Sonder - n. the realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
Sonder. You are the main character—the protagonist—the star at the center of your own unfolding story. You're surrounded by your supporting cast: friends and family hanging in your immediate orbit.
Scattered a little further out, a network of acquaintances who drift in and out of contact over the years.
But there in the background, faint and out of focus, are the extras. The random passersby. Each living a life as vivid and complex as your own.
They carry on invisibly around you, bearing the accumulated weight of their own ambitions, friends, routines, mistakes, worries, triumphs and inherited craziness.
When your life moves on to the next scene, theirs flickers in place, wrapped in a cloud of backstory and inside jokes and characters strung together with countless other stories you'll never be able to see. That you'll never know exists.
...In which you might appear only once. As an extra sipping coffee in the background. As a blur of traffic passing on the highway. As a lighted window at dusk...
"An endless row of living sculptures brought together by the same subway line, the same direction, the same intention of taking the train to get caught and carried away by the urban flow. All their motions slowed down, they are graceful and stainless, holding their breath waiting for their train to pull into the station." - what the video shows in Adam Magyar's words.
Slow motion video of people waiting at train station. Open this piece by Chopin along with this one and enjoy the mesmerizing video.
He also captured the same video in Berlin(Alexanderplatz) and NYC(Grand Terminal). You can check them here: http://vimeo.com/adammagyar
English Translation of Paul Valery's poem "Le Cimetière Marin" read by Scottish singer Elisabeth Fraser.
Absolutely wonderful reading, beautiful and hypnotic voice. However, it omits the last 6 stanzas, the last stanza is my favorite one. This is the last stanza of this poem, the ending:
The wind is rising! . . . We must try to live! The huge air opens and shuts my book: the wave Dares to explode out of the rocks in reeking Spray. Fly away, my sun-bewildered pages! Break, waves! Break up with your rejoicing surges This quiet roof where sails like doves were pecking.
Great song by Russian rock legend Виктор Цой (Viktor Tsoi).
The song is about cycle of human history, meaningless wars, unachievable dreams and inevitable death under the star called sun.
White snow and black ice On the cracked earth. As a patchwork blanket lays on it - And this city is in the road loop. Floating clouds over the city, Closing the heavenly light. Over the town - yellow smoke And the city two thousand years old,
Lived under the light of a star named the Sun
And for two thousand years there is war, War without special reasons. War is a matter of the young, İt's medicine against wrinkles. The red, red blood - In an hour is simply earth, And after two on it is flowers and grass, And after three it is alive again
And warmed by the rays of star called the Sun
And we know that it has always been, That the fate would like special ones, Those who lives by the other rules and laws , And who were born to die young. He did not know the words "yes" and "no" He did not know the orders and ranks, And he was able to reach the stars, He did not think it was a dream.
Haruki Murakami: On seeing the 100% perfect girl one beautiful April morning
(Above is short film fully based on this story)
One beautiful April morning, on a narrow side street in Tokyo's fashionable Harujuku
neighborhood, I walked past the 100% perfect girl. Tell you the truth, she's not that goodlooking. She doesn't stand out in any way. Her clothes are nothing special. The back of her hair is still bent out of shape from sleep. She isn't young, either must be near thirty, not even close to a "girl," properly speaking. But still, I know from fifty yards away: She's the 100% perfect girl for me. The moment I see her, there's a rumbling in my chest, and my mouth is as dry as a desert. Maybe you have your own particular favorite type of girl one with slim ankles, say, or big eyes, or graceful fingers, or you're drawn for no good reason to girls who take their time with every meal. I have my own preferences, of course. Sometimes in a restaurant I'll catch myself staring at the girl at the next table to mine because I like the shape of her nose.
The emperor, so a parable runs, has sent a message to you, the humble subject, the
insignificant shadow cowering in the remotest distance before the imperial sun; the
Emperor from his deathbed has sent a message to you alone. He has commanded the
messenger to kneel down by the bed, and has whispered the message to him; so much
store did he lay on it that he ordered the messenger to whisper it back into his ear again.
Then by a nod of the head he has confirmed that it is right. Yes, before the assembled
spectators of his death -- all the obstructing walls have been broken down, and on the
spacious and loftily mounting open staircases stand in a ring the great princes of the
Empire -- before all these he has delivered his message. The messenger immediately sets
out on his journey; a powerful, an indefatigable man; now pushing with his right arm, now
with his left, he cleaves a way for himself through the throng; if he encounters resistance
he points to his breast, where the symbol of the sun glitters; the way is made easier for
him than it would be for any other man. But the multitudes are so vast; their numbers have
no end. If he could reach the open fields how fast he would fly, and soon doubtless you
would hear the welcome hammering of his fists on your door. But instead how vainly does
he wear out his strength; still he is only making his way through the chambers of the
innermost palace; never will he get to the end of them; and if he succeeded in that nothing
would be gained; he must next fight his way down the stair; and if he succeeded in that
nothing would be gained; the courts would still have to be crossed; and after the courts the
second outer palace; and once more stairs and courts; and once more another palace;
and so on for thousands of years; and if at last he should burst through the outermost gate
-- but never, never can that happen -- the imperial capital would lie before him, the center
of the world, crammed to bursting with its own sediment. Nobody could fight his way
through here even with a message from a dead man. But you sit at your window when
evening falls and dream it to yourself.
"Time passed. But time flows in many streams. Like a river, an inner stream of time will flow rapidly at some places and sluggishly at others, or perhaps even stand hopelessly stagnant. Cosmic time is the same for everyone, but human time differs with each person. Time flows in the same way for all human beings; every human being flows through time in a different way." -Yasunari Kawabata, Beauty and Sadness Wonder how life was without concept of time was invented by human. Was eternity understood by someone at that moment? Maybe eternity wasn't that far for primitive human minds... maybe some thought it would be eternity after surviving few days and night. When time got invented by human mind, eternity was murdered. The concept of eternity became something that is something that will never be achieved. However, maybe there is eternity and that is simply just ignored? Internal time flows differently for not only different people but also for different occasions. How long is eternity? Is this is a span of time that ends after countless of hours of boredom and nothingness or is it time when we lose all our limitations and starts seeing things as they are and engulf in perpetual momentum... If we observe a falling leaf, it has a mathematical infinite possible soon to come future outcomes. Leaf may tilt to right by such and such way, to left such and such way. Although the leaf is about to fall off and rot in coming days, at that exact moment before hitting the ground, it experiences a spectra of infinite choices. Thousands of possible near futures and past chain events colliding to create a perpetual moment of everything and nothing. When we face a decision, we think of possible actions. Pessimists only see only few possible future, a dreamer sees an infinite possible future. All in all, the beauty of eternity lies in exact moment before the phenomenon occurs. It contains absolutely everything and yet nothing but one possible soon to occur event. More interestingly, It may seem B caused A but in reality it is more like A, X,C.....V etc caused B. Certain phenomenon's are caused by uncountable number of causes. If we try to explain me writing this post then we have to explain entire history of the universe. And interesting fact is that 99.99% of it will not be related with me and whatever happened in past 2000 years. 99.99% will be about how the planet was formed, how species originated and how first human kinds victoriously hunted their dinner. Irrelevant, yes, but out entire action is based on infinite causes that stretches back to who knows how long. This creates the eternity and we are the part of eternity. The phenomenon that is about to happen endured billions of years. Imagine how we impatiently waits for 3 minutes for cup ramen to get ready when we are really hungry and craving for it. Multiply the 3 min wait by infinite. After waiting for eternity, it finally occurred and It sets a path for next event to occur. Gravitational force between the next event and previous event must be the force of loneliness of those events that waited for eternity. The momentum is set a long ago. How it was set is unknown. Maybe gravitational force or just a mistake or it just happened because it happened. How far it should go depends on how long the eternity is. But if we trace the certain near future event then it seems the first mover of that event will stretch way back to big bang. There are billions of events (if we bound our timeline by big bang, otherwise it could be infinite event) that happened in between and some events may happened spontaneously and some events may happened deliberately (if we assume we have free will, otherwise everything was either spontaneous or planned beforehand). Leaf falls, sun shines, rain droplet falls on the window and wind blows the curtain... And it has the momentum of eternity ,....and the same momentum goes on and on. Our each moment contains eternity in a way , just like how our bodies contain part of cosmic. (cosmic dust) Metaphysical milkshakes and Starry nights. Maybe the eternity isn't that long after all.
___________________________________________________________________________________ And here is a video of making coffee in mid-air by colliding it with water droplets that are levitated with acoustophoresis.
These are my favorite lines from Marcel Proust's In Search of Lost Time - Volume I - Swann's Way. It describes an event where eating tea soaked madeleine triggers unexpected strong vivid remembrance of a childhood memory of eating tea soaked madeleine. Such involuntary memories allow the timeline of the story to randomly shift from past, further past and present. I think that human memories are non linear and often memories of the past is intervened with memory of further past, having gap in between, and that memory is sometimes connected with the present memories. Similar literary device of involuntary memories and non-linearity of memories is depicted in Swedish director Ingmar Bergman's masterpiece work "Wild Strawberries". The main character experiences series of involuntary memories in his vivid dreams and it is also triggered by seeing his old childhood home. If you like the following few passages then I recommend you to read In Search of Lost Time (it is Proust's monumental work consisting of seven volumes, swann's way is the first volume) and watch Ingmar Bergman's film "Wild Strawberries".
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Many years had elapsed during which nothing of Combray, save what was comprised in the theatre and the drama of my going to bed there, had any existence for me, when one day in winter, on my return home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent for one of those squat, plump little cakes called "petites madeleines," which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted valve of a scallop shell. And soon, mechanically, dispirited after a dreary day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid mixed with the crumbs touched my palate than a shudder ran through me and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary thing that was happening to me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory – this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, something isolated, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory - this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me it was me. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, contingent, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? I sensed that it was connected with the taste of the tea and the cake, but that it infinitely transcended those savours, could, no, indeed, be of the same nature.
I drink a second mouthful, in which I find nothing more than in the first, then a third, which gives me rather less than the second. It is time to stop; the potion is losing it magic. It is plain that the truth I am seeking lies not in the cup but in myself... And I begin to ask myself what it could have been, this unremembered state which brought with it no logical proof, but the indisputable evidence, of its felicity, its reality, and in whose presence other states of consciousness melted and vanished. I decide to attempt to make it reappear. I retrace my thoughts to the moment at which I drank the first spoonful of tea. I rediscover the same state, illuminated by no fresh light. I ask my mind to make one further effort, to bring back once more the fleeting sensation.
..And suddenly the memory revealed itself. The taste was that of the little piece of madeleine which on Sunday mornings at Combray (because on those mornings I did not go out before mass), when I went to say good morning to her in her bedroom, my aunt Léonie used to give me, dipping it first in her own cup of tea or tisane... But when from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection...
...And as soon as I had recognized the taste of the piece of madeleine soaked in her decoction of lime-blossom which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know and must long postpone the discovery of why this memory made me so happy) immediately the old grey house upon the street, where her room was, rose up like a stage set to attach itself to the little pavilion opening on to the garden which had been built out behind it for my parents (the isolated segment which until that moment had been all that I could see); and with the house the town, from morning to night and in all weathers, the Square where I used to be sent before lunch, the streets along which I used to run errands, the country roads we took when it was fine...
...The sight of the little madeleine had recalled nothing to my mind before I tasted it. And all from my cup of tea...
This is a movie clip from the 1957 movie "Det Sjunde Inseglet" (The Seventh Seal), directed by Ingmar Bergman.
Antonius Block is a knight returning from the Crusades. Here, he's entering a chapel to confess about his withering faith and his thoughts about god and death to Death himself, who disguised into a priest. This is a short, yet accurate trip to the innermost depths of a human's fears and wonders.
KNIGHT I want to talk to you as openly as I can, but my heart is empty.
DEATH doesn't answer.
KNIGHT The emptiness is a mirror turned towards my own face. I see myself in it, and I am filled with fear and disgust.
DEATH doesn't answer.
KNIGHT Through my indifference to my fellow men, I have isolated myself from their company. Now I live in a world of phantoms. I am imprisoned in my dreams and fantasies.
Human beings on this small orb sleep, waken and work, and sometimes wish for friends on Mars. I’ve no notion what Martians do on their small orb ( neririing or kiruruing or hararaing ). But sometimes they like to have friends on Earth. No doubt about that. Universal gravitation is the power of solitudes pulling each other. Because the universe is distorted, we all seek for one another. Because the universe goes on expanding, we are all uneasy. With the chill of two billion light-years of solitude, I suddenly sneezed.
- "Two Billion Light Years Of Loneliness" by Shuntaro Tanikawa
John Lennon got the idea to write this song when he heard phrase "words are flowing out like endless rain into paper cup" from his first wife Cynthia while talking about something. Shortly after that while in bed, Lennon kept hearing the phrase "flowing like an endless stream" again and again. This led him to write this cosmic song. According to Lennon, this is his best, most poetic lyric he ever wrote. The line Kay Guru Deva Om is in Sanskrit and it means glory to the shining remover of darkness. Oh and Fiona Apple's cover of this song is also very good. Enjoy!
Words are flowing out like
Endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe.
Pools of sorrow waves of joy
Are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me.
Jai Guru Deva. Om
Nothing's gonna change my world x4
Images of broken light, which Dance before me like a million eyes, They call me on and on across the universe. Thoughts meander like a Restless wind inside a letter box They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe. Jai Guru Deva. Om Nothing's gonna change my world x4
This is an incomplete list. Things I look in films are plot, message, soundtrack, actors&acting and cinematography. You can probably see my movie taste from this list.
The Seventh Seal - Ingmar Bergman
Wild Strawberries - Ingmar Bergman
Before Sunrise/Sunset - Richard Linklater
Waking Life - Richard Linklater
Coffee and Cigarettes - Jim Jarmusch
Dead Man - Jim Jarmusch
2001: A Space Odyssey - Stanley Kubrick
A Clockwork Orange - Stanley Kubrick
Amadeus - Forma and Shaffer
Lost in Translation - Sofia Coppola
Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain - Jean-Pierre Jeunet
Pulp Fiction - Quentin Tarantino
Reservoir Dogs - Quentin Tarantino
Ikiru - Akira Kurosawa
Tokyo Story - Yasujirō Ozu
Vanilla Sky - Cameron Crowe
Inception - Christopher Nolan
Der Himmel über Berlin - Wim Wenders
Das Leben der Anderen - Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Goodbye Lenin - Wolfgang Becker
Submarine - Richard Ayoade
Chungking Express - Wong Kar-wai
In the Mood for Love - Wong Kar-wai
New World - Park Hoon Jung
A Bittersweet Life - Kim Jee-woon
Oldboy - Park Chan-wook
Memento - Christopher Nolan
Prestige- Christopher Nolan
5 Centimeters per seconds - Makoto Shinkai (+other makoto works)
The Machinist - Brad Anderson
The Number 23 - Joel Schumacher
Requiem for a Dream - Daren Aronofsky
Matrix - Wachowski brothers
Fight Club - David Fincher
Dolls - Takeshi Kitano
The Illusionist - Neil Burger
Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind - Michael Kondry
Dead Poet Society - Peter Weir
V for Vendetta - James McTeigue
Tokyo Sonato - Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Casablanca - Michael Curtiz
The Graduate - Mike Nichols
Schindler's List - Steven Spielsberg
Life is Beautiful - Roberto Benigni
Goodfellas - Martin Scorsese
Last Emperor - Bernardo Bertolcci
Godfather - Albert Ruddy
Citizen Kane - Orson Welles
Turkish Gambit - Konstantin Ernst
Studio Ghibli works (mainly Hayao Miyazaki's works)
One of the many great scenes from Le Fabuleux Destin d'Amélie Poulain
"...Nino is late. Amelie can only see two explanations.
1 - he didn't get the photo.
2 - before he could assemble it, a gang of bank robbers took him hostage. The cops gave chase. They got away... but he caused a crash. When he came to, he'd lost his memory. An ex-con picked him up, mistook him for a fugitive, and shipped him to Istanbul. There he met some Afghan raiders who took him to steal some Russian warheads. But their truck hit a mine in Tajikistan. He survived, took to the hills, and became a Mujaheddin. [Increasingly angry] Amelie refuses to get upset for a guy who'll eat borscht all his life in a hat like a tea cozy... "
