I have always believed that moving—p h y s i c a l l y moving—is my greatest escape from myself. I live for the
process of driving over state lines or waiting at baggage claims or flagging
down the next cab or scrounging up enough loose change to pay for the next train
ride because these are the things that keep me in m o t i o n, these are the things
which keep my brain occupied.
The past few years have
provided me with so many warmly welcoming cities, so many early morning
flights, so many hello’s and goodbye’s – from New York City, to Boston, to Atlanta,
to Chicago, to Nashville and beyond. And sometimes I forget that there’s a
whole world that’s been sitting at my fingertips all along, just waiting to be
my escape route at a still and steady pace.
The world of film and
movies (and television in general) has never been a place I’ve found a home in. The
idea of physically shutting down and remaining in one place of focus for an
extended period of time is not something I’ve ever considered to be an escape.
But, for me, the idea of
traveling means only pushing into the future, experiencing new places and
people for the very first time. Films have the ability to take me back to past
experiences, past feelings, past heartbreak.
(Maybe that’s why I never
let them in.)
I have mixed feelings about my own personal experience with these blogs this semester. Originally, I was really excited upon first hearing the idea of what the blogs would entail and how they would function. I also liked having the anonymity and being able to post freely without any reservations. The different incorporations into the blog (font, colors, backgrounds, photos, videos, music, etc.) are things that actually really excite me, so it was cool to have that creative freedom throughout the process. The main thing I struggled with was writing under pressure. I like to have time to really collect my thoughts whilst attempting to utilize creative outlets like this one, so I really regret sometimes procrastinating and thus not taking the time to fully do so – sometimes I waited until crunch time, and others, I just didn’t find the inspiration I was looking for (because I was looking too hard and ran out of time.) Another thing I found interesting, though, was having the opportunity to completely explore one another’s blog posts at all times. It’s been a really neat process to see how we’ve all built and expanded upon one another’s experiences throughout these posts. It has been neat to learn that a lot of the experiences among my classmates are ones that I, too, have shared—being able to relate to my “anonymous” classmates has been an interesting experience. The intertextuality between all of our thoughts and feelings has turned into a pretty cool collaboration of creativity. In the words of Benjamin, “In principle a work of art has always been reproducible. Man-made artifacts could always be imitated by men.” In a sense, the way that we’ve all built upon each other’s pieces and somewhat “stolen” ideas and made them their own can be compared to the way Mr. Brainwash seemingly “steals” the ideas from so many artists in Exit Through the Gift Shop and turns them into “his” creations.
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