Thursday, March 11, 2010

Tom Faith; Peeping no More

I might be in love with Mike Patton.

At least, it feels that way whenever I listen to his music. Some of what he does seems very pretentious and self-involved, but then I can be very pretentious and self-involved. More importantly, most of what he does simply feels right, even without getting into lyrics or composition (of which I am by no means an expert, on either count). His voice generally just sends me to all the right places. Not to mention he's gorgeous.

The same goes for Dero, actually. Either of them could have me on a plate at a moment's notice.

Anyway, with that particular bit of pointless (and likely future embarrassment) out of the way, I must admit that I had every perfectly available opportunity to write blog entries the last few days but I did not. The first of those days, I was still moping from the previous day. Pointlessly moping, but I have ever been secretly eager to give in to depression. I regret that on this particular occasion, I was weak.

However, yesterday was slightly different. I was in a much better mood, and I didn't get a blog written because I was busy writing and then passing out. Again, not a terribly large amount of writing, but the quality was good. I even improved the quality of what I had written previously, and that pleases me greatly. It felt like I was pushing the two characters together too fast, so I backed them off a bit and it now feels much better.

In general, I've often come to the conclusion that holding back is the key to a lot of things. Too much of anything is not necessarily a bad thing, but if you have too much then you cannot want more. It is the wanting of something that I feel leads people to truly like something, or think they like it, more than they actually do. No child is as happy with a toy, once they get it, as they thought they would be before they got it. So from one perspective, you could say the child loves that toy more before they get it than after. I think this applies to all things, character relationships in particular.

I have been on a Spaced kick lately, and I rewatched both series over the course of the last couple days, in between writing, yammering, and passing out. As with many stories, part of the draw of that show was the unspoken romance between Daisy and Tim. It was obvious, it was sweet, and it went completely unrealized in any meaningful way. The reasons for this are unimportant, but the effect is what I think holds some of the great value for the show as it does for many stories in which characters have unspoken feelings. We, as viewers or readers, can see the underlying affection, and we want the characters to speak their thoughts. It feels, at so many points, when emotions will suddenly spill over and one or both of the characters will be unable to contain their affection any longer. Yet every time they hold back, we lean forward. We want, even more than before, for the words to be spoken and their romance to take hold.

Eventually, of course, there must be a breaking point. Either the characters finally do confess their love, or we as the audience reach our limit of tension and our interest naturally wanes. Nothing lasts forever, and that applies to romantic tension as much as anything. So finally one day, whether the characters get together or the audience loses interest because the tension went on for a bit too long, that feeling of wanting and waiting and hoping is gone. The emotions for the audience break as well, and nothing in that story will ever be good enough, I think. Or at least, it will take some doing for the storyteller to make it as good as it was. Because the audience's emotions, at least a portion of them, were so invested in the anticipation of that unspoken romance, that the achievement of its potential or the loss of interest result in an absence of content when they think about those characters from that point on. Something just is not there anymore, for good or ill.

Hmmm....this has primarily been a bit of a brainstorm, putting down words as I thought through the idea. Not exactly a new idea, for me or anyone else, but I have never deliberately put it down before. Hopefully it will help to read through later.

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