pretty sure, but not completely. However, I think my upaya may be coming across. It seems to be doing so for me at least. Certainly though, it is by no means as skillful as the Zen masters, nor my roommate Grover, who has just told me the idea for his own paper. It oozes so much upaya it hurts. I think that this brief interlude was pertinentÖ feel free to get a coffee or other refreshment, or at least go to the bathroom if you need to at this point. Anyway, back to Dogen.”
-Excerpt from my final Buddhism paper. I got an A on this one. Go figure.