10. Smoke and Mirrors
March 19th 2020, Thursday
Dear Blog,
I heard Hans Zimmer once said that scoring for films is mostly like asking questions and getting answers musically. I experienced that once again with the opening sequence of Westworld. I have always liked it but didn’t really know why. It is calming, hypnotic, and eerie. Composer Ramin Djawadi explained in an interview that the opening music is also about questions and answers. The violin represents humans while the piano represents the robots. At first, it is a duo between a violin and a piano, back and forth. The violin asks a question and the piano answers. But when the piano gets automated, then it takes over on its all, and all traces of violin disappear. It is such a smart thing to do, something I intuitively understood but was never consciously aware of until now. I suppose good scores are always about hiding the process of questioning and answering inside the music, which seems especially appropriate for a show like Westworld, where questions are at the core of directing our attention to find meanings of our lives.
The philosopher Lichtenberg says that the whole of philosophy can be reduced to the following questions: ” Who am I? What ought I to do? In what can I believe, and what can I hoped for?” The most important of these questions is the second. If we know what we ought to do then we will know everything else we need to know.
— Leo Tolstoy
Once again, this quote from Tolstoy is focusing on doing the right actions and understanding our duties. I have spent so much time trying to understand my purpose, but perhaps that is not the right question to ask.
The purpose of life is not to act in accordance with the will of the majority, but to live your life in such a way that it is in harmony with your own inner law.
— Marcus Aurelius, Meditation
I think I have misquoted this in a previous post. I said in harmony with your “nature” and that nature is love. It is refreshing to read the original quote and observe the difference. What is the difference between “own inner law” and “nature”? I suppose “nature” implies something permanent that is to be discovered, but “law” implies discipline and a strong will to follow it through.
Free will is not free.
Freedom entails a responsibility to refrain from engaging in certain thoughts or emotions, the things that will lead us astray.
If you should sometimes feel that, despite your wish to quell and overcome some passionate desire, it takes the upper hand, don’t think you will never succeed in overcoming it. It simply means that you were not successful on this occasion. A coachman does not throw down the reins because he cannot immediately stop his horses, but he carries on tugging at them until the horses stop. So it is with you: you may not have been able to restrain yourself on one occasion, but just carry on and you will certainly gain the upper hand.
— Leo Tolstoy
Vance changed his WhatsApp profile picture. It was empty before. Yesterday he changed it to a party photo in which he was eating pizza with another frat boy in a club-like setting. Upon seeing the photo I realized that I have always treated him like a mirror instead of a real person. Through that mirror, it shows me what my deepest needs are because attraction at the end of the day is only a manifestation of what we need. I grew up in a chaotic household where one of the parents can be incredibly affectionate one moment and heartbreakingly cruel the next. When I experienced my attraction towards Vance, a sense of calmness would take over me, as if my world had started to quiet down for a change, because he possessed this sense of assuredness without being cocky, probably the result of a stable family upbringing in which love from his family was a certainty. He doesn’t need to do anything, because that certainty does not need to be earned, but is rather deeply imprinted in his entire being that he is not even aware of it. The truth of the body. I know calmness of the mind but my body betrays it. Tensions in my shoulders prepare me for battles. If you wear an armor all day, you would always scan the world for threats. It does not matter if the world is kind, for as long as you hold on to this armor, you shall never perceive reality as it is. To perceive reality, you have to take down your armor, and break the mirror that shows you your deepest desire, the shadow from your past, and heal on your own. Stare too long inside the Mirror of Erised would only drive you mad, for it is only interesting but not helpful because holding onto a vision you can never have, of the things that you were deprived of, stops you from living in this moment. Vance is my Mirror of Erised. He is not the first one and I doubt he would be the last one. Life can pass you by as you are clinging on to a wish that cannot be fulfilled. You must seek it within you, for you already have all the answers. All you need to do is to have faith, fulfill your duties to your inner law, and refrain from looking at the mirror.
You can’t always remain calm, but whenever there are times of peace and calm in your life, you need to value them and try to prolong them. Those are the times when you can start thinking clearly and decisively, and your thoughts can become a guide as to how you should live.
— Leo Tolstoy
