Driving
Emma Watson does not bear all the blame for me being in Alabama at midnight tonight, but she certainly gave my innate madness a little push. I just went out for completely unnecessary groceries (I wanted chocolate. Shut up.) and decided to take the long way home. I had a full tank of gas, a lovely full moon hanging over my shoulder, plenty of good music, and no one waiting for me, so the the long way kept getting longer. I kept thinking, In one more exit, I'll turn around. Then a track from Seks Vol. 1 came on, and turning back while good driving music plays offends both the shuffle and driving gods. Thus, I found myself in Alabama.
Driving (also flying) is kind of magical. For the length of the trip, you are neither here nor there: you are between. When you are here or are there, you are-but when you are travelling, you are neither here nor there, so you aren't, quite. Doing this with people you like and trust means that for that moment, you are safe together in your own between. No one can find you, no one can reach you. It's wonderfully, beautifully, private and safe. It's an ongoing liminal state that forms a bubble of sanctuary so long as you do not stop. Obviously, then, many things helped my normally-six-mile trip home involve two states and nearly two hours-but it started with Emma Watson, a pickup truck, and Heroes.
Last night I watched The Perks of Being a Wallflower because sometimes one takes what comes in the bootleg queue. The book does not sound all that great, honestly, but the movie turned out to be lovely, mostly because of step-siblings Sam and Patrick (Emma Watson and Ezra Miller, respectively). The tunnel scene was just beautiful. (If you've not seen it, in an apparently accidentally defining scene in the film, David Bowie's Heroes plays while Sam stands in the bed of a pickup, arms outstretched, going through the Fort Pitt tunnel.) The tunnel wasn't a necessary part of their drive, they detoured because Sam wanted it. That moment, the three friends together, in the world but separated from it, was a perfect depiction of that moment of sanctuary.
This is the final shot of the scene:
I love this shot. In the beginning, it's just Sam, flying with the background and lights speed-blurred into abstraction. Then they emerge from the tunnel, and the background slows into a recognisable cityscape, the mundane returns in the form of the pickup and the interstate signs, and Sam is just a small lone figure again situated in the concrete world, but she's still soaring. (When I cut the gif from the video, I chose to split the lyrics, from the grandeur of We can be heroes in the tunnel to the fall of Just for one day, at the point where she exits the tunnel and returns to the world. I hope that wasn't too heavy-handed.)
As an aside, when I was trying to identify the bridge and tunnel, I came across an article talking about how dangerous this was. In particular, an article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette claimed one could [fly] out of said motor vehicle in the event of the slightest bump or swerve and quoted a Carnegie Mellon physics professor saying, Even if the truck swerves a little left or right, then you will fall. Nope: I remember riding in the back of a truck like this when I was about eight. It's certainly more dangerous than sitting in the cab wearing a seat belt, but it's not significantly dangerous. Are we really this into bubble-wrapping kids?