This too shall pass

It's such a strange feeling when you experience something meaningful, with people outside of your normal experiences - and you know you'll never experience them in the same way again.

I was in Amsterdam in September, and found myself sitting in a cafe, watching a documentary about 9/11 with the owner. He didn't speak great English, but we communicated so much, so many shared feelings; as we watched a thing which felt as fresh and painful as nine years ago. And then another guy came in, and watched the last hour with us. It was strangely poignant. I'm English, the owner was Turkish and the customer Dutch. And we watched the TV screen in near silence, together. Nobody ever does anything in silence together. It was important somehow.

And then I was in The Hague for a conference with a bunch of people I'd never met, and four days later they were the best of friends. But then we went home, to literally thirty different countries around the world. And now we know we'll never all be in the same room again. We have different plans, different visa situations, different priorities. But our connection on those days went beyond what you can explain in tangibles.

I think that's what film is about. It's about capturing that. Capturing things we feel and experience and people we find; 'cause it's the only damn way we know to hold on to all the things that pass. The girl leaves, but she can live in a screenplay forever. The friend dies, but we can leave our impression of him up on a cinema screen for all to see.

Writing is about imagination a lot of the time. But it's also about looking very precisely at the things you're yearning for, that you've felt, that you miss. That's why 'Almost Famous' is everyone's favorite movie; it captures what it is to fall in love with everyone you meet on the journey, on Thunder Road. It'll never be the same again, so enjoy it, indulge in it, remember it and write everything you remember about it.

I am always longing for that. My favorite moments in life and in movies are about people being in places they weren't meant to be, connecting with people they never expected to find. That's 'Adventureland,' that's 'Before Sunrise,' that's sitting in Amsterdam with two strangers watching history and building a new, better world, just by being together in silence and understanding each other.

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