Waking Life Page #6

Oh. A lot of people.

A lot of talking.

Some of it was kind of absurdist,

like from a strange movie or something.

Mostly, it was just people going off

about whatever, really intensely.

I woke up wondering, where did

all this stuff come from?

- You can control that.

- Do you have these dreams all the time?

Hell, yeah. I'm always

gonna make the best of it.

But the trick is, you got to realize

that you're dreaming in the first place.

You got to be able

to recognize it.

You got to be able to ask yourself,

"Hey, man, is this a dream?"

Most people never

ask themselves that...

when they're awake or especially

when they're asleep.

Seems like everyone's sleepwalking

through their waking state...

or wakewalking

through their dreams.

Either way they're not

gonna get much out of it.

The thing that snapped me into realizing I

was dreaming was, uh... was my digital clock.

I couldn't really read it. It was like the

circuitry was all screwed up or something.

Yeah, that's real common. And small

printed material is pretty tough too.

Very unstable.

Another good tip-off

is trying to adjust light levels.

You can't really do that.

If you see a light switch nearby,

turn it on and off and see if it works.

That's one of the few things

you can't do in a lucid dream.

What the hell.

I can fly around,

have an interesting conversation

with Albert Schweitzer.

I can explore all these

new dimensions of reality,

not to mention I can have any kind

of sex I want, which is way cool.

So I can't adjust

light levels. So what?

But that's one of the things you do to

test if you're dreaming or not, right?

Yeah, like I said, you can totally

train yourself to recognize it.

I mean, just hit a light switch

every now and then.

If the lights are on and you can't turn

them off, then most likely you're dreaming.

And then you can

get down to business.

And believe me,

it's unlimited.

- Hey, you know what I've been

working on lately? - What's that?

Oh, man, it's way ambitious,

but I'm getting better at it.

You're gonna dig this.

Three-sixty vision, man.

I can see in all directions.

Pretty cool, huh?

Yeah. Wow.

Well, I got to go, man.

Okay, later, man. Super perfundo

on the early eve of your day.

- What's that mean?

- Well, you know, I never figured it out.

Maybe you can.

This guy always whispers into my ear.

Louis. He's a recurring

dream character.

Cinema, in its essence,

is about reproduction

of reality,

which is that, like,

reality is actually reproduced.

And for him, it might sound like

a storytelling medium, really.

And he feels like, um...

like film...

like... like literature

is better for telling a story.

And if you tell a story

or even like a joke...

"This guy walks into a bar

and sees a dwarf. "

That works really well because you're

imagining this guy and this dwarf in this bar.

And it's an imaginative

aspect to it.

In film, you don't have that because you

actually are filming a specific guy...

in a specific bar

with a specific dwarf...

- of a specific height who looks

a certain way, right? - Mm-hmm.

So like, um, for Bazin, what the

ontology of film has to deal...

it has to deal

with, you know, with...

- Photography also has an ontology,

- Right.

except that it adds

this dimension of time to it...

and this

greater realism.

And so,

it's about that guy...

at that moment

in that space.

And, you know, Bazin

is, like, a Christian,

so he, like, believes

that, you know...

in God, obviously,

and everything.

For him, reality and God

are the same. You know, like...

And so what film is actually capturing

is, like, God incarnate, creating.

You know, like this very moment,

God is manifesting as this.

And what the film would capture

if it was filming us right now...

would be, like,

God as this table,

and God is you and God is me and God

looking the way we look right now...

and saying and thinking

what we're thinking right now...

- because we're all God

manifest in that sense. - Mm-hmm.

So film is like a record of God

or the face of God...

or of the ever-changing

face of God.

You have a mosquito.

You want me to get it for you?

- You got it. Yeah.

- I got it?

And the whole Hollywood thing

has taken film...

and tried to make it

this storytelling medium...

where you take

these books or stories...

and then you,

like, you know...

you get the script and then try

to find somebody who fits the thing.

But it's ridiculous.

It shouldn't

be based on the script.

It should be based

on the person, the thing.

And, um...

And in that sense,

they're almost right

to have this whole star system...

- because then it's about that person

instead of the story. - Right.

Truffaut always said

the best films aren't made...

The best scripts don't

make the best films...

because they have that kind of literary,

narrative thing that you're sort of a slave to.

The best films are the ones

that aren't tied to that slavishly.

So, um...

So... I don't know...

The whole narrative thing

seems to me like...

Obviously, there's narrativity

to cinema 'cause it's in time,

just the way there's

narrativity to music.

You don't first think of the story

of the song, then make the song.

It has to come

out of the moment.

That's what film has.

It's just that moment, which is holy.

You know, like this

moment, it's holy.

But we walk around

like it's not holy.

We walk around like there's some holy

moments and there are all the other moments...

- that are not holy, but this

moment is holy. - Right. Right.

And film

can let us see that.

We can frame it so that we see,

like, "Ah, this moment. Holy. "

Like "holy, holy, holy"

moment by moment.

But who can live that way?

Who can go, "Wow, holy"?

Because if I were to look at you

and let you be holy...

I don't know. I would,

like, stop talking.

Well, you'd be in the

moment. The moment is holy, right?

Yeah, but I'd be open.

I'd look in your eyes

and I'd cry...

and I'd feel all this stuff

and that's not polite.

It would make you

uncomfortable.

You could laugh too.

Why would you cry?

Well, 'cause...

I don't know.

For me,

I just tend to cry.

Uh-huh. Well...

Well, let's do it right now.

Let's have a holy moment.

- Everything is layers, isn't it?

- Yeah.

There's the holy moment

and then there's the awareness...

of trying to have

the holy moment...

in the same way that the film

is the actual moment really happening,

but then the character pretending

to be in a different reality.

It's all these layers.

And, uh, I was in and out

of the holy moment, looking at you.

Can be in a holy...

You're unique that way, Caveh.

That's one

of the reasons I enjoy you.

You can...

bring me into that.

If the world that we are forced

to accept is false and nothing is true,

then everything

is possible.

On the way to discovering what we love,

we will find everything we hate,

everything that blocks

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