Wednesday, May 27, 2009

Stories, Mirrors, and space

Today I watched a movie I'd been planning to watch for some time, but for some reason or the other, kept putting off, The Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I've planned to watch it ever since my sister recommended it to me. To use her words, it's a beautiful story about how love can overcome obstacles of any magnitude. Atleast that's how I remember it. In addition, I've been reading this novel for some time, and was wondering about this fact from a numerical computing course I took. That's quite a bit to start with, so let me begin from humble origins.

While watching a movie, reading a book, don't we always get to that point of 'eureka', when you can feel yourself as one with it, when you know the crux of the whole story is at hand. To borrow a line from the matrix, "everything you have done, has led to this". This kind of phenomenon has parallels, if you somewhat stretch the definition of parallel. One is resonance, the irritating thing we study in physics, it just means 2 bodies vibrating at the same frequency. But a simpler definition also exists, which basically means having a very good rapport with someone or something. Then the question comes that if there is this one resonant moment, what's the point of the rest of the story? That's simple, the story led you to this point. In the spirit of the stuff I learnt in the numerical computing class, lets try a more mathematical approach. The crux is simply a point in space, and the story is then simply the location of this point. As the story unfolds, a map unfolds with it, guiding you to this point. But, we know that different people experience different things with the same story, the same work of art. And this experience gives us some new insight, it changes us ever so slightly. At the risk of losing you, this is somewhat like the action of a matrix on a vector. I love SVD, and it explains the action of the matrix as follows. The vector or point is first written in the right coordinates, then we can describe easily how the matrix will change it. Once that is done, we can try to write the point back in the old coordinate system.

What I'm trying to say is, that the story is your map, it gets you to the crux, the crux then transforms you to a certain extent, and the falloff of the story tries to get you back to your own world, the key being 'tries'. To look at the actual transformation, I'm reminded of those contorted mirrors in which you look fat or short. Stories are interesting, but most of all, I think the ones you like are the ones you relate to, ones in which you see a bit of yourself, or what you would like yourself to be. In so doing, they are like contorted mirrors, they focus on a certain aspect of us, that is usually hidden from us. With that focus, we can probably get a better insight into who we are. Which would explain why people who love reading books claim it helps in character development. But some stories are simpler, they do what some of those contorted mirrors do, show us thinner or taller. What I mean is, to experience a moment of grandeur, that exquisite and exciting life we do not have in real life. A simple escape from reality which lots of other things provide as well, games, alcohol, basically any addiction. But then you might say, aren't you discounting the whole aspect of what a good writer can do? not really. A good writer is like a good map maker, but he's one better, he can make a map which can make people get to different places by following the same directions, good places at that! That's his second power, how well can he/she affect the people once they get there. The best stories leave you there, to find your way back, or to wherever you may want to go. The feeble may get lost, probably they were not meant to go there unsupervised in the first place, or they may not realise where they are. But most find a moment of clarity, and that moment is the whole point of the story for me. To put it in the best possible way, I quote : life is not the number of breaths you take, but the moments that take your breath away. An apt, if somewhat cheesy conclusion.