No Longer Just a Little Person: Synecodoche, New York, Two Years Later

I started my online diary three years ago. I pretentiously resist the term "blog", because I was never looking for people to seek it out to read. It was always just for me, and was hugely therapeutic in getting through a divorce, and settling into post-married-single-father life.

During the lowest point of 2008 (the closest I personally have ever been to depression,though never settled into), I was hugely impacted by the Charlie Kaufman film Synecdoche, New York, which dealt with themes of post-divorce life, while also chronicling how one may feel miniscule and purposeless in a vast universe of misunderstanding and selfishness amidst the never-ending creep towards our own mortality.

In Kaufman's view, there is no such thing as solace or peace, and even if you are lucky enough to find your soulmate, you will be kept apart by your own obsessive need to lionize - or destroy - any semblance of self, preventing true, meaningful engagement with other people. Which leads to the inevitable question you grapple with day in, day out:

The Question: Are we all destined to be lonely forever?

When your spouse leaves and you're wondering whether or not you'll ever ever date again, much less find your soul mate, these were hugely impactful themes and ideas, and there wasn't much of a positive spin to put on any of it.

The impact of the movie was best captured in the painfully gorgeous, "Little Person", whose lyrics chronicle a protagonist caught in a sea of solitude, left only to "eat my little meals, miss my little kid and wife".

After posting how I felt like "just a little person", I was surprised to find that my secret-little-blog-I-wanted-no-one-to-know-about suddenly started garnering minor amounts of traffic from random places across the globe. With this being my most emotionally naked blog post, I was disquieted, to say the least. Was I revealing too much of myself?

But as an online marketer, I became fascinated, and suddenly started poring over geographic maps (the Ukraine, really?!) of where people who found the post were from, those who were equally drawn by Charlie Kaufman's painful but intensely human rumination on what it means to be human.

Being someone not intrinsically drawn to online self-exposure (and who now, ironically, must dive into it every day in my professional career), this was confusing. I didn't want to be sucked into that living-life-online vortex, but for a period it somehow made the lonely nights a little less lonely. Some messages shared with others led me to realize this film impacted lonely others out there - were we all in the same adrift boat, yearning for rescue? There's that question again: "are we all destined to be lonely forever"?

Fast forward two years later, to the question's answer:

No, we're not

Not long after wallowing in Synecdoche-magnified self-pity, I met the love of my life. The woman that I am matched with in every way. Our rhythms are perfectly suited for each other; with no disrespect to my ex-wife, we were just never on the same rhythm. We may have wanted ourselves to, but we simply were not meant to have been life partners. I think the post-marriage grieving period was more over the loss of an idea than anything else; this is probably true for both of us.

But I found another little person who wanted to come out and play.

And play we did, and play we continue to do. We endlessly have a ridiculous amount of fun, whether it's weekends away, hanging out with my son, long nights of wine drinking and laying on the floor listening to music, grabbing coffees and glances, or even (gasp) shopping together. There's absolutely nothing that we don't do together, and even less we don't do well together. She's truly been a blessing.

Certainly, the omniscient narrator/Millicent Weems would take a dim view of this turn of events, arguing that it's all a big nothing anyway, both in the beginning, the middle and the end of our time on earth. Talking quietly in his ear - and ours - she says:

"As the people who adore you stop adoring you; as they die; as they move on; as you shed them; as you shed your beauty; your youth; as the world forgets you; as you recognize your transience; as you begin to lose your characteristics one by one; as you learn there is no-one watching you, and there never was, you think only about driving - not coming from any place; not arriving any place. Just driving, counting off time."

I choose not to believe that.

That doesn't mean that I believe in an afterlife, or God, or anything else that suggests a higher consciousness than where we stand in the here and now. But I do believe there is meaning in this life, if you are lucky enough to find it, or choose to embrace it. I do think there is someone out there for most people. Sometimes you'll find them early, sometimes late; in some cases, not at all. I've been truly lucky to find mine, and hope for others to do the same.

Caden Cotard's journey through Synecdoche is one of futility, hypochondriac neuroses and pain, but it's marked by a genuine searching and yearning - the belief that there is something out there that may be found. Something or someone that makes it better. Makes it what you believed it could be. Caden whispers into the phone:

"I know how to do the play now. It will all take place over the course of one day. And that day will be the day before you died. That day was the happiest day of my life. Then I'll be able to live it forever. See you soon."

I believe I've found my way to live forever. For this time on earth, the time that it actually matters.

For so long it was those first few verses that rattled sweet and painfully in my brain, but all that resonates now are the final stanzas:

I know you
You're the one I've waited for.
Let's have some fun.

Life is precious every minute,
and more precious with you in it,
so let's have some fun

We'll take a road trip way out west. You're the one I like the best.
I'm glad I've found you,
Like being around you
You're the one I like the best.

Somewhere, maybe someday,
Maybe somewhere far away,
I'll meet a second little person
And we'll go out and play.

I am not just a little person, and never will I be. Hopefully none of us will be.

I'm just a little person.

And the full lyrics for those hunting for them:

I'm just a little person,
One person in a sea
Of many little people
Who are not aware of me.

I do my little job
And live my little life,
Eat my little meals,
Miss my little lid and wife

And somewhere, maybe someday,
Maybe somewhere far away,
I'll find a second little person
who will look at me and say,

"I know you
You're the one I've waited for.
Let's have some fun."

Life is precious every minute,
and more precious with you in it,
so let's have some fun

We'll take a road trip way out west. You're the one I like the best.
I'm glad I've found you,
Like being around you
You're the one I like the best.

Somewhere, maybe someday,
Maybe somewhere far away,
I'll meet a second little person
And we'll go out and play.

-- Little Person, "Synecdoche, New York"

I'm at one of my lowest points in the last couple of months. Much of it, though not all of it, has been brought on by Synecdoche, New York, which created in me an overwhelming sense of malaise and alienation. It's almost like I saw the exact movie at the exact wrong moment to create the exact maximum impact on my psyche.

There are many reasons, I suppose. Work is a big one. The closure of my vertical has left me adrift in our department, waiting to find out what the Next Big. Thing is. In the meantime I'm doing mundane, tedious work that I graduated from nearly two years ago. I'm suddenly not important, central, creative or, frankly, very useful. It's a miserable feeling.

Second, the movie brought on a new round of discombobulation over my impending divorce. The protagonist (Philip Seymour Hoffman) of the movie never really recovers from the failure of his first marriage, which is dramatized in a way that he never fully knows what went wrong. That hit me so hard, and I could relate to it immensely, but then Hoffman spends much of the rest of the movie trying to find a way to connect with the child who was taken from him, poisoned against him in disgusting, horrible ways. It's a dark, horrific vision of parental alienation... Alec Baldwin shouldn't see this flick. He may end up making more angry phone calls...

I'm just a little person

One person in a sea

Of many little people

Who are not aware of me

I do my little job

And live my little life

Eat my little meals

Miss my little kid and wife

These are the lyrics to the heartbreaking closing credits song of Synecdoche, New York. These lines caused tears to pour down my face as the credits rolled. Everything about my failed marriage pouring out of me, channeled through those simple, simple lines. Which is followed by...

And somewhere maybe someday

Maybe somewhere far away

I'll find a second little person

Who will look at me and say...

I know you

You're the one I've waited for

Let's have some fun

And there's the third reason... my new friend is disappearing from me.

I don't know if it has anything to do with me. I can tell that she's reaching out to experience life in many forms. Sometimes includes me, but it seems that now it doesn't more often than not. Our last date was fantastic, with promises of more that week. She opened up in a lot of meaningful ways. We appear to be on the same wavelength. Then things started stalling out, and it suddenly feels like it turning into an one-way street, and I'm tired of being the chump going the wrong way.

And I absolutely know that I shouldn't be worked up about her at all, but yes, we're all reaching out for that bullshit that makes us forget just how alone and scared we all are, all fearful that it doesn't mean anything, that we can't get anything out of this world. Which is, after all, what Synecdoche, New York is about in many respects. It's a pretty nihilist film, though in a beautiful, tender-hearted way rather than caustic and bitter.

So it's been a perfect emotional storm this week. I'm rarely a depressive, morbid, sad person. But I feel like I've been one big ball of sadness since Sunday night when I watched that movie. I don't have any direction, I don't feel any hope...

Yes. I'm just a little person. One person in a sea of many people, who are not aware of me.

Part two of this story came almost three years later. Feel free to read it.

I am at a loss for words for...

Writing about a movie, or music, or even meaningless pop culture... it's in my nature to want to sound eloquent, intelligent, or at least like I have a clue what the fuck I'm talking about. 

But tonight I endured a movie that has left me an emotional wreck, and without any of the necessary words. Or the right words, or maybe not even the words that make a lick of sense. Which would be appropriate, given the movie that I watched tonight: 

Synecdoche, New York

Synec-what?! Who the hell has even heard of this movie. Well, it's the directorial debut of Charlie Kaufman, the screenwriter behind Being John Malkovich, Adaptation and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. I have long had a hate him/love him relationship with Kaufman. "Malcovich" was an amusing trifle, a bit self-conscious and smug, while Adaptation was one of the most navel-gazing, self-indulgent movies ever that made me want to punch Meryl Streep. How often do you want to punch Meryl Streep? That said, I adored Eternal Sunshine. 

And in a lot of ways, this movie features similar themes of both those films I loved and hated, exploring the artistic process and the search for meaning within the context of one person's life. It's almost like Kaufman was teasing the edges of those themes in those latter two films, but Synecdoche, New York is so astonishingly raw, painful, achingly sad, and elegiac that it just might be one of the most important movies ever made. Hyperbole, yeah, but… god, I’m just at a total loss right now. I warned that I wouldn't sound coherent.

It was so gut-wrenching to watch, and so utterly illogical and random and all over the place and dream-like and non-narrative, that it was just an absolute mess, and that’s part of the point. It’s intentionally messy, and ugly and obtuse. It is self-obsessed, and universal-looking with gigantic open arms all at the same time. Years pass, and people describe them as weeks. Characters develop physical ailments, which then disappear. Some characters age, becoming old, while others don’t. So much of it makes no logical sense – and for people not willing to go along on the journey, it will be truly infuriating to the point of walking out – but the entire thing is about digging deep into our individual pain, which is really a universal pain, and trying to find truth, and meaning, and connection. And not finding it. And yet somehow finding it too. 

It’s so dreamlike that it’s not a tear-jerker as it unfolds, but I found tears pouring down my face during the final credits. After it all ended. Because I wasn’t crying for the movie, but I was crying for what the movie said about me, about everyone else, about life. It made me want to crawl under a bed and sob for the next two weeks.

There is craft, there is art, and then there’s something that’s almost beyond art. I kind of feel like I saw that tonight. Something that gets beyond image, and sound, and texture, and story, and meaning, and gets to a place that people can’t easily get to. And I bet that 7 out of 10 people who see that movie will hate it (maybe even 8 of 10)… but something really remarkable and depressing and transcendent took place on that screen… and I hated it, and loved it, and it’s something that’ll stay with me for a long time to come.