i was productive. for a while. cleaned on a micro-scale in the room, throwing away almost drawerfuls of random and unnecessary refuse. things i just don’t need anymore, expired insurance cards, obsolete coupons for things i would never have bought, even old letters i realize i will never again read. then i settled into the living room for two movies. a double-feature of my own creation. both of them contain lines that just make me smile at their genius and truth.
stop trying to hit me and hit me!
morpheus to neo, the matrix 1999
luminous beings are we, not this crude matter.
yoda to luke skywalker, the empire strikes back, 1980
if you didn’t go to church this morning, that last one is part of a good sermon i could hear every sunday for months.
and its funny, but watching empire again helps me to see some of the good in episodes one and two. references to luke’s father have a certain resonance now. but basically, these movies, the three in the middle of the saga, they mean so much to my generation because they arrived when the clay of our own personal mythologies was still wet and malleable. naturally, an attempt to revisit a personal era of such importance is going to fall short of the mark. nothing will ever match that first time any of us saw obi-wan give luke his father’s lightsabre, or the “scoundrel” kiss aboard the millennium falcon, or yoda’s remark of “no, there is another.” but who knows? maybe there are little kids down at your local multiplex watching episode two right at this moment who will someday get shivers down their twenty-five year old spines when someone says “this party’s over.”
eh. maybe not.
in other news. a new the the double-album compilation comes out on tuesday. rock!
