princess mononoke
just finished rewatching hayao miyazaki's princess mononoke. kinda weird that the culture that produced hentai and young women in initialD should also produce someone like him. his work is just... moving. princess mononoke is one of the most complex animations i have ever experienced. i leave it feeling a little troubled, deeply saddened, and calm.
no one is innocent. not ashitaka, or san, or lady eboshi, or the cunning monk, or even the gods. everyone is one step away from commiting violence, ushering death or bringing life. and everyone has blood of others to account for. each character, no matter how peripheral, has made a decision and acted to affect such outcomes. whether by loyalty, fear, belief, greed, gratitude, anger, hatred, or love. all senses for survival gain weight and wiggles from these depths, articulated as reason.
there is also a certain inevitability that tinges the movement of time. i dont know if the ending ruptures that for me. written at the messy cusp of change, epochs burning into a new chapter, maybe my reading of poignancy is also inevitable. i dont know. this anime is like a poem. everytime i return, it shakes me a little harder.
this time it made me think of lines. the boundaries we are so anxious to locate, name, and die for. i dont understand it. the compulsion to know where this ends and where this begins. our complete inability to fall into the fullness of infinity. the only way to function and make sense is to enact lines. pinning the wet smell and heat of bulls onto rock walls. dissolving the weight on its hooves by slicing dimensions into simple forms. mineral, animal, vegetable. wave, DNA, atom.
"i like..."
for it to mean something, i must compare it to what i do not like. something i like less. something that means lesser, if not amnesia. all through our lives, we maneuver around these circles of lining, naming, distinguishing. gaining complexity and sophistication as we bend rigidly with time. imagination for something extra-real is shredded in the web and makes a collage only in dreams, growing thinner as waking time is swallowed by the perpetuity of needing to line, name and distinguish. as good as you. better than you. a little worse. ambition of hope is caged.
is madness the only escape. or promises of freedom that comes through stronger obedience of lines? or indifference? all lines feel as painful, or blissful, as necessary, as needless, as each other. or do certain lines hum near the heart of everything, and the quest is to cut away the finer, obfuscating barriers to envelop our feet in its thickness?
i dont have an answer. it does seem like the more i grow up, the easier it is to find sense and a place to stand through knowing what i hate. and it is making me so tired. and hollow. it's choking curiousity from my being. i feel like there is no where left to go, and the black, oily soul from a decapitated forest god is slowly filling me up. sometimes.
at least there are kodomas. orang bunian.
"I believe that [...] imagination is very important. We shouldn't stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind and of the imagination." - hayao miyazaki
no one is innocent. not ashitaka, or san, or lady eboshi, or the cunning monk, or even the gods. everyone is one step away from commiting violence, ushering death or bringing life. and everyone has blood of others to account for. each character, no matter how peripheral, has made a decision and acted to affect such outcomes. whether by loyalty, fear, belief, greed, gratitude, anger, hatred, or love. all senses for survival gain weight and wiggles from these depths, articulated as reason.
there is also a certain inevitability that tinges the movement of time. i dont know if the ending ruptures that for me. written at the messy cusp of change, epochs burning into a new chapter, maybe my reading of poignancy is also inevitable. i dont know. this anime is like a poem. everytime i return, it shakes me a little harder.
this time it made me think of lines. the boundaries we are so anxious to locate, name, and die for. i dont understand it. the compulsion to know where this ends and where this begins. our complete inability to fall into the fullness of infinity. the only way to function and make sense is to enact lines. pinning the wet smell and heat of bulls onto rock walls. dissolving the weight on its hooves by slicing dimensions into simple forms. mineral, animal, vegetable. wave, DNA, atom.
"i like..."
for it to mean something, i must compare it to what i do not like. something i like less. something that means lesser, if not amnesia. all through our lives, we maneuver around these circles of lining, naming, distinguishing. gaining complexity and sophistication as we bend rigidly with time. imagination for something extra-real is shredded in the web and makes a collage only in dreams, growing thinner as waking time is swallowed by the perpetuity of needing to line, name and distinguish. as good as you. better than you. a little worse. ambition of hope is caged.
is madness the only escape. or promises of freedom that comes through stronger obedience of lines? or indifference? all lines feel as painful, or blissful, as necessary, as needless, as each other. or do certain lines hum near the heart of everything, and the quest is to cut away the finer, obfuscating barriers to envelop our feet in its thickness?
i dont have an answer. it does seem like the more i grow up, the easier it is to find sense and a place to stand through knowing what i hate. and it is making me so tired. and hollow. it's choking curiousity from my being. i feel like there is no where left to go, and the black, oily soul from a decapitated forest god is slowly filling me up. sometimes.
at least there are kodomas. orang bunian.
"I believe that [...] imagination is very important. We shouldn't stick too close to everyday reality but give room to the reality of the heart, of the mind and of the imagination." - hayao miyazaki