Oct 13, 2007

The movie in my mind

Call it vanity if you want. I choose to think of it as an over active imagination.

I didn't grow up in a place where people used public transportation. Heck, I didn't grow up in a place where there was public transportation. I remember when my grandmother, who had spent her adult life in New York City and Tampa, Fl, moved to our small town in Indiana. She couldn't drive because her eyesight was bad and she wanted to know the number of a cab company so she could go to the store. I was 12 or 13 and I remember looking at her like she had 3 heads. "A cab?" I thought. "A cab? We don't have cabs here." In my mind taxis and buses and subways and commuter trains were only for the movies, which all took place in big cities.

Now. I ride a train every day to work. I get on at 7:22 in the morning and get off at 7:48. I then walk 4 minutes to my building, get in the elevator and go up to the fourth floor. I sit down at my desk and turn on my computer and go get a cup of coffee. By the time I get back to my desk my watch says 7:58 and I am 2 minutes early and I start to work. I'm living the opening scene of a movie.

I think about it all the time. I imagine that someone is watching me pace through the day through a viewfinder and that I had better lend them my MP3 player so that they know what the soundtrack to my day should sound like. Right now it sounds like the autumn mix that James made last year. Specifically, Night's Sorrow by Becoming the Archetype.

Sometimes, when I get a window seat on the train I lean back with the soundtrack to my movie playing in my ears and can see my reflection in the window and I can see the city out on the other side of the window and I wonder what that screen shot would look like. I wonder what the camera would see with my face, the reflection of my face in the window, and the city beyond the window all in the same shot. Which would be the focus? Me? or the city outside slowly slipping by.

I think in the morning, when I'm on the way to work that that scene would be the best for the intro to the movie. All of the movie watchers would be seeing me for the first time and they would hear the same soundtrack in the theater that I have plugged into my ears on the train and I hope that they would feel the same thing that I do on the train, on the way to work, passing my days as a person who breathes on this planet. Since the movie is just starting they don't really know anything about me yet, unless they read a preview, so they might be trying to figure me out. What's my name? Where am I from? Where do I work? Am I married? Do I have any friends? Am I gay? And then I get to work and go through all of that routine and the soundtrack fades and the dialog begins.

At the end of the movie I'll still be on the train, but this time I'll be headed home. Sitting back in my seat, buds in my ears, the soundtrack for the trip home should be Iron and Wine, maybe singing Jesus the Mexican Boy, because I really like that song. This trip is different than the ride to work, because now the movie watchers have had the whole length of the film to get to know me, and they've heard me talk and they've met my friends and they know that I am in fact, not gay. I'd like to think that maybe they are a little sad that I'm headed home because they really enjoyed the movie and getting to know me, but now it's almost over. The soundtrack can keep playing while I get off the train and walk the two blocks to my 2 flat. The autumn wind off Lake Michigan will make me hunker down inside my jacket when I cross Ravenswood St., and then I'll turn the corner onto my little city street, unlock the door and go inside. And that will be it.

Call it vanity if you want. I choose to think of it as an over active imagination.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Well written article.