]A few weeks ago, I dug out an old record of mine—not sure if I would say that it is my favourite album. But surely, it is from a movie which I watched the most. Probably over 20 times, or even more…I remembered that I watched it so much that my housemates wanted to have a discussion on whether I was on the ‘spectrum’. (A similar thing happened the other day when people discovered that I have been playing the same video game series for the last year. But man, it was so good. I am not sure I could play any other games again. It is both a gift and a curse.)
The movie is based on a fiction that has won a relatively well-respected literature award, and its story is about a very well-known author (in real life), and how their work influences the readers, whose actions influenced future writers and future fiction, across multiple generations and continents. But the fact is that I am not even crazy about either of these books, since I only read each of them once against watching the movie adaptation obsessively.
I supposed there was a sense of inconsolable melancholy back then. The notion of writing as the only means of engaging with the occasional yet unbearable fatalistic nihilism in daily life. (pretty much like doing a PhD as some may say). As one character restlessly commented on a (fictional) book that was influenced by another book (in real life): it went on and on. Nothing happened, then BOOM! The protagonist died all of a sudden.
However, this sense of nihilism somehow wore off as I watched it over the years. It somehow becomes very calming as one ages. It was no longer sentimental but dignified and factual. There is one line that I am particularly fond of, and I guess I shall wrap up this blog with a similar demeanour:
Look at it as what it is, and then, put it away.