Art Brain

A couple months back I was standing in my back yard in San Antonio thinking about the ants in Once and Future King when I realized how much art has added to my life. I spend an unaccountable amount of time thinking about film, T.V., books, music. It's those stories, those moments that inform how I look at my world.

Since I finished college I hadn't been able to bring myself to watch or read almost anything new. This started at a time when a lot of who I am was up in the air - I was living in a new city, working for the first time after 18 years of school, hanging out with some crazy bastards. I didn't have any furniture, I didn't know how to do anything, and it was the first time in six, seven years that I'd had all my stuff in the same place at the same time. I had chaos aplenty.


I needed stability, and, as a result, the only stuff I read or watched was things I'd seen before. I read books I knew I could rely on - Fear and Loathing, The Crime Studio, Paul Auster's New York Trilogy, My Family and Other Animals.

I watched a lot of animated kid's movies - Miyazaki, Pixar. I still have Lilo & Stitch saved on my TiVo. I'd TiVo new movies but I couldn't bring myself to watch them. I must have read Narbonic five times. And my taste in music is definitely defined by its limits.

I love this stuff, but, come on, there's a lot I'd been missing out on. I didn't really understand how important Wes Anderson was until a roommate made me watch Life Aquatic and I finally went ahead and took a look at Royal Tenenbaums, probably the most important divorce movie of our age (with apologies to Dustin Hoffman). Shit, I barely made it to Brick, and that earned a good 1,400 words, like, twice.

So I haven't abandoned my nostalgia quest, but I've started taking a look at some new stuff. Well, new-to-me. I'm taking it pretty easy - kids' books, pilots, short fiction. But one idea, a single idea, can change my life. It's worth taking a look.