Although I know it’s most certainly not his intention, the great Charlie Kaufman has a knack for timing the release of his movies to coincide with transitional moments in my life when I’m in need of some sort of guidance or inspiration. The words that pour off of his scripts directly through the movie screens have always seemed directed at me. I’ve come away from each viewing feeling refreshed or renewed in some way. Repeated viewings of Kaufman films provide further intellectual and/or spiritual stimulation, but nothing quite like the first time.
For instance, Sarah the L and I went to see Adaptation as my relationship with Widget was dying its fairly-quick-yet-painful-nonetheless-death and I found comfort in a scene between the sibling characters, Charlie and Donald. In the scene, Charlie remembered a time back in high school when the love of Donald’s life made fun of him behind his back. Donald said he knew they were making fun of him and Charlie asked why then did he look so happy? Donald replied that he loved her to which Charlie said, “but she thought you were pathetic.” And Donald’s reply shed light on Charlie’s heartache and mine: “That was her business, not mine. You are what you love, not what loves you.” Five years later and that scene still resides in the forefront of my heart and mind. And it was something I thought of when I walked into the theatre to see Kaufman’s most recent movie, Synecdoche, New York, all the while hoping I’d find some sort of new wisdom that might help point my life in the right direction.
I’ve spent the last week since viewing Kaufman’s latest trying to understand what my eyes saw. My first reaction was to compare the movie to an overhead projector straight out of a high school class. I left the theatre feeling as if, in an effort to tell the story of one man’s life, Kaufman prepared five transparent sheets, each with its own form of art (e.g., a Hemingway short story; a Norman Rockwell painting; an Annie Leibowitz photograph; lyrics to a Bob Dylan song; and a page ripped straight out of Grey’s Anatomy of the Human Body), and placed them down on the projector, one on top of the other. The end result, of course, was a blur of confusion with faint traces of unimaginable beauty, and the feeling that Kaufman had failed to bring meaning and understanding of life through art.
Now, six days later, I’m overwhelmed with the revelation that in his film’s study of the life of one man, this blurred confusion with traces of beauty is precisely what Kaufman was striving to achieve. How else to describe the indescribable life than to be unable to completely describe it? Even more mind-blowing was the realization that Kaufman came closer to bringing clarity to life than I originally thought.
The literary-ites among my reader(s), as well as those of you with an insatiable thirst for knowledge, are most likely familiar with the word “synecdoche,” but for those of you who, like me, spent their entire lives without hearing this word until Charlie Kaufman delivered it into our consciousness like a line from an Alexander Pope poem, I’ll give a brief lesson. According to my trusty dictionary, a synecdoche is a figure of speech in which either a part is used to represent the whole, the whole for a part, the specific for the general, the general for the specific, or the material for the thing made from it. For example, if I told someone to use his head, because I was talking about his brain (specific) but said his head instead (general), I’ve just used a synecdoche. Other examples include saying “steel” instead of “sword,” “wheels” for a “car,” and a “Judas” for “traitor.”
If you consider the definition for “synecdoche” when thinking of this film, it becomes clear why Kaufman titled the movie as such. Everything and everyone in this world is both the sum of its parts and part of the sum. In other words (some of which are Kaufman’s), every person in the world is a “lead in their own story,” but also the extra in someone else’s. Each person is a synecdoche. Furthermore, the tragedy of Caden Cotard, played brilliantly by the resplendent Philip Seymour Hoffman, is that his life’s work, which turns into a work of his life, cannot be completed until his death. Each separate moment of his life, including his death, makes up the bigger picture of his life and, thus, his life is a synecdoche.
As a writer, I found Kaufman’s film and this newly-learned literary term equal parts comforting and haunting. In “synecdoche,” here was a word that accurately described Benchly’sword: one blog made up of numerous individual pieces, each of which complete on its own but also meant to be combined with every other piece to define one person’s life. My life, as complicated as it can be in its worst moments (goodbye hugs void of any feeling on a cold fall evening), and as simple as it can be in its best (sleeping in on a cold, December Sunday morning), is one story made up of a seemingly-unending-but-obviously-inevitably-ending (and I’ll admit, oftentimes inappropriately long-winded) parade of anecdotes. This blog is my play and I am the lead character.
I’m haunted, however, because I know that though each posted anecdote may be complete, I’ll never be able to finish every anecdote of my life. As thorough as I am, it’ll be impossible for me to complete my life’s work. The best I can do is enjoy each moment (good or bad) and find solace in the fact that I’m able to share most of these moments with my reader(s). And if ever I’m lucky enough to be able to share them with my Maxine/Amelia/Clementine/Hazel, after all that I’ve been through in this life, and especially in this year, she would most certainly be the cherry on top.
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