QUESTION:

Does life imitate art or the other way around or is it all a pile of circumstancial manure?

This one I need answered for personal reasons. Here's the story:

There's a particular old film (I won't name it, don't ask.) He brought it to my attention. The first time I watched it- I think I stopped breathing a few times. Some distinct similarities with my life in the moment were extremely unsettling.

Months passed before my second viewing- I went back to it because of something niggling at me: what I'd lived since- I'd maybe seen similar events in that film? So I watched it again- now having a far better understanding both of him, and of his presence in me.

Faaaaark!

Or rather WTF? How had we both morphed into those two characters so effortlessly? We were them! We were them? I remember shutting down all further thought that time. I refused to buy into the notion that life imitates art. Nuh uh.

A subsequent viewing (under the influence of a mind-altering substance- man, I went deep!) months later... Little similarities jumped out at me from every scene: A snippet of a tune; the name of the antagonist- another thing that should have been a warning beacon during that very first vewing and was missed until now; the number on a hotel door shown over and over; the 'period' pieces in my room seen duplicated on film; my penchant and subsequent purchase of 're-purposed' clothing and personal items from the particular era it was set in; the small boy later seen as an old man, representing his conscience (the antagonist being mine)- there's pobably more I can list, I vaguely recall far more similarities than discrepancies but that's the problem with weed and mind-trips: Retention.

I filed away those many dual instances and didn't dwell further on them. I was, after all, 'under the influence' during the viewing. I was certain if seen again with a lucid brain I'd discount most of them. The mind playing tricks and all. I didn't revisit it straight away though.

It was only the other day, almost six months later... that I sat and examined it clinically scene by scene and I had a word doc open with two colums: FILM. REAL. This, because I went back to it looking for a particular expression- or rather the hopeful absence of it. (Something to do with a suspicion in the here and now.) It was there, same as the real. It prompted me to go back to the start and to dissect.

Under each, I recorded every similarity between each scene and the equivalent as witnessed in 'real life'. The list grew and grew and some 3k words later... I reached THE END. It makes for an interesting analysis- were it not for this one thing: it began as an honest and serious comparison but then devolved into a comedic routine worthy of Youtube sensationalism. (My acidic, often cynical 'voice' and my sadistic play on words... else my expressive language- it alas will remain private.)

But here's the thing: It only devolved because I gave up. I gave in to it. I said, "Film, when I was twenty, you'd already foreseen and then mapped out my present. I accept it." I then put it down to sheer and absolute coincidence and predictive behaviour and laughed at it and tried to find flaws whereby I could dispute that life imitates art. I tore it apart, in the end. I got myself out of it.

Else, I'd have to believe he and I had lived before and this was merely the next cycle. And that art imitates life.

(The third option is that of me being somewhat crazy... who does stuff like this right? And that the above is all a crock.)

Thoughts?