You and Me and Everyone We Know

I’m sitting here for a late inexpensive dinner at Perkins looking around the restaurant and thinking about how the other six strangers here can so quickly go from strangers to acquaintances, friends or even enemies.  Even as I am sitting here writing this article in segments, I have met the four wonderful women that are sitting next to me singing about their Mellow Yellow and laughing about how it will become a remix and make them a ton of money from the Coca Cola company.

My thought process about this stems from a movie trailer I saw today. The tailor was of the new Miranda July movie, The Future.  Miranda July has this way of reminding me that we are apart of life and no matter how hard we attempt to remove ourselves from it, we are still there, in it, fighting to make it and enjoy every moment we can.  This is the trailer for the film.

When I saw the preview, I then thought of one of my favorite movies that is also by Miranda July, You and Me and Everyone We Know.  I first saw this movie when it came out while I was living in Madison, WI in the fall of 2006.  For me, its focus on community and how we all are here for each other even though we don’t acknowledge it is so true.  The movie also really puts focus on technology and the part it plays on how we connect with other human beings.  Whether it is directly or indirectly done, we really do touch a much greater group of people than we will ever conceive. 

Two parts of the movie really stick out to me.  One, is towards the end when the father is talking to his oldest son who is sick at school.  He can’t leave work to go get him because of the issues of being a single parent and having a job but he says that someone will be there to pick him up because, “we are a community and that is what we do, be there when someone is in need.”

The other part is when the little boy is making a picture from computer symbols.  He sits and explains that each dot represents someone who then makes up the entire picture.  One dot is him, another his brother, another their father and so on until the entire picture is created.  This metaphor is a good reminder on how we all make the big picture and that we really do need human connection.  That is what it is all about, the human connection.

The scene that I am putting into this blog post though is the scene with the goldfish.  Death is inevitable but when you have a support system and can make sure that you spend the time with each other when you can, life becomes that much more valuable.