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juushikaI'll just put The Crow on the background while I go about my business and entertain myself this evening...
Or I could watch the whole thing through with my complete attention. That works too.
But I will pause it to blather for a bit.
Autumn for me—or rather, this general time of year—is more than a season or an event. From the first rains (which usually come when it's still rightly summer) through the dark dead of winter marks a time when the world is cooler, blazing out and dying, darker, wetter, quieter—and I am more alive. I come alive under with the lowered sun, the falling rain, the colder air. As there are places which are home to me, there is this time of year: I can live elsewhere and elswhen, but it's here that I thrive.
This dying and dead time of year comes, for me, with many things: brighter colors, better clothing, more beauty and comfort in and out, but it also marks a change in my media consumption. I'm oddly sensitive and must match my media to the seasons, probably because when I consume something I do it not in bites but by gorging. I read dozens of books, I watch a movie dozens of times. If what chosen media doesn't fit my mood and the world around me, then it is distinctly out of place.
I started this year with Sleepy Hollow. Ironically when the film first came out I didn't see it—the whole thing (action-y film about classic literature? hah!) seemed vaguely daft to me. But at some point Devon and I bought it on a whim because it's Tim Burton, and when is Tim Burton ever bad? (Well, rarely, at least.) Now I watch it constantly through autumn, but it's the beginning of the film that I really come to see. The plot is interesting, the casting is delightful, but it's the setting, mood, and scenery which I love—honestly, it's the opening credits which get me each time:
This is not quite my autumn—the world around me is paved, for one; trees here are denser, younger, and, in the autumn, redder, and our mist is never quite Hollywood perfect. But we create media (as artists, as viewers) and media creates us: this is autumn in my mind, the tones and atmosphere, the onset, the color, the wet, the beauty. So much beauty.
I pulled out The Nightmare Before Christmas when seeing Halloween candy on shelves no longer made me rage about painfully premature advertising. I once burned out a DVD player by watching Nightmare on repeat for, approximately, a solid week. Now I have the soundtrack and revisited soundtrack to add to the rotation and so spare Devon's DVD player, but still: Nightmare is not something I take lightly. I can watch it with completely attention, or just have it as background noise; I can delight in the Halloween aspects, or the Christmas themes; I can, and do, keep it on all the time. It, for me, encapsulates the season.
But today, Devon dug out a box from the garage, one that I packed for easy access storage but then got buried: these are things I wanted nearby, but didn't need on hand—and then I didn't see them for a fair few years. This afternoon, with Devon and his dust-allergies off visiting a friend, I organized the closet to celebrate. Our media—games, movies, and CDs (remember those?) are now in polite, neat stacks. But what matters most in all of this (at the moment at least) is that, found and freshly organized, I now have my boxset for The Crow.
My best friend in England was the one that introduced me to the film. I remember her with great fondness, but that movie night (The Crow, The Matrix, and some random episodes of Buffy) is perhaps my favorite memory of us—for a variety of reasons, but this film is one of them. My father gave me James O'Barr's original comic a year or two later—he had to track it down used and at a not-insignificant cost, because it was at the time out of print, and it is one of the most wonderful gifts I've ever received. It was one of the first comics, also, to make me cry. I say all of this because my love for The Crow as both book and film (and my fondness for the sequels, even the silly Salvation) is very personal. It's a goth classic I'm sure, it's melodramatic and gritty and wonderful, and I am not the only one that's seen the film hundreds of times.
But my love for it is intense, and intensely personal, and I have been away from it for so long—and so tonight, as I go to start it up again, I watch it with my complete attention. It is a dark and rainy Devil's Night.
Or I could watch the whole thing through with my complete attention. That works too.
But I will pause it to blather for a bit.
Autumn for me—or rather, this general time of year—is more than a season or an event. From the first rains (which usually come when it's still rightly summer) through the dark dead of winter marks a time when the world is cooler, blazing out and dying, darker, wetter, quieter—and I am more alive. I come alive under with the lowered sun, the falling rain, the colder air. As there are places which are home to me, there is this time of year: I can live elsewhere and elswhen, but it's here that I thrive.
This dying and dead time of year comes, for me, with many things: brighter colors, better clothing, more beauty and comfort in and out, but it also marks a change in my media consumption. I'm oddly sensitive and must match my media to the seasons, probably because when I consume something I do it not in bites but by gorging. I read dozens of books, I watch a movie dozens of times. If what chosen media doesn't fit my mood and the world around me, then it is distinctly out of place.
I started this year with Sleepy Hollow. Ironically when the film first came out I didn't see it—the whole thing (action-y film about classic literature? hah!) seemed vaguely daft to me. But at some point Devon and I bought it on a whim because it's Tim Burton, and when is Tim Burton ever bad? (Well, rarely, at least.) Now I watch it constantly through autumn, but it's the beginning of the film that I really come to see. The plot is interesting, the casting is delightful, but it's the setting, mood, and scenery which I love—honestly, it's the opening credits which get me each time:
This is not quite my autumn—the world around me is paved, for one; trees here are denser, younger, and, in the autumn, redder, and our mist is never quite Hollywood perfect. But we create media (as artists, as viewers) and media creates us: this is autumn in my mind, the tones and atmosphere, the onset, the color, the wet, the beauty. So much beauty.
I pulled out The Nightmare Before Christmas when seeing Halloween candy on shelves no longer made me rage about painfully premature advertising. I once burned out a DVD player by watching Nightmare on repeat for, approximately, a solid week. Now I have the soundtrack and revisited soundtrack to add to the rotation and so spare Devon's DVD player, but still: Nightmare is not something I take lightly. I can watch it with completely attention, or just have it as background noise; I can delight in the Halloween aspects, or the Christmas themes; I can, and do, keep it on all the time. It, for me, encapsulates the season.
But today, Devon dug out a box from the garage, one that I packed for easy access storage but then got buried: these are things I wanted nearby, but didn't need on hand—and then I didn't see them for a fair few years. This afternoon, with Devon and his dust-allergies off visiting a friend, I organized the closet to celebrate. Our media—games, movies, and CDs (remember those?) are now in polite, neat stacks. But what matters most in all of this (at the moment at least) is that, found and freshly organized, I now have my boxset for The Crow.
My best friend in England was the one that introduced me to the film. I remember her with great fondness, but that movie night (The Crow, The Matrix, and some random episodes of Buffy) is perhaps my favorite memory of us—for a variety of reasons, but this film is one of them. My father gave me James O'Barr's original comic a year or two later—he had to track it down used and at a not-insignificant cost, because it was at the time out of print, and it is one of the most wonderful gifts I've ever received. It was one of the first comics, also, to make me cry. I say all of this because my love for The Crow as both book and film (and my fondness for the sequels, even the silly Salvation) is very personal. It's a goth classic I'm sure, it's melodramatic and gritty and wonderful, and I am not the only one that's seen the film hundreds of times.
But my love for it is intense, and intensely personal, and I have been away from it for so long—and so tonight, as I go to start it up again, I watch it with my complete attention. It is a dark and rainy Devil's Night.
