Whether it’s Coppola’s The Outsiders or Jean-Luc Godard’s Band of Outsiders (Bande à part) I think we can all relate, in our secret selves, to the oddball, the misfit and the outlier.
Now if we can relate, we must intuit that our kids, no matter how well they do or do not seem to fit in, or believe they fit in, will be more fully understood if we parents, without spelling it out for them, just simply get that they too feel like outsiders from time to time.
I like the irony in weird sometimes being cool, and in the potential collective unity to be found behind our masks, in the secret and carefully hidden authentic Self.
And so, in the winter of our intermittent discontent, and sometimes mittenned content, perhaps a diversion of no particular consequence might be just the ticket on a January Sunday.
Thus my post today is but a portal to a clip from Bande à part, a quirky scene of three friends dancing in a café. Like most Goddard, it goes on a sort of “Waiting for Godot” bit but has brilliance in it… rather like parenting.
My younger son loves films, he loved Inglorious Basterds, and perhaps one day he’ll be inspired by the filmmakers he admires toward his own Self-expression, maybe realizing that they had creative “parents,” or maybe not. Godard very much inspired Tarantino (who named his production company after this very film); none of us are without ancestors, and no one can stop us from picking our muses and creative spirits from the pantheon of our own opinions.
I remember watching Bande à part in some New York revival house in the days when cinemaphiles were hotly debating VHS vs. Beta and purists still watched film. I remember being very charmed by the café scene and wanting to be just like those kids.
And yet, dancing at Area and Pyramid Club, wearing second-hand clothes from thrift stores and often aimlessly wandering around the East Village in the early 1980s or hanging out at Café Orlin while dreaming and scheming of making our mark in the world seems all too nostalgically to blend together with Godard’s vision of Paris in 1964.
So, let’s dedicate four minutes of timelessness to wherever it personally takes us, and to the hopes, dreams and love that we carry for all our splendidly beautiful collective children.
Namaste…
Click away (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6pOXjQLh7Y), Bruce
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Wonderful Sunday morning clip to share. I smiled all the way through.
My daughter struggles with the fitting in, and the feeling other, and I identify so intensely with her and with this issue that sometimes I feel like I’m in a hall of mirrors with her fears and my child fears and etc and what is real and what is reflection agggghhhh!