It's all about ME
-Walt,
...Cool story, bro
I encountered Breaking Bad at a very strange time in my life. It was the perfect time. That moment and the show's embedment into my soul is now timeless, I think.
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-http://web.ics.purdue.edu/~drkelly/DFWKenyonAddress2005.pdf
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Here are the things I know, through learning them across diverse crises and cross-roads of life.
But yet, the earth is good. The above clip isn't the usual distancing device you'll find throughout this project. Melancholia also meant so much to me at the point in my life in which I witnessed it (side-track.....).
But, Lars shares with Gilligan a sense of compassion for the wistfully doomed and the walking dead. Von Trier is still cruel as hell with the narrative and iconography of Melancholia; but compared to the tone of Anti-Christ (a film that was his, mine, and any victimized by looking at it, most depressive rock bottom)...
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It is a sin, Alex, it is terribly wrong (again, from a film that was fundamental in my development
His follow-up was as life affirming and wonderful as, well, as It's a Wonderful Life.
The coalescence of these auteur's and mine own life philosophies lies in the nexus of the abyss, the "nerve center of the core of being." That itch that can't be scratched. The thing that leads to intense self-medication across all forms of diversions and distracting doings. However, what
But what matters most are the things outside the self, outside of those easy escapes of solipsism and moral relativism. We can choose to fight and flight, all in the same action. Breaking Bad speaks to so many people because it captures the full complexity of the human condition. The progress. The struggle. The struggle to not regress. Despite all the outside things working against people the choice to not do wrong is easy. It is figuring out what is right, in a world of conflict and interests, that can lead to denial and resistance. Walt's struggle is extreme, since often to redeem himself (see end of 3x13, "Full Measure"), he most choose to. But can we blame him. Self preservation is instinctual. Yet so is love, empathy, and compassion. Even when I've forgotten those things, I never lost the ability to learn and grow. It is after breaking through the other side of dark impulses that I and others like me learn how to do right by others; because getting outside of one's head is also inherently selfish, since it leads to a reprieve from the lashings of insecurity and self-doubt. Walter White has no excuse. We'll see what his last act is at the curtain call of the show's. It may not be too late for him to make at least one right choice.
Because, even if he, those ensnared in his web of sins, and we as a civilization watching, are at the cusp of complete obilivion; that doesn't mean we have to forsake humanity, or question if there is a right way. Being authentic is a feeling, one validated through the results of one's actions, and the effects of embodiment on others.
Even with seemingly everything pulling and pushing against and within you, there is always a path of less resistance. Most are too cowardly, ignorant, or at worse, flippantly malicious, to know or care to know what paths are best tread.
Bob Dylan Tempus. Camus' the plague. Nothingness brings out the worst, but it can bring out a best-that-may-have-never-existed otherwise.
"WALTER WHITE
There was no fugue state. I remember everything. The truth is I couldn't stand to spend another second in that house. I just had to...get out. And so I left. I didn't think about it, I just did it. I walked for a long time, and when I couldn't walk anymore, I hitchhiked. I got as far as Gallup. And then it was just time to come home.
THERAPIST
So, being found naked in a supermarket, that was your way of giving credibility to a lie? Of avoiding questions about your disappearance? Why run away? What did you feel you had to run from?
WALTER WHITE
Doctor, my wife is seven months pregnant with a baby we didn't intend. My fifteen-year old son has cerebral palsy. I am an extremely overqualified high school chemistry teacher. When I can work, I make $43,700 per year. I have watched all of my colleagues and friends surpass me in every way imaginable. And within eighteen months, I will be dead. And you ask why I ran?"
"Run..." ... or hold ground? With all the karmic retribution, and especially after a year in which the rug and very foundation-of-purpose was stripped from other his feet, there seems to be only one choice. For though Walt has become a No-Where-Man, he is still a living human that once cared deeply for family both blood and surrogate. He must found ground. Gilligan wouldn't let him completely fall into the abyss. Not because Walt doesn't deserve it, but because Gilligan is better than that.
Even in the end, amends and decency can be obtained. It's the saving grace note to the sometimes cacophonous melody of life...
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