I have voices, in my head, they are talking, known only by letter, about a life I might once have had. I don't want them to stop. Not until they show me the way.
A. Yeah, kind of. I never saw it. But I did see a documentary about the guy that "Shine" was about.
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B. How was it?
A. It was very moving. I got really wound up emotionally at times. After seeing it I wanted to see "Shine" but I was extremely compelled having become acquainted with the real person in the documentary.
B. So what was it about the documentary that got you...?
A. ...that got me emotional? It was his unfiltered enthusiasm for life. I mean, had it not been done the way it had been I could easily have seen him as a savant, what was once referred to as an "idiot savant". I remember seeing news stories on 60 Minutes about savants, one guy from the UK who was also a pianist, his name was Leslie, and then seeing a follow up on that guy decades later. He was incredibly gifted, could replicate a piece of music on the piano after only hearing it once and he was able to immediately play the piece in any other style, key, tempo... amazing. But that guy couldn't tie his shoes, he was blind, but I mean he was incapable of caring for himself at all. This guy is different...
B. How so? He can tie his shoes?
A. Funny. Yes, he can. He is functional, just a bit strange. He talks incessantly it seems. Even while performing. In the film, he was unintelligible a lot. But he had a lot of people that loved him. He was amazingly talented. And he was wise. Incredibly perceptive about people, emotions. At one point, in the midst of a lot of other rambling discourse, his manic expression of enthusiasm, in the middle of his display of raw appreciation for this bizarre thing we call life, what he was talking about I didn't catch most of, but he said in the midst of it all, 'Life is a journey, not a destination". Yeah, we've all heard that before, but from him, it had more meaning.
B. And the meaning is?
A. Well, just that. He is older, 70 maybe, plus or minus a few years, but he had an almost childlike enthusiasm. Not just for his family and friends, his wife, but for everybody. I could feel his happiness. I wanted to experience it myself, because I do possess that same enthusiasm, I think we all do deep inside, but I rarely am able to tap into it. He made me feel it, if only for a moment, that joy for life, this bizarre, meaningless trip of a brief 85 years or so. It doesn't make sense to me at all, normally, but I got a taste of it through him in that documentary.
B. Kind of makes you wonder...
A. Yeah. The meaning of life? Don't know. But, in him, I think we can see a little bit of that meaning. The meaning is in the moment. In every interaction, we have with each other. Every moment of every day. We should all strive to be aware. to feel and to express love. Love for each other. Love for life. I don't know where we go after we die, if anywhere. But I hope that if there is a heaven, and I hope that the experience of being in heaven is something like that joy I felt, that that man exudes, every day for eternity.
