Reality shift

Wednesday, 12 September 2007

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In the night of the 10th of march in the year 2000 I had a sort of near death experience. I say sort of, because it was actually something very different. The experience goes under a wide variety of names, that all have been misused and watered down until they have lost their meaning. I sometimes call it a full death experience, but even that means little to nothing.
I love to read books and watch movies in which the main character has a similar mind blowing experience. There seems to be an archetypical structure underneath all the apparent totally different experiences, either real or phantasized. Of course the first Matrix movie is among my all time favourites in this genre, but there are more: Groundhog Day, Pi, Contact, Being John Malkowich, Truman Show, Dark City, Lawnmoyerman, etcetera. I will try make a complete list one day.
I am still reorganising my space, or actually I am trying to create a few cubic centimetres space in my room. I just found a pile of videos of some of the movies I mention here. I watch very little movies, and I prefer to watch as little television as possible. These videos have been lying around since I bought them, and I have only seen them once. I think I can live without them.
Apart from the mind blowing experiences that the main characters in all these movies undergo, and the reality shift that is shown in these movies, there is a third theme that fascinates me: the idea that our reality is some sort of artificial digital creation. This idea is worked out in The Matrix, but there are many other books and movies based on this strange idea. The Thirteenth Floor is one of them. I remember a scene when someday travels to the end of his world/reality, where he literally sees that there is nothing beyond a certain point. All you see are the rude computer sketches of something yet to be created as “reality”. Scenes like this make deep impressions on me and keep me awake at night. Philip K. Dick once said it perfectly : “Reality is the dream that doesn’t go away when you wake up from it” . I would like to add : but it does become fuzzy at the edges.
Here is a song that has the same effect on me as all those movies: Mad world, a song by a band that you would probably not expect in this Soundtrack, Talk Talk. I play it in a version that I used for a radio show long time ago. I mixed it myself with two turntables and two tape decks.

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