I really love to travel, and travel inspires my neurons to detect every last thing- scents, every inch of passerby, the light of each day. This overload of information (in a good way!) then is translated into a wealth of descriptions to use when writing. In other words, traveling gives me something to write about.
The protagonist Gil in "Midnights in Paris" is nostalgic for Paris in the twenties. He feels like that era was the perfect era for his own creative thoughts (he is a novelist), and feels like he was born too late. Not to spoil the movie, but a main part of the plot is his discovery of the magic of his everyday, 2010 world. Although lighthearted, the movie is a poignant look into the fact that we are always longing for something else- a different country, a different time...but, in fact, there is much to be inspired by everyday. This is very different from saying that we all need to accept our circumstances and not do anything to change them; what we need to do is believe that within our immediate surroundings is wonder.
So, as I write about daily life in Somerville, MA, I'm going to try to feel like a traveler, try to imagine what it would be like if I was a visitor here. I met a Serbian boy on the T yesterday, it was his first time in the United States. I wondered what the subway here looked like to him. It made me look at the T all over again.
No comments:
Post a Comment