Jeff wrote:I'm not laughing. Why am I not laughing?
It's not really funny, or rather, it doesn't seem to fall into the realm of the comedic. Mr. Vasquez' reaction to his face-to-face confrontation with the sublime is a perfectly natural one, but it is a reaction which modern life makes virtually no allowance for, and one which has no place in the realm in which we spend the vast majority of our waking hours.
Mr. Kimmel's tweet relegating the honest expression of awe and wonderment to a position within his public context as a "funny man" on television is the perversion here, and that may be a part of the popularity of the clip once Kimmel's Twitter followers were exposed to it. There's an unresolved conflict inherent in the juxtaposition there, of the perfectly innocent and the utterly contrived (a conflict exacerbated by the awkward containment vessel for his ecstacy, the YouTube format and the computer screen), that may cause people severe discomfort and anxiety, leading them to release the tension by laughing at Vasquez' outburst. Laughter is often a reaction based in the emotion of fear and surprise, two states I can imagine might accompany most Western people's viewing of any genuine or sincere appreciation of the grandeur of a complete double rainbow, or of the inexpressible beauty of the natural world, or the world in any of it's breathtaking forms at all. The world is a shocking spectacle of terrible beauty, and to allow that in, and to find oneself contexturalised within the scope of that vastness and wonder, if truely experienced and heartfelt, is a thing that would bring any real person to his knees.
But these days we have built such a phalanx of embattlements and towers to guard ourselves against the inpouring of nature's quite standard revelations, that, when faced with the magnificence, we turn instead to the dashboard lights, or the billboard in the background, or the radio or television dial, and pause our innate sense of ourselves to wait there for instructions from the spokesmodels on how to proceed with our egress from the violence of reality's majesty, nervously anticipating our return to a context of aquisition more suited to the headlong needs of late capitalism. We retreat in shame, and lie, and call it a victory of man against the elements. We laugh at his awe.
Mr. Vasquez' openness to the rainbow's power is commendable, and is an example which should be followed with insistence by those of us who wish to find a new way to live here, without becoming the characteristic consumerist patsies of the requirements of the marketplace which lays a pricetag on anything it can grasp or measure. It is a happy fortune that the radiance of the rainbow cannot be so quantified, and the lack of vocabulary or measurements with which to assess the glory, that very inability, is a part of what makes his moment so painfully real. He went outside to take a picture of a rainbow. It's a simple thing. Most of us have probably at some point in our lives done the same. And then he, unlike most of us, was caught, offguard, unguarded and exposed before it, naked.
I laughed when I watched it, in shock and empathy with his plight. But I think it's important to weep uncontrollably at the sheer crackling preciousness of the now at least once a week or so. Sometimes it takes a rainbow.
The most dangerous traps are the ones you set for yourself. - Phillip Marlowe
