mushinnoshin

Back when I used to … um, medicate myself with some regularity, just about the best thing in the world was a good hallucinogenic video with a mind warping psychedelic soundtrack. So it seems almost criminal that — despite being scored by one of my heroes — I never saw until tonight what is arguably the best one ever made: Koyaanisqatsi.

Those of us raised in the MTV era and later may be tempted to dismiss it, seeing images that have since become cliche, and indeed the very idea of mixing sight and sound in this way has become part of the background noise of our lives. But not only was this film revolutionary for its time, I dare say it still surpasses anything that’s come since. Because the images here don’t just dance with the beat to feed our ADD, they tell a story — *the* story, revealing and reveling in the truths that lie behind our lives and beyond our words. The serenity of nature builds to industrial destruction and rebuilds to climax in the psychotica at the dawn of the information age — relaxing back to leave us with a lullaby as we ponder the constant through it all: simple human lives, individuals with dreams and hopes and fears and flaws just living life as best as they can.

A life that is unfortunately, as the title chants with a sad stern serenity, Out of Balance.

Which all seems appropriate as we also lack the words to capture how our heart goes out to Brittney — not for the joblessness, but for the pain I know she has felt which brought her to this point.

For the sake of everyone who cares about you, please do whatever you need to do to put your life back in balance. You have a whole community that loves you, I pray you’ll let that be stronger than the voices of negativity.

Sometimes the old has to be destroyed to make room for the new.