You ever find yourself watching a film… staring at the screen in total awe at how ridiculously strange the sequence of events that you are consuming are in front of your face? The weirdness captivates you in this unique way. There are moments where you snap out of your trance and think to yourself… “This is such a weird movie. I’m kind of bored. What am I watching?” but in the next moment you are back to it… completely locked in. And as the credits roll… you smile to yourself and think… “That was good. I think I liked that. I kind of want to watch it again… but not really.” That was me last night as I watched “Asteroid City”… the Wes Anderson film. It was good… I think… but I know for sure that it was unique and strange and thought provoking and visually specific… and I liked it… maybe.
What I know for sure is it got the wheels turning. There was a scene… and maybe even the theme of the film… but that is up for interpretation… you know that whole art is subjective thing… that has a class of actors at an acting school listening to a playwright and an acting coach as they speak on stage. The writer of the play informs them that he is struggling to write a scene in the third act and the acting coach asks the class to “act as if they are asleep” in the hopes that as the writer watches each actor interpret “sleep” in their own way… maybe it will unlocked the creative juices that he needs to write his scene. As the actors are pretend sleeping in all different fashions… there is a line of voice over that states… “You cannot wake up without falling asleep”. Simple enough… right? But I couldn’t stop thinking about the line… and maybe that was the point.
“You can’t wake up without falling asleep”…
I started thinking about “sleep” as a metaphor for struggling or falling down in life. And the fact that we cannot find ourselves… solve that problem… see the problem… humble ourselves… work through our struggles… deal with trauma… face our truths… or snap ourselves out of that funk… without stumbling and “laying it down” for a bit in order to reflect on whatever it is that is troubling us. And without taking this step back from life… without “falling asleep”… we will never have the ability to come out of this “slumber” feeling awake and alive and rested and ready to tackle life with clear eyes and pure intentions. Then I started thinking about sleep in general and how it is the healing time of the 24 hours that we all get every day. It is the time for our body to recuperate and rejuvenate from that workout. It is the time for our minds to slow down and bank memories and experiences from the day before. It is the time for us to shut out all the external influences that the world forcefully fills our life with and allow ourselves to calmly rest with nothing more than our thoughts. It is the time to mentally wonder through our dreams finding those gems along the way that surprise us and scare us and enlighten us. Sleep is wonderfully powerful and without it… we can’t wake up to the world around us… figuratively or literally.
But in order to take advantage of the “sleep” and the “wake up”… we must slow down enough to recognize… experience and ultimately appreciate the mental and physical break. Even if this “sleep” presents itself (such as in my life)… in the form of a horrible situation that I put myself in that led to me laying on my back at the bottom of the hole we like to call… “rock bottom”. It needed to happen… I needed to “get some sleep” and take the time to re-evaluate my life and my decisions so that I could “wake up” and be the human being that I want and need to be. We cannot wake up without falling asleep. Just take a moment to think about that… interpret it however you see fit… and most of all… do what these uniquely strange and satisfying but kind of boring and weird movies do best… they make us sit there as the movie ends and ponder what we just watched and what it all means. So…. do that… who knows what you may find.
Stay Healthy. Stay Active. Stay Curious. Get Some Sleep.