Thursday, February 13, 2014

ugh

I'm doing awesome
and clearly the answer to the question at the bottom is: all of them

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

Thank You, Philip Seymour Hoffman


Anyone that knows me well is aware that Philip Seymour Hoffman is/was one of my favorite actors--no, fuck that--artists. I am devastated by his death in a number of ways. I'm sad that he was in so much pain that he risked ending his consciousness as a human being in order to alleviate it. The first thing I felt when I found out that he died was anger. I was angry that he left me alone here to deal with "all of this" by myself. I'd felt a connection with him through how well he could share the dark, sad parts of being human that people don't like to acknowledge. I thought that he'd "gotten it" and had been not only able to deal with that shitty pain in order to survive the day to day, but to conquer it, expose it, manipulate it to create art--to show others something true and meaningful.

One of the reasons why I think he was such a great actor was because you could tell, you could really feel, that he understood the nature of that kind of immense, existential pain that chills you to the bone, the kind of pain that makes you afraid to open your eyes in the morning, the kind of pain that is so great and so massive that you feel like no matter what you do, where you go, who you're with, it's always there, waiting to consume you. I'm talking about that void inside of you that threatens to take you over if you let it. All people have that void, feel that deep pain because it is an integral, inescapable aspect of humanity. However, it's my belief that addicts are affected by that void more deeply. Few people know how to channel their knowledge of it to create such compelling illustrations of the human condition. Philip Seymour Hoffman was one of those people who knew how to do that and did it well.

Below are a collection of scenes that demonstrate his abilities as an actor, an artist. These scenes have affected me greatly.


Doubt – Father Flynn

Capote – Truman Capote

Almost Famous – Lester Bangs
 

Magnolia – Phil Parma
 

Happiness - Allen
 

The Master – Lancaster Dodd
 

Mary & Max – Max Horowitz (voice)
 

Synecdoche, New York - Caden
 

Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead - Andrew



There are other movies that Philip Seymour Hoffman did an incredible job in (Love Liza, The Savages, Boogie Nights, etc), but it was in these films that I feel he truly shined and contributed something human, beautiful, and uniquely unsettling to the narrative. He was the kind of actor that would not only make you believe he was the person he was playing but would make you believe that this person was real, that you had met them or some version of them, and that you would meet them again. His influential monologues stayed with you after you watched them, nestling somewhere inside of your psyche. That's why his acting was art. You believed him so much that you let him in. You let him move you and change you. And that's what art does.

My mourning does not continue purely because he was a person that I admired and now he is dead but for a more selfish reason; he was a part of me and he taught me something significant about my own pain, fear, self-loathing, and more importantly, the very nature of human suffering. He helped me identify the terrifying age-old question that has haunted me my whole life: "Why do we suffer?" and I thought, through that forlorn, wise way he had about him, he had accepted the heartbreaking answer, which is simply, "Because we do and we always will." It fucking kills me that someone who was able to both understand and portray pain's nature so intimately on-screen could not bear it himself, off-screen.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: Though I didn't know you, you made me feel like I did. I'm sad that you're gone. Your death frightens me to the core, for if the answer to the question you explored so expertly was not good enough for you, what does that mean for me? If anything positive has come of this, it's that you've made me understand that pain is a part of living and if I don't accept that, if I too allow myself to continue the fruitless pursuit of pleasure without pain, I will die, never again to create anything meaningful to others, just like you did. You've hurt me and you've helped me.

Rest in peace, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and thank you. Thank you for the art you shared with us and the lesson that your death has taught me. I promise to try to find a way to live with the pain you couldn't, to fight against the dark that swallowed you and countless others who suffered from the same addictive delusion of painlessness. Your waving white flag terrified me at first. But now it's made me realize that what I'm fighting for every day that I'm sober is my life.