After our invigorating 2.5 hour indoor spin yesterday, watching Q. Tarantino’s glorious Inglorious Basterds, I had the afternoon to myself. Until 1700 anyway when I had a dinner date with new clients. In between Hans Landa, Aldo Rains, Shoshanna Dreyfus and my new client's pair of standard poodles, I worked on the outline of the new video. I did a fairly intensive Google-foo trying to find the precise wording of a Kurt Vonnegut quote from a novel I couldn’t remember that I thought might be useful in the script. Here is the line (and the entire story line as well):
“Why we are put on this Earth only to face suffering and eventual death?”
In the novel - I think is one of three - Breakfast of Champions, Sirens of Titan or Venus on the Half-Shell (Farrar) the protagonist spends his entire life in celestial pursuit of the answer, visiting other galaxies, solar systems and various planets that they comprise. Finally at long last he meets up with the Emperor of the Universe, The Kong of Kings and the Absolute Ruling Supreme Being. Who just happens to be a giant cockroach. After a series of tests to prove his worthiness he is granted an audience with the big guy. He asks his question and in an absolutely magnificent metaphysical moment, he gets his answer.
“Why not?”
The fact that I cannot recall the novel is painful enough without even the slightest bit of irony over my actually needing to borrow it, and hence get it accurate instead of ‘close enough.’ All that is the bad news. The good news is that during the aforementioned search I found a few, many actually, juicy quotes from the mind behind Kilgore Trout, Elliot Rosewater, Billy Pilgram and Unk. Like this one:
“Once upon a time on Tralfamadore there were creatures who weren’t anything like machines. They weren’t dependable. They weren’t efficient. They weren’t predictable. They weren’t durable. And these poor creatures were obsessed by the idea that everything that existed had to have a purpose, and that some purposes were higher than others. These creatures spent most of their time trying to find out what their purpose was. And every time they found out what seemed to be a purpose of themselves, the purpose seemed so low that the creatures were filled with disgust and shame. And, rather than serve such a low purpose, the creatures would make a machine to serve it. This left the creatures free to serve higher purposes. But whenever they found a higher purpose, the purpose still wasn’t high enough. So machines were made to serve higher purposes, too. And the machines did everything so expertly that they were finally given the job of finding out what the highest purpose of the creatures could be. The machines reported in all honesty that the creatures couldn’t really be said to have any purpose at all. The creatures thereupon began slaying each other, because they hated purposeless things above all else. And they discovered that they weren’t even very good at slaying. So they turned that job over to the machines, too. And the machines finished up the job in less time than it takes to say, “Tralfamadore.”
― Kurt Vonnegut, The Sirens of Titan
And so it goes. There is my intro. My challenge will be to segue out of the transcendent and into the actual theme of the film, riding bikes. I will try something along these lines:
VO:
If, then, we are in a timeless search for meaning (quote V. Frankl here) and if we deny ourselves every purpose other than immortality as inadequate, what could possibly satisfy our thirst for the definition behind our presence on this planet? Is this the place where all philosophies, religions and spiritual enlightenments come together and create the Zen idea of here and now? Further, if art is simply a way to endure our passage through the ravages of time, could there exist something, anything, that we can do that satisfies our demands and requirements for mind, body and spirit actualization? Is there any activity that has optimal benefit for our heads, hearts and happiness?
JUMP CUT TO PEOPLE ON BIKES.
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