In an article I read recently, I found out about a new film coming out, You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger, made by an artistic hero of mine by the name of Woody Allen. You might have heard of him. This film, like many of Allen's films, reflects the pure luck and circumstantial nature of life, which, from his viewpoint, is without meaning. In the interview, Allen reveals that life is survived by, simply, "distraction. And you can distract yourself in a million different ways, from turning on the television set and seeing who wins the meaningless soccer game, to going to the movies or listening to music." One of the characters in the film whose life's course gets altered by a distracting woman in the window across the street is Alfie; it is through his lens that we learn just how important "figures in the window" are to our survival of life. Allen purports that we fill in the gaps; we create what we don't know about the stranger in the window, day in and day out, to keep us interested, titillated, entertained. In the film, "Josh Brolin plays a writer, Roy, who becomes obsessed with the stranger in the window opposite. Does Allen think this is just the human condition? That we're all captivated by the stranger in the window?
"Yes, because you fill in the gaps. You see the woman in the window and you impute to that person the things you want to hear.""
That idea in itself struck me. The fact that such a nihilistic thinker like Allen came up with it is not what surprises me; it is, rather, the statement itself and its truth that have brought me to this blog post. I, myself experience this "stranger in the mirror" magnetization in regards to Allen: hooked by Allen's frequent directorial use of New York as a backdrop and of relationships' futility and insanity as a canonical device, I have created Woody Allen himself to be the neurotic, psychoanalytical, endlessly humorous little man that he portrays in film. In reality, however, Allen admits to being quite dedicated to certain arts (like film, jazz, and his clarinet) and therefore very regimented and average regarding his approach to life. This made me wonder: where can we find instances of the self-influenced "stranger in the window" in our own lives, and how and why do many of us construct such characters from reality? Allen would have us believe that we simply need to create non-mortal problems in life to continue on, things with which to distract us. But muses like unknown window figures can be much more than distractions; for some, they can become the object of artistic flourishment.
Let's take a portrait painter, for example. He or she sees an attractive individual across the street and begins to paint him/her, every day, as they go to and from the market to buy cucumbers. The artist will grow and grow and soon delineate from the original sketch or outward appearance of the individual. The artist's own personal talents have interjected, forcing themselves onto the the page and creating an entirely new individual in paint. Even better, however, is the fact that the process will teach the artist his/her faults. Such doting recreation highlights in brilliant clarity the mistakes and inconsistencies of an artist's technique; this is almost paradoxical in that a subject largely created or altered by the bias of the artist's fascinated mind can still be portrayed lamely and unfashionably. Sometimes, therefore, doting on the stranger in the window can do much more than distract us from the pain of life or even improve our creativity--it can also teach us about our own flaws and ways to improve how we look at the world, as long as we, the doters, steal a breath every once in a while from the sea of fascination.
What do you, the readers, think about the importance of the distractions we make for ourselves? Can devotion serve as a platform for self-improvement in your own lives? Do you feel as though the "Stranger in the Window" fascination of unknown individuals is a legitimate, common lens? If so, what foundations does it hold within your perception of life and entertainment?
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